Confessions of a Murderer

Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, is expected to enter a plea bargain today. Ridgeway is expected to enter FOURTY-EIGHT counts of "Guilty" in a King County courtroom. The website is a registered site, but I'm sure the news will be out as soon as Ridgeway pleads.

Sources close to the case say Ridgway has confessed to 42 of the 49 listed killings, plus six not on the list.

Fourty eight murdered women. Fourty eight lives torn apart. And the thing that bugs me is that he copped a plea bargain. He won't be getting the death penalty, he'll get live in prison without parole.

And I'm kinda torn on this.

On one hand, I want the bastard to fry. There's nothing in the world that can replace what he took away from fourty-eight families, but sending him on a one-way trip to hell would give those families some sort of closure.

However, without the plea bargain, many of those deaths would have remained unsolved. Period. Some of these murders were twenty years ago, a cold case if I ever saw one. The chances of those murders being solved without Ridgeway's cooperation are nil, and his cooperation was part of the plea bargain. The King County law enforcement only had enough evidence to try Ridgeway for seven or eight of the murders, even though they suspected him on a lot more. Now we can finally solve the rest, and see some sort of justice done to the murderer.

So, I guess I would rather see the cases solved than see Ridgeway fry. Anyone else have comments on this?