11:29 AM PST on Thursday, November 6, 2003

Associated Press

SEATTLE — For attorney Michele Shaw, April 10 is etched indelibly in her mind.

That’s the day Gary Ridgway admitted to her that, yes, he had committed the Green River killings.

Shaw was sitting across from Ridgway, in a cramped room on the 11th floor of the King County Jail. For 16 months, she’d been meeting with him every week as part of his legal defense team, slowly building a rapport.

He clipped coupons for her; she’d bring birthday cards for him to sign for his family. It turned out that both their mothers had worked at J.C. Penney, and both Shaw and Ridgway had spent enough time in Denny’s restaurants to have memorized the menu.

KING/NWCN Gary Ridgway (left) during his November 5 court hearing.

“I just wanted to treat him with same dignity and respect I would my best friend,” said Shaw, the only woman on the defense team.

In all that time, Ridgway, 54, had maintained he was not the Green River Killer, despite the mounting evidence against him.

But on that April day, Shaw passed along word to Ridgway that his brothers, Ed and Greg, still loved him and they didn’t want him to get the death penalty.

“They love you so much,” she recalls telling him.

He kept crying and crying, she said. Then Ridgway confessed.

“I just remember I was overwhelmed,” Shaw said. “I was crying too.”

On Wednesday, Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder in the serial slayings. The pleas will spare him from execution for those killings, bringing him life in prison without parole.

As for Ridgway’s motives, his defense team offered no insights, other than noting he felt rage and hated prostitutes.

“The guy was addicted to killing,” said Fred Leatherman, another member of the defense team. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

Despite his gruesome crimes, Shaw said, “Gary’s always displayed emotion to me and gratitude to me for what I’ve done.”

That included a trip in September to San Diego to tell Ridgway’s son, Matt, 27, the news that his dad had confessed to his lawyers that he’d killed all those women.

“His son is an outstanding young man,” Shaw said.