Notorious

Serial killer. Born Gary Leon Ridgway on February 18, 1949, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Raised near Seattle’s Pacific Highway, a deprived neighborhood near SeaTac airport, Ridgway was a poor student and was sent to Vietnam after high school. When he returned, he got a job painting trucks, which he kept for 30 years. Though he married three times and was fanatical about religion, Ridgway was a frequent customer of prostitutes. Ridgway’s slayings began in 1982, when young runaways and prostitutes began disappearing from state Route 99 in south King County, Washington. He brought many of them to his home and strangled them, then left them in woodsy, remote sites. The first few bodies turned up along the now-notorious Green River. Dubbed the Green River Killer, Ridgway eluded the law until 2001, when King County sheriff Dave Reichert—the first officer assigned to the case in 1982—called a meeting to re-examine evidence using newly developed DNA-testing technology. The analysis produced a match between evidence from the victims and Ridgway, and he was charged with four counts of aggravated murder in December 2001. Ridgway eventually pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder. Facing the prospect of execution, Ridgway told investigators that he killed as many as 60 women, and revealed where he'd hidden the bodies of four young women who had never been found. He was sentenced to life in prison in December 2003 having committed more murders than any serial killer in U.S. history.

A Murder in Greenwich: The Martha Moxley Case from the Biography Channel series Notorious follows a complex case of murder among the elite of Greenwich, Connecticut. In 1975, the 15 year old blond was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death, after spending the evening with the Skakel family, relatives to Ethel Kennedy, Robert's widow.

The California Killing Field from the Biography Channel series Notorious is the disturbing story the grisly murder spree of Charles Ng and Leonard Lake. The two friends raped and murdered between 11 and 25 men, women and infants in Calaveras, California between 1983 and 1985. Police originally arrested the men for petty theft, but then found human remains on their property, along with a torture chamber and videotape of their crimes.

The Andrea Yates Story from the Biography Channel series Notorious follows the sad story of the mentally ill mother who killed her children. In 2001, Yates methodically drowned her five children, one by one, in the family bathtub. After several suicide attempts, two psychiatric hospitalizations, Yates experienced a psychotic break before the murders.

Like Mother, Like Son: Sante and Kenny Kimes from the Biography Channel series Notorious details the strange case of a mother-son crime duo convicted of two murders and numerous crimes. Conwoman Sante Kimes raised her two sons, Kent and Kenny in an atmosphere of forgeries, theft and arson. Her younger son Kenny followed in her footsteps, until police caught the pair for the murder of Irene Silverman.

Notorious examines a three-time convicted felon named Patricia Allanson, who somehow manages to get paroled shortly after serving time. Allanson first landed in prison after advising her husband to murder his parents. She later received two jail sentences for the attempted murder of her grandparents and of some seniors living in a nursing home.

Notorious investigates the secret life of Herb Baumeister, a serial killer accused of murdering seven men, and after, burying his victims in his backyard. From the surface, Baumeister appeared to be a loving husband and good father. Little did his friends and family know that the man had psychopathic tendencies.

Notorious returns viewers to 1954, when a well-liked doctor named Sam Sheppard shocked the people living in his hometown after police accused him of beating his pregnant wife to death. Sheppard denied murdering his wife, claiming that another man killed her. The show revisits the highly-publicized trail that led to Sheppard's conviction and the retrial that acquitted him.

JonBenet: Anatomy of an Investigation from the Biography Channel series Notorious examines the famous Colorado case to find out why no murderer was ever brought to justice. This episode includes interviews with her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, about their resistance to police cooperation, as well as an FBI agent involved in the investigation.

Hunting the Washington Sniper from the Biography Channel series Notorious details the Montgomery County police hunt for the killers. The episode includes interviews with Police Chief Charles Moose and the Sniper Task Force as they try to find the elusive team that killed 10 people and injured 3 others in October of 2002.

The Green Beret Murder Mystery follows the account of the murder of a pregnant wife and two young girls. The man who was accused and convicted was Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the husband and father. MacDonald was found beaten and stabbed at the scene of the crime, but investigators decided the wounds were self-inflicted. MacDonald continues to seek exoneration.