For nearly two decades, a killer moved through the forests and highway corridors of South King County, Washington, selecting his victims with calculated precision and concealing his crimes within the routines of an ordinary life. Gary Leon Ridgway ? the Green River Killer ? murdered at least forty-nine women and girls, operating within one of the largest serial homicide investigations in American history while remaining undetected for nineteen years.

This landmark work of narrative nonfiction examines the full arc of the Green River case with the depth and rigour it demands. Drawing on criminological research, forensic science, investigative records, court documents, and the human testimony of the families left behind, Catherine Wilson reconstructs the developmental origins of Ridgway's pathology, the social vulnerabilities he systematically exploited, the investigative story with all its turning points and failures, the DNA revolution that finally produced his identification, and the extraordinary legal proceedings that followed his 2001 arrest.

But this is not primarily a book about a killer. It is a book about the women he killed ? their names, their lives, their families ? and about the social and institutional failures that left them unprotected. Meticulous, humane, and unflinching, The Green River Killer is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what serial violence reveals about the society in which it occurs.