Ted Bundy Offered to Help Police Catch Another Serial Killer

Gary Ridgway (The Green River Killer) was finally captured after murdering at least 49 women — with some thanks to Ted Bundy?

True Crime & Curiosities
4 min readJun 9, 2024

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Ted Bundy

Most of us may be familiar with the storyline of The Silence of the Lambs, a 1991 thriller which sees an FBI agent hunting a serial killer (Buffalo Bill) with help from an imprisoned and highly dangerous psychopath (Hannibal Lecter). What many people are not aware of is that a few years before the release of this movie, this fictional scenario had played out in real life.

In the early 1980s, the Green River Killer was terrorising the Seattle and Tacoma areas of Washington state, with the bodies of young women turning up in and around the Green River. The killer’s modus operandi was to lure vulnerable women — usually sex workers — to their deaths, leading to a prolonged and frustrating investigation for law enforcement. By 1984, the police were not any closer to catching the elusive killer, later identified as Gary Ridgway.

The Silence of The Lambs: FBI agent (Jodie Foster) sought help from imprisoned serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins)

In a surprising turn of events, the police received an offer of assistance from an unlikely…

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