Who Was the Green River Killer? Inside Gary Ridgway’s Brutal Murders and How Ted Bundy Helped Police Capture Him By Christopher Rudolph

For nearly two decades, the Green River Killer claimed numerous lives in Washington state, evading authorities — until Ted Bundy teamed up with the authorities to catch him.

A serial killer assisting law enforcement in capturing another mass murderer is the plot of The Silence of the Lambs but it happened in real life, too. The unusual partnership is the subject of the new Hulu documentary, Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil, out on Aug. 7.

It features excerpts from the 1995 book The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer, written by Bob Keppel, who helped catch Bundy. The documentary showcases how Keppel worked with the lead detective on the Green River Killer case, Dave Reichert, as Bundy’s killer instincts guided them.

Bundy reached out to investigators, offering insight into how the Green River Killer thought. The two men were both murderers, and they both targeted victims in the same area, in the Pacific Northwest; Bundy in the 1970s, and the Green River Killer in the ’80s and ’90s.

So who was the Green River Killer, and why did Ted Bundy offer to help capture him? Here’s what to know about the Green River Killer, including why he was called that and whether he was ever convicted of his crimes.

Who was the Green River Killer?

The Green River Killer’s real name is Gary Ridgway, who was born on Feb. 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City and raised in Seattle.

After graduating from high school in 1969, Ridgway enlisted in the Navy, where he served on a supply ship in Vietnam, according to Military.com. Ridgway was later discharged and returned to Seattle.

There, he was a truck painter for 30 years, until his arrest in 2001.

Why was he called the Green River Killer?

The serial killer became known as the Green River Killer because his first victims were found along the Green River, located outside of Seattle.

On July 15, 1982, the body of 16-year-old Wendy Lee Coffield was discovered floating in the Green River, per King 5 News. “She was found naked with a pair of blue jeans tied around her neck. This was obviously not the victim of an accidental drowning,” according to Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil.

Over the next month, five more bodies were found along a one-mile stretch of the river, leading authorities to create the Green River Task Force, per the FBI website. The task force’s mission was to scour the area for additional clues that could help reveal the identity of the killer.

One of their first findings was the fact that Gisele A. Lovvorn, Debra Lynn Bonner, Marcia Faye Chapman, Cynthia Jean Hinds and Opal Charmaine Mills were sex workers. They had all been strangled.

“The crew that went into the Green River, they were tripping over the bodies. That’s how he got the name, the Green River Killer,” The Riverman co-author William J. Birnes said in the Hulu documentary.

The Green River Task Force expanded into a bigger team in 1984 as bodies continued to be discovered.

How many women did the Green River Killer murder?

Ridgway was convicted of murdering 49 women and teen girls, but he has confessed to killing at least 71, and investigators believe the number could be closer to 100 — making him one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history.

The King County website lists the names of the confirmed deaths linked to the Green River Killer, including a few women whose identities have still not been established.

Ridgway later admitted in a courtroom statement that he targeted prostitutes because he “knew they would not be reported missing” right away.

“I picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed,” he explained, The New York Times reported. “I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

Why did Ted Bundy want the Green River Killer caught?

One of the detectives who was trying to catch the Green River Killer was lead Dave Reichert, who said he was “surprised” when Bundy — who was on death row — sent a letter, offering his help.

“He made it very clear what his purpose was in his letter. What he wanted to do, according to his description, was to get us into the mind of a serial killer,” Reichert told Fox News in June 2022.

He thought Bundy was “just injecting himself into the situation, trying to find out as much as he could about the case.”

Reichert reasoned that Bundy was eager to offer his services because he wanted to be known as the “number one notorious serial killer in the United States.”

“I think he was jealous that the Green River killer was grabbing all the headlines at the time,” the detective continued. “Ted Bundy was in prison, so he was sort of a forgotten entity.”

Did Ted Bundy help catch the Green River Killer?

In 1984, Keppel and Reichert teamed up when the latter reached out to the then-chief criminal investigator, knowing Keppel had helped capture Bundy, per Dialogue with the Devil. That November, Keppel and Reichert met with Bundy at the Florida State Prison, where he was being held.

The conversations with Bundy didn’t directly lead to the Green River Killer’s arrest, but helped detectives place themselves in the mind of the murderer. Bundy’s observations provided insight into what Ridgway was doing with the bodies.

Bundy suggested that the Green River Killer may have been returning to the victim’s bodies and performing sexual acts on them, which turned out to be true. As Keppel wrote in The Riverman, Bundy also suggested that the police stake out one of the body burial sites to catch the killer if he returned to the scene.

“Ted Bundy was more accurate in profiling this serial killer than the police were,” Birnes said in Dialogue with the Devil. “He was right all along the lines. Where to find the victims, and why he attacked the victims.”

How was the Green River Killer caught?

The Green River Killer was caught using DNA evidence. Even though Ridgway had been a suspect since the beginning of the investigation in the ’80s, he was not linked to he murders until decades later.

Evidence was seized from Ridgway’s house and cars in 1987 and retested in 2001, when authorities got a match. (An investigation by NBC News in 2024 discovered that spots of industrial spray paint were found on Ridgway’s early victims that could have pointed to him much sooner.)

In late 2001, Ridgway was taken into custody in connection with the Green River killings. The New York Times reported that he was linked to three deaths and a suspect in four more. Two years later, the former painter was charged with all seven murders.

Where is the Green River Killer now?

By November 2003, Ridgway agreed to plead guilty to 48 murders of aggravated murder in the first degree, per the King County website. He accepted a plea agreement that would spare him the death penalty, per The New York Times. The following month, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, the outlet reported.

“I’m sorry for killing these ladies,” he said. “They had their whole lives ahead of them. … May they rest in peace. They need a better place than where I gave them.”

Less than a decade later, in February 2011, a 49th life sentence was added to Ridgway’s conviction. As part of his plea agreement, Ridgway confessed to killing 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero, whose body was eventually found, according to KGW.

Today, the Green River Killer is incarcerated in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Wash. Per Seattle’s KOMO News, in September 2024, Ridgway was briefly transferred to the King County Jail to help detectives with an ongoing investigation related to additional victims. He was then brought back to the Washington State Penitentiary.