All language subtitles for Invisible.Monsters.Serial.Killers.in.America.S01E04.Part.4.Media.Firestorm.(1979-1982).1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-Cinefeel

[slow dramatic music]

[rain pattering]

- It was a really bad rainy day.

I decided to hitchhike.

I thought that he was
just a normal man.

He showed me his ID and
I was just thinking,

"I'm going to get home and
everything's going to be fine."

Little did I know it was going
to be my worst nightmare.

[dramatic music]

[dramatic music]

- [Man] Five of the most
prolific serial killers

in American history were all
operating at the same time.

- [Reporter 1] John Wayne Gacy-

- [Reporter 2] Ted Bundy-

- [Reporter 3] BTK.

- [Reporter 4] Jeffrey Dahmer-

- [Reporter 5] The so-called
Green River Killer.

- [Man] This was the golden
age of serial killing.

- I mean, if you
kill 30-some people

and you never got caught,
you begin to think

you're never gonna get caught.

But the biggest mistake John
Gacy made was Robert Piest.

That was the
beginning of the end.

- [Reporter] Officers
armed with warrants

began searching the premises
for the bodies of young men

believed to have been
killed and buried there.

- Gary Ridgway worked
for 30-plus years

at the Kenworth
plant in Seattle,

and he was a truck painter.

- You could sit next to
him on a bus, or a train,

or a plane, you would
never associate him

with being one of the worst
serial killers in US history.

- Dahmer picks up
this young boy.

They engage in some
sexual activity.

Steven Hicks decides, "It's
time for me to leave."

But Dahmer doesn't
want him to leave.

And the only way that
he could figure out

how to do this was to
basically kill him.

- [Reporter] BTK began today's
letter with a question,

"How many do I have to
kill before I get my name

in the paper or some
national attention?"

- Dennis Rader apparently
wants more attention,

or just as much
attention, as Ted Bundy.

- Once the police
department announced

that there was a guy called BTK

and he was now a serial killer,

Wichita grew up a little bit.

- All of law enforcement
started putting things together,

and it wasn't long
before Ted was tied

to the cases in Chi Omega.

- On the way to jail Bundy said,
"I wish you had killed me."

[slow dramatic music]

- At the time when
we charged Ted Bundy

for the Chi Omega murders

he was already convicted
and sentenced in Utah.

And he was under
investigation in Colorado

for an associated murder

for which there
wasn't hard evidence.

But I knew now, for the first
time in Bundy's history,

we had some real good scientific
forensic physical evidence.

[upbeat music]

- Keep your pieces short so
that we can all get on the air.

- Smile, Ted.

- This is Larry Warren reporting
live from Miami, Florida

where the jury in Ted Bundy's-

- [Man] There are
some 250 reporters

and television technicians
from around the country.

They will be following the trial

and making video tape
recordings of it.

- The trial for the Chi Omega
killings was televised live.

And this is all, you know,
years before O.J. Simpson.

[slow music]

It was probably the first trial

that really captured
our attention.

- The legal preliminaries
are underway in Florida,

where Theodore Bundy
is charged with murder.

[slow dramatic music]

- It wasn't gavel
to gavel coverage,

but it was quite
a national story.

- We are watching it all by
television, as we have done-

- There was media everywhere,

and there was one
floor of the courthouse

that was turned over to
reporters and journalists

from all over the world.

- [Reporter] In court,
the urbane Theodore Bundy

proclaims his innocence.

- [Ted] For I find it somewhat
absurd to ask for mercy

for something I did not do.

- This trial was an eye-opening
moment for the public

because you had this
charming-looking,

articulate, smiling Ted Bundy.

It was not the portrait
of what most people

expected a serial
killer to look like.

And that was a scary
proposition for a lot of people.

[slow music]

- Having cameras
in the courtroom

is a very good thing
for law enforcement

in the sense that we
can see how the suspect

and the witnesses are acting,

their demeanor, the
things that they say.

And that can be very helpful

as you are investigating
other cases.

We picked up a few clues
about Ted's trickiness,

his arrogance, his narcissism,

his wanting to
represent himself.

- [Reporter] You going
to represent yourself

or are you going to
get another attorney?

- I'm staying with
the man I know best

right now, and that's me.

- Ted played to the cameras.

He got to be this
well-known attorney

that he never
really could become

because he hadn't graduated
from law school, for one thing.

- My name's Ted Bundy and
I'm defending the case.

And I'm just here
to introduce myself.

- Here he was
representing himself,

being a TV star lawyer,
a big deal to Ted.

[men laughing]

- So you see Bundy's narcissism

on full display
in the courtroom.

He thought, "Here I can
show how smart I am,

"how much smarter I am
than law enforcement."

- He was like out of body.

He was acting as his own
lawyer, but he wasn't.

He was acting as the lawyer

for the person that
committed these crimes.

He never did see himself as
having committed the crimes.

He knew he did, but
it wasn't that persona

that committed the crimes.

And he had no guilt.

[people laughing]

- Bundy actually thought that
his abilities as an attorney

were going to be so good

that he wasn't even
going to be convicted.

And actually his narcissism
is what got him convicted

because he wasn't a
very good attorney,

but he played to the audiences.

- [Reporter] Each
day, the courtroom

is filled with spectators
drawn by a fascination

with Theodore Bundy himself

or by the gruesome
details of the crimes.

- At the time where serial
murderers began to surface

you have them being
portrayed in the media

as kind of glamorous figures.

- [Reporter] What
is unusual to see

is that many of the onlookers
are women, young women,

contemporaries of the five
Florida State sorority sisters

who were assaulted in their
beds a year and a half ago.

- Every time he turns around,
I kind of get that feeling,

"Oh no, you're going
to get me next."

- One of the really odd
things is how he had groupies.

He had these young women who
just thought he was so handsome

and they seemed to be
able to just shrug off

the fact he was a murderer.

[slow dramatic music]

- I'm not afraid of him.

He just doesn't look like
the type to kill somebody.

- I could not believe
the young women

that thought he was a hero.

Let's have some consideration
for the families

of the victims and
stop making a circus

out of this, people's tragedies.

- The level of exposure
and sensationalism

that was happening in that trial

fueled interest in that sort
of event from that point on

to where criminal trials become

the new sort of theater
of the next decade,

where we're watching a
parade of serial murderers

in front of us
through their trials.

- [Reporter] Crucial pieces
of evidence the state has

linking Theodore
Bundy to the slaying

of the two Florida State coeds

is teeth marks found on the
body of one of the coeds.

The prosecution claims that
Bundy's teeth match those marks.

- The only thing that
captured Ted Bundy for murder

was the bite mark.

On the morning
after the murders,

I decided that I should
examine the bodies myself.

What surprised me
was when I looked

at one of the young
ladies, I saw a bite mark.

It was deliberate.

I thought something
could be done with it.

Bite marks had never been used

in a court in
Florida at that time.

The idea came up
that we could get

a search warrant for his mouth.

I believe that it might be
the first search warrant

for a person's mouth in
the history of the country.

We took him to my dentist's
office, the doors swung open,

and there were three doctors

and behind them
was a dental chair.

As soon as he saw them, he said,

"You can't do this.

"You can't do this.

"I want my lawyer."

- [Reporter] For the state,
perhaps the single most

important piece of
evidence linking Bundy

to the crimes is bite marks.

- [Lawyer] Can you tell us,
within a reasonable degree

of dental certainty
if those teeth

made the marks on
those photographs?

- Yes, sir.

- [Lawyer] And what
is that opinion, sir?

- They made the marks.

- This was Ted Bundy's bite.

I believe now that he did
indeed sign that body.

He put his signature
on it with his bite.

- Mr. Bundy, a
jury of your peers,

having found you
guilty of the offense

of burglary of a dwelling

and committing assault
upon a person therein,

this court judges you guilty.

[slow dramatic music]

- The verdict was guilty
basically on all the charges.

So we were quite thrilled.

- This court, independent
of, but in agreement

with the advisory sentence
rendered by the jury

does hereby impose
the death penalty

upon the defendant
Theodore Robert Bundy.

- I think Judge Cowart
developed a respect for Ted.

- You'd have made a good lawyer

and I would have loved to have
you practice in front of me,

but you went another
way, partner.

Take care of yourself.

I don't have any animosity to
ya, I want you to know that.

- Bundy had this glibness,

superficial charm
that won people over.

This happened time
and time again.

That judge was manipulated.

And it demonstrates how
dangerous psychopaths can be

in their ability to charm
and manipulate others.

- And the family will
be devastated by this.

But we'll stick behind
him because we know

he's not guilty, as
do all his friends.

- He thought he was
a brilliant lawyer.

But he just showed his
stupidity representing himself

because he was not
a brilliant lawyer.

He never could back
that arrogance up

with true intelligence.

[slow music]

- The Bundy case was really
a critical case for us

because it brought
national attention

to this problem
of serial killers.

It was when we first defined
what a serial killer was,

someone who's committed
three or more murders

in three or more locations,
with a cooling-off period

between each of the murders.

And the common traits
in serial killers

is that they're very egocentric,

narcissistic, thinking
only of themselves,

have no remorse or
empathy for their victims,

and they're usually very careful
preparing for their crimes,

because they understand
that it is against the law.

And Bundy was really
one of the first.

The Bundy case also
helped us develop

the Violent Criminal
Apprehension Program, or ViCAP.

- The FBI's ViCAP program
was meant to make connections

and link cases together
across jurisdictions,

cases that were
serial in nature.

- The ViCAP program was
specifically designed

to have homicide detectives
complete questionnaires

on their homicide, solved or
unsolved, send them to the FBI,

and the FBI would look at
and analyze these cases

and see if there were
commonalities between the cases.

- This system will
assist investigators

in learning and
acquiring information

about serial
multi-jurisdictional predators.

- We recognized that
we had these cases

going on with Ted Bundy.

We had the case with John
Wayne Gacy going on in Chicago.

And now there was
an impetus driving

this understanding
of these individuals.

[slow dramatic music]

- In February of 1980, after
Bundy gets his sentence,

John Wayne Gacy goes on trial
for the murder of 33 boys.

- Chicago prosecutors began
presenting evidence today

in the trial of John Gacy,
evidence it hopes will lead

to the death penalty in the
case involving more murders

than any trial in
American history.

- It was certainly
the biggest case

I had tried up to that point.

If you're going to have
capital punishment in Illinois,

John Gacy deserves it.

- Gacy's trial was unique.

It was 33 murders
tried at one time.

It was the most cases tried
in any serial killer case.

- We saw the trial
from beginning to end.

And what's very different,
he just sat there

like he was waiting for a bus.

[slow music]

My mother said, "We are
going there every day."

It was a long haul for
us to go every day,

but it doesn't matter.

You gotta be there to support

all the other families
that were there.

Many of the parents
were there all the time.

- [Reporter] The central
question for the seven men

and five women on the jury,
is Gacy crazy or diabolical?

One answer could mean life
in a mental institution.

The other could mean death.

- There was a jury looking at
33 murders at the same time.

You had to educate
them in a layman's way

as to the difference
between crazy and

the legal standard for sanity
at the time of an offense.

[dramatic music]

- Gacy's MO was to lure young
men and boys to his home.

He had done this over
and over and over again.

- What John Gacy targeted
for was certainly

a homosexual event,
possibly non-consensual.

And if it became obvious
to him that that individual

was going to be a threat to him

and not go along
with the program,

then he made the choice
to make them a victim

with the handcuff trick
and the rope trick.

- [John] He'd put the handcuffs
on him behind his back,

show his victims
that he was cuffed.

But Gacy would get
out of the cuffs

as he's showing
them to the victim.

So he said, "That's the trick.

"I can get out of the cuffs.

"So now you try it and see

"if you can get out
of the handcuffs."

- Now he's got the
hands immobilized.

He can't get out.

He said, "Well, don't try yet,

"but I'm going to show
you the rope trick now."

- [Reporter] And then
there's the Gacy confession

about how he killed his victims,

strangled them with his
now infamous rope trick.

- This is too long.

You don't need it this long.

What I told them, I
says, "Here, all you do

"is you wrap it around,
you put one knot in it,

"then you put a second
knot in it, okay?"

I says, "Then you take a
stick and stick it in here.

"And you just turn this."

- That's called a garrote.

And any number of the bodies
buried in the crawlspace

still had a noose
around their neck,

or the marks from the noose.

- John Wayne Gacy, he was
doing it in a very thoughtful,

cold-blooded, premeditated,
strategic manner.

He was thinking like a predator.

He wasn't thinking
in terms of someone

that didn't know
right from wrong.

[slow dramatic music]

- There was no way that
he could be found insane.

He covered up his tracks
for how many years.

He was a pillar of society.

There was a lot of
shrinks that came

and said, "Oh yeah, he's nuts."

Well, okay, prove it.

Show me why he's crazy.

Show the jury why he's nuts.

[dramatic music]

[people talking]

- [Reporter] It took the jury
of seven men and five women

less than two hours to
find John Wayne Gacy

guilty of murdering
33 young men.

Gacy was convicted of
murdering more people

than anyone else in US history.

- Very pleased, very happy
for the people of Illinois.

Very happy that John
Gacy has been stopped.

- They constantly kept saying
this could have been solved

much earlier than it was.

They dropped the ball.

But I do believe
that good things

do come out of bad situations.

And it's because of my
brother's disappearance

and other kids of that age
that they changed their ruling

on when a minor does disappear

things happen much more rapidly
than it did in the 70s.

It was 72 hours.

Now it's within 24
hours they are on it.

- If there's anything good
to come out of the Gacy case,

it would be the
ability to keep track

of people who are missing.

Police come up with
a computerized system

that they can use to track
people who have been murdered,

reported missing, or
have been kidnapped.

[slow dramatic music]

- There's a commonality
between John Wayne Gacy

and Jeffrey Dahmer in the fact
that they were both gay men

trying to exist and live a life

in a time where being a
gay man was not accepted.

They're spending their
whole life as outcasts,

as not being good enough.

And that becomes
sort of the context

for their sexual behaviors,

as well as all
their interactions.

[slow dramatic music]

- There's a large gap after
Dahmer killed Steven Hicks

to his next kill, because
Dahmer's not ready yet.

He's only 18 years old.

- Dahmer actually went
to Ohio State University

after he graduated
from high school.

He didn't do well.

He flunked out
after one semester

and his father dragged him to
the army recruitment office

and insisted that he join up.

[slow dramatic music]

- When I enlisted,
all I wanted to do

was make my mother proud.

First day in Germany,
this jolly guy

meets me at battalion
headquarters.

He says, "Hey, we got
a roommate for ya."

And that roommate
was Jeffrey Dahmer,

Private First Class
Jeffrey Dahmer.

When I first met Jeff, I'll
never forget that first look.

When he looked at you,
it was a blank stare,

like no one was even in there.

And then it just started,

Night after night, after
night, after night,

the attacks, the choking.

He was raping me all the time.

It was almost every single day.

I reported the rape.

They did not document
rapes or any of that stuff.

It's like no one was in charge.

He was drinking constantly.

He'd get drunk.

He would masturbate.

They caught him at Family
Park in front of children.

The MPs escorted him
back to the barracks,

several occasions with
just his underwear on.

- Dahmer was actually
discharged from the military

because of his abuse of alcohol.

- After the military,
Dahmer returns home

and his drinking continues.

His father can't deal
with him anymore.

[slow music]

- His father actually sent
him to live in West Allis,

which is a suburb of Milwaukee,
with his grandmother.

- The family also recognized

that he had a drinking
problem back then.

And the father was hoping
that by living with Grandma

that Grandma could kind
of keep that in check.

- On August 7th, 1982,
Dahmer is arrested

for exposing himself to
women and children at a park,

and he's fined and released to
the care of his grandmother.

[slow dramatic music]

- He went to a mall and
stole a male mannequin

that he brought back
to have sex with.

He actually went to
some young men's wakes

and would look at 'em.

In one case, he told us he
tried to dig up the grave

and was going to try to
take home a dead body.

- With these behaviors, Jeffrey
Dahmer appears to be trying

to avoid his urges to kill.

If I can have sex
with this mannequin,

then I'm not killing people and
having sex with a dead body.

We don't see themes of control

with all five of these killers,

but we do see it prominently
with Dennis Rader.

In between his first
set of killings

and his second set of killings,

Dennis Rader took seven
years off to raise his family

and seemingly control
his impulses to kill.

So Rader and Dahmer are
able to sort of kill

and then lay low for a while.

There is this cooling-off period

that lasts a fairly
significant amount of time.

Gary Ridgway, on the other
hand, once he started killing,

he went on a killing rampage

the likes of which
history has rarely seen.

[slow dramatic music]

[dramatic music]

- The first victim of
the Green River Killer

was Wendy Coffield.

She was 16 years old.

- [Reporter] Two boys
riding their bikes

along the Green River
spotted the body

of 16-year-old Wendy Coffield
tangled among these pilings.

- She had been living in foster
care in a home in Tacoma,

and she had run away
from foster care

and was thought to be
engaging in prostitution.

She was last seen
just a couple of days

before her body was
found in the Green River.

The ligature that was used on
Wendy Coffield was her pants,

and they had been
wrapped tightly

and kind of knotted
around her neck.

And this was the first body

that was found in
the Green River.

So at that time no one knew

that it was part of
a serial killing.

[slow music]

- Gary Ridgway is the
antithesis of Ted Bundy,

who was very charismatic,

very outgoing,
supposedly attractive.

Gary Ridgway is none
of those things.

And yet when you're watching him

and you're listening to
how he lived his life,

to some degree he lived
his life that way.

He's invisible.

And that's what contributed
to much of his success

in being able to get away
with this for so many years.

- With Ridgway, I don't know

that he necessarily
mapped this crime out.

Ridgway was already having
experiences with prostitutes.

And it sounds more
like it was just

an opportunity that
presented itself.

Fantasy is an
important part of this,

but you also have to
have the opportunity.

And he had fantasized
about this particular event

for many, many, many years,

almost even going back to
his childhood arguably.

- Gary Ridgway had a
domineering mother.

You know, he wasn't a
very smart individual.

This was a guy who was reported

to have wet his bed
until he was age 13.

- He described how his mother
would wake him in the night

and be angered by
the bed wetting,

and put him in the bathtub

and wash his genitals
aggressively.

Gary said it was
both humiliating

and sexually arousing
at the same time.

- [Mark] This created

really conflicting
feelings for Ridgway.

- One part of him lusted after
his mother in a sexual way.

Another part of him
hated his mother.

So as a child growing
up, you have these

really conflicting
emotions that then develop

into sort of this
love, hate relationship

with women as you get older.

- His father constantly
reinforced into him

his hatred for prostitutes,
because he was a bus driver

and his father was
always talking about,

in a very degrading
way, about prostitutes.

So you see how this
could impact Ridgway

and his thinking early on.

And of course, who
is Ridgway targeting

when he starts to act
out, who is he targeting?

He's targeting prostitutes.

[slow dramatic music]

- When he was in the military,
he discovered prostitution.

And, you know, that
was an outlet for him.

He told us that after he was
discharged from the military

and he came back to
the Seattle area,

he discovered that
his first wife

had become involved
with somebody else,

that she was having an affair

and she wanted to get divorced.

and they did ultimately
get divorced.

And this enraged Ridgway.

- 1982, Gary
Ridgway's first kill.

At this point in Gary's
life, he's in his early 30s.

And at this particular time

a number of social environmental
stressors happening to him.

He was arrested for
soliciting a prostitute

and had just gone through
his second divorce.

The former is significant
because two years prior to that

he was arrested for
choking a prostitute.

So there seems to be a pattern
that was already ramping up,

if you will, related to
sexual and violent behavior.

- [Reporter] Four more
victims were discovered,

three in the river and
one on the river bank.

All of them had been strangled.

- It was only a few weeks
after Wendy Coffield was found

that they discovered another
set of bodies in the river.

I think it was
clear at that point

that they were dealing
with a serial killer.

[slow dramatic music]

- Our first victims
are in the Green River.

Both Wendy Coffield
and Debra Bonner

were found floating
in the water.

We had two other victims that
he had placed in the water

and put large rocks on
them to hold them down.

The detectives, as
they're investigating

the two in the river,
they're doing a canvas

and that's when they come
across the body of Opal Mills.

She has her jeans around her
neck, used as a ligature.

And other than that
she's face down and nude.

- What's really important
here is that Gary Ridgway

is a serial sexual killer.

And so the power and control
that existed in his murders,

I think is extremely compelling.

He said at times the idea
that he was strangling someone

at the point that he was
also sexually assaulting

his victims, that was such
a feeling of omnipotence.

- He was picking sex workers,
many of them women of color.

- They had broken homes.

They had been abused.

They had people who
didn't care for them,

who didn't love them.

And they were vulnerable.

Ridgway knew that they
were the least likely

to draw attention
if they went missing

or if they turned up dead.

I don't think that the
community in general

reacted the same way as they had

during the time that
Ted Bundy was killing.

And I think that was
largely related to attitudes

that kind of marginalized
the women that he victimized.

And as a result of that,

people didn't give it the
same kind of attention

as if you kill a sorority girl

at the University of Washington.

- You go back to
the 70s, you find

this sort of
trusting environment

where we trusted strangers.

We didn't look
askance at strangers.

Then there was a lot
of national attention

to these bigger
cases like Ted Bundy,

like John Wayne Gacy,
and culture changes.

- Come on, hop in.

- [Narrator] Talk
to your children

about not talking to
strangers, and do it today.

A message for your child-

- So these individuals
had to start targeting

groups of victims that weren't
previously being targeted.

That's where we start to see
a shift to vulnerable types

of population groups like
drug abusers, prostitutes,

high-risk victims,
because they have to find

their victim
population somewhere.

When investigators in
King County, Washington,

start discovering
these dead prostitutes,

they didn't really
waste any time

in getting a task
force put together.

Because they had been
dealing with Ted Bundy

over the years in the
same general area,

they recognized that
putting together

a task force with
multiple facets

would be the best way
to solve this case.

- And that task
force was made up

of the King County
Sheriff's Department,

Seattle Police
Department, and the FBI.

- At the time that
Ridgway was really

in the height of
his killing period,

people just have to
remember that the science

and the technology
and what was available

to law enforcement
was so different.

We had pretty rudimentary
forensic science.

The technology
just wasn't there.

There weren't
elaborate databases.

So when you were trying to
track who the Johns were,

for example, that
we knew frequented

Pacific Highway South,

you know, those
were all individual

hard copy little
notes and cards.

- Back in the 70s
and the early 80s

certainly we didn't have all

of the electronic surveillance
means that we have now.

There are no cell phones.

When we initially started
finding the bodies,

they were using VHS tapes for
videotaping the crime scenes.

In the past, remember, it's
still photography and that's it.

And now we're able to
videotape the crime scenes

and go back and
maybe look at things

that we might've not
seen at that time.

So that was considered real
cutting-edge technology

back in the 80s.

- [Reporter] Almost
immediately after

the fourth and fifth
bodies were pulled out

of the Green River last
month, King County police

asked the FBI to prepare
a psychological profile

of the possible
killer, or killers.

- Early on, the Green
River task force

had asked for FBI assistance.

And at that point,
FBI agent John Douglas

had gotten involved in the case.

John Douglas was one
of the founding agents

of the Behavioral Science Unit.

He and Robert Ressler are known

for going around
the United States

interviewing murders
and serial killers,

and produced research on it.

- Profiling generally has to
do with an unknown subject

where you're looking at both
the psychological dynamics

and the behavioral dynamics

based on the crime
and crime scene,

and trying to create,
sort of, the composite

of an individual who
would commit the crime.

- I think what we're dealing
with here is a serial murderer.

The man who commit
a crime like this

definitely would have
had to been involved

in crimes in the past.

And in all probability
will be involved

in crimes like
this in the future.

- You know, he made no attempt
whatsoever to bury the body.

The river was just a
short distance away,

another 175 yards.

He could have dumped
her into the river.

There's a strong current.

This is something I
think is going to give us

some clues into his personality.

[slow dramatic music]

- The profile that was done
on the Green River Killer

was very broad and
very general in scope.

- Some things were
correct such as, you know,

his age, his race,
that he was divorced.

But considering the
demographics of Washington

at that time, it's very broad.

- I know it was
disappointing at the time,

but the science of
profiling at that point

was still very young.

- [Richard] Some of
these cases have taken

two and three years or
more to eventually solve,

but I am optimistic about this.

- [Interviewer]
Will someone else

have to be killed
before you can solve it?

- I certainly hope not.

- Between July and
October of 1982,

Gary Ridgway was killing
three to four women a month.

But because some of these bodies

weren't recovered
until years later,

law enforcement really
didn't have a good handle

on how many women
were going missing.

Meanwhile, we have sex workers

that are extremely
fearful for their lives

because they noticed the
women that are missing.

- [Woman] Take one, mark.

- I asked him if he was
the Green River Killer.

He said nothing, just
a plain blank look.

[dramatic music]

I remember those eyes,
those beady little eyes.

I am the only survivor of
the Green River Killer.

[slow dramatic music]
[rain pattering]

- I was 20.

I was getting stressed out

because it was a
really bad rainy day.

And I decided to hitchhike.

I got into Gary Ridgway's truck.

[dramatic music]

We had talked and
he showed me his ID.

And I knew that he had
worked at Kenworth.

And I also started to trust
him because I saw the ID.

After all that small chit chat

we went to a area that I knew.

Well, I was making an
exchange for a sex act.

He kept telling me to
get out of the truck

and go up in the woods.

I kept hesitating and
saying I didn't want to,

and why do I have to do that?

So then he gave me the $20.

And so then I decided
to go up in the woods.

He did not want sex.

He immediately attacked me
and threw me on the ground.

- He had covered my mouth,
and the string on the neck.

I tried my hardest to breathe

through my nose,
through my eyes.

Things happen so fast.

You just have no
time for thinking.

You don't think, you do.

You have to do it.

- I was a fighter to the end.

I was not letting him
get the best of me.

I was given some extreme power

to push him away against a tree,

but I had also bit him.

I ran so fast I literally
don't remember touching ground.

I found a trailer
and they let me in

and I hid there for a long time.

[rain pattering]

[slow dramatic music]

So I got back to my apartment

and I was just totally
freaked out for a long time.

Because of the strangulation,
I couldn't talk for a week.

I wasn't going nowhere
because I kept thinking

that he was out looking for me.

And that was the
weirdest feeling,

to not feel safe out in public.

I didn't tell anybody
for a long time.

- She didn't initially report
what had happened to her.

You know, she was
engaged in prostitution.

So she herself was
committing a crime.

Ridgway told us that many
of the women he picked up

asked him whether or not he
was the Green River Killer.

And he would say, you know,

"Do I look like the
Green River Killer?

"Look at me.

"I'm not a very big guy.

"I'm not that strong."

What Ridgway was doing
was very cunning,

it was very deliberate, and
it was very premeditated.

- There are so many
things he doesn't do well,

but this one particular
thing, killing young women

is something that he perfected.

- He was killing so frequently,

within days, weeks
of each other.

There were just so many
victims during that time

that he appeared to be
really out of control.

[slow dramatic music]

- Everybody thought
the Green River case

was never going to get solved.

But then Rebecca Garde had
the courage to come forward.

- Ted Bundy was on death row.

And he offered to
share his thoughts

about who the
serial killer known

as the Green River Killer was.

- By 1985, BTK had disappeared.

And then he kills his neighbor.

- [Reporter]
53-year-old Marine Hedge

was last seen a week ago.

There are very few clues
to work with on this case.

- Dahmer specifically
targeted victims

who were very small, so he
knew he could overpower them.

Konerak was only 14 years old.

- [Dispatcher] Fire Department.

- [Caller] This
butt-naked young boy,

he's been beaten up real bad

and he has no clothes on.

He's very hurt.

- We kept trying to tell them,

"But he's a kid, he's a kid.

He said, "Well, he's
telling us he's not a kid.

"So who should we believe?"

Believe the white guy.