Cold Open: Gary Ridgway. The Green River Killer. A real piece of shit. A misogynist misfit who preyed on the weakest members of society - young, female street prostitutes and runaways. Women already marginalized to the lowest rung of society - mere sexual objects to be used as the men who bought their bodies saw fit. And no one used them more than Gary. He took everything from them. He took their futures. He took any hopes and dreams that a short lifetime of desperate choices hadn’t already removed. That youthful light in one’s eyes that most of us are fortunate enough to have at least experienced for awhile when we were in our teens or twenties - that feeling that anything was possible, or that, if things weren’t where you wanted them to be right now, there was still time to change course - he took that. He ended the hope that there was still time to get things right. Gary took what little was left of their light and he snuffed it out. He actually watched it go out. And then, after taking the last bit of these women’s lives, he refused to even allow them dignity in death. He returned to body dump sites and desecrated their bodies time and time again. He let their families wonder what had happened to their daughters year after year. He let them fear the worst. And what had happened to them WAS the worst.

Gary Leon Ridgway would be convicted of murdering forty-nine women in Western Washington State. He confessed to killing forty-eight in 2003 to avoid the death penalty. He was given forty-eight life sentences plus another 480 years - ten years for tampering with evidence in each of the forty-eight murders. And then, in 2011, a forty-ninth body was found and he was given another life sentence. He’d claim over 20 additional murders on top of the ones he was convicted of.

Feels like any sentence that involves allowing you to still live when you’ve been convicted of killing forty-nine human beings seems a little soft. But it was the only way to get closure on so many homicide cold cases.

So now, sadly, this complete fucking dirtbag is still alive. Currently incarcerated at the age of sixty-nine at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Where you know damn well he’s made several 69 jokes in the past month.

Why did he do it? How did he do it? How did he get away with it for so long? He killed without being caught for over 15 years. We look into all of that any more as we Suck on one of the worst human beings the Pacific Northwest has ever produced, today, on Timesuck!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

A. Happy Monday Timesuckers! I’m the Master Sucker, the Suck Master, He Who Sucketh the Most - I’m Dan Cummins and I may actually be a whackadoodle. And you - YOU are definitely listening to Timesuck right now.

Welcome to, or welcome BACK to, the Cult of the Curious - and Hail Nimrod! And Hail Lucifina fellow wanderer! Long episode but don’t fade at the end today - maybe the most interesting Timesucker Updates we’ve ever had. Lot of weird shit been happening when people listen to the recent exorcism two parter.

B. New album is out! Thanks for keeping my new standup comedy album, Maybe I’m the Problem, on the number one spot on iTunes this past week! This is that Pandora exclusive album that is now out on all the major online digital album retailers.

I hope you download it, love it, and rate it to help others do the same. Maybe I’m the Problem out now! Maybe I really am the problem. Nah. I don’t think so.

C. My West Coast Buds pre-roll: Timesuck is brought to again by the My West Coast Buds podcast! Yes! Yes! Yes! Hosted by comic, kush king, and TIMESUCKER Joe Dimeo, My West Coast Buds is an inside baseball look at Cannabis, coffee, comedy, and spirits - some of Joe’s very favoritest things - and so much more. It’s a fun conversation where you learn about all kinds of stuff.

On today’s My West Coast Buds episode - Bar Room Blunders! The guys do a live podcast from the undertow comedy festival and speak with comedians Shane Mauss, Jake Silberman, Caitlyn Warehouser , and AJ Foster about their craziest alcohol related experiences! 4 comics telling 4 really funny stories, in a room full of fantastic beer drinking costal folk. Timesuck fans Ben and Joe really appreciate your support - they been receiving a lot of love from Timesuckers and they don’t take it for granted. And if you’re are enjoying the show to please write a quick review on the iTunes store.

So listen and subscribe to the My West Coast Buds podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud and all sorts of other podcast players - including, of course, www.mywestcoastbuds.com - link in today’s episode description. You can also find them in the sponsor section of the app. Just push their button!

D. Second Pre-Roll: Hunch.ly!

Timesuck is also brought to you by Jupiter’s Twist! - a really fun new board game where you and a friend stick needles in your nipples, start twisting, and see who can make it the most times around the areola before passing out from excruciating pain. One twist? Amateur hour! Two twists? Now we’re talking! AND… we’re screaming. Three twists is when the fun And the tearing begin! Four twists - you’re winning Jupiter’s Twist while also losing your Goddamn mind! Five twists - get the Guinness people on the phone - you’re about to either set a new world record or bleed out. So head to Jupiter’s Twist dot what the fuck am i talking about!?!

No - that is of course not a sponsor. But we do have another kick- ass real one.

Hunchly - ANOTHER awesome company ALSO ran by Timesuckers. I LOVE it!!

You Timesuckers know that I have to do a shit pile of research for every episode.

Google searches, endless Wikipedia pages, news articles and forums in the dark, seedy underbelly of the Internet.

I’ve got 100 tabs open and half the time and I don’t know how I ended up down so many of the rabbit holes I find myself in. Damn you Lucifina!

Well, let me tell you about a tool that helps put an end to this madness. It’s called Hunchly.

Hunchly kicks ass, you just turn it on when you’re using Google Chrome and it captures and keeps track of every page that you visit so that you never forget where you’ve been.

The best part is that Hunchly does this automatically so you never have to stop your research to worry about taking screenshots or copying and pasting URLs. You can tag pages to keep them organized, take notes on interesting pages, and clip photographs all from the intuitive Hunchly dashboard. Hunchly can even track phone numbers, email addresses, names or whatever other piece of information is relevant for your investigation and notify you when those pieces of information are found on the page you are on. And so much more.

Hunchly is used by podcasters, police officers, private investigators, journalists, cybersecurity researchers and financial investigators all over the world.

And to get 15% off on your Hunchly purchase, head to hunch.ly and use coupon code: timesuck. That’s H-U-N-C-H DOT L-Y, OR, just go to the Timesuck app or web page, head to the sponsor page, and click their logo! We love hunch.ly and we know you will too!

E. Spokane Live Podcast: Big thanks to all the Timesuck Faithful who made it to the Spokane Live Green River Suck last night at the Spokane Comedy Club. Had a nice full-size crowd of dedicated Suck Heads. Bunch of Timesuckers wearing their swag and bringing their positive energy. I’ll release the taping for the Space Lizards via Patreon here soon.

We emptied the keg of Timesuck IPA that was brought to the club for the event and I gotta say - great beer! Young Buck Brewing knocked it out of the park. For Spokane area Suckers, the beer will be available for an unknown amount of time at the Steel Barrel Tap Room on Madison Ave downtown and also at Backyard Brewing on Argonne in the Valley and also, this Thursday and Friday, May 10th and 11th, the Big Dipper bar and rock club downtown is carrying it.

F. Tour Dates!

I’ll be at the Sacramento Punchline this weekend, May 10th - 12th, and based on emails - lot of cool-ass Timesuckers will be joining me. Hope you’re one of ‘em!

May 31st - June 3rd I’ll be at the Tempe Improv and hoping it’s not over 100 degrees when I land in Phoenix like it was last time. Great club and it’s gonna be a blast.

June 8th and 9th I’ll be at the Drafthouse in Washington DC - tickets are ON SALE! http://drafthousecomedy.com/event.cfm?id=507358&

June 15-16th I’ll be at the Funny Bone in Des Moines, Iowa - two nights only! Tickets on sale there as well.

July 15th doing another live Timesuck podcast in Orlando at the Orlando Improv. http://www.theimprovorlando.com/ComedyClub/ 866e4def-e0ba-4722-b140-f1b2b8ab8940/Calendar/orlando

More tour dates at www.dancummins.tv. La Jolla, Dayton, Tampa, Palm Beach, Chicago, Sunnyvale, Portland, Tacoma, Columbus, Grand Rapids and more coming up in 2018!

G. Big thanks to everyone who got the limited edition Pootie and Juju mugs - that was a blast. Hope everyone who got a busted one already has a replacement.

And speaking of merch, I know a lot of you have tried to get Flat Earth tour shirts, those shirts I’ve only been selling live at shows this year, only to not be able to get them because I was sold out. As you’ve seen, I don’t have some dedicated merch person. It’s just me bringing this stuff around for the near future at least. So, those shirts are now available at the store because I do realize that’s kind of dick move to not allow to be able to buy the shirt you showed up to buy. Not cool. So - they’re in the store now at timesuckpodcast.com What are they made of? 217% Madagascar Lemur ball sack. Lemurs have some of the softest ball sack on Earth and, the softest sacks are found in Madagascar, and they’re the softest when the sacks are harvested between November and April, the hot, wet season when those sub-tropical rains really soften up that sack skin. Only the fucking best for you assholes.

Also - cool Timesuck charity donation announcement after The Top Five Takeaways inspired by the victims of Gary Ridgway. Timesuck is gonna help a charity that helps the population he targeted not become future victims.

Now let’s get to it. Timesuck 86 - the Green River Killer!! PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Green River intro A. So Gary Ridgway. Young chronic Bedwetter into his early teens. Young fire starter. Dude who suffocated at least one cat as a kid. Dude who shot neighborhood dogs with a pellet gun “just to hurt them”, in his own words. Was he destined to become a serial killer??

1. Macdonald Triad:

Bedwetting past the age of five, fire starting, and animal cruelty - that’s what’s known as the Macdonald Triad. The Homicidal Triad! The Serial Killer Triad!

Ridgway had it. And I wondered as I read about his childhood - did that early trifecta of deviant behavior greatly increase his chances of becoming a serial killer, like I’d always believed?

Maybe not.

According to an article I found in Psychology today, this formula may offers little in the way of predicting future criminality.

Instead, thanks to misconceptions and spotty research, the notion that the Macdonald triad points to murder-prone kids has become an entrenched stereotype.

So where did this info come from? Let’s learn some shit!

In 1963, forensic psychiatrist J. M. Macdonald observed in a paper, "The Threat to Kill," that these three behaviors often showed up in his most aggressive and sadistic patients. Macdonald had compared the childhoods of forty-eight psychotic patients against fifty-two non-psychotic patients - all of whom, incidentally, had threatened to kill someone. None of whom HAD actually killed someone. Just over half were male, and they ranged in age all the way from eleven to eighty-three.

Macdonald relied mostly on clinical observation to make his assessment and it’s worth noting that he himself did not believe his study necessarily had any strong predictive value.

His research group was small and unrepresentative and he just thought it interesting that psychotic patients seemed to be more threatening than the average psychotic when as a kid they had engaged in animal cruelty, fire-starting, and prolonged bedwetting - all of which by the way, I also engaged in. Damn it! I set many a fire as a teenager living in Las Vegas. Me and a friend would set trees, dumpsters, and sagebrush fields next to nearby apartment complexes ablaze just to watch people freak out and to watch the fire department come. The thrill of creating so much disruption. So much chaos. The adrenaline rush of knowing on some level that the fire might get out of control and hoping it wouldn’t. But also, kind of hoping it did. We were fucking savages.

I also wet the bed on a regular basis all the way through junior high school with a few accidents in actual high school. And at least one incident in college where I woke up to find myself peeing on someone. For real. Woke up mid arc. She was still sleeping. And then she did wake up before I could sneak out of bed and I had to then admit to peeing on her. Not one of my finer moments. That one, unlike the others, may have had a lot more to do with alcohol than nocturnal Enuresis [en-yuh-ree-sis] - the scientific term for bedwetting.

And, while I wasn’t cruel to dogs, I was borderline cruel to my sister’s cat Toby, swinging it around like a helicopter blade inside of one my mom’s nylons - that’s pretty fucked up. And, I shot squirrels and little birds with a bb gun and a pellet gun out of curiosity of what would happen if I actually hit them. Turns out a squirrel can shriek if it’s in enough pain - not a fun thing to hear, especially when you’re responsible for the wound.

So, just like with Gary Ridgway, did that predispose me towards being a sadistic killer?

Turns out - yes. I didn’t feel comfortable admitting this earlier in the podcast, but I killed some guy in Miami in 1998. Wait. That’s not how I wanted to word that. I killed some guy for the first time in 1998. Feels good to know it’s not my fault.

But we’re not here to talk about the boring details of my many, many, many unsolved murders. We’re here to talk about Gary Ridgway.

So - does the MacDonald Triad really predispose one towards murder? A lot of people have believed this to be true.

Despite Macdonald himself questioning the implications of his findings, other later researchers felt his ideas were at the very least worth re-testing.

A couple of years after Macdonald's publication, a pair of psychiatrists, Hellman and Ryan, divided eighty-four incarcerated offenders into two groups: Fifty-three nonaggressive offenders and thirty-one aggressively violent offenders. They found that three-fourths of the violent offenders showed evidence of one or two behaviors from the triad, and that 45% showed all three.

But their study, too, was small and poorly designed. For one thing, I cannot find any info on what the percentage of non- violent offenders displayed all three behaviors, so the results meaningless. If you said, for example, that 75% of serial killers wet the bed, set fires, and were cruel to animals as a kid, you’d be freaked out if your kid then did all those three things, right?

Well, what if you then heard that 86% of the general population wet the bed, set fires, and were cruel to animals? Then, you’d think - how was everyone but ME wetting the bed? And, poor animals! Are any animals NOT abused? And - how the Hell is there so much shit to burn??

But seriously, that second bit of info drastically changes the importance and relevance and predictiveness of the first bit of info. Just pointing this out as an example of how to interpret studies. Unless you have comparative data - the seemingly shocking data is fucking useless.

(STAT) “20% of people who eat bacon will get cancer!” (YOU) “Oh my God! Throw away the bacon!”

(STAT) “AND - 20% of the general population, regardless of diet, will get cancer!” (YOU) “Huh. Alright, well pass the fucking bacon already!”

Still more researchers tried to link this childhood behavior with sadistic criminal adult behavior with much larger groups and better controls, and no one was able to prove a definitive link.

Nevertheless, some criminologists have applied the triad to various offender populations, including - and especially - serial killers. Although some violent offenders do have excessive fire- setting, animal cruelty, or bedwetting past age five in their backgrounds, rarely do all three behaviors show up. Other behaviors, such as callous disregard, occur more regularly.

“Callous disregard” - what an interesting phrase. And it DOES make me think of serial killers. People with callous disregard for the lives of their victims. Very creepy quality. If someone were do describe themselves that way on a dating profile, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say - don’t date ‘em!

“I like staying at home watching movies, Vietnamese cuisine, and I have a callous disregard for the sanctity of human life” Movies, cool. Love pho soup. Never gonna spend time alone with you.

It turns out, a lot of the data on which claims are made about the triad's relationship to serial murder come from shit like true crime books and true crime websites. That info gets passed around because it’s interesting, and it’s interesting mainly, I think, because we’d love to be able to predict the behavior of serial killers before they ever kill. We want to control the darkness and predict it.

And also, a lot of authors probably toss that info around simply because they’re too lazy to fact check it’s validity. They name- drop this study and/or the results of this study because it sounds cool, but, a proven correlation just isn’t there.

Another group of people that lazily tossed this info around as fact was the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. During the 1980s and 1990s, they offered evidence from their own studies pointing to the triad as being predictive but their research was also flawed.

While on the road teaching local jurisdictions about behavioral analysis, several members of the then-Behavioral Science Unit interviewed offenders at nearby prisons. With no effort to work within a randomized scientific design, they gathered information from just thirty-six convicted murderers, only twenty-five of which were serial killers. All had voluntarily agreed to talk. Once more, the sample was too problematic to draw significant conclusions.

Yet several agents used this data to develop theories and publish articles. They found that nearly half of the subjects were from single-parent homes, three-fourths had described an indifferent or negligent parent, a majority had a psychiatric history, the mean IQ was bright normal, three-fourths had paraphilias - aka extreme and possibly deviant sexual fetishes, such as attraction to objects or body parts like Dahmer’s attraction to bicep muscles. And not like, “That dudes hot, he’s got some guns.” No, like, “Man I want to cut that dude’s arm off and fuck his bicep.”

Around three-fourths also reported an experience of childhood abuse.

In addition, although the FBI agents found evidence in many of their subjects of at least one of the Macdonald triad factors, they supplied no data about the percentage that had all three. And again - no comparative data from the general population to measure it up against. Chronic bedwetting, high on the list, was evident in more offenders than animal cruelty, and yet recent research has shown that soaking the sheets late into childhood is not an indicator of psychological maladjustment.

Thank God.

This flawed FBI date nevertheless made its way into criminological texts as a reliable source, and only recently have researchers started challenging it.

The articles I read stressed that until we design and carry out better empirical studies than we've seen thus far about the MadDonald’s triad, researchers and media agencies should refrain from stating that the triad identifies a future serial killer.

The only triad that does matter is the BOJANGLES TRIAD! THREE-LEGS - ONE BLOCK OF MUSCLED PITBULL AWESOMENESS!

Praise Bojangles! Praise our sweet Timesuck Pitbull mascot.

I’m kidding - the only real triad that matters is What a Fool Believes, Minute by Minute, and Yah Mo Be There - the only three Michael McDonald solo career singles to win grammies!

Sorry.

Oh - and I didn’t kill anyone. I hope no one actually thought I did. What a strange way that would’ve been to confess. How extra fucked up if I did admit it and then just kept talking like that’s not a big deal to admit.

“Yeah, I mean, whatever, I killed a couple people as a teen, but, who didn’t make mistakes growing up. So what movie do you want to see tomorrow?”

No - good news for me - I’m not gonna become a serial killer when I grow up someday. Turns out I just like to fantasize about killing strangers in moments of extreme annoyance over how fucking rude they behave. Don’t actually want to start storing heads in my fridge.

Gary Ridgway though- well, while the triad of behavior he displayed may not have predicted later murderous behavior, he certainly DID display later murderous behavior. So much of it. So very, very much of it.

No one has been convicted of more serial killings in US history, than Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer.

So let’s dig into this sick fuck, and find out what makes this particular monster tick, so we can maybe feel a little bit more secure in thinking that no one like him could ever take one of us down, with a Timesuck Timeline!

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE

III. Timesuck Timeline A. Feb. 18, 1949: Gary Leon Ridgway was born Feb. 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, the second of three brothers. His parents, Thomas Newton Ridgway and Mary Rita Ridgway, lived in a rented room near a local high school.

The oldest brother, Gregory Ridgway, was also born in 1948 in Salt Lake City. The youngest brother, Thomas Edward Ridgway, was born in 1951, but public records do not reveal where the family lived at that time

And sadly, nothing else is really known about his early childhood. His family, after his capture, understandably not real interested in talking about young Gare Bear.

We’d probably know a lot more, but, Gary wasn’t apprehended until he was fifty-two years old. His mother, born in 1928, would’ve been seventy-three by the time he was captured but, according to a neighbor, she died before he was captured. I can’t find an obituary reference but one of his former neighbors remembers Gary going to the funeral of his mom before he was arrested. So we’ll never get to hear her account of Gary’s childhood. And I did find an obituary reference for his father, who for sure died three years before his capture, so, too late to get info out of him as well.

His brothers were and are religious enough to feel like it was God’s place to judge their brother and not theirs - and they continued to have a relationship with Gary after his arrest and conviction, at least for a little while. Maybe they still do. They haven’t seemed real interested in talking to the police. And his ex-wives, don’t seem to know much about Gary’s early childhood other than mom was domineering and dad was a doormat.

Gary did wet the bed. We know that. And, according to Gary, his mother would wash his genitals after he wet the bed, and that this went on for years, which seems, you know, to be a bit much. I’d say, unless your kid has developmental delays or is cognitively delayed, there’s gotta be a hard cut off age on thorough genital washing. I’d say, no later than six. I’d say four, but I’m sure there are some pre-k kids out there who don’t have any mental issues, so to speak, but also still don’t have a firm handle on what it means to have a clean ween.

Gary had a clean ween. He had arguably the cleanest ween in town. Gary has “vivid memories” of his mom thoroughly washing his peen stained ween, polishing up his little corn on the cob. Creepy!

And we don’t know much else about young Gary. Until he was twelve that is.

B. 1960: In 1960, when Gary was 12, he raped a neighbor’s dog and the neighbor initially pressed charges but then the golden retriever, Mitsy, wasn’t willing to testify and the charges were dropped.

No. That’s insane.

In 1960, the Ridgways moved to a house in what is now the City of SeaTac. SeaTac is a roughly 25,00 person strong suburb of Seattle that lies in southern King County that surrounds the Seattle-Tacoma International airport. It’s only actually been incorporated since 1990. And it has a LOT of cool stuff in it. It has the High line Botanical Garden AND it has that’s it. It has the airport. And I thought it had iKea - home of cheap and cheerful office furniture and cheap and tasty as fuck meatballs but that is actually in nearby Renton.

Anywho!

The old Ridgway house still stands at 4404 S. 175th St., in what seems to be a very nondescript, middle class neighborhood called McMicken Heights.

Shaggy shrubs and trees now conceal the view from the road, but when Gary was a kid, the yard was wide and open -- big enough for family football games.

Thomas Ridgway was a bus driver and also worked for a time at a mortuary. Mary Ridgway was a saleswoman at J.C. Penney in Renton.

J.C. Penny, man - they’re not cool now but that store used to be the shit! I’m pretty sure the bra section of the big JC Penny catalog is the first place I discovered sexuality. One day, flipping through the pages to make it to their big ass toy section where they had SO many great, color pictures of super happy looking kids playing with the latest, greatest lego sets, G.I. Joe figures AND accessories - so many good accessories. Planes, tanks, bases, fuck yeah. They had Ataris and then Nintendos. They had the best Nerf Guns. The best remote controlled cars - THAT I knew of. Now I realize hobby stores had small, nitro gas powered RC cars that made JC Penny’s cheap, battery D battery powered RC cars look like the piece of shit cars they really were. BUT, anyway, one day, trying to get to that section, hit the bra section and wasn’t grossed out. Instead, I was like, wow. I can see a lot of this woman’s boobs. AND the outline of some part of her vagina I don’t fully understand yet. How did my favorite catalog get even fucking better!?!

Wow! Got WAY off path there. Damn you Lucifina and your glorious visions of distracting boobs and panties!

Anyways - Gary’s mom worked at JC Penny.

And it’s virtually impossible to put the next few years into any kind of chronological order. All we have to go on is the recollections of neighbors, old childhood friends, classmates, and ex-girlfriends. So, this next little bit is just a collage of shit that went on when Gary was in junior high and high school.

These same neighbors would recall young Gary coming over and splashing in the backyard pool with their kids and sitting in their living room and watching TV. Many recall young Gary being quiet, polite, and frankly, pretty nondescript.

Gary’s second-wife would later assert that his mother was overtly sexual and dressed like a prostitute, but old neighbors heavily dispute that account.

Most of Gary’s childhood is up for dispute, actually. Gary hasn’t talked a ton about it and it’s hard to understand what the Hell he is talking about half the time. Not a real eloquent speaker, that Ridgway.

Other than snapshots from neighbors, co-workers, childhood acquaintances and ex-wives, lot of what I’ll share with you today does come from Gary himself, and the dude also wasn’t known for being super honest. He actually avoided arrest early in the Green River killings investigation by passing a polygraph. Ended up passing two separate lie detector tests.

The account of Gary’s sexed up mom is disputed by a woman who lived next door to the Ridgeways throughout Gary’s childhood who recalls Gary’s mother dressing modestly and wearing jeans “90% of the time”. And, I’m guessing, not sexy 1960s, flower-child jeans. Strong suspicion they were mom jeans. Straight leg cut. not heavily tapered at the bottom. Form obliterating instead of form fitting.

This same neighbor remembered Mary as a good neighbor, they recalled her being a skilled and avid gardener, someone who turned her yard into a miniature park. They remembered her, years after Gary had become a grown man, playing badminton and volleyball by the hour with one of her granddaughters.

Bruce Revard also lived next door to the Ridgway family throughout the 1960s. As a child in Sea Tac he played regularly with Eddie, Gary’s youngest brother. Revard remembers family football games and tinkering around with cars. The Ridgway boys and their father were constantly messing around in the garage. They were Chrysler men, he said.

Greg Ridgway was the family favorite, Revard said. Other friends, classmates and teachers remember him as the achiever - the popular brother and track team member who ran for student office at Tyee (Tie-ee) High School.

At odds with the achiever status, is the fact that Ridgway was 20 when he finally finished high school. He told investigators he was a "slow learner" and a poor reader. He was held back two grades before graduating from Tyee (Tie-ee) High School. So, if he really was an achiever, that doesn’t speak well about the overall educational status of Tyee (Tie-ee) High School in the 1960s.

“Gary was the best we had! He graduated at 20! Can you believe it? Back then in Tyee (Tie-ee), it was unHEARD of to make it out of high school before the age of 25. I mean, it was rare to even get IN to high school before the age of 18. But Gary - there was just something different about him. He had a drive and a vision that you just DIDN’T see!”

Again - conflicting stories of his youth.

Bruce also recalled that the Ridgway parents were strict, especially with the two younger brothers. The mother would scream at the boys, he said, and the father would spank them.

"I could sit up in my treehouse and look in their yard," Revard said. "All I'd hear were cries of 'No, Dad, no,' as they were getting beaten with a belt or a stick or whatever."

So, you know, that doesn’t sound good. Doesn’t sound like something that would make the father of the year award nomination highlight reel. But, did it even happen? Again - so much disputed information.

Some other neighbors, the Andersons, who lived next door, are deeply skeptical of allegations that the father beat his boys. They don't claim to know everything that went on at the Ridgways' home, so they don't want to say that Bruce is lying. But, they also never overheard beatings or the cries of "No, Dad, no!”

One of Ridgway's girlfriends said Gary was extremely close to his mother growing up but could never please her. Mary Ridgway "wore the pants in the family," according to a statement in court documents from Marcia Winslow, Ridgway's second wife.

Winslow remembered Mary Ridgway yelling at her husband "continually." In court documents, Winslow described seeing Mary once break a dinner plate over her husband's head. He did not retaliate. He got up from the table and left the room.

Gotta say - pretty solid man move right there. Don’t even acknowledge the plate. You just get up and you walk on out of the room.

Sadly though, old dad, old Tommy Ridgway, didn’t keep on walking like you’re supposed to. You’re supposed to calmly get up, calmly walk right the fuck out of the house and straight down to the police station.

Somebody breaks a plate OVER YOUR HEAD, especially in front of company - there’s no marriage counseling. It’s over. There’s no, “But he cheated he on me!” reason to excuse that. Nope. Plate broken. Head bloody. Marriage over.

Gilbert Mendiola's family moved in next door to the Ridgways when Mendiola was in the seventh grade. He and Gary became good friends and often walked to school together. Mendiola stopped walking to school with Gary one day when Gary killed him. Mendiola would later recall being really shaken up by getting murdered by Gary. He said that Gary murdered him a few times growing up and that it really bothered him.

That doesn’t make ANY sense.

No. Mendiola saw no signs of the strict parenting Revard remembers, but said he also didn't really know Ridgway's parents. He said his friend Gary was "just actually a nice guy," interested in sports and girls.

Other friends and classmates offer similar memories of Ridgway: Personable. Liked cars. Played freshman football. A nice guy, but pretty average. Nice mom, nice dad. “He didn't really stand out," said former Tyee (Tie-ee) classmate Tim Shinners, fifty.

Tyee (Tie-ee) graduate Terry Rochelle, fifty-two years old, remembers Ridgway showing up on Saturday nights at a youth nightclub run by the local Methodist church. Typical kid stuff. How sad does a Methodist youth night club sound by the way? Sounds like a blue balls factory. So many trips to the bathroom to adjust youthful boners at that nightclub.

At Tyee (Tie-ee), Ridgway often got in minor scrapes. "You'd see him going to the principal's office, but nothing bad," Rochelle said. Revard said Ridgway had no problems with girls in school. Allan Sample, who attended Highline Community College with Greg Ridgway, actually remembers Gary as a ladies' man. "He never had any trouble getting a girlfriend or getting a date," Sample said.

C. Dark Childhood stuff: No one he went to school with recalled anything dark about Gary. But, he did do some dark shit. He allegedly once suffocated a cat.

And then there was the fire obsession.

He started setting fires when he was about eight—not houses, but garages and outbuildings. He found some newspapers stacked in a garage a few houses away from their house on Day Street and he was playing with matches and set the fire. He heard the fire engines coming as he hid in his basement at home. He didn’t come out for a long time, not until after dark. Nobody knew he did it. When he was older, he was playing with matches in a dry field at Long Lake where his grandfather owned some property. He lit the grass, and then tried to stomp it out, but it quickly got away from him. He didn’t mean to do it, but fire always fascinated him.

And there was one particularly disturbing teenage incident when he almost killed a little neighborhood kid.

When Gary was about 15, he walked up to a first-grade boy near some bushes on a street corner and stabbed him in the side with a knife.

The 6-year-old, wearing a kid’s cowboy hat, asked Gary Ridgway a question: "Why did you kill me?” Blood streamed from a stab wound in the boy's side and ran into his cowboy boots.

Instead of answering, Ridgway, stood with the knife in his hand and laughed. Then he calmly wiped both sides of the blade on the boy's shirt.

"I always wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody," he said.

Years later, the boy remembered Ridgway walking away, "kinda puttin' his head in the air, you know, and laughin' real loud.” The boy survived. He spent several weeks in the hospital. The incision to repair his liver was about a foot long.

At the time of the stabbing, police weren’t able to find out who stabbed the little kid and Gary got away with it. Eventually, the victim moved from King County to California. And he didn’t tell his story until a King County sheriff's detective tracked the now grown man down in 2003 in time to testify at Ridgway’s trial.

Pretty disturbing. And this one is actually true. He randomly just stabbed one kid when he was a teen.

And here’s something else pretty creepy.

Gary’s father, Tom, worked at a funeral home for a time during Gary’s childhood. And supposedly, he once told a story that Gary overhead of a coworker who enjoyed engaging in necrophilia at the mortuary. In time, this story would become the subject of Ridgway's teenage sexual fantasies. He loved the idea of being able to "have sex with someone who is dead because you wouldn't get caught. No feelings. She wouldn't feel it”.

What a weird perspective on sex, by the way. Clearly he was meant to feel ashamed of sexuality growing up if he didn’t want the women he was having sex with to feel it. I wonder how many sex crimes and murders are really, if you trace it back far enough, the result of the perpetrator being made to feel ashamed of sex and sexuality as a kid. We often want what we’re not supposed to have and what’s taboo - what if the urge to have sex, such a primal, powerful urge - wasn’t so taboo in our culture? Would that result in less sex crimes? If sex wasn’t made to be SUCH a big deal, would rapists have less desire to rape? I don’t know. I really don’t. Interesting to ponder, though.

And then there’s the creepy shit that centered around his bed wetting.

According to Gary, when he wet the bed, his mother would berate him in front of his brothers and then stand him up in the shower to give him a cold scrub down while paying special attention to his "dirtiest" parts, that is, his genitals. Lotta ween washing like we talked about earlier. Lot of sack scrubbing.

Also, according to Gary, Mary Ridgway did these ritualistic cleanings while she was barely clothed herself. She was wearing that sexy ass JCPenny shit!! Wearing tight-ass mom jeans and kind of lace-y white bras.

Eventually, as Gary Ridgway grew into adolescence, he began to fantasize about having violent sex with his mother which is never a good thing. I’m no psychologist, but, if you think about fucking your mom, violent or otherwise, I’m gonna strongly suggest you sign up for a few therapy sessions.

Gary claimed he wanted to scar her for life by slitting her throat with a kitchen knife so as to relieve his frustrations at never being able to please her.

Might want to sign up for a few extra sessions if you’re thinking about violently sexing up and then killing your mom! Again, not a psychologist, just feels like something that you probably need to talk out with a professional.

D. April 1969: In April 1969, two months before he graduated from Tyee, Ridgway landed a job at the Kenworth Trucking Co. in Seattle painting eighteen wheelers. This job would soon become the center of his working life, but first, he joined the Navy. He enlisted on Aug. 18, 1969, still only twenty years old. Where he served initially, records do not say, but his stint in the military may have helped lead to a lifelong obsession with prostitution.

Court records show that four months after he entered the Navy, Ridgway's military doctors diagnosed him with gonorrhea. His ween wasn’t so clean now! Man mom would be FURIOUS if should would’ve found out. She would’ve had to wash that skin flute for hours. Days maybe.

Records also show that in the early 1980s, he told a girlfriend that "he especially disliked Filipino prostitutes because of his contacts with them during his cruise in the Navy.” So, going to go out on a limb and say that he probably got his gonorrhea from one of those Filipino prostitutes.

Interesting fact - it’s impossible for Filipinos to exhibit gonorrhea symptoms. It’s mostly interesting because it’s not true.

E. 1970: Sometime in 1970, Gary met his first wife, Quasimodo, I mean Claudia. Claudia Kraig - met her in Seattle and their courtship consisted of fucking like animals. For reals. “Outdoor and in-car sex” marked the young couple's courtship, according to court documents. They favored a wooded area in Seward Park and a dead-end street off Military Road South - one of the many South King County side roads Ridgway knew well.

F. Aug. 15, 1970: The two were married in Seattle on Aug. 15, 1970. Soon after getting hitched, they moved to San Diego, and Ridgway set out on a six-month deployment with the Navy.

While he was away, court documents say his young wife had an affair. Gary was furious BUT… he was also cheating on her with overseas prostitutes.

“How could you do exactly what I’ve been doing!?!”

When Gary returned, Claudia took off for Seattle and Gary followed. They tried to work things out, Gary discharged from the Navy, he got his old job back at the Kenworth Trucking Co they lived with Gary’s parents for awhile, Gary’s mom washed Gary’s ween each morn, and Claudia left for San Diego and moved in with a boyfriend she would later marry in August. And all of that is true except for the ween washing.

Claudia never came back. She never answered a summons for a divorce hearing sent to her San Diego home in October 1971. The divorce was finalized in January 1972. The only contested piece of property was a 1963 Ford Fairlane. And Ridgway got it. And as brief as this early marriage was, it seemed to really scare Gary.

Court documents show he spoke bitterly of the divorce to his second wife and a subsequent girlfriend. In racially charged terms, Ridgway claimed Claudia had moved in with several men and became a prostitute. He also said he still loved her.

G. 1972: Around the middle of 1972, Ridgway met a woman who was cruising the Renton loop. Her name was Marcia Winslow.

Cruising the Renton loop! I Googled that and it’s still a thing. I found an article talking about it’s revival in 2017.

It said that for decades teens would gather with friends and their shiny cars to roll through the streets past the high school. "It used to take us three hours to get around this little loop that's usually a minute and a half. It was a lot of fun," said cruiser George Stahl.

And then the city shut it down. No more cruisin’ you damned greasers and beatniks!

Crusin’! I remember doing that as a teen in Riggins, Idaho. Heading up and down Main Street aka Highway 95 aka the one and only street that actually ran clean through the whole mile that covered the town. Slow-rollin’ that 1982 Robin Egg Blue Chevy Citation, sometimes blasting a little 2 Live Crew out of a speaker system that cost easily twice what the car was worth - more of a commentary on the car than the speaker system, sometimes blasting a little Ace of Base. Yeah - I Saw the Sign! Embarrassing? Yes. Did I think that band was super cute? Also yes. Did they sound phenomenal being blasted out of my Kenworth Subwoofers? For sure yes!

Well, when Marcia Winslow was crusin’ back in 1972 - Ridgway pulled her over in what Marcia described as "a police-like stop," court documents say, which sounds like maybe not the best way to meet some dude.

With his short hair and military manner, Marcia thought he could have been a police officer. He wasn't, but he told Marcia he once applied to be an officer and was turned down.

They started dating. During their first sexual encounters, he called her “Claudia." Still hung up on wife #1! The one that left him. Got a little bit of Ted Bundy in him. Just can’t let go of that first, failed love.

Court documents say Gary and Marcia lived together for a year and the got married in December 1973. And then their only child, Matthew, was born in 1975. Weird to think some dude only two years older than me is the son of Gary Ridgway. Man I hope he didn’t take his dad’s name. That shit would be a curse now.

Gary and Marcia also did a fair amount of outdoor and car fucking.

Ridgway introduced Winslow to his favorite South King County haunts for outdoor and in-car trysts: Back roads and wooded dead ends in Maple Valley, Enumclaw and North Bend. Obscure, untended turnouts along Highway 18.

Dude had some very specific sexual needs.

They knocked it out in shady spots near Star Lake and along the banks of the Green River. His wife said he specifically liked having sex outdoors, dabbled in bondage and that he liked to sneak up on her from behind trees. On at least one occasion, he tried to choke her, using a “police-like" hold, she, years later, told investigators.

Wow! That reads as pretty disturbing to me. If I was a woman, and my man was like, “Hey do you want to role play?” And I was like, “Sure, sounds fun. What do you want to do?” And then he was like, “I want to head out into the woods and I want you to pretend you’re lost and afraid and then I’m gonna sneak out from behind the bushes and choke you down to the ground and fuck you like a murderous serial killer would,” I’d be like, “You know on second thought, I DON’T actually want to role play. Or ever see you again.”

After the birth of their son in 1975, Ridgway and Marcia joined two churches, one Baptist, the other Pentecostal. They knocked on doors. Some were shut in their faces, which made Ridgway angry.

Marcia told detectives he became "fanatical" about religion. He would cry frequently during church services. At night, he watched TV with a Bible in his lap.

But don’t think for a second that scripture got in the way of his choking! No sir! No, he took that choking to the next level.

Marcia remembered returning home from a party around that time where the couple had been drinking. Marcia stepped out of their van and stumbled toward the door. Suddenly she felt hands around her neck, squeezing tighter and tighter.

She screamed and fought, not immediately realizing it was her husband. Ridgway finally let go, then darted to the other side of the van and tried to convince her someone else had done it.

He liked to sneak up and scare her, Marcia said, seeing if he could walk noiselessly. She said he was pretty good at it.

I’m thinking I’m filing for divorce at this point. It’s creepy enough to sneak up on your partner and start choking her - WAY creepier to then jump back and be like,

(Gary) “Oh my God, what just happened to you!?!”

(Marcia) “You just choked me you psycho!”

(Gary) “What?? No I didn’t! That was some other guy!”

(Marcia) “Why aren’t you chasing him!?!”

(Gary) “Because, um, uh… because I don’t want to get choked!”

So ridiculous. How do you choke someone - not just someone - your wife - in your own driveway, and then just be like, “No, I didn’t!” Classic Ridgway! Classic Gare-bear being Gare-bear.

H. 1978: By 1978, the Ridgways were living in Federal Way near Dash Point State Park. The house was a rambler at the end of a cul-de- sac, surrounded by acres of dense, damp, prime wood-fucking forest.

Their churchgoing tapered off. Marcia told detectives Ridgway began to come home from work later and later, without explanation, often returning to the house dirty and wet. He had no personal friends during their marriage, she said.

Fairly concerning husband behavior. No friends, comes home late, offers no explanation as to why he’s dirty and wet. Solid grounds for divorce.

Constantly amazed by what people put up with in marriages. I love Lynze but, if she starts coming home late from work, dirty and wet, with no explanation - she’s out! It would be especially weird considering we work together and live just a few blocks from the office.

I. July 4, 1980: On July 4, 1980, Gary and Marcia separate. Marcia is sick of being fucked in the woods and she’s had it with a wet, dirty loner of a husband. She moves to nearby Kent. She files for a restraining order, as does Gary. Both claimed to fear violence from the other.

The Federal Way house was sold that same month and the divorce was finalized in May 1981. Marcia got custody of Matthew and Gary began making child support payments of $275 per month.

J. Spring of 1981: In the Spring of 1981, Ridgway joined a Parents Without Partners group and quickly rose to become a health benefit case manager for single parents. He was really good at tracking down state and federal funds and putting it in the hands of those in need.

Yeah, right.

No - he didn’t do that. He fucked a bunch of women in the woods. Court records reveal that he dated a bunch of women whose names were not revealed, described in official documents only as Girlfriends A, B and C.

Ridgway met Girlfriend A in May 1981, and soon moved into her West Seattle home. Patterns from prior relationships materialized. The couple had sex outdoors in many locations. Twice, Ridgway tied up his girlfriend with her consent.

Apparently, Gary had an insatiable sexual appetite. Girlfriend A had to ask Ridgway to "back off" from his constant demands for sex. She also said he had no outside friends. The horny loner! Never a good look.

Girlfriend A asked him to move out of her home in December 1981. By then, Ridgway had met Girlfriend B. They started dating, but they didn't go to Ridgway's favorite outdoor locations. They went to her house or to Ridgway's house on Military Road in SeaTac, which he’d bought in 1981 and would live in for seven years.

The house sits in the kind of neighborhood where many people keep to themselves, though some have shared the same street for decades. In that sense, Ridgway fit in well although he was probably a little more reclusive than his neighbors. Considering what he started to get into around this time, being reclusive makes total sense.

"His house was always closed up - it seemed very private," said Debbie Roselieb, whose daughter went to day care in the neighborhood at the time. Roselieb remembered passing Ridgway's house daily and noticing the particularly messy yard. On occasion, Roselieb said, she passed Ridgway on the street.

"If I was walking by, I'd say, 'Hi,'" she recalled. "He would just ignore me. He was more private than rude. It was like he just wanted to be left alone.”

He sure did want to be left alone. Gary suddenly had a lot going on. His sex life was starting to take some dark turns. About 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1981, Ridgway met Girlfriend B at the White Shutters Inn in SeaTac for a Parents Without Partners function.

Ridgway was distraught, she told police later. He said he'd nearly killed a woman. The girlfriend told police he thought he meant a prostitute. And, somehow, this revelation did not lead to a break up. Gotta say - girlfriend B seems overly tolerant. “Hey - Gary wasn’t perfect. What guy is? Some guys don’t take out the trash or hold open the door, some guys almost choke out a prostitute on Christmas Eve.”

The next month, Ridgway began dating Girlfriend C behind Girlfriend B’s back, and when she found out a few months later and she broke up with him. Almost choking out a prostitute is one thing, but, dating another woman? That’s too much!

Another possible reason for their breakup was Gary’s terrible choice in Mattresses.

Girlfriend B was sick of laying down and occasionally being choked on some JCPenny piece of shit when what she really wanted was to not get choked on a LESSA mattress!

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Back to someone who will have a better chance of sleeping on a fellow prisoner’s boner than he will a Leesa mattress - Gary Ridgeway.

In April 1982, Ridgway was having financial troubles and rented his SeaTac house to Rose Hahn and her husband. He moved into the garage. He was rarely home at night and never on weekends, Hahn said.

Most of those weekends were spent with Girlfriend C. But Ridgway spent other nights elsewhere. On May 11, 1982, he was arrested on suspicion of soliciting an undercover King County sheriff's deputy disguised as a prostitute.

Girlfriend C knew about the arrest. She told investigators Ridgway regarded prostitutes as "things" to be used. She said they'd planned to get married, but broke up in June of 1984. Ridgway then swiftly found another girlfriend, she said. He was also dating somebody - he had a sneaking up on someone and choking ‘em fetish, which is hard to pull off alone.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We still need to stay focused on 1982. That’s the year Gary Ridgway became the Green River Killer.

K. 1982: Gary would later tell investigators that he killed dozens of women in his military road home in Seatac, usually in the bedroom.

Though there’s a chance he may have started murdering women in the 1970s, his compulsion to kill ripened in the early '80s. 1982 was the year his fsirst known victims began to disappear.

He spent a lot of time in 1982 staking out potential victims. He spent hours driving through areas known for a heavy amount of prostitution: the Tukwila, Kent-Des Moines, and Federal Way areas along Pacific Highway South, Rainier Valley, Seattle's Chinatown International District, and North Seattle along Aurora Avenue.

Gary took steps to make sure the girls he picked up weren't undercover police officers. He’d learned from that earlier arrest. He often watched them from a distance and waited for them to be picked up by other "tricks." He’d sometimes asked them to expose themselves before agreeing to pay, believing undercover officers would refuse.

"Prostitutes were the easiest," he’d later say. "I went from uh, havin' sex with 'em to just plain killing ‘em." Unlike, say, Bundy, his victims didn’t fit a particular look. He didn't care if they were black or white, though he preferred white. And he preferred young women who were relatively innocent and less likely to "con" him. Killing was always on his mind, he said.

Painting big rigs by day, choking out prostitutes at night. How strange are some of the live people have actually led?

"During the killing spree, there were a few women I didn't, for some reason, I didn't kill, but they were few and far between," he said. Reminds me of the Night stalker Richard Ramirez who also would occasionally and inexplicably let random victims live.

Ridgway developed a number of ruses to gain the women's trust, prosecutors said. He showed them pictures of his son. He offered to become a regular customer. He offered to lend them his truck, to get them jobs, to feed them and to pay them more than they were asking. He didn't have to worry about keeping the promises because, as he told prosecutors, "they were already dead."

Sometimes, he’d show them his super duper clean ween that his mom had washed up to prove he was a good guy.

(Creepy Ridgway voice) “Look at my ween! Look at how clean it is! Momma says I have the cleanest weenus. Put your hand on my balls and then smell your fingers! Nothing but the sweet scent of citrus-y soap! Momma likes my balls to smell like an orange grove.”

Sorry. Just needed to lighten shit up for a sec. It’s about to get real heavy.

L. July 8, 1982: July 8, 1982. 16 year old Wendy Lee Coffield goes missing.

A week later, on July 15th, two young boys find her dead body on pilings under the Peck Bridge on Meeker Street in Kent, Washington. She had floated in the shallows of the Green River, her arms and legs entangled in a rope or some similar bonds.

The paper wasn’t specific about the cause of death, but police in Kent suspected that she had been strangled. The victim hadn’t drowned; she’d been dead when she was placed in the river.

Although she’d been in the river for several days, no one had come forward to identify her. The woman was white, estimated to be about twenty-five years old, and at five feet four, she weighed about 140 pounds.A King County medical examiner Dr. Don Reay noted that she had five tattoos on her body: a vine around a heart on her left arm, two tiny butterflies above her breasts, a cross with a vine around it on her shoulder, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle insignia on her back, and the unfinished outline of a unicorn on her lower abdomen.

When a description of her tattoos was published in area papers, a tattoo artist recognized his work and came forward to identify Wendy.

And who was Wendy? A troubled teen being raised by a single mom who had already spent time in foster homes and juvenile detention facilities. She’d stole food stamps. She was a chronic runaway who’d dropped out of school completely in junior high.

She’d told her mother the year before that she’d been raped by a hitchhiker, and her mom, not really equipped to deal with her daughter’s assault, basically told her that’s what happens when you hitchhike.

Wendy, like so many of us meat sacks, lived a sad, troubled, short life. If you think about how many human beings suffered similar fates - it’s liable to drive you mad. She lived hard and fast and died a victim. Used, abused and killed by a man only three years younger than her mother.

M. July 17, 1982: July 17, 1982. Two days after Wendy’s body is found and less than 10 days after she disappeared, Gisele Ann Lovvorn, a 17 year old teen runaway and prostitute.

Giselle was the youngest child of an upper-middle-class family in the San Fernando Valley, where her father had his own insurance business. She was very intelligent; she read constantly and her I.Q. had tested at 145, well above genius level on some tests.

She was also an unhappy teen girl who had begun to run away from home when she was only fourteen. She dropped out of school in the tenth grade. She had been miserable in California, ever since the family moved there from New Orleans a few years earlier.

She had no ties to the Seattle area, but earlier that year her boyfriend had persuaded her to leave California with him. Jake Baker, known as “Jak-Bak,” a young man several years older than Giselle.

Quick note to fathers out there. If you’re 17 year old is dating a much older dirt bag who goes by “Jak-Bak” - buy a ski mask and some gloves, make sure someone will give you a solid alibi, and then find Jak-Bak and beat him within an inch of his life and make it clear he’s never to see your daughter again if he wants to live.

Jak-Bak. What a dumb fucking name! Well, he was a street savvy young dude who had recently gotten a job driving a cab on the SeaTac Strip and Giselle had headed up to join him. And within a few weeks she was turning tricks. Classic Jak-Bak bait and switch!

While this was never proven, it feels like ol’ Jak-Bak might of been straight up pimping her out. At the very least, he knew about what she was doing. He knew it was dangerous. And on July 17, she met the wrong John - Gary Ridgway.

On September 25, 1982 the body of Giselle Lovorn was discovered in a wooded area seven miles from the Green River. Another teen prostitute who’d been strangled and dumped off in the dirt.

N. July 25, 1982: July 25, 1982 - a third Seattle area prostitute goes missing. Twenty-three year old Debra Lynn Bonner.

Debra was a slender, exotic-looking woman who grew up in Tacoma, along with two younger brothers. Like Wendy, she had dropped out of school—in Debra’s case two years before graduating.

With little education, she’d had trouble finding jobs. She had been excited about taking a test to join the navy, but she didn’t pass. Still, she planned to get her GED (high school equivalency certificate) and start a different kind of life. But then Debra met a pimp and heroin junkie - Max Tackley. And he treated her like a queen, he had a newer model Thunderbird and they traveled a lot and all she had to do was sell her body for sex.

And after meeting Gary - her body would be found on August 12, 1982 on the banks of, you guessed it, the Green River.

O. August 1, 1982: August 1, 1982. 31 year old Marcia Fay Chapman goes missing. Seventeen year old Cynthia Jean Hinds goes missing ten days later on August 11th. Sixteen year old Opal Charmaine Mills goes missing the very next day on August 12th.

A local man rafting on the Green River looking for antique bottles or anything else of value found all three of their bodies on August 15th and King County detectives knew they had a serial killer on their hands.

All the women had been strangled. All dumped in the Green River. All prostitutes. Someone had even stuffed two of the women’s vaginas with rocks after they’d died.

P. Aug. 16: On August 16th, King County police set up the Green River Killer task force, the biggest police task force since the Ted Bundy murders of the 1970s. Current Washington State Republican Congressman Dave Reichert (“Rie-kurt”) was one of the detectives who worked for many, many years on this task force.

Q. August 29th - December 24th, 1982: Between August 29th and Christmas Eve - that’s right, Christmas Eve, nine more women would die. Sad enough that some poor prostitute is walking the streets on Christmas Eve - and then you have to kill her the night before Christmas?

Damn.

Nine additional young women, all working the streets, all between the ages of 15 and 23, would disappear and end up in the Green River. The remains of one of these girls, Rebecca "Becky" Marrero, wouldn’t be found until 2010.

Gary Ridgeway would eventually be convicted of killing 16 women in 1982 alone. And those are just the confirmed kills. We’ll never know what the actual total is.

And what was Gary up to in 1982? Just living the nondescript life of a working class 33 year old bachelor. Painting 18 wheelers at the Kenworth factory in Renton. Paying child support. Seeing his son Matthew sometimes on the weekends. He was handy around his bachelor pad and liked to keep his yard nice and tidy, fix up the house, and do a little antiquing sometimes. He was thrifty. He dated. He probably watched Newhart, MASH, and Three’s Company. That shit was popping in 1982!

And, in a way, he’s normal life outside of his obsession with murdering prostitutes is more disturbing than if he was some Richard Ramirez type always doing something fucked up. Always doing hard drugs, hooking up with prostitutes, burglarizing, worshipping the Devil, raping, murdering, or some combination of all of the above.

If Richard was your neighbor, you’d know something was up! That’s why he lived in that sketchy-ass Hotel Cecil in downtown LA surrounded by other dirt bags. If Ramirez lived next door to you in the suburbs, the only time you’d be looking at him would be when you were peeking out from between the blinds behind a locked door: “What are you up to Creepy McCreep???” R. Nov. 9, 1982: On Nov. 9, 1982 - one woman got away. Of all the women Gary Ridgway attempted to murder, she would be the only one known to have escaped.

Ridgway met a prostitute named Rebecca Guay and arranged a date that chilly November day.

Ridgway agreed to pay $20 for sex with Guay. Then the two drove to an area near South 204th Street, where Ridgway wanted to go into the woods. Guay said Ridgway tried to choke her, but she managed to escape and run to a nearby trailer. Ridgway admitted choking Guay and said she had bitten him.

Guay said she was certain Ridgway meant to kill her. "His face looked white, clammy, cold," she told police. She thought she was gonna die.

S. 1983: In 1983, twenty-three more women disappear from King County. Twenty-three!! Fuck. ALL at the hands of Gary “the Green River Killer” Ridgway.

Five vanish in April alone. All between the ages of 15 and 26. Sadly, only five of those bodies actually being found in 1983 which gave detectives that much less evidence to work with.

One of the bodies found belonged to Gail Lynn Mathews, 24 years old. She wasn’t a career prostitute. She was a woman who had been married, and lived a somewhat normal if impoverished life, and was currently down on her luck when she met Gary. She was staying in a budget motel, the New West, and she needed money for her and her boyfriend if they wanted to keep staying there.

And she was last seen alive sitting in the passenger seat of Gary Ridgway’s truck. And by the time her remains were found in September, it would take the medical record of bones she’d broken in a boating accident to be able to identify her body.

T. May 4, 1983: On May 4, 1983, Des Moines police - Des Moines, Washington not Iowa - spoke to Ridgway about the disappearance of Marie Malvar. The prostitute had disappeared four days earlier, last seen in a truck that resembled Ridgway’s. And, she was in fact, one of his victims. But, her body wouldn’t be found until September and the police didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him at the time. And there were a lot of other suspects. These women weren’t all paying there bills off of the business of Gary Ridgway. There were a lot of sad, lonely dudes looking to escape their misery for a few minutes of lust with some sad, desperate women. Ugh.

U. Nov. 16, 1983: On Nov. 16, 1983, the Green River Task Force now interviews Ridgway. He’d been ID’d as being seen with some of the prostitutes that had recently gone missing and he’d already been arrested for attempting to pick up prostitutes previously in the area. But still - not enough evidence.

V. 1984/1985: In 1984, two prostitutes, Dawn White and Paige Miley, spoke to the Green River Task Force about Ridgway and he was brought in again for questioning. In an attempt to clear his name, he voluntarily took a lie detector test and he passed.

The balls on this guy! He knew. He fucking knew he was the guy they were looking for - and he volunteers to take that test. Not sure what gave him the courage to make him think he could do that, but, Gary just doesn’t think like the rest of us.

Investigators believe that Ridgway's psychopathy helped him. The polygraph detects stress; Ridgway had none. "I just uh, relaxed and took the polygraph," he said.

Despite passing the test, Gary’s murder spree slows down in 1984.

The detectives having questioned Gary a few times now probably spooked him. And - the Green River Task Force was now out in full force which made it harder to sneak off with future victims.

In November of 1984, former Seattle area killer and now incarcerated Ted Bundy, Timesuck Topic 11 - WAY back in the catalog- begins to work with the Task Force from behind bars to help profile Gary. They’re taking this shit seriously. Bundy’s help didn’t lead to Gary’s capture but his profile of Gary was fairly accurate.

They’re keeping an eye on known prostitution areas, tracking Johns. And all of this slows Gary down.

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Gary slows down to two confirmed killings in 1984, zero in 1985, and only one in 1986. Also, in 1986, the Task Force interviews Ridgway again, asks him to take another polygraph, and he passes it AGAIN.

X. 1987: In 1987, Ridgway met new single Judith Lynch at a bar in Seattle. she recalled he seemed like the perfect suitor - he was handsome, polite, had a good job, and treated her like a lady.

She had no idea he was still on the Green River Killer’s suspect list. While they were dating in 1987, Police obtained a search warrant issued for hair and saliva samples from his home at 21859 S. 32nd St. in Kent. But they still couldn’t link him to the crimes.

Again though - this close call seemed to slow him down. He was only convicted on one murder that definitely happened in 1987, none in 88 or 89, one in 1990, and then the last confirmed kill in 1998.

39 year old Gary married her in 1988, and the couple bought a home in Des Moines on South 253rd Street. They lived there until 1997. Ridgway suddenly had become an extrovert who went out of his way to talk to his neighbors. He also took an almost obsessive interest in gardening, neighbors said.

"He kept his house up well and he kept his yard up well," said Mike Welch, who has lived in the same house since 1976. "He seemed to be a model neighbor.” He was so happy in his new marriage he almost stopped killing prostitutes. But not quite. He’d rape, strangle, and dump the body of Roberta J. Hayes in the Western Washington Woods. Roberta aka Bobby Joe was a woman who’d been living on and off on the streets since she was 12 years old. On Feb. 7th, she walked out of a Portland, Oregon jail after being arrested for prostitution, headed North, and nobody that knew her ever saw her alive again.

Years later, in 1991, a state parks employee discovered Hayes' skeletal remains near piles of debris along a dead-end dirt road north of state Route 410 near Enumclaw.

And then Gary went back to being a good husband and neighbor. He has garage sales as often as twice a month. Nothing stood out among the odds and ends the Ridgways were trying to sell as weird. No bloody murder kits. No candid photos of women with the eyes on the photos scratched out. Nothing.

If Ridgway had a fault, his new neighbors said, it was that he was a little "overly friendly,”.

"When I was out in the yard, I couldn't get anything done because he wanted to talk all the time," agreed Paul Winkle, another neighbor.

What a strange way to think about Gary after they caught him.

“Yeah - I remember Green River Gary - the man wouldn’t shut the fuck up! I’m trying to mow my lawn and he wants to talk my ear off about a new nitrogen based fertilizer he swears I have to try. Definitely gets yard the greenest it can be. I go to walk my dog and he won’t stop talking about Mike Morgan getting rocked last night by the Yankees! I don’t think he strangled anybody - I think he talked those women to death!”

For 13 years, Judith lived with the most prolific serial killer in US history, this good, if too talkative neighbor, and swears she never suspected a thing.

And then finally, Gary got caught.

And before we dig into how he was caught, let’s check in with the fools we skipped over last week - those wonderful idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET

IV. Idiots of the Internet

A. In an Interview video of Gary Ridgway, where, while in prison, an unnamed, at least unnamed in the videos I watched a female interview asks Gary about his childhood, how he lured women into his car, etc. And User Arizonabay15 points out some real idiocy in the comments, posting: “This freak has probably murdered 80+ women but the comment section hates on the female interviewer. It's a sick world, that's for sure..”

It’s true. There are constant posts of “She asks the dumbest questions” , “Worst interviewer ever”, “I don't like her style”.

And these type comments far outweigh comments along the lines of “What a piece of shit this guy is.” And, in my opinion, she isn’t that bad. She talked a lot during his interview but she had to. He’s not an engaging speaker. He’s quiet towards most people. Former coworkers he worked with for years would say he never spoke more than two words to them. Weird commentary on society that people attack her instead of him. And then one user gets even weirder.

User Roberta 10019 posts, “This woman is so annoying, she also another one who needs treatment. She is much more worried about seducing him, with her fake sweet voice and jewelry and body language than keep to herself and do a professional interview.”

Wow! The lady is wearing a skirt suit not a g-string bikini. She’s leaning forward to engage him in conversation not smushing her tits together and shoving them in his face - she’s using a solid, basic body language interview technique. You’re not gonna get someone to warm up to you in an interview if you’re leaned back with your arms folded. That sends a message of - I don’t like you, or, I’m not interested, or, in my case, “this position seems to minimize your ability to notice the size of my midsection that I don’t do much of anything to address but am also not comfortable with”.

1. Zepbigfoot bearcove leaves my favorite comment under this video , posting: “He needs therapy. Death therapy. Cures em every time.”

Touché! Death therapy! Well played Zepbigfoot. I like it! And I agree, cures these fuckers every time. Take out the trash and snuff this piece of shit out already. B. Under another video titled “Gary Ridgway "The Green River Killer" - Serial Killer Documentary”, uploaded by Serial Killer Documentaries, Chickasaw 963 goes full Captain Obvious, posting:

“Just cuz a person is in troubles gives no one permission to kill them.”

1. And user Abdul Galad quickly points out their stupidity, replying: “nice conclusion Einstein. Keep at it. You may discover the answers to other moral questions we all already know.”

I love it! I love it when people virtue signal like that. “Hey guys, listen up! I want all of you to know, that I am 100% AGAINST prostitute murder! I don’t care what kind of trouble it gets me in to take this very controversial stance! If I get fired from my job - if I get disowned by my family for coming out and saying that I DO NOT think it’s okay to kill prostitutes - SO BE IT!!!! It’s the right thing to do! Consequences be damned!!!”

C. Mark Preston has my favorite post I’ve seen in awhile. Mark uses the comment section of a Gary Ridgway video to unleash his own agenda upon the web - which is a strange hatred of all King County women and a more than tacit approval for the Green River Killings.

“King County WA SUCKED ASS in the 1970's. Angry women were doing their women's lib stuff, Ted Bundy had killed in the region and then ultimately was being adjudicated in FL while the Green River bodies were being discovered. I remember that summer 1982, I delivered the Seattle Times from 1979 to 1982 and noticed the headlines during that era. It sucked. One thing that I noticed during that sickening time were how cruel and angry the women were in King County. The young ones were seeking empowerment, the older ones had some leftover European angst. I believe the motivation for some of these serial killings were the shitty, angry women and the shitty weather. I never dated a woman that grew up in King County. My high school girlfriend was from Twin Cities, the one before that was from Bay Area. The only King County one I hooked up with and liked moved to CA after high school. I moved to CA after high school and spent time in San Diego. I had a lot of friends in Mission Beach from all over the world. There were two young women that I couldn't stand although I did not know them. It turned out they were from Bellevue. Years later I was working in East Boston on an IT project and there was a woman on our team that I despised. The last day before everyone flew home she told me she grew up in Renton. I have a friend in Bay Area that is a kind soul, his wife is a total jackass and many people hate her. I learned years after I also hated her that she grew up in Bellevue. I grew up in Bellevue, too. I have had many girlfriends and bosses from all over the US, the ones from CA are the nicest and friendliest. Women from King County WA are toxic.”

Jesus! Mark is a little longwinded here, so, in case you tuned out a good chunk of his rant, what he’s basically saying regarding the Green River Killings is, “I fucking get it! Totally get it!! Look, I’m not saying those women deserved to die, BUT, what I AM saying is that, they brought that shit on themselves. If you don’t want to get choked out in the woods after getting fucked, don’t be so uppidity! Let go of your European angst, whatever the Hell that is, and stop wanting to be empowered! How dare you uppidity broads want to be empowered. Keep your shoes off, stay in the kitchen, stay pregnant, and shut the fuck up when the men are talking!”

Oh Mark, while I don’t hope that you also get murdered, if some woman does kill you, and a video gets posted of them being interviewed about it - I may just post about how I totally understand why you were killed, you Idiot of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET OUTRO

V. Gary’s Arrest Alright - let’s wrap up this Timeline.

A. November 30th, 2001: On 30 November 2001, 52 year old father and married man living in the Seattle suburbs, Gary Ridgway, is arrested as he leaves that truck painting job, a job he’s had now for over 30 years.

And his arrest marks the the end of the longest running serial killer investigation in US history.

The handcuffs used on Gary were an old pair given to the arresting officer, Detective Mullinax, over 15 years earlier, in 1985, by Paul Smith, a veteran King County detective who died of cancer that year. Mullinax had promised Smith’s Widow that he put those cuffs on the Green River Killer one day.

What was the break in the case? DNA evidence. Seattle detectives, despite Gary passing two separate lie detector tests, still considered him a strong suspect and many believed he did it. And now, with new DNA matching technology, detectives were able to link a sample of saliva they’d held for 14 years with some semen found on three of the earliest victims.

Detectives had been comparing the semen against DNA samples from a variety of old suspects from the early and mid-80s. And then, when they looked into Gary, a new arrest popped up - he’d been arrested again for soliciting a prostitute just two weeks earlier. They found his old saliva sample in a cold case file, matched it, and headed to his job and arrested that piece of murderous trash.

And then, for nearly two years, investigators worked to get Gary to confess to more than the three murders DNA evidence linked him too initially.

Finally, on June 13, 2003, threatened with the possibility of the death penalty if he didn’t confess, Gary Ridgway confessed to 48 separate murders.

B. December 18, 2003: On December 18, 2003, King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones sentenced Ridgway to 48 life sentences with no possibility of parole and one life sentence, to be served consecutively. He was also sentenced to an additional 10 years for tampering with evidence for each of the 48 victims, adding 480 years to his 48 life sentences

C. Feb 18, 2011: And then, on his 62nd birthday, Feb. 18th, 2011, Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to one more murder. The 49th he’d be prosecuted for. In an interview, he’d claim more than 70 murders. Others think he killed closer to 100 women.

In December of 2011, three teens stumbled upon the remains of Becky Marrero remains in a ravine in the 6300 block of 296th Street, just west of West Valley Highway North.

The 20 year old had gone missing on December 3rd 1982. And to date, she is the last victim Gary has been found guilty of killing.

Gary is currently incarcerated at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. And that takes us out of this Timesuck Timeline. PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE

VI. Conclusion - The “Banality of Evil” A. So that’s it. That’s Gary Ridgway. The Green River Killer. A guy who doesn’t have the same fascination around his murders than say, John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer even though he killed more people and for a longer amount of time.

Why isn’t there the same level of fascination? Well, because when you see the dude in interviews he comes across more pathetic than terrifying. Reminds me of Ed Gein that way. When you watch him, you’re just like, “Oh, this isn’t some criminal mastermind. This is just some sick, pathetic fuck who was able to keep his secret life secret.

I came across the phrase “the banality of evil” in a description under an interview with him and it was so perfect. He is banal. (“bah-nAl - emphasis on A sound, as in Apple)

Gary’s IQ is consistently listed in articles and books as being somewhere around 85-87. If you look at the old Lewis Terman IQ scale, a score of 80-89 classifies someone as “dull”, 90-109 is normal or average. 110-119 is superior. 120-140 is very superior. 140+ is genius or near genius. And just below Gary, at 70-79 is borderline deficiency, below 70 is classified, or rather, was classified in 1916 when the study came out, as “Feeble-mindedness”.

Ted Bundy, by contrast, has an IQ listed anywhere from around 110 to 136 online. Superior to very superior. Gary Ridgway was dull. He was angry, kind of stupid man.

Maybe that’s what helped him get away with it for so long. He was like a murderous robot. He didn’t pull a BTK and send letters to the police taunting them. He wasn’t like the Zodiak, sending letters to the press looking for publicity. He wasn’t like Bundy, drunk on murderous power, going through a sorority and attacking multiple girls in the same night.

He didn’t think he could outsmart the world like John Wayne Gacy and just put the bodies in his crawlspace and invite the police into his home.

He preyed on the easiest members of society to prey on - young women who made careers out of getting into cars with creepy men whose name they didn’t know and who they’d never met before. Men they let drive them to secluded areas. Men who’d be virtually criminally untraceable if they disappeared.

And, not only did he prey on prostitutes, he specifically tried targeting the youngest ones. Those with the least street knowledge. The easiest, most trusting victims. He paid them for sex, they had it, and then he choked them out and took his money back.

He initially strangled them manually but after being inflicted with many wounds and bruises from the victims trying to defend themselves he began using ropes, belts, and other ligatures so as not to draw suspicion. Ridgway killed the majority of his victims in either his truck or his home.

He’d dump the bodies in the thick woods surrounding the Green River and then he’d do it again. And he’d revisit his dump site to revel in his murderous glory and have sex with the victim’s body again.

Couple last gory Gary details before we recap.

Why did Gary choke victims? “that was more personal and more rewarding than to shoot her.”

In 1984, Ridgway took a camping trip to Oregon, south of his home in Washington, with his son. He also happened to have the remains of two or three dead prostitutes in his car. He paid for everything in cash to leave no record of the trip, and dumped the remains in the Oregon area, so as to make detectives think the Green River Killer was moving south. He then presumably had a nice time camping with his son.

Dude was capable of some serious compartmentalization.

Why did he kill prostitutes? “I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

He also hated prostitutes. Why? Because they wouldn’t give him freebies. He’d say, “I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex.”

This is where the low IQ comes in. Dude. Paying for sex is what makes them prostitutes you dumb fuck. Of course they’re not gonna fuck you for free - if they did - they wouldn’t be prostitutes. They would be sex angels.

He really wasn’t a bright man. For example, after six months of questioning, Dave Reichert, the head detective in the Green River Killer case, asked Ridgway if he had any questions. Ridgway responded, "Yeah, how come your hair is gray and your eyebrows are dark?"

Who says something like that to the detective trying to pin murders on them? A moron.

He also was super proud of his killings. In a way some high school has been would be proud of all the touchdowns they scored.

During his intensive period of questioning with the police, Ridgway made clear he wanted credit for all the murders he committed, but very explicitly stated, more than once, that he didn't want to take credit for murders someone else committed. When asked why, he replied, “Why, if it isn’t mine? Because I have pride in…in…what I do, I don’t wanna take it from anybody else.”

And, as I’m sure you’ve heard, he became a necrophiliac.

Over time, Ridgway lost his ability to be aroused by a living person, so he would kill his victims then have sex with them, while their were corpses were still warm. When he first began practicing necrophilia, Ridgway buried his victims close to his home, so he could return to them, dig them up, and have sex with them again. And, he apparently didn’t mind is conquests to be a little rotten. By his own admission, he would have to wipe away maggots before having sex with some of the bodies.

Alright! Not gonna get more disturbing than that. Let’s cut to some Top Five Takeaways

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

VII. Top Five Takeaways

1. Number one. Gary Ridgway is the most prolific serial killer in American history, convicted of 49 murders. Three less than Ukrainian nightmare, Andrei Chikatilo. “What is big deal? He evil but not as evil as Chikatilo. Americans no have communist work ethic.”

2. Number two. Gary began killing Prostitutes in Western Washington and dumping their bodies along the Green River at least as early as the beginning of 1982. And he didn’t get caught until the end of 2001. For 20 years he killed, dumped, and walked free - leading what seemed to be a normal, working-class suburban life.

3. Number three: Ridgway preferred to murder prostitutes because he knew they made it the easiest for him to not get caught. He knew who the weak were and he knew how to prey on them, gaining their trust by doing stuff like showing them a picture of his young son.

4. Number four: Despite his prostitute addiction, the Green River Killer had arguably the cleanest ween in Western Washington. BAR NONE! Mama scrubbed that shit DOWN.

5. Number five. New info! Early on in the formation of the Green River Killer task force, Gary Ridgway was NOT the prime suspect. Police initially believed that Melvin Foster was their man.

In mid-September 1982, a man named Melvin Wayne Foster called King County Police. Melvyn was a 43-year-old taxi driver, he'd been married five times, had done a nine-year stretch in prison for auto theft, had grown up in South King County, and was creepy as fuck. I watched an interview where he was asked why he went to police with what he thought was information, and he opens with “You can be your brother’s creeper, or just another bearer of the mark of Cain.” Totally dead in the eyes as he says this.

Foster worked as a cabbie and frequently came in contact with prostitutes, both in downtown Seattle and on the Seattle-Tacoma Airport strip. After the first bodies were found, Foster began thinking about some of his fellow drivers. He decided to tell the police his suspicions Police promptly made Foster himself their prime suspect. And I don’t blame them.

Who says weird shit about “bearing the mark of Cain”? Religious fanatics, murderers, or both. I feel like if you hear someone say that, odds are you are in a strange pentecostal church shed slash shack listening to the rantings of a wild- eyed, sweaty pastor OR tied to a chair in a shed slash shack slash murder hut listening to the final words you’ll hear on this Earth.

And that takes us out of today’s Top Five Takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS

VIII. Final announcements A. Gary Ridgway - that dumb murderous piece of shit has been Sucked. Don’t let his low IQ allow to you feel sorry for him. That IQ may have prevented him for entering MENSA or getting his doctorate in, well, anything - but it didn’t give him a reason to kill and didn’t justify in any way that atrocities committed at his hands.

And now for that special charity announcement.

B. Charity: I promised the Space Lizard that one we hit the initial $10,000 monthly goal that covers studio, employee, and app costs - that we’d start giving 20% of additional funds each month to a charity. And, while we only beat the goal of $10,000 by a few hundred dollars, $60 didn’t seem like enough and we had a good month as far as touring and merch sales go, SO, we’re making a $500 donation to the Seattle-based Organization for Prostitution Survivors.

OPS, who you can find via their website, http://seattleops.org/

Co-Founder and survivor of 15 years of prostitution, Noel Gomez, recognized an acute lack of services for adult survivors of prostitution while working at YouthCare’s Bridge program and facilitating the Sex Industry Workers Class for the City of Seattle. This acute lack of services inspired Noel to create OPS. Noel collaborated with Peter Qualliotine and other survivors and allies in Seattle to establish OPS in the spring of 2012.

The non-profit works with prostitutes and former prostitutes in the Seattle area to identify their needs and provide a vision for the rest of their lives. Services include one-on-one advocacy, case management, support groups, employment services, chemical dependency & recovery support, housing resources and so much more. They even provide services for those who pay to use prostitutes, essentially a weekly group therapy and workshop to teach men about the dangers of prostitution and how to form healthy relationships outside of prostitution.

And they do all kinds of other cool, non-judgemental, progressive shit. And everyone who listens to this show just gave them some support, so, thank you. Hopefully this is just the beginning of so, so much donation to so many good causes.

C. Closing Announcements 1. Gary Ridgway - Sucked! That piece of shit is in the Suck Pile and rotting in Walla Walla. Quick update on him - I talked to a Timesucker at the show in Spokane who said that his brother had a friend who was or is incarcerated with Gary in Walla Walla and apparently, this dude pieced on Gary. I asked him if it was in the shower and he said no, said the guy just straight up pissed on him. So - I didn’t want to hold the line up more to get more details but I like that Gary was pissed on and wanted to share that.

2. Don’t forget to grab my new album, Maybe I’m the Problem, on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play if you’re a standup fan. It is available at all the usual digital suspects now. I’m proud of it, it’s been selling well, and the feedback is great.

3. Thanks to Harmony Vellekamp, Jesse Dobner, Lynze Cummins, Josh Krell, and the entire Timesuck team for their help and huge thanks to the Lillie Twins - Sarah AND Rebecca Reba, those Bojangles Research department assistants for doing some great research. Consistently doing a great job of gathering extra details for the Timesuckers.

This Friday - more murder! Yes. Apparently it is murder week this week on the Suck. It was the Will of the Space Lizards to have Gary sucked today and it was, well, Nimrod’s will to suck the Ripper. That was decided awhile back.

Who was Jack the Ripper? We’re gonna try and find out! From August 7 to September 10 in 1888, someone dubbed "Jack the Ripper" terrorized the Whitechapel district in London's East End, killing at least five prostitutes and mutilating their bodies in an unusual manner, indicating that the killer had a knowledge of human anatomy. Jack the Ripper was never captured and I’m guessing he never will be, considering he would now be 131 years old today, and that’s if he killed people when he was a newborn which is HIGHLY unlikely! So, we’re heading to jolly old England this Friday for some late 19th century history and to talk about unsolved murders! Should be fun.

4. And now, let’s find out what you Suckers have been drawn to this past week, with some Timesucker Updates!

IX. Timesucker Updates

A. Lot of scary updates have come in regarding our recent two part exorcism Suck of Anneliese Michel. Can’t believe we’re already doing another Bonus Suck this Friday.

Lot of weird shit has been going while people have been listening to that Suck. Like what happened to our very own Suck employee, Harmony Vellekamp. She texted me, saying:

“So super scary! I’m finally finishing the 2nd part of the Annalise Michele episode (wanted to listen in daylight)

I ran a bath cause the kids are napping and I made myself some hot tea. A real mom vaca

I set the tea cup up on the soap shelf in the wall of the shower and got in the bath. Pressed play. I was at the part where You started to read the prayers for the first part of the exorcism when all the sudden the tea cup of boiling water falls on me and drenched me in boiling water. My chest is burnt and my headphones broke. Officially spooked and I’m not even a believer in most of that stuff. �

Now it’s at the part where you’re about to play the voice clips of her, and I paused it. I need to wait til I’m downstairs in daylight lol damn!”

And that is one of many crazy things that have happened. Also - as far as I know, Harmony is alive and well and not further burned today.

B. Email From: Lauren Hendricks ([email protected])

Message: No you don't even get an intro because it's not funny anymore. Fucking HELL. AGAIN. Hi, it's Lauren Hendricks again and my phone shut off the recording AGAIN. It's never done those before today and it's happened twice during this episode. You were reading out the actual saying the priests would say for an exorcism. It was making my skin crawl the longer you went on with it and it sounded kind of echoey and then all of a sudden my whole phone shut off. Turned it back on and nothing's wrong, it has 45% left and the episode started back up exactly where it had left off but this is is the second creepy phone issue I've had during this episode and I don't know who to blame, you or Lucifina, but I'm scared, so fuck you

Email From: Dylan Irish ([email protected])

Message:Dear Sucker Supreme, I’d send this in as a spooky story for the secret suck but I already sent one in. I just wanted to let you know something that just happened to me literally minutes before I am typing this. I work at an auto body shop. I am painting a hood on a big ass dump truck and I have done my paint layers and I am just starting my first clear coat layer. As I’m doing all this, I’m listening to part 2 of the exorcism suck. As I start to spray clear coat on the hood, the part with the audio files is playing and, I shit you not, two sections of lights start to flicker rapidly. They been fine all day, but when those audio files started to play, they just went bananas. I think it’s weird but I keep going. Seconds later, I look at an area where I had already cleared and the clear coat is running down the side of the hood faster than I’ve ever seen. It looked like I had just sprayed clear semen on it and it just ran down quickly. I’ve been painting for 4 years and this has never happened. I wasn’t doing anything different than usual and the air pressure on my gun was where it should be. This happened all over the left side of the hood... by the time I started to clear the right side, the audio clips were over with and I didn’t have a single run of clear on that side and the lights are currently on and are not flickering. Maybe it’s coincidence but I thought you’d like to hear about this creepy ass series of events that just happened. Forever a space lizard, Beard Papa

C. Email From: Michael Wojcio ([email protected])

Message:Hey Suck master general, I haven’t written in since you read my “pussy gate” email on your show. Love the show but right now I’m so FUCKING scared I need to get right to the point... it’s 850pm EST as I’m writing this. About 10 minutes ago I was showering while listening to the latest episode (which I will NEVER listen to again if I even finish it) and let me tell you what the fuck just happened. The first recording of the exorcism made my skin crawl. When you played the second clip, mind you in in the shower, 3 or 4 seconds in the lightbulb in my windowless bathroom went out leaving me alone, wet, naked and covered in goosebumps in pitch black in the House I live alone in. As soon as the light went out my dog started barking like a psychopath outside the door. I’m a grown man (37), not afraid of much and pretty level headed I like to think. I camp a lot in barren places and have never been creeped out like I am right now. Holy fucking shit on a sandwich I am terrified. I just ran out of the bathroom to my room where the light was on and now as I listen to you talk about how scared you are I think I need a break from today’s episode. Best. Episode. Ever. I might go to church on Sunday and I haven’t been to a church since I was 12. Great job man. Great job.

D. Email From: Geoff (leaving last name in case he’s embarrassed) ([email protected])

Message: just finished listening to part 2 of the Anneliese Michele demonic possession time suck. I do deliveries over night and listen to your podcast all the time but this one fucking scared the SHIT out of me....literally. I was doing a U-turn on a dark rural Street and just as you were playing the tapes of her speaking in that voice, a horse moved in a paddock near the road. I literally crapped myself a little. I now know what burnt shit smells like because that little nugget my butthole so fast that it would put a shuttle re-entry to shame. As always suck master Cummins, a great episode. Keep up the good work from your faithful follower in the land down under. HAIL NIMROD!

E. Email From: Jenny Öman ([email protected]) Message:

Hello there, dear SuckMaster! I am writing to you from the cold, dark depths of Northern Sweden. (Well, it's actually not that cold anymore, is about 37 degrees Fahrenheit today) I recently listened to bonus episode 20 about the possession of Anneliese Michel. You mentioned that demons who don't possess you just put spooky, evil thoughts into a person's mind and it made me think of something I read not too long ago. Apparently, there's a type of OCD that instead of making so you feel the need to turn the lights off and on and off and on and so on, a bunch of times, it gives you "intrusive thoughts" (I think it was called that.) I read about a guy who has it, and he says that he often thinks about hurting other people, children, his friends mothers, etc. He can't stop the thoughts from coming and he said that eventually, when one thought has been in his mind long enough, he starts worrying that he's actually done the bad thing that he's thought of and then forgotten about it. Seems like a pretty shitty thing to live with, thinking something like "I could totally just stab this person." and knowing you don't want to, that it's bad, but not being able to get the thought out of your head and then becoming paranoid that you've actually done it. Anyway, just thought that might be an interesting thing if you didn't know about it already. Love the show, I love listening to it while I'm welding at work.. And sometimes also accidently setting myself on fire. Shit happens, you know? F. Email From: Alanna Lynch ([email protected]) Message:

Hear this you crazy with a capital F supreme master sucker! I have an update on the Anneliese Michel suck. While I am not a psychologist myself I have quite a bit of experience with intrusive bad thoughts. No, I wasn't possessed, but I was diagnosed with OCD at an early age, and wanted to see if I could shed a little light on what the hell is going on when a person experiences unwanted, disturbing thoughts. OCD is not the disease of obsessive hand washing and cleaning, as many people believe. What it really is is an overwhelming amount of troubling thoughts that the sufferer obsesses over. In fact, while many people think of OCD as a disorder of rituals (hand washing, cleaning, hoarding etc) the rituals are more of a symptom of the real problem; invasive disturbing thoughts. For example, when someone hoards, they do so because their brain is telling them all sorts of scary wackadoodle stories about how the might die or go insane if they throw anything away. A common form of OCD that is not really heard of in the public sphere is "Pure O" OCD, where the sufferer doesn't actually perform any rituals, but is simply caught in a terrifying loop of stories that their mind is telling them. These thoughts can range from disturbing sexual acts, harming oneself or a loved one, or even religious based thoughts about hell. Many OCD sufferers are terrified they will hurt those that they love, even though in reality it is the last thing they ever want to do. For example, while you might have a thought about bludgeoning a smoothie guy to death for being a dick and then turned it into a funny joke and laughed it off, the OCD sufferer will start to wonder if they are genuinely a monster, if murder is something they fantasize about. This will snowball into obsessive thinking about every encounter with another human being, asking themselves if they feel violent towards them, perhaps even forcing themselves to imagine being violent to make sure they feel the right amount of disgust and horror. It's an exhausting cycle and if untreated, crippling. Like I said, I'm not a psychologist, but if I were to encounter Anneliese today I'd recommend she get tested for OCD and Schizophrenia (those two disorders love to tag team). OCD is often mistaken for psychosis, and it's a disorder that can make you do some pretty weird and disgusting things, like being compelled to eat or drink certain things (feces and urine included in extreme cases), talk in a specific way with specific words, and act in ways that seem insane to an outside observer. Belief is a powerful thing, particularly in the mind of someone with OCD. It has the power to alter our perception of reality, and it's catching. If Anneliese was acting in such strange ways with compulsions she could not explain, it makes sense that her family would believe her when she said she was possessed. Their belief in turn would firm up her own belief in her possession. I am an educated, fairly intelligent woman, and I remember a night where it took me three hours in the middle of the night to climb the stairs to my bedroom, because I was convinced that if I didn't do it the right way I would go insane. Obviously this is less intense than what Anneliese did, but I bring it up as an example that mental illness can make a person do things they would never normally do, and can't really explain. And if my parents had been standing next to me, agreeing with me that if I didn't climb the stairs correctly I would lose my mind, I don't know if I ever would have made it to the top. My saving grace was my family was there to remind me who I was, to point out when the OCD was making me do irrational things. If instead they had become convinced that a demon was possessing me, and told me that, I cannot even imagine how much my mental state would have deteriorated. I'm bringing this up partly because I think it adds to an already fascinating discussion, but also because I think it's important for people to know that disturbing, intrusive thoughts are completely, entirely normal. Sometimes your brain comes up with shit that is completely out of character for you, because brains are weird. We cannot control our thoughts, and the contents of our thoughts do not define us. What matters is our responses to them, and how we decide to act. Thoughts are not inherently powerful - we give them power in the way we react to them. Knowing this, I have been able to move past the ridiculous stories my brain sometimes tries to tell me. It is possible to be a victim of your own thoughts, but you don't have to be. You decide what you give the privilege of your attention to and how you speak and act. You are the one with the power. Realizing this was essential for me to overcome my OCD and depression, and I'm hoping it could help someone else too, even in a small way. Finally let me say thank Nimrod for Timesuck and the cult of the curious. It is so refreshing to have a community that isn't afraid to ask difficult questions and agree to disagree on the answers. You have created something rare and powerful with this podcast and community, and I can't thank you enough. And even better, you do all this in a way that has me laughing out loud every time. Hail Nimord, begone Lucifina, and keep on sucking, Supreme Chancellor of Suck! Alanna

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