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'Green River Killer' wants to help police find other victims

Green River Killer Gary Ridgway gave his first interview since being sent to prison for life. The Green River Killer says that he killed as many as 80 women, not 49.

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(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River Killer, appears for his sentencing in Seattle in 2003. Ridgway now says he might be able to locate the bodies of some of his Green River victims who were never found.
  • By Staff Associated Press

| Seattle

Serial killer Gary Ridgway says he might be able to locate the bodies of some of his Green River victims who were never found.

Ridgway told KOMO  radio that the Green River Task Force mostly kept him in a van in 2003 when he directed them to sites in the Seattle area where he dumped bodies in the 1980s. He'd like to revisit every site on foot and says he could have had as many as 80 victims.

"Ridgway is a sociopath and pathological liar" who likes notoriety, said King County sheriff's Sgt. Katie Larson, who was a member of the task force.

It's possible he killed more than the 49 women for which he was convicted, she said Tuesday. But, investigators are confident they did everything possible to recover all the victims.

Ridgway was arrested in 2001 after advances in DNA technology enabled authorities to link a 1987 saliva sample to some of the bodies. He pleaded guilty to 48 murders two years later, agreeing to help authorities locate as many remains as possible. He pleaded guilty to a 49th murder in 2011.

The killing spree took its name from the Green River where the first bodies were found.

Ridgway, 64, is serving a life sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

The SeattlePI.com reports that "The contentious plea deal struck by former King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng required Ridgway to admit guilt in all his King County killings. In exchange, Maleng agreed not to seek a death sentence, so long as Ridgway pleaded guilty to the charges.

Additional charges elsewhere in the state or country, which are not precluded by the agreement, have not followed. The serial killer remains a suspect in dozens of other disappearances, but has yet to face charges elsewhere."

The SeatlePI also notes:

During a lengthy police interrogation following the 2003 agreement, Ridgway admitted to killing dozens of Seattle-area women but was not charged in those disappearances in which his story couldn’t be corroborated by other evidence. Prosecutors were not convinced Ridgway was being truthful or -- as Ridgway admitted -- able to remember all the women he killed.

"I killed so many women, I have a hard time keeping them straight," Ridgway said in 2011, after another of his victims was discovered.

KOMO plans to air more of the exclusive interview with Ridgway this week.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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