Suspect charged in four of Green River serial killings

SEATTLE (AP) -- Authorities have seized several items, including bone fragments, from homes of a truck company worker charged with murder in the deaths of four women blamed on the Green River serial killer.

Gary Leon Ridgway, 52, who was arrested last week, was charged Wednesday with four counts of aggravated murder after authorities said they had linked him to three of the victims with DNA evidence.

Detectives took envelopes containing bone fragments, boxes of latex gloves and a copy of the book "The Search for the Green River Killer" from four homes where Gary Ridgway has lived, court documents made public Wednesday show. Authorities wouldn't provide details about the bones, including whether they were from humans.

The documents offer graphic details of Ridgway's sex life, as described by two ex-wives, girlfriends and prostitutes. They also recount alleged incidents of past violence toward women.

The Green River case has baffled investigators since 1982, when authorities began finding women's bodies in or near the Green River, south of Seattle.

Forty-nine women -- most of them prostitutes or runaways -- were believed to be victims of the killer in Washington and Oregon. They were slain in the early 1980s.

Ridgway is accused of killing Opal Mills, Marcia Chapman and Cynthia Hinds, whose bodies were found in the river on Aug. 15, 1982, and Carol Christensen, whose body was found May 8, 1983, in woods in nearby Maple Valley. Hinds and Mills were teen-agers. Christensen was 21 and Chapman was 31.