In the spring of 1983, a 19-year-old Caucasian female named Andrea Childers was last seen by a male friend on April 16th in Seattle, Washington. A month prior to her disappearance, she had been arrested by Seattle police on prostitution charges. For years, her fate remained a mystery, a painful void for those who knew her. The heartbreaking answer to her disappearance would not come to light until more than six years later.
On an October day in 1989, skeletal remains were discovered in a
shallow grave located south of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The grim discovery was made in an area that had become a dumping ground for a serial killer who terrorized the region throughout the early 1980s. Forensic examination of the remains confirmed they belonged to Andrea Childers. Her discovery brought a somber conclusion to the search for the missing teenager, identifying her as the 41st known victim of the notorious Green River killer.
The man responsible for Andrea Childers' death, along with the murders of dozens of other women, was Gary Ridgway, a truck painter from Auburn. Ridgway preyed on vulnerable young women, many of whom were involved in street life and prostitution. He was known to frequent the Pacific Highway South area, picking up his victims before strangling them and disposing of their bodies in wooded and secluded locations. Ridgway was a suspect early in the investigation in 1983 but was not definitively linked to the murders until years later through advances in DNA technology.
In 2003, in a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty, Gary Ridgway confessed to a staggering number of murders, including that of Andrea Childers. He admitted to killing so many women that he had lost count. His reign of terror is considered the nation's largest unsolved serial-murder case for a significant period. Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 charges of aggravated first-degree murder and was sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. He would later receive an additional life sentence after another victim was identified. His confessions brought a long-awaited, albeit painful, resolution to the families of his many victims, including the family of Andrea Childers.
