THE SMILING ASSASSIN
When newly single Judith Mawson met Gary Ridgway at a bar in Seattle in the mid 1980s, he was the perfect gentleman. He was handsome, polite, had a decent job as a truck painter and treated her like a lady. Judith fell in love and they married three years later.
“He made me smile every day,” she recalled. “I had the perfect husband, perfect life. I absolutely adored him.”
But after 13 years of marriage, Ridgway was arrested under suspicion of being the Green River Killer, with the blood of up to 70 women on his hands. Investigators believed he picked up prostitutes and teenage runaways, strangled them during sex and dumped their bodies in remote areas near the Green River.
Judith refused to believe the accusations against her beloved husband.
She said the now-69-year-old hadn’t revealed any clues about this so-called secret life – there were no outbursts of anger or unexplained absences.
“He was always happy, he had a smile that would never change,” she said. “He made me feel like a newlywed every day.” Ridgway assured Judith police had the wrong man and they tried to touch each other through the glass when she visited him in jail.
Then, two years later, police matched Ridgway’s DNA to evidence found on a body. He finally admitted to killing at least 48 women.
He was spared the death penalty in return for helping police locate the remains of some of his victims.