http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056798/Judith-Mawson-finding-husband-Green-River-Serial-Killer-Gary-Ridgway.html
‘I had the perfect husband… but he was the perfect murderer’: Wife reveals moment she found out she was married to Green River Serial Killer who murdered up to 70 women
By RACHEL QUIGLEY
UPDATED: 06:32 EST, 3 November 2011
Newly single after a failed marriage, she was swept off her feet by a man she describes as being ‘perfect’ and who would later become her second husband.
But it turned out that Judith Mawson’s husband was far from perfect as, after 13 years of marriage, she discovered he was the Green River Serial Killer with the blood of up to 70 women on his hands.
When Judith, 67, met Gary Ridgway at a bar in Seattle in 1985, she recalled he seemed like the perfect suitor – he was handsome, polite, had a good job, and treated her like a lady.
Trusting: Judith Mawson, 67, had no idea that her devoted husband of 13 years was America’s most prolific killer
In love: Around 1985, Ridgway began dating Judith Mawson, who became his third wife in 1988. She said he was the ‘perfect husband’
Sentencing: In 2003, Ridgway received 48 life sentences, with out the possibility of parole, for killing 48 women over the past 20 years in the Green River Killer serial murder case
She found a man she adored and wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Two years later they moved in together, a year after that they were married.
‘He made me smile everyday. I had the perfect husband, perfect life. I absolutely adored him.’
But Ridgway was also the perfect killer.
For 13 years Judith was living with the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history. She never suspected a thing.
She told People Magazine that she believed him when he told her his carpet was destroyed by kids and removed and that his ex-girlfriend had taken her bed back. She trusted him when he said he was late because of a union meeting.
Happiness: They married after three years together and she said she lived a perfect life with a husband who made her ‘smile every day’
Shackled: Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder in the Green River killing cases as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors
When police turned up at her door one chilly November morning she realised that her ‘perfect’ life with her husband was one big lie.
THE GREEN RIVER SERIAL KILLER: A KILLING SPREE THAT LASTED 20 YRS
Ridgway preyed on female runaways, prostitutes and drug addicts in a killing spree that terrorised Seattle and its surrounding suburbs in the 1980s.
He was not arrested until 2001, when DNA technology advances helped authorities to link a saliva sample from 1987 to the bodies. He pleaded guilty two years later.
Ridgway is serving life without release in solitary confinement at the state prison in Walla Walla, where he is allowed out of his cell for only one hour a day four times a week.
His youngest known victims, Debra Lorraine Estes, Carrie A. Rois and Colleen Renee Brockman, were just 15 when they died.
He would have sex with the women then strangle them from behind, often in his own home.
He removed their jewellery and clothes and then placed their bodies in what he called ‘clusters’ so he could keep track of them all, he said.
‘I was crying, no it cant be him. Then I found out that he’d had the carpets removed because he’d killed women on them and there were bloodstains.
‘He’d had sex with some of them on the bed and killed them. I look back and think, “Was my life real with him or did he just use me?”.’
Gary Ridgway, now 62, is suspected of murdering more than 70 women in the Seattle area over a period of 20 years.
It took two years after his arrest to plead guilty to 48 of the murders in exchange for life without parole instead of the death penalty.
In February of this year he pleaded guilty to a 49th murder, after the skull of Rebecca Marrero, 20, was found. She died in 1982.
He is currently housed in a Washington prison in solitary confinement. He is allowed out of his cell for one hour day, four days a week.
When he was first arrested, Judith said she believed her husband when he told her they had the wrong man.
When she visited the former truck painter in jail she said: ‘We were trying to touch each other through the glass. I would cry.’
When he confessed she cut all contact with him and spent the next two years hiding at home in virtual isolation, drowning her sorrows in wine and pain pills.
She told People: ‘I was scared, in hiding, ashamed. I dreamed about him all the time. he kept reaching out to me.’
Victims: Ridgway pleaded guilty to the murder of 49 women but his killing spree is believed to have totalled 70
Nancy Gabbert, mother of Sandra K. Gabbert who was murdered by Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer, weeps as the charges involving the murder of her daughter were read in court
Jim Bailey, Ridgway’s best friend and coworker said he couldn’t even talk about the arrest for three years after his arrest, he was so stunned and upset.
His wife Linda tried to reach out to her and when it seemed she wasn’t getting any better, she suggested she write a book to help her heal.
Her book Green River Serial Killer: Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife came out in 2007 and though it helped her recover, she said she will never forgive her husband.
‘Telling my story, getting all the poison out of me helped me to heal. But how do you forgive someone who is suspected of killing 70 women?’
Judith has not dated since her husband’s arrest, believing she may never trust another man again but spends her time with friends and at her local church.
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