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(Photo: AP)
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Gary Leon Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 murders on Nov. 5, 2003, making him the worst known serial killer in the nation's history. The Green River killings, named for the river south of Seattle where the first victims were found, confounded detectives for two decades. The remains of scores of women, mainly runaways and prostitutes, turned up near ravines, rivers, airports and freeways in the 1980s. Ridgway had been a suspect ever since 1984, but it was 13 years before advances in DNA technology linked him to the bodies of three of his earliest victims. A longtime painter at a trucking company, Ridgway was married three times and is the father of one child. In a statement read in court, he said he killed so many women he had a hard time keeping them straight. He said he hated prostitutes and did not want to pay them for sex. He struck a plea bargain that will spare him from execution and result in a sentence of life in prison without parole.
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