Gary RidgwayWhat are the root causes that make a person become a serial killer? There have been many serial killers in recent years, but only one is the infamous "Green River Killer." Gary Ridgway was nicknamed the "Green River Killer" because many of his early victims were found near the Green River in Washington state. There are many factors that explain why a person turns and takes out their anger on others. Some people have a normal childhood in a loving family, while others are not so lucky. A loving family is built around the parents, but if the parents choose violence over love, then that is what the child will grow up knowing only. Gary Ridgway is an American serial killer who killed more than sixty women over a twenty-year period. Gary Ridgway was born in Salt Lake City on February 18, 1949. He was the second of three brothers. Ridgway's parents were Thomas Newton Ridgway and Mary Rita Steinman. At the time, they were renting a room near a local high school. Ridgway's older brother, Gregory, was born in 1948. Ridgway's younger brother, Thomas, was born in 1951. In 1960, Ridgway's parents moved the family into a small three-bedroom house in a neighborhood called McMicken Heights, which is now the town of SeaTac. He was “raised near Seattle’s Pacific Highway, a low-income neighborhood near the SeaTac airport…” (Biography, 2013). They lived in a working-class neighborhood where many other children also lived. All the children played together and walked to school together. Ridgway's father was a subway bus driver whose route was the Pacific Highway South to Seattle. The route passed through the infamous strip where Gary would later find so many of his victims. His father also liked to organize garage sales. Ridgway's mother was just a... middle of paper ... when the rampage began. He argued that if he had only killed his second wife Marcia, he would never have killed those prostitutes. He was really trying to hurt his wife. It's easy to disbelieve Ridgway's claims. People who worked or were involved in the case believe he would have killed sooner or later anyway. Whatever his true motivation, a little over a year after Ridgway's divorce, bodies of young women began to appear along the Green River. References Gary Ridgway. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Accessed September 24, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/gary-ridgway-10073409Lewis, Hal. (Director). October 26, 2013. Gary Ridgway: The Green River Killer. Robert Forman (Producer). New York, NY: CBS News Archive. Robinson, Sean. “The Gary Ridgway they knew.” The News Tribune [Tacoma, WA] December 16, 2001: All. Print.