Recently, I was in Seattle for a few days and I was staying on the SeaTac strip. Out of curiosity, I drove by the former home of Gary Ridgway (aka, the “Green River Killer”). It was jut a few blocks from my hotel.
Ridgway is the most prolific serial killer in American history; he was convicted of killing 49 women…mostly prostitutes that were working on the Sea-Tac strip in the 1980s. Ridgway would solicit them for sex, drive them to his house, and strangle them to death.
When I passed by Ridgway’s old house, I saw that somebody was living there. I’m guessing that the owner of the house knows about its gruesome history. How could he not know?
We can say a lot about Gary Ridgway, or serial killers in general. Books have been written, movies have been made, etc. There’s even a morbid fascination with the subject in our culture – see the popularity of crime shows like CSI. Perhaps that’s a subject for another post. However, I will ask a question…the same one that went through my mind as I drove by Ridgway’s house:
Could you live in the former house of a serial killer?
For me, the answer is no.
The Major is a man of reason. I don’t believe in ghost towns or zombies. I laugh in the face of witch doctors. And yet, some things just give me the Heebie-Jeebies. In particular, l could not sleep in a room knowing that dozens of people were murdered there.
Clearly, the owner of the Ridgway house doesn’t care. He’s cut from a different cloth than Major Styles. Such is life. Each man does what he believes to be best. And yet, I think that there’s an important moral to this story (at least from my perspective).
Some people will overlook anything to buy a cheap piece of real estate.
See Related Article: Why Does Colombia Produce So Many Serial Killers?
Major Styles 
49 bodies don’t seem all that much
Compared to Planned Parenthood, it’s a drop in the bucket.