Search of Ridgway's homes turns up no 'smoking gun'
Detectives called in a small backhoe yesterday to excavate the back yard of the SeaTac home where Gary Leon Ridgway lived during the Green River killings, after body-sniffing dogs were alerted to something in the yard.
But they found no human remains or other evidence that would tie Ridgway to any other slayings, King County sheriff's deputies said last night.
"We're pretty sure there's nothing there, and we're done digging," sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart said.
"The cadaver dogs are good, but there are lots of other things they can hit upon as well," including septic systems.
Meantime, as prosecutors prepared to charge Ridgway with murder this week in the 1982 and 1983 deaths of Green River victims Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman, Cynthia Hinds and Carol Christensen, investigators continued to look for evidence that might tie him to other slayings, including the remaining 45 attributed to the Green River killer.
They also hope to find more to answer the larger questions about what might have motivated Ridgway, an unassuming 52-year-old truck painter and lifelong South King County resident.
Some of those answers are expected to be partly addressed Wednesday in charging papers, said a source familiar with the investigation. Among other information, the documents are expected to allege that, despite three marriages, Ridgway finds his sexual gratification in hiring prostitutes, the source said.
Sheriff Dave Reichert hasn't called Ridgway the Green River killer, though detectives are reassembling a task force to try to tie him to the remaining Green River slayings and possibly other cases. The 1982-84 case is the largest unsolved string of serial slayings in the country.
Ridgway, who remains jailed without bail, was calm though "clearly stressed" when he met with a team of three court-appointed lawyers to discuss his situation, said one of those attorneys, Mark Prothero of Kent.
"He has maintained his innocence for 18 years" and still does, Prothero said. The arrest "was not a complete surprise, obviously, because of what happened (years ago)," the attorney said, referring to the 1987 search of Ridgway's home in what is now SeaTac.
It's too early to discuss a possible defense, Prothero said.
But because at least some of the key evidence against Ridgway is based on DNA analysis, it's likely that Ridgway's attorneys would vigorously attack the DNA testing process itself. Prothero said he has been studying DNA science as he defends another homicide suspect who has been accused of murder based on DNA evidence.
Yesterday, search teams continued to comb through residences connected to Ridgway: his current home in Auburn, a former home in Des Moines, his now-deceased parents' home in SeaTac and the small, blue-gray SeaTac rambler where Ridgway lived in the early and mid-1980s. That house is just a few minutes' drive to either Pacific Highway South or to the winding Green River.
The searches yesterday turned up no "smoking gun" evidence, Urquhart said. But it's too soon to tell what may come from the multitude of small pieces of potential evidence detectives are gathering for analysis.
"This is a difficult task, to go through the entire house," said Reichert, who visited Ridgway's former home in SeaTac yesterday. He said detectives have to go through every inch of every room and closet, "looking for that one piece of evidence that can tie this case together."
At Ridgway's Green River-era home, police dogs trained to sniff out decomposing animal remains found at least two interesting spots inside the wall, prompting detectives to cordon off grids with orange tape in the yard, lay down blue tarps and call for the backhoe. At the ready were large archaeology-style dirt sifters, though they proved unnecessary.
Authorities are likely to turn the backhoe on Ridgway's Auburn residence tomorrow, an investigator said. Though the dogs have not alerted searchers on anything there, some neighbors have reported that Ridgway used a backhoe of his own to dig in the yard, ostensibly to fix a drain field, investigators said.
On hand to help in the searches is Bill Haglund, former chief investigator for the King County Medical Examiner's Office and the old Green River Task Force's expert in exhuming and identifying human remains.
Haglund, who holds a doctorate in anthropology, was instrumental in identifying many skeletal remains of Green River victims in the 1980s, especially by helping to create a computerized database of dental records. In later years, he has helped to identify victims of mass killings in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
When Green River detectives searched Ridgway's house in 1987, investigators were said to be looking for a green carpet with nylon fibers in hopes the fibers matched green carpet fibers found at a number of the Green River crime scenes. No such carpet was found at that time.
However, it's likely that this latest search will also focus more scientifically and intensely on finding such fibers, said Al Matthews, a retired King County deputy prosecutor. He was the lead Green River Task Force prosecutor when police obtained the 1987 search warrant.
"I hope they're tearing off the baseboards to look for green fibers," he said.
After that 1987 search turned up no evidence, Green River detectives at the time turned their attention away from Ridgway, said Robert Evans, who commanded the former Green River Task Force from 1988 until the team was dissolved in 1990.
The FBI and other experts in the field of serial-killer profiling told the team that such killers have to be imprisoned or die to stop killing, Evans said.
But Ridgway remained in King County, living a seemingly normal life, and no more Green River killings occurred after 1984. So detectives ignored him, Evans said.
"We put all our eggs in one basket, and we didn't look at more people like Ridgway," Evans said yesterday. "I'm troubled by the fact that he might have stopped (killing), in spite of what (profiling) experts told us."
At the former home of Ridgway's parents, in the McMicken Heights neighborhood of SeaTac, police summoned King County medical examiners to check out bones found in the yard. But they turned out to be poultry bones likely chewed and abandoned by garbage-can-raiding neighborhood dogs, a deputy said.
Meantime, two families have been displaced as detectives moved them out to search Ridgway's former homes. Yesterday, Urquhart said the Sheriff's Office will pay them for their living expenses and cover any damage done during the searches.
So far, most of Ridgway's relatives have been unwilling to talk.
Yesterday, Ridgway's second wife, reached by telephone at her home in Maple Valley, declined to comment.
Ridgway's sister-in-law, found yesterday at her South Seattle home, said family attorneys have told them not to talk to the media.
"We're praying," said the woman, the wife of Ridgway's brother, Greg.
Seattle Times staff reporter Peyton Whitely contributed to this report.
Former Seattle Times reporters Carlton Smith and Tomás Guillen, who covered the Green River case and wrote the 1991 book "The Search for the Green River Killer," have returned on special assignment.