i killed him because i wanted to kill him. along this lonely stretch of river, body after body turns up in the dark waters. a serial killer stalking young women, showing no mercy. >> she fought and she fought. >> over the years he struck 48 times. for this dedicated detective, it would become the case of a lifetime. >> we only knew we had young girls and young women being killed at the prime of their life. >> but after clues along the river evaporate, he's told to give up. >> it's like the scene out of a movie where they tell the guy stop working this case. >> but he couldn't, wouldn't.

>> what would you have me do if it were your daughter on the list? >> for two decades the killer remained on the loose. finally, after so much death, this sheriff will come face to face with the man who murder sod many. >> women had control of me and i don't like being controlled. >> to confront a heart of darkness. >> i was most interested in killing them than in sex. >> the biggest serial killer case in u.s. history. for this sheriff, a personal 20-year journey for justice along a river of death. john larson with "chasing the devil." here is stone phillips. good evening. it all started with one body found floating in a lonely stretch of river. it became a desperate hunt for the man believed to be the deadliest serial killer in u.s. history. tonight, a story that stretched over two decades. there were dozens of victims, hundreds of shattered loved ones left behind and one determined law man.

he had to be dedicated, because along with vital clues came serious setbacks. along with reasons for hope came orders to give up. one thing that's never wavered, his commitment to those he has only known in death. here's john larson. >> he was on top of me, weight's on top of me. >> the sea-tac strip. >> i just was begging him to let me go. >> a gritty river of traffic, cheap motels, and neon. >> his hands are on my neck. >> a river that draws the troubled. >> i'm still fighting. i was trying to live. >> the hitchhikers and the hookers, into the darkness along its shores. and for a time in the early 1980s, those tragically unlucky,

desperate, sometimes naive young women flowed with it. only to end violently, tossed into another fast-running current nearby. the green river. >> my desire was to have sex with them and to kill them. >> the words of a man who bragged "i am evil, i am satan, i am a monster." >> i was more interested in killing them than in sex. >> a serial killer who claimed more victims than any other person in u.s. history. >> i killed them before i had a chance to torture them. >> a driven demonic slayer who strangled dozens of prostitutes and littered the misty waters and woods of the northwest with their bodies. >> he chose to murder to satisfy his own sex desires. he tried to play god. >> may god have no mercy on your soul. >> back then, dave reichert was a bright young detective at king count yip sheriff's department.

optimistic, eager, he had no way of knowing he was about to be hit with a case that would haunt him for decades. that he would become obsessed with catching the killer and ultimately he would have to make his own deal with the devil. it began on july 15th, 1982. two boyy bicycling across the peck bridge over the green river in the seattle suburb of kent spotted a nude body floating down below. it was wendy lee caufield, age 16. she had run away from a juvenile detention home a week before. she had been strangled. reichert knew that murders of street prostitutes are hard to crack. it's the way they live and become victims. >> you stand on a street corner. you wait for a john to drive up. they pull up next to you. they reach over, they unlock the door. no struggle, no screaming. nobody sees it.

>> reichert had scarcely begun to look into the caufield death when four weeks later there was a second horrifying discovery. an employee of a meat company on the banks of the green river noticed a body in the water lodged against a log. that young woman was also nude, also strangled. her name was deborah bonner. she was 23. >> we had started working on the possibly of wendy caufield and debbie bonner being connected. >> but only three days later, august 15th -- >> when i got the phone call at home on that sunday afternoon, august 15th, and i was told there were two more bodies found in the river. it's a feeling you can't describe at all. >> was there a moment where it occurred to you, i think we have a serial killer here? >> the moment i got that phone call, i knew. >> chillingly aware of what awaited him in the water below,

the almost-nude bodies of the two young women, floating, pulsating by one account in the current. reichert was yet to uncover yet another gruesome site. >> when i arrived there, my job is to find a way down to the river that's going to disturb the least amount of evidence. as i'm working my way down, we find opal mills on the bank just off to the right as we're pushing aside grass that's five to six feet tall, and i saw her bare legs. >> suddenly, it's three dead women, all strangled, all sexually assaulted. all three, cynthia heins, marsha chapman, opal mills, all engaged in prostitution. now the total stands at five. any doubt is gone. reichert realizes a warped and vicious killer is stalking women

who work the sea-tac strip. what dave reichert could have never imagined was that the number would eventually reach 48. 48 women or maybe more. and that he would spend the next 20 years pursuing one way or another the man who came to be called the green river killer. nor could he have appreciated that finding that third body, the one on the bank and not in the water, the body of opal mills, would turn out to be of critical importance. ultimately in tracking down a suspect. >> we were three days behind him. that's the closest we had ever gotten to him. the body was in tact, the ligatures were there. we were able to find bodily fluids there. >> fluids containing dna that 20 years later would point back to one man. of course, back in 1982, dna was unknown as a crime fighting tool. sheriffs investigators desperate to find a killer, meticulously employed the methods they had at that time.

reichert had 20 detectives on the trail. but it soon went cold. and the community grew impatient, fearful and angry. denise griffin knew all three women found at the green river that august 15th. >> they died in a very brutal fashion. very brutal fashion. >> opal mills was her best friend. >> opal was a fighter. the fact that she had a lot of scratches on her knuckles, nails broken which meant to me that she fought. but for her to have fought and lost i think was probably -- i think that's the thing that

scares me the most. >> bodies kept turning up week after week. the task force was working hard but at the end of three months they came up empty. politicians fretted about all the money being spent with no results. and ordered the sheriff to pull all the cops working the case. all but one. dave reichert did not give up. >> i became the sole investigator from about end of september to about august of 1983. and there was a lot of frustration on my part. >> more still, more young women went missing from the sea-tac strip. ten more by the end of 1983. 25 the next. a poster with the faces of the murdered went up at headquarters. but despite the detective's hard work, there was no arrest. cynics said police were not trying hard enough to find the killer, because the victims were thought to be disposable, prostitutes, after all, a case not worth pursuing. >> absolutely false. that's what drove us to continue every day. we didn't care what their background was, we didn't care what they were on the street

doing. we only knew we had young girls and young women being killed at the prime of their life, and their future was erased, taken from them. and the family's lives were destroyed. >> dave reichert served as a pallbearer at several funerals. it wasn't surprising that he did. reichert had grown up in the same seattle suburb, kent, where the first bodies were found. he had overcome a difficult childhood, sometimes spending nights in those very woods, escaping a father who drank too much. he worked his way through a small lutheran college and after

service in the air force, became a cop so he could live out his dream of rescuing the vulnerable. there was one important exception, on may 8th, 1983, the body of carol ann christensen was found. like the others she had been strangled but unlike theirs, her body was clothed and the scene elaborately staged. >> over the years we've seen lots of bizarre crime scenes. we don't understand all the symbolism of some of the things that he did there. >> christensen had two fish,

trout, placed on her chest. an empty bottle of wine on her stomach and sausage on her hands. so bizarre that at first reichert didn't think the murder fit the green river killer's m.o. he was muzzled, worried, was there a second murderer? even christensen mother and sister had their doubts. >> at the time we didn't connect it. she wasn't found in the green river, she was found in maple valley. >> what matters to us right now is the evidence that's left behind. >> what was left behind would later link christensen's murder to that of the other young victims dragged to the green river the year before. there were suspects, of course. the fbi did a profile, a profile that was so general it could have fit half the young men in seattle. what's more, the sketches the police were using were pretty

much useless, too. >> there was one magazine that came out, a picture of me, a picture of this artist drawing, and the author of this article makes a comment, it's as plain as the nose on your face. the lead detective is the killer. >> there were 40,000 tips and that was the problem. there were hundreds, even thousands of suspects. >> i was amazed at the number of people that matched the profile that was given to us. so i was always shocked and surprised that my wife and my two daughters, you go from point

a to point b during the day and not run into one of these guys. because they looked like to me they're all over the place. >> most were eventually crossed off the list. but were investigators being blinded by conventional wisdom about serial killers? were mistakes made early on that would hamper the search for years to come? was crime scene evidence overlooked because of the lack of manpower? >> it did get politically rough for us. we were called the green river task farce because no progress was seen. money went away. they saw no hope. they pulled the task force plug. >> the poster with the victim's names and faces rhetorical reminder of failure, was yanked off the wall at headquarters. the once daunted task force became one investigator, tom jenson, assigned to monitor any tips that came in. dave reichert, the original investigator, was reassigned. >> i was given orders to, you are now a patrol sergeant. stay away from green river. it's not your job any longer. >> it's like the scene out of a movie where they tell the guy stop working this case. >> right. >> but this movie had other scenes. flashbacks. the investigators had already encountered the man they would one day arrest.

>> and for this woman, it would mean coming face to face with the green river killer. amazingly, she would live to tell the tale. >> he was on top of me trying to choke me. >> when "chasing the devil" continues. which is why i'm introducing our new papa's quality guarantee: love your pizza, or get another one, absolutely free. get any large pizza up to 5-toppings for just $9.99. online only. at papajohns.com

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we now return to "chasing the devil." >> while the green river task force was being cut back, losing manpower and looking at all the wrong people, the man who would, in the end, become the chief suspect continued to solicit prostitutes on the sea-tac strip. a man who would later admit to investigators that he was addicted to prostitutes in the same way that alcohol can be an addiction. >> it wasn't for sex. i don't think that he enjoyed sex really personally. if he did, he sure didn't show it. >> rebecca guarde is one of only a couple of prostitutes assaulted by the green river killer who lived to tell about it. >> he says you want to make $20? >> the first thing she noticed about the guy in the pickup truck who pulled up to the bus stop where she was standing is he was wearing only gym shorts

and a t-shirt. it was a cold, rainy november evening in 1982. not exactly shorts weather. he seemed nervous. >> he asked me if i'm a cop. i'm not a cop. >> she was worried, too. the first of the green river victims had been discovered that summer. he knew how to calm her fears. >> he shows me his i.d. when i said, are you sure you're not the green river killer? and he just -- da, just nothing. >> reassured for the moment, she suggested they drive to a place she knew nearby. >> he didn't want to sit in the car. he wanted to go up in the woods. that's when i knew something was strange. this was very strange. why did he want to go up there? why can't we do it here? >> reluctantly, because she didn't want to forfeit the $20, she agreed to follow him up the slope into the trees.

she says he didn't get aroused during the oral sex he had paid for. then he got angry and attacked. >> he starts choking me. claiming i bit him. and he does call me a bitch, i do remember that. then he tackled me to the ground and is smothering me. he's on top of me at that time, trying to choke me. i turned around somehow. i tried my hardest to keep breathing and to be able to get away. that's all i could think about was trying to get away from him. i noticed he was getting very excited. >> guarde says she kicked, rolled, pushed and somehow got loose and ran to a nearby mobile home for help. he did not chase her. >> i thought for many years that he was out still looking for me. >>en fortunately guarde waited

two years to call police and tell them about her encounter. if she had called earlier, the man who had boldly showed her his identification might have moved onto the list of suspects a lot sooner. by the time rebecca decided to make that call, the same man had already been involved in another incident that brought him to the attention of dave reichert. that encounter began on april 30th, 1983, nearly a year after the first five bodies had been found at the river. 18-year-old marie malvar got into a blue pickup truck at a bus stop just a few blocks where rebecca was picked up. her boyfriend, who watched out for her when she worked the streets, noticed she seemed to be arguing with the customer. so he decided to follow them but lost the truck at a light. he panicked when marie did not

return after several hours. he told marie's father the next morning. >> he come to the restaurant and told me marie did not come home last night. what happened? she disappeared. what do you mean, disappear? she get into the truck and i follow the truck but at a stop light i could not go ahead. >> marie's boyfriend said the truck had some distinctive markings. >> blue truck with primer on the back. >> you mean, like a gray primer? >> yes, yes. >> so very easy to identify.

>> yes. >> jose and his daughter's boyfriend drove around for hours in the area looking for the truck. finally, they spotted it in the driveway of this house. was there any doubt in either of your minds this was the same truck? >> no, because the boyfriend and of my daughter told me that this is the truck. >> what did you do? >> so i call the police. >> the house belonged to gary ridgway, a truck painter who had lived mere the sea-tac strip most of his life. in 1982, when the green river killings began, he was 33 years old. he had been twice married and divorced and he had been arrested for soliciting prostitution earlier that year. since ridgway's house was located in a suburb of seattle, it was the local police who questioned him. >> the following day i went to the police department and asked them, what's happened? and they said he doesn't know nothing about it. >> do you feel like police at the time made a good effort? >> i don't think so. >> malvar believe that by giving up too easily, police lost an opportunity to determine his daughter's fate. and you never heard a word from her again? >> no. >> jose malvar and rebecca

guarde weren't the only ones to tell the green river task force about gary ridgway. in 1984 and again in '86, two other prostitutes told them they thought ridgway was connected to the disappearance of two of their friends who were working the streets. but it took until 1987 before detectives launched an investigation. they interviewed ridgway's former girlfriends and wives. and the picture that emerged was that of a sexually aggressive young man who had trouble with relationships from early on. police learned that gary ridgway was already 20 when he graduated from high school in 1969. that he joined the navy and got married that same summer. he and his wife moved to san diego. by the time gary returned from a six-month tour of duty cruise, his wife was romantically involved with another man. according to police documents, he accused her of being a whore and giving him sexually transmitted diseases, diseases navy records show he had before going to sea. ridgway acquaintances said he often complained that he gotten venereal diseases from prostitutes.

his wife said he liked to have sex outdoors, on the banks of the green river. and in the woods. she took them on a tour of places they had gone and locations where they had camped or bicycled. the locations matched the dump site where multiple bodies had been discovered. she also told officers that ridgway had once come up behind her in their driveway and started choking her. that he had tied her up during sex and often come home late at night wet and dirty. seattle sheriff deputies got a search warrant and went through his home, his truck and his locker at work. they asked him to take a lie detector test. he passed. what about that lie detector test? >> cops know that a lie detector test is a tool. i mean, we take that and we look at all the other things that we have. we don't get a polygraph test here and if they fail it say, we got the guy. >> and there were facts about gary ridgway that did not fit with the conventional profile of a serial killer. a profile that may have misled investigators from the beginning. for one thing, he was happily married, although it was his third marriage. >> we were also told about serial killers is they can't keep a relationship with one woman. they can't hold down a job. they won't stay in the same area. they're irresponsible. none of those things fit with gary ridgway. he's been working the same place for over 30 years. he's been married to the same woman for 13 years. he has been in this community for 30-plus years. >> even though they turned up nothing conclusive then, detectives decided to ask for a court order requiring gary

ridgway to chew on a piece of gauze to leave them a sample of his saliva, his dna. it was just a tiny amount but that was all they were legally allowed to get. of course, back then the science of dna was in its infancy. so investigators simply stored it in the evidence freezer, along with what they had on other suspects. >> we got to a point where there was nothing else we could do. >> one more thing argued against ridgway and other suspects. there seemed to be a reprieve from the terror. it had been three years since a prostitute disappeared from the sea-tac strip. had the green river killer disappeared, too?

the original profile said this is a serial killer, he's going to keep killing, and all of a sudden the killing stopped. or they appeared to. >> right. >> so you guys logically assume the guy is either in jail, he's dead or he's left. >> we never grabbed onto any one of these ideas and said that's the end of this. if we did that we wouldn't be where we are today. >> more than ten years would pass. while the technology needed to solve the crime moved slowly forward. then the seattle sheriff's department got both the scientific breakthrough it had been hoping for and a new champion. because even though he had been ordered off the case back in 1990, dave reichert had made his mark in the department, commanding special operations and other high profile areas. so when the county held an election for sheriff in 1996, he easily won. and he was back in pursuit of the green river killer. >> and that pursuit is about to pay off. the sheriff and his team are about to get a break they've

waited for, for almost two decades. >> you just don't seem like the guy that would run around the room slapping high fives, but you had to be tempted. i mean, it had been almost 20 years. >> i was elated. >> when "chasing the devil" returns.

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ridgway's defense lawyer was already attacking the core of the case. >> it proves he was a customer, not a killer. assuming that they can show it was mr. ridgway's dna, and we're not conceding that for a minute, they're not going to show he was the last customer. >> reichert was determined to do whatever he could to put gary ridgway away for good. he launched a full-bore investigation. >> would they be able to prove their case against gary ridgway beyond a reasonable doubt? was the dna evidence found on the murdered prostitutes conclusive? >> it proves he was a customer, not a killer. >> when "chasing the devil" continues.

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we continue with "chasing the devil." >> dave reichert realized that matching gary ridgway's dna with that found in the dead prostitutes was not necessarily a slam dunk case.

ridgway readily admitted he patronized prostitutes with an addictive fervor. >> gary ridgway, even up until the time he was arrested, enjoyed the excitement of hunting for prostitutes. he enjoyed the control that it gave him had he got one in his car, and whatever he did afterwards, this was all about gary ridgway's pleasure. >> in fact, only weeks before he was charged in the green river murders, he was picked up once again by the vice squad for soliciting prostitution. and ridgway's chief defense attorney tony savage used that fact. arguing that his client patronized hundreds of prostitutes, even prostitutes who later turned up dead. and that it proved nothing. >> it proves he was a customer, not a killer. i mean, you don't commit

prostitution by waving at somebody from 50 yards away. it's a full contact proposition. >> so by definition, there's dna evidence? >> well, from the male point of view, that's the object is to leave some dna behind. assuming that they can show it was mr. ridgway's dna, and we're not conceding that for a minute, they're not going to show that he was the last customer. >> savage said the defense would contest the dna evidence itself as well. >> you don't have to go back any further than california versus o.j. simpson to understand that dna can be mishandled, it can be disintegrated, it can be tainted, it can be flawed. >> this is one of our first kind of official meetings in our new facility. >> sheriff reichert's team of detectives and some veterans was charged with picking through all of the hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence that had been stored to look for items from crime scenes that could be checked for ridgway's dna. evidence that might prove ridgway was more than just a customer, that he was indeed a

killer. reichert worried if something were missed back then when there were only a few overworked investigators, there was little chance it would be found 20 years later. but hoping against hope, they revisited crime scenes even

though they had changed dramatically. >> the river is a lot lower. obviously, the grass is probably higher, much higher actually. >> we've been wading through arm-high grass?

>> at least. >> katie larsen says surprisingly this small section of the green river where the killer dragged his first five victims down to the water is much the same. although the area around it has been developed.

what seems odd is that the killer would have had to go through so much work to put a body here. i don't know if the tv audience can see it, but this is a real cliff here. another site where six bodies were discarded was near a well-traveled road that now runs through a subdivision. this is not a secluded area. obviously there was less building back then -- >> right. >> you figure it was just off his life was useful, but it was not evidence. the new work was excruciatingly detailed, building a case that would hold up in court. but it was just another battle in dave reichert's 20-year personal crusade. >> i am passionate about it and i do have a personal

relationship with the victims. >> families and friends of the dead women were looking forward to the trial of gary ridgway. hoping for answers to questions that had haunted them for 20 years. >> i want to know a reason why. i want a reason why do you take somebody else's life? right? i mean, a mother, somebody's sister, daughter. you don't go out and just pick them up off the street just to kill them. >> but as investigators and prosecutors prepared for trial, there was an unexpected development, a twist in the case. it would change everything. >> and it would allow detectives to finally get gary ridgway right where they wanted him. but could they get this killer to crack? >> the investigators are very creative thinkers and it was a plan that i immediately approved of. >> when "chasing the devil" continues.

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we return to "chasing the devil." here again is stone phillips. >> returning to our story, after 20 years, sheriff dave reichert has caught the green river killer. now gary ridgway is going to sit down with investigators and reveal the secrets of his killing spree. for the past hour, you've seen the evidence of his brutal crimes. now something just as horrifying. a look inside the mind of the man who committed them. once again, john larson. >> state of washington versus ridgway. >> prosecutors were determined to seek the death penalty and the people of seattle were with them, but they also knew that a trial involving multiple murders from 20 years ago would go on for months, and the county was paying for the defense as well. it would cost tens of millions of dollars. some worried it could bankrupt local government, and a few family members dreaded the

prospect of reliving the horror of a loved one's death. task force investigators were working hard building their case, evidence that they had the right guy. within months they were able to confirm that paint flecks found on the bodies of other victims matched paint gary ridgway used in his job. they filed three new murder charges, bringing the total to seven. with that, the defense, confident about challenging 20-year-old dna, blinked. lead attorney tony savage knew he had to change tactics. what happens to a defense attorney i talked to months ago who sat there and said that dna evidence can be questioned. they were, after all, prostitutes. i can challenge all of this. >> that's right, i could have and i would have. but the problem came when there was paint evidence that could be traced to gary's place of employment. now you got gary's dna and you got the paint. it's a little bit difficult, i think, to sell to any reasonable

person, the idea has this is all a big coincidence. he would lead detectives to the places where he had tossed the bodies of young women missing for decades that had never been recovered 37. he would tell families and investigators how and why he had killed again and again and how he had eluded police for years. and in exchange, he would escape the death penalty. it was a deal no one agreed to at first. king county prosecutor norm maleng was completely opposed. >> this office does not plea bargain with the death penalty. >> sheriff reichert looked at it if ridgway were to be convicted of seven murders and get the death penalty, ridgway would never have to tell what happened

to all the other missing women. >> when we arrested him, we wanted answers. the investigators have always wanted to know why. the families have always wanted to know why. >> at first reichert worried about a plea bargain. he was concerned ridgway wouldn't come clean, wouldn't provide the answers they wanted. on the other hand, reichert says he knew ridgway was not acting out of concern for the investigators or the victims. >> he wanted to live. this was always about him. >> do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? >> i do. >> so ultimately the deal was struck. ridgway signed the agreement. >> sign here and here. >> are you pleased with the decision not to go with the death penalty?

>> yes. not everyone agrees with this decision, but the opportunity to bring some sort of finality to 48 families versus seven was just overwhelming. >> so began one of the most bizarre chapters in criminal justice. gary ridgway was taken out of jail and sequestered with the detectives detailing his crimes here at task force headquarters. >> the investigators are very creative thinkers and it was a plan i immediately approved of. >> for 106 days he was grilled and prodded, paraded and coaxed, he was taken on field trips to the scenes of his crimes, and every word of his confession and they were videotaped. what he would reveal is even more horrifying than anyone knew. but would reichert get the whole truth? would it be worth sparing gary ridgway's life? what you're about to see rivals any true crime story you've ever seen or could ever imagine. >> investigators are about to shine a bright light into the mind of the man considered the nation's deadliest serial killer and learn how cunning he could be when choosing his victims. >> she's a student, you know,

nobody would look for her. >> when "chasing the devil" returns.