Painter admits record-breaking 48 murders

Serial killer Gary Ridgway walked into a Seattle court today and admitted murdering 48 women – a US record.

“I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight,” he said in a confession read in court.

“I wanted to kill as many women as I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could,” Ridgway said in the statement.

Some relatives of victims wept quietly in the court.

Ridgway – dubbed the Green River Killer – struck a plea bargain that will spare him from execution and result in a sentence of life in prison without parole.

The agreement signed June 13 would put more murders on his record than any other serial killer in US history.

Since signing the deal, Ridgway has worked with investigators to recover still-missing remains of some victims in the case.

The Green River Killer’s murderous frenzy began in 1982, targeting women in the Seattle area of Washington state, mainly runaways and prostitutes. The first victims turned up in the Green River, giving the killer his name.

The killings seemed to stop as suddenly as they started, with prosecutors believing the last victim had disappeared in 1984. But one of the killings Ridgway admitted to occurred in 1990 and another in 1998.

Ridgway, 54, was arrested in 2001 as he left his long-time job as a painter at a truck company.

Prosecutors said advances in DNA technology had allowed them to match a saliva sample taken from Ridgway in 1987 with DNA samples taken from the bodies of three of the earliest victims.