SEATTLE — A swab of saliva recently tested after 14 years in storage gave police their first big break in one of the nation's worst unsolved serial murder cases, as they arrested a truck painter Friday in four of the killings.
Gary Ridgway, 52, was arrested in connection with four of the notorious Green River murders, a string of 49 killings of young women in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s. DNA analysis tied Ridgway to three of the slayings and police said other evidence, which they did not specify, linked him to the fourth.
Officials said they do not now have forensic evidence connecting him to the other corpses. But they firmly believe all 49 cases are linked. And they made plain their jubilation at having a suspect behind bars for at least some of the murders after two decades of dogged pursuit.
"Boy, have we made one giant step forward," King County Sheriff Dave Reichart said Friday.
Ridgway had been a suspect in the Green River case as early as 1984. Detectives scrutinized his background, interviewed him and even obtained a saliva sample for DNA tests. But they were not confident enough in the capability of DNA technology to try to match Ridgway's sample with semen and other suspect DNA collected from the victims.
They worried that the tests would eat up the DNA collected from the victims without yielding positive results. So they held on to the sample until they thought the technology was good enough.
They made that call about a year ago. The state lab began processing the sample and the first results came back two months ago. On Friday, they picked up Ridgway in Renton, a suburb of Seattle.
"I am not calling this guy the Green River Killer," Reichart said at a packed news conference Friday evening. "We do not know if he is responsible for the deaths of any other women. We are still examining that."
The sheriff emphasized, however, that all the Green River murders are linked by several factors, including where the victims were abducted and then dumped, the time frame for the murders, the victims' lifestyles and in some cases the cause of death. "What I am saying is that the list [attributed to a single serial murderer] is still accurate, that the cases on the list are still considered to be linked," Reichart said.
"This is one of the most exciting days of my career," Reichart added.
He said he expects charges to be filed next week.
