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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 06, 2003

US deadliest killer admits 48 women killings

The deadliest woman killer in the United States pleaded guilty in a Seattle court Wednesday to 48 accounts of murdering of women, most of whom were prostitutes and runaways.


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The deadliest woman killer in the United States pleaded guilty in a Seattle court Wednesday to 48 accounts of murdering of women, most of whom were prostitutes and runaways.

Gary Ridgway, the 54-year-old former truck painter long suspected of being the Green River Killer, said the word "guilty" 48 times in a plea bargain that will save him from execution but will face a life sentence.

"I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight," he said in a confession read aloud in court.

"I wanted to kill as many women as I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could," he said in the statement.

Ridgway said he killed all the women in King County, mostly near his home or in his truck not far from where he picked them up.He said he enjoyed driving by the sites afterward, thinking about what he had done.

"In most cases, when I killed these women, I did not know their names," Ridgway said. "Most of the time I killed them the first time I met them, and I do not have a good memory of their faces."

By admitting these murders, Ridgway set a record of committing the highest number of killings by a single serial killer in the US history.

Ridgway has worked with investigators to recover still-missing remains of some victims after signing a plea bargain deal.

The Green River Killer's murderous frenzy began in 1982, targeting women in the Seattle area, mainly runaways and prostitutes. He confessed that he targeted prostitutes just because their disappearances would not be reported missing to the police.

The first victims turned up in the Green River, giving the killer his name. Other bodies were found near ravines, airports and freeways.

The killing seemed to stop as suddenly as prosecutors believed the last victim had disappeared in 1984. But one of the killings Ridgway admitted to occurred in 1990 and another in 1998.

Ridgway, of the Seattle suburb of Auburn, was arrested in 2001 as he left his longtime job as a painter at a truck company.

Prosecutors said advances in DNA technology had allowed them to match a saliva sample taken from Ridgway in 1987 with DNA samples taken from the bodies of three of the earliest victims.


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