/ Green River Killer

04:04 PM PST on Saturday, December 20, 2003

Associated Press

SEATTLE - Green River killer Gary Ridgway, sentenced to 48 life terms after admitting he strangled 48 young women, will likely spend the rest of his life behind the cinder-block walls of the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

That's where most "lifers" at least begin their sentences after mental and physical evaluations at the state prison in Shelton. It's where all Washington's death-row inmates live.

"Most prisoners think of Walla Walla as hard time," penitentiary spokeswoman Lori Scamahorn said of the 2,200 men at the prison.

KING Green River Killings suspect, Gary Ridgway.

"Essentially, you're already dead. It's just when they get around to burial," said Rice, who erroneously believed his victims to be Jewish communists.

"It's your choice how you do your time here," said Mitchell Rupe, who killed tellers Twila Capron and Candace Hemmig while robbing an Olympia bank in 1981.

"Some people take longer to learn that. Lots of knuckleheads," said the 49-year-old Rupe, interviewed last week by The News Tribune newspaper of Tacoma. "But you either deal with life on a level you accept here, or you're just going to burn yourself out."

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Rupe said he finds qualified happiness in good visits, good mail and rare good meals, like biscuits and gravy on Saturday mornings.

"I try not to waste any day," Rupe said.

But boredom is part of the deal at what he calls "Wally World." "Shower, slop, break, slop, work, slop, work, TV, bed," he said. "Get up and do it again."

Some inmates turn bitter, he said. Some "medicate" themselves.

Some become spiritual. Some delve into law books. And some distract themselves with prison jobs and hobbies.

That option won't be available to Ridgway, at least not at first.

"Gary Ridgway is not going to be in the inmate activity center," Scamahorn said. "Gary Ridgway is not going to be at the hobby shop. Gary Ridgway is going to be in the Intensive Management Unit."

That unit, 150 yards from the general population behind two fences and coils of razor wire, is "specifically designed to house the most problematic, violent offenders in the state," unit manager Sean Murphy said.

It's home to death row inmates awaiting execution, as well as inmates who have been violent and those in protective custody - like Ridgway.

"Inmates have a code of their own, too," Scamahorn said. "There's going to be those inmates for whatever reason that feel he didn't get the justice he deserved."

An inmate serving five years for a King County drug conviction said officials won't ever let Ridgway into the general population.

"He would be a target, and it would cause some serious problems," said one inmate serving five years for a drug conviction who didn't want to be identified.

"They (his victims) may have been hookers, but they were still people. He's got a lot of people who are upset at this guy. I hate that he did get a plea bargain."

Just as prisoners look down on those who hurt or sexually prey on children, they don't like those who target women, have sex with corpses or get special deals from prosecutors.

"There are probably guys in here who have killed one person or two people, and they got the death penalty," Scamahorn said. "Ridgway has killed 48. Why should he get special treatment?"

The case of Spokane's "South Hill rapist," Kevin Coe, is an example of what can happen to high-profile criminals.

"Somebody tried to slit his throat," Scamahorn said. "That's the criminal code."

Ridgway will likely spend his first years in a 9- by 9-foot cell. He'll eat alone, exercise alone five hours a week in a 1,200-square-foot yard and have contact with other inmates only by yelling into a speaker on his door.

Visits with immediate family, for an hour or two once or twice a week, will be through glass.