Ridgway's relatives 'mortified by grief'
"I hear comments: 'Is his family just dense?' I'm so offended by that," said Shaw, one of Ridgway's defense attorneys. "No. They're a loving, close family that cared about him. He lived such a double life. Nobody saw it."
On Wednesday, in exchange for being spared the death penalty, Ridgway admitted to strangling 48 women, one of the most horrific killing sprees in the country. While he faces life in prison, his family — Greg and Ed, an older and a younger brother living in King County, and Matt, a 27-year-old son living in San Diego — must struggle with unfathomable questions and gruesome truths.
The family has declined to comment publicly about the case, but allowed Shaw to speak on their behalf about their reactions to the plea agreement and their thoughts since his arrest. Shaw was the intermediary between the defense team and the family.
For almost two years, through numerous e-mails, phone calls and personal visits, Shaw has kept the family updated on the case and counseled them through the nightmare.
"They are definitely victims, too; they are mortified by grief," Shaw said. "They are aware Gary has ripped hundreds of families apart. They're having a very difficult time right now."
When Ridgway was arrested in November 2001 and charged with four murders, the family was devastated, Shaw said. They had been through this before, when Ridgway was considered a suspect in the early 1980s. But he passed a polygraph test in 1984. In 1986, Green River Task Force investigators said they had no evidence against him; the family thought it was a closed chapter.
So they hoped the arrest was a mistake. The first solid evidence connecting Ridgway to the Green River killings was a saliva sample he had given to police in 1987. The DNA of that saliva matched the DNA of semen samples found on some of the victims.
At that point, prosecutors and police didn't know to what extent Ridgway was involved in the other 45 deaths attributed to the serial killer. And the defense team and the family felt it could be argued that Ridgway only had sex with the women, many of whom were prostitutes, but it wouldn't have meant he killed them.
The family stayed loyal to him, Shaw said. Since his arrest, they have sent Shaw thousands of e-mails. They asked when they could see him again or what they could do to help or what was going on with the case.
Ridgway made collect calls to his older brother every Monday night. The brothers came regularly to jail, often on Tuesday evenings. Other relatives would ferry together from Bainbridge Island to visit Ridgway.
But in March, when new evidence emerged and Ridgway was charged with three more murders, their hope started to deteriorate.
Microscopic paint dust on the clothing of the three women matched the paint dust from the Kenworth Trucking Co. in Renton, where Ridgway worked for 30 years. "They were very concerned, shaking their heads," Shaw said, recalling the meeting with the family to discuss the new charges.
They wanted to know if it were possible that the paint found by investigators had come from some other plant such as a Boeing facility, which might implicate someone else in the killings.
"They were very somber about the new information," Shaw said. "It was becoming more difficult to explain away."
Meanwhile, Shaw worked on establishing a relationship with Ridgway himself, meeting with him once a week to talk about his case. The discussions turned to God, family, books. She earned his trust through small favors. She bought him birthday cards he could send to relatives. She helped get his glasses fixed. They found their mothers shared the same birthday, Aug. 15.
In April this year, during a jailhouse meeting, Shaw asked Ridgway if he wanted to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for his life. He agreed and began sobbing profusely, Shaw said. That meeting would spark the plea deal that culminated Wednesday.
When news of a plea deal began to leak, the defense team worried that family members might find out about it through the media.
So in July, Ridgway's lead attorney, Anthony Savage, met with Greg Ridgway. And on July 24, Shaw flew to California to meet with Matt, Ridgway's only son, and his wife, Dianne. They live on a military base outside San Diego.
"I told them a fib," Shaw says. "I said I was coming down because I had some other work in the area. But they're very bright, and I had a hunch they knew something was up...
"I was very nervous. I prayed for the right words. It was one of the scariest days for me."
She told them Ridgway was going to admit to the killings and cooperate with authorities in exchange for his life. They were very calm, she said, and they asked questions: How many people did he kill? When did this start? Is it a done deal?
Early in the evening, Matt was stiff, braced for bad news, Shaw said. Four hours later, he had "thawed out," she said.
"After that initial shock, we talked about everything but Gary: the service, how Matt and Dianne met, computers, Seattle," Shaw said. "Everyone has their own way of dealing with things...
"My opinion on the reason that Matt took it so well was because I think he held out the possibility that his dad could have been the (Green River killer)," Shaw said.
Last week, prior to Wednesday's court hearing, the family received a copy of the prosecutor's final charges against Ridgway. The lengthy document contains Ridgway's admissions and explicit details about how he killed and avoided detection for so long.
Shaw said Greg Ridgway read about one-third of it before becoming "physically sick." But he and his wife showed up at work the day after the hearing, Shaw said.
Greg and Ed Ridgway, and their wives, watched the hearing on television, Shaw said. Everyone agreed that it would be best if Matt stayed a while in San Diego.
Shaw said she used her connections last week to track down the father of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who was executed June 11, 2001. She wanted to gain insight into the family's feelings. "He went through the same emotions that the Ridgways are going through now," she said.
She said Ridgway's relatives "want to continue to have a relationship with Gary" and are looking forward to having visits with him. She said most of them have forgiven Gary and are leaving the judgment of his actions to God.
Shaw, 43, who has worked for 15 years in Seattle as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, said her religious faith was crucial to her job.
"Part of my faith ... you help those who are lost, forgotten, mentally ill, those that have troubled souls," Shaw said. "I looked at Gary as a person. I felt it wasn't my place to judge him or condemn him...
"God had his hand in what happened. It took way more power and wisdom than I had in me," she said. "It's difficult for people to understand how I could feel empathy, and there's been criticism, but I'm happy to accept it."
Michael Ko: 206-515-5653