'Green River Killer' expected to admit to 48 murders

A suspected serial killer in the US has agreed to plead guilty next week to the murders of 48 women in a deal that would spare him from execution, according to reports.

The 54-year-old truck painter arrested in 2001 as the so-called “Green River Killer”, will admit to murdering 42 women on investigators’ list of victims in that case, as well as six women not on the list, said the source, who is involved in the case.

The Green River Killer preyed mostly on prostitutes, drug addicts, young runaways and other women on the streets. The case is named for the waterway where the first bodies were found in the suburbs south of Seattle, Washington in mid-1982.

Most of the killings were in the mid-1980s, but one of the murders to which Ridgway will plead guilty was in 1998, the source said.

In many cases, the killer had sex with his victim and then strangled her.

The suspect was arrested nearly two years ago and was ultimately charged with seven murders.

Prosecutors said DNA evidence and microscopic paint particles linked him to most of those killings.

Seattle-area newspapers and TV stations had been reporting over the past few days that a plea bargain had been reached.

With the death penalty off the table, he would face life in prison without parole – the only other penalty for aggravated murder under Washington state law.

Detective Kathleen Larson, a spokeswoman for the Green River Killer task force, would not comment when contacted on Wednesday and yesterday.

The dead women who were not on the list include Patricia Ann Yellow Robe, 38, a nurse’s aide who was found dead in 1998.

“I guess I’m a little stunned, you know,” her father, Joe Yellow Robe, told KING-TV. “I find it incredible that an individual was able to cause that many deaths, to perpetrate that much suffering and misery on so many people.”

Task force detectives have found four sets of human remains at various sites in recent months. That led to speculation that the suspect himself was directing investigators to the burial sites.