Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: The Green River Killer

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

Through the 80's & 90's, women in the state of Washington were turning up dead. First, along the Green River, then in other clusters throughout the state and even into Portland, Oregon. Not only had these women been murdered but their killer would re-visit their corpses and sexually assault them multiple times until their corpses were fully decomposed and consumed by maggots. A man named Gary Ridgeway had been pointed out by a number of witnesses as being the Green River Killer but police were unable to make an arrest until DNA connected him to four crime scenes in 2001 – two decades and at least 49 victims later. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/serial-killer-green-river-killer/    

Hi, Crime Junkies. Welcome back to another episode. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And today I have kind of an interesting episode. If you'll remember last week, we talked about Misty Copsie and her case was very heavily linked to and related to the Green River Killer possibly. And in part of the episode, I said, you know, I don't know a lot about the Green River Killer, so I can't really speak to it. So I decided what better for our next episode than to dive into the case of the Green River Killer, which is one of the craziest serial killer cases I think here in America. Don't forget that every episode is brought to you

by Crime Staffers of Central Indiana, so you can get more information about their program at CrimeTips.org. And this is the last episode of May, which means we have a prepped of the month segment after our episode. So if you want to hang around, hear a wonderful story about a dog adoption, I promise not to make you cry this time. Last time we had a serial killer case, we talked about LISC, the Long Island Serial Killer. We were still left with a lot of questions. The killer or killers have yet to be found, but this week I'm going to tell you about a serial killer who after over two decades was captured. And this is the Green River Killer or who we now know as Gary Ridgway.

Something that kind of gives me hope for cases like the Long Island Serial Killer. The Green River Killer was caught some 20 years later, and Golden State Killer was caught like 40 years later. We could be in the last days before they announced that they've identified and captured LISC, right? Yes and no, I'd like to think that things will shake loose in the LISC case the way they did for the Golden State Killer and the Green River Killer, but they were both caught because of DNA, and there's none of that in the LISC case. And the reason the cops even had DNA back in the Green River case is because he committed his crimes so long ago. He actually started, as far as we know, in the early 1980s when

DNA wasn't even a thing. So while he covered up his crimes in other ways, he didn't even know that this was something he was supposed to be doing. So our story starts in July of 1982 when a young girl named Wendy had gone missing. She was actually in foster care at the age of 16, and she had left her home one day, and she had been known to start selling herself on a well-known street for sex workers. It's called the Pacific Highway South. One week after she went missing, a couple of boys were riding their bikes, and they saw something floating in the Green River, and it looked kind of like a mannequin. Can I make a crime-junkie life rule? Yeah. It's never a mannequin. No, never. Because of all the true crime that

I consume, I kind of have the opposite reaction. If I ever see like the slightest thing on the side of the road or a riverbank or in long grass, I immediately go to like, oh my god, I found a dead body, and it's barely a log sometimes. Well, these boys found more than a log or a mannequin. When they got closer to it, it was the body of a naked girl with her clothes tied around her neck. At first, when police got to the scene, they assumed it was some kind of one-off incident, possibly a crime of passion or a domestic dispute. This was Wendy, and she was a super young girl, so they had no idea what could have happened to her, but they had no way of knowing that this was just the beginning of a killer's

reign of terror on the Seattle Tacoma area. Just four weeks after Wendy was found in the Green River, another woman was found face down floating in the river, 23-year-old Deborah. Just three days later, passerby spot what looked like two more mannequins in the river. Again, it's never a mannequin. Ever, ever. When crime scene texts arrived, they find two women, Cynthia, who was just 17, and Marsha, who was 31. This time, the women were submerged underwater and held down with very large rocks. And while they are processing this scene with these two women, they find another body, and this is the body of a 16-year-old girl named Opal. And from then on, bodies are consistently being found. Women and teenage girls are consistently

going missing off the streets, and the police know there is a serious epidemic, but they have no idea who is behind it. They're trying to follow every single tip, but they feel like they're just running in circles. They do get one really good break in the case, though. An 18-year-old girl named Marie goes missing in April of 1983. We know the timeline looking back on it now, and she is the 23rd girl to go missing in relation to the Green River Killer. Well, as they investigate her disappearance, a witness says they saw her getting into a pickup truck the night that she was last seen. This piece of information wasn't new, though. Missing women had been linked to a pickup truck, and they'd heard

this before. What was new, this time, shortly after the witness told police about this pickup she saw, she ended up seeing the very same pickup truck again in the driveway of someone's home. When police look into this tip, they find out that it is the home of Gary Ridgway. So obviously, we're talking about a case that was solved over 15 years ago. We all know that Gary Ridgway is the Green River Killer, but I also know that he is responsible for a minimum of 49 deaths, but you're telling me the police were at his door after victim number 23? Yes, spoiler alert, they don't arrest him. They go to his home, have a conversation with him, but he comes off as a very normal dude. And while he might be on police's radar

now, there's nothing to make them think that he's the killer. Oh, nothing except a witness spotting his car picking up the victim. Yeah, just that. So I don't know how much police looked into Gary after this first encounter, but if they would have dug deep, this is what they would have found. I don't think Gary was ever a normal child. There wasn't one instance I can point to really that made him into the killer he became, but his childhood was troubled. He was the middle child of three boys. He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, but at a young age, he and his family moved to Washington State. Specifically, they bought a home very close to the Pacific Highway South, which is a street

where it was well known that you could go and meet a sex worker. And this is where Gary would later stalk and abduct his victims. His home life was rocky as a child. Although they looked like the all American family on the outside, they were not a happy family. Gary's mother was very domineering and could be both physically and verbally abusive to the family, especially to her husband. One time she even smashed a plate over his head at dinner and he didn't do anything. He just gets up, walks away from the table, and this is how he was in most of their confrontation. So she overpowered him and he was too meek or didn't care enough to fight back. And some psychologists have attributed this interaction

between Gary's parents as the building block for his hatred toward women. He hated the way his mother treated all of them, and he really hated the fact that his father was never strong enough to really stand up to her and he didn't protect himself. He didn't protect Gary or his brothers from his mother. People say that when Gary grew up, he wanted to be the exact opposite, like basically an extreme to what his father was. His mother was also very mean to the boys. She would scream at them. She would ridicule and embarrass Gary as he grew up, sometimes in front of his friends or his brothers. He actually had a problem wetting the bed until he was 13 years old and his mom would make fun of him

in front of his brothers and she would force him into a cold bath where even at the ages of 11, 12, 13, she would hand wash him and she would scrub his, quote, dirtiest parts which were his genitals. And she would do this all while she was barely dressed like in her underwear. This is just, again, all super inappropriate and especially at his age. And there are other things that she would do. She worked at a clothing store fitting men for suits and she would tell Gary these stories about how while she was down on her knees measuring these men's inseam, they would get aroused and she would explain to him what their erections were like and what their genitals smelled like. And this all contributed to very

confusing thoughts about his mother, about women and about sex in general. And this was noticeable early on. Gary said that he used to fantasize about his mother. Like, sexually? Partly. He said he had two competing fantasies. The first was sexual. She used to come home sometimes and lay out in the backyard in her bikini, sometimes even topless. And he said she was the only female figure he had ever seen. So while he's going through puberty, which was already confusing for him because she was washing his genitals and talking to him about really inappropriate sexual things, he's seeing her like this and getting very confused. He would get aroused looking at her and he said he liked the sexual aspect

of his mother better than the actual mothering part of her. But at the same time, he said he had those thoughts, he also thought about torturing her, like mutilating her, cutting her throat and even burning down their house with her in it. Wait, are you familiar with the edifice complex? Kind of. Like, do you want to explain? Sure. It's a Freudian theory that all boys are sexually attracted to their mothers at a young age and they see their fathers as a competitor. If you have a healthy relationship with your mother, you eventually grow out of it. You're never going to win her over,

you're never going to beat your dad, and it becomes nothing. It's just something that you experience and doesn't really affect you at all. Freud's theory is everyone feels like this as a child and we all just grow out of it. Everyone, Freud. Everyone. It's pretty broad, I agree. I feel like this is like one of his more, like, controversial theories. Yeah, I don't know why I couldn't think of the word. But if you consider that in this case, Gary was never threatened by his dad. His dad was

a very weak figure in their family, so though, according to Freud, everyone experiences this and the majority of us grow out of it, Gary never had to grow out of it because he never had a competitor for his mom. So he believed that he could actually be with his mother and I'm sure, like, the stuff that she was doing was making him think that. I mean, she's talking to him about these sexual feelings, stuff a mother shouldn't be talking to her son about bathing him while he's like way too old to be bathed. Literally nurturing his edifice complex.

Interesting. I wonder, I mean, I have no research to back this up. It's just the thought that I have. I wonder how many serial killers have this complex. It'd be super interesting to know. Freud says all of them. True. So whether he had this or not, he said he knew these feelings were wrong to have about his mother, but he couldn't stop them. So he got these sexual feelings mixed together with all of these violent thoughts all during some of his most formative years when really his sexual preferences are developing.

So you can see how a violent man came from this childhood that was laid before him. But it wasn't just Gary's mother that we can see in his actions as an adult. Gary's father worked in a mortuary and he used to come home and he would tell Gary stories about how his co-worker would have sex with the dead bodies. Oh my God. Why would you tell a kid that? Why would you tell anybody that? I know. These parents. I know. Also, note to self, getting cremated because-

Seriously. What the hell? So again, during his formative years when he's learning about sex and going through puberty, he has someone talking to him about necrophilia, basically normalizing it, and this goes into the mix for Gary and he would later be known to revisit the corpses of his victim, sometimes multiple times, and use their bodies until they were so decomposed that they became infested with maggots. So sorry to anyone who's listening to this pre-breakfast or pre-eating anything ever

again. Now, for all the dysfunction going on at home, you would think that Gary would be displaying some disturbing signs at school or with his friends, and this is the craziest part about his story to me. All of his classmates describe him as being well-liked in school and a fun and outgoing kid. Really? I would have expected him to be very withdrawn and isolated. Me too. Now, this isn't to say that there weren't warning signs. I think it just shows why he was able to go so long without getting caught. He was able to be normal and likable

and just like the average Joe when he needed to be so he could get women to trust him and he could get police to believe him and he could get neighbors to like him and then no one suspected him. The warning signs that people should have been looking for were glaring though. He was abusing animals, setting fires. Oh, so he had all of the markers of the McDonald's triad. Yeah, he very clearly displayed all three. Wedding the bed, abuse to animals and setting fires and he went even further. In elementary school, he would stalk some girls that he liked or girls that he was interested in. He would follow them home from school a lot

and he continued this through middle school and in high school he had even tried to force sex on a girl who he had given a ride home to. And finally, one of the last acts that we know for sure he did that should have been a warning sign to everyone, but most people didn't know about is he actually stabbed a kid when he was 16 years old. What? Yeah, I know. He took a young boy into the woods and just kind of led him in there, looked him in the face, whipped out a knife and stabbed him and the boy was so confused and he asked

him why he did it and he just said he wanted to know what it felt like and then he walked away. The boy must not have known him well because he did survive and he reported this incident but they weren't able to track it back to Gary. So he's living this pretty outwardly normal life with these instances of violence just peppered through that really no one is picking up on. I will say the one thing that does stand out to everyone is that Gary had a very low IQ, 82 to be exact, which isn't low enough to constitute any kind of mental disability, but he did have to repeat a couple of grades and he didn't graduate until he was 20 years

old. When he did graduate, he got his first girlfriend, Claudia. She was a local girl who was just a year younger than him and after a year of dating, they both got married and shortly after he graduated, Gary had actually enlisted in the Navy and right after they got married, he got shipped off and so while he's in the Navy, he frequents sex workers and he said he did this because he was forced to because his wife was so far away. Like you know, had to do it, had to do it. Once in the Philippines, he actually ended up contracting gonorrhea from a sex worker

and he was furious and blamed this woman for all of his problems. So this is where a lot of the experts think that his hatred for women really became focused as a hatred for sex workers. When he returns home, he found out that his wife had also been unfaithful to him and instead of just being like, oh, weird, I cheated too, like let's just call it even, we're both really bad at being married, he is outraged and says that she turned into a quote whore so he divorces her. And by the way, again, like quotes there because I hate that word and I never, ever, ever want to use it if I don't have to. So this brings us to 1972. He is back in Washington and gets a job painting designs onto trucks.

His neighbors and coworkers all said that he seemed like the average Joe super nice guy, a little bit odd, but they never suspected anything of him. And being the average Joe that he is, he even gets married again. Now the second wife he spent more time with, he was gone for most of his first marriage. So she really didn't see the warning signs of what was to come like his second wife did. Gary used to take her out by the green river to have sex with her. He had this fetish for having sex outdoors and especially in the areas which he would later use as a dumping ground for his victims. And that's where he would go and return to their corpses. The sex was getting more violent, more frequent, he needed

it all of the time from her. And she eventually ended up getting pregnant and had their son. Gary was pissed. This was not the reaction of a normal father. His anger started because there was a time right after she had the baby where she couldn't have sex with him. Yeah, because she had pushed a human out of her body. Yeah, but he did not care. He just knew that she was useless to him and he blamed his son. And having the baby took attention away from Gary. It took time away from Gary. She could no longer devote 100% of herself to him, to be there for his every sexual need. When they did have sex, it got weird. He would try and scare her, like jump out from behind

things or say things. And this is how he would become aroused. And more often than not, during sex, he would try and choke her until she was close to passing out. And finally, all of this became too much and she ended up divorcing him. Of course, this just angers him more and he blamed a lot of his future actions on the hatred of his second wife. Once he even said that if he had only killed her, he wouldn't have killed all of those other sex workers. They were all substitutes for her. And sometime after this divorce is when the murders began. Did he have custody of his son at all while he was killing these women? Not only did he have custody of him, he would use him as part of his bruise. He had his son

every other weekend and he would use this contact with his son in different ways to make these women trust him more. Like for example, some women would ask to see his ID. And I will let Gary himself tell you what he would do. Well, one of them was, as I, they would, women would get in a car. She's already in the car? She's in the car. You have to say she's always in the car driving down the road. And she, first she wants to see my ID. So I whipped out my ID and with my ID would be my, I'd put my finger over my driver's license to hide my name. But on the opposite side was pictures. And a picture of my son.

And then she'd see my son and they would know I was a probably normal person. He would also leave toys in the back of the car to put these women at ease as well. And in the vehicle I had some, always had some, not always, but had some of my some stuff in it, you know, that he left in there or some star wars or something like that. You know, so it was like a family setting. And he even showed off this family setting when he would bring these women home with him. He would show them his son's room and these women would relax because surely a father, a man who's been married before, can't be the same guy who's killing all of these women.

He said that he was actually asked over 50 times by these women if he was the Green River killer. And one time, just to show you how he would use his son, he actually let his son meet one of his victims. I was July 18th, I think it was my brother's birthday that weekend. I picked up a woman on back, back highway and Matthew was next to me in the seat and she hopped in and I took her over to in the South, South airport area and took her into an area and my son was there and I killed her. I'm real sure my son didn't see it, but that only happened one time. Gary said having his son there only ever happened one time, mostly because his son was a liability,

not because he actually had any feelings about what this would be doing to his son later in life. Now this brings us back to the beginning of our story where police had been pointed in the direction of Gary. So you know all about him, he's been committing these crimes and police are pointed to him because someone saw his truck pick up the girl then saw in his driveway, but Gary is able to divert suspicion. Remember the first time they came to him was in 1983. Women were going missing at an astonishing rate. By the end of 1983, there were 13 victims found. All of them were either sex workers or runaways and within that population, there were another two dozen women who went missing. By 1984, the local authorities had developed a green river task force.

It took them over three dozen missing or murdered women to create a task force. Girl, I know this is a broken system. This reminds me a lot again of the Liske case. He was praying on people who weren't going to be noticed by people if they went missing. Furthermore, these are people who are actively avoiding police. There were no back pages back then. Their killer was meeting them on the streets and these women don't want to be caught getting into the car of a John. So they're really trying to avoid police while they're working and then when they go missing, the public isn't taking notice. They are the perfect victim for this killer. Of the women who have been found, he only left five of the first 10 by the green river. Even

though this is how he got his name, he eventually started venturing out, leaving them in other outdoor areas. He did say though that he would keep them in these clusters and it was usually never just a single body. He said he liked to keep them together so that he could drive by them and relive these memories. And he's still all the while like playing, I can't think of a better word, playing with their bodies after death. He was having sex with them, putting rocks inside of their sexual organs, just messed up stuff. From all of this activity where he would go back, police were able to collect DNA from some of the victims, those who he revisited. But there was really nothing they could do in the mid 80s, except for save it and hope for scientific

advancements. By the end of 1984, he has killed over 40 women. Then all of a sudden, the task force sees a sharp drop in the number of victims. They don't know if he moved or died or was in jail. But really, there was probably one of two reasons that Gary Ridgway stopped. One of the reasons could have been that about the same time in 1985, he had just gotten married to his third wife. So possibly his sexual needs were being satisfied. But personally, just my opinion, I find that kind of hard to believe because the whole time he was killing all these other women, he had multiple girlfriends and consensual sex partners. What would be the second reason? Well, in 1984, the task force that was formed got really close to Gary and they had even given

him a lie detector test, which he passed. And this is why you don't take a polygraph. They mean nothing. Yeah, polygraphs are looking for stress. We've said this a thousand times, a guy who has no remorse and no guilt isn't stressed. And so he passes and they have nothing to hold him on and they end up letting him go and moving on to other suspects. So he could have just been laying low for a little while. By 1987, somehow the task force ends up circling back around to Gary Ridgway and they piece it together and realize that he didn't have a solid alibi for any of the disappearances of their missing and murdered women. And they were trying to track him and his trips to gas stations because what they were doing is they were looking at his receipts and

noticing that this guy is buying way more gas than he needs for somebody who says that they're just going to and from work and not really doing anything else. His story isn't matching up. So they then put him like in a picture lineup with a bunch of other people and a couple of witnesses identify him as being with some of these missing and murdered women. So based on the suspicions they had way back in 1984 and all this new stuff they had in 1987, they're able to get a search warrant and do a full search of his home. But they come up completely empty because as dumb as Gary was, he was smart enough not to keep any trophies at his home. That's kind of unusual for serial killers not to take any trophies isn't it? Oh I didn't say he didn't take any. He just didn't keep them.

He used to do something kind of strange. He would take jewelry from the women that he killed and then he would take it to his office and leave it in the women's bathroom like on the sink or near the toilet as if someone had left it there hoping that someone would swipe it and he would watch and wait for his co-workers to be wearing the jewelry around work and this is how he would totally get off during the day. I also heard in just one or two places that he would have garage sales and sell lots of random women's jewelry but I don't know how much of that is real and how much his nosy neighbor is trying to be a part of that story after the fact. You said he was married for a third time when the police came back around in 87 right? What did his third wife think of all

of this? She just thought that he must look like someone who was really the killer and that's the thing he was super good at blending in and again for as dumb as his IQ says he was, he was smart in how he killed. He even kind of flaunted this later on after he was captured saying that at least he was the best at one thing. If a victim would scratch him he would cut off her fingernails. Once at a dump site he noticed that his truck had left tire marks so he then immediately replaced all of his tires. He would often intentionally pick up sex workers to have very normal interactions with them so that they would go spread the word to all their friends that he was a nice guy, he paid them and he was no one to be afraid of so that way girls would get into his car easier

and wouldn't put up a fight. And even crazier he would also plant evidence like cigarette butts knowing that he wasn't a smoker and later in his killing spree he planted airport pamphlets trying to give police the idea that the killer was a traveler and he even drove some of the remains of the women that he killed from seattle to portland to try and convince police that the killer was really traveling south or the killer had moved and they actually investigated this lead for a while and he just got away with it all the task force could never pin it on him he didn't slip up his downfall was dna one of the times that he was interviewed by police they collected his dna and they had his semen from old crime scenes and it wasn't until the summer of 2001 that

they were able to match them together and pick him up outside of his work his dna was conclusively linked to only four of the victims but he made a deal that in exchange for them taking the death penalty off the table he would confess to everything and everything he did he even led them to the bodies of previously undiscovered women and they were able to link him to the murders of 49 women but they suspected him of up to 71 and he thinks he killed over 90 i have two questions if police think he killed more why wasn't he charged and he thinks he killed 90 well in a lot of the other cases they just couldn't get things to match up either gary's story didn't match what they had on victims that they had found or he says he killed someone that they never found a body

or some of these women were just missing and nothing really happened so they have 71 people that they think that he's linked to and for gary he said that he just can't remember who he killed he was always pretty attached to the places and he would drive by them and he could lead investigators to burial sites but he didn't even have enough thought or respect for these women to even remember how many he killed what their names were what they even looked like in fact he says that he doesn't even remember his first kill the first one that we know about was wendy back in 1982 but gary thinks that he started as early as the 70s how can a serial killer like him not remember at the very minimum his first kill i mean he was the one who told police about his cruelty to animals

and about stabbing that boy when he was a kid but he doesn't remember the first time he actually took a human life yeah there's a couple of things that i think about this and most likely this just shows how little regard he has for these women that it just doesn't even register for him when he's murdering them they mean nothing to him the other thing that i can think is gary says that actually when he was really young like when he was 16 stab that kid he said around the same time he actually drowned a boy in a lake and police couldn't confirm this account because i don't know what they couldn't match to it there were two boys that had drowned in the lake the same year the same lake that gary was talking about but for whatever reason they couldn't link it to him

so it's possible that he actually did remember his first and which kind of opens up opens up the question to me was he killing from that point on which was way sooner was he killing when he was over in the philippines and in the navy when did he really start but it's not too surprising to me just knowing how little he thought of these women how much he hated sex workers that they were not human to him so it was like killing a bug it meant nothing and it just didn't even register he's now serving out his life in a prison in walla walla washington where brit both you and i have family right uh i have a cousin and you have a cousin i know i okay so did you know that they had this prison that is like housing some of america's worst serial killers i had no idea and

i've been to walla walla i know so have i like i've only know about they had a great wineries i went for a wine weekend ones and it's beautiful and i had no idea that i was probably within like a 20 minute car drive from gary richway i know isn't that insane i don't mean to sound like i'm vangirling but that's crazy yeah i mean like i i'm not doing anything with this information i don't know what it means to me but it's to me it's just super weird we have another trip planned out there and i will definitely be thinking of this almost the whole time thank you guys for listening to another episode if you want to connect with us you can find us on instagram at crime junkie podcast or on twitter at crime junkie pod and be sure to

join our facebook discussion group just go to facebook and search crime junkie discussion group oh and don't forget to go sign up for our newsletter we have our merch store opening like dangerously soon and the first people we're going to tell about it are the people on our newsletter so make sure you go sign up on our website and stick around if you want to hear an adorable profit story crime junkie is written and hosted by me all of our sound production and editing comes from brit pray what and all of our music including our theme comes from justin daniel crime junkie is an audio chuck production so what do you think chuck do you approve

about my best friend hi everyone welcome to my favorite part of the month profit of the month segment and ashley i actually last month you were in mess during profit of the month we had people almost angry at us because you cried and made them cry okay listen i didn't say it was the happiest time of the month i just said i love it the most sometimes the love makes me cry i i've got to be honest with you i cry at the good stories i cry extra hard at the bad stories i can't really make it through that's why you guys i'm not allowed to do profit of the month anymore at least temporarily i'm going to take that away from yeah brit's

taking the baton so i'm gonna sit back and cry in silence because the great part is we can turn off my audio and you guys don't have to hear me cry even when we tell the good stories so brit who is our profit of the month this month i am so excited about our profit of the month it's this month our profit is named ash fitting i thought for you i love it already okay so listener named beggin uh got a call that i personally have always wanted to get for my husband babe i got a dog oh my god best call come on best call evidently this is super unlike her husband but one of his co-workers had told him about this beautiful dog at the shelter and showed him a picture and her husband knew that he had to get this dog wait so wait what kind of dog is this i'm gonna

tell you okay okay all you know right now is it's the beautiful deal all of them are but whatever so he brings this dog home quote unquote to foster and it's a puppy only three months old so super cute right always beggin is expecting a tiny little cuddly pup but she gets home and ash is massive practically a mini horse she said even at three months but she fell in love with him and after they finished the foster program with him they ended up adopting him oh my god i was actually i was actually just talking to someone about this today they she's like that's called a foster fail and she's like foster fail yeah and she's like but because she's had four foster fails and she was like it's only a fail if you tried and i never tried to give them away

sorry go on so ash it turns out is a purebred blue cane corso which i was unfamiliar with but he's this beautiful smoky gray color and megan and her husband are both firefighters so they kind of came to the name ash because he's gray and smoky they're firefighters it just seemed to fit wait to be clear they didn't name him after me unfortunately no but i'm sure someday someone will okay okay okay oh my god if anyone gets two puppies and names them ashley and brit i will pass out oh my god we would die i i have to tell you when you're describing my like initial reaction is i reached out and kissed my microphone but like i knew like i thought it was the nose but i know it's not i know okay go on go on so his previous owner had his tail docked but they didn't

dock his ears and megan says she's so glad they didn't because his ears are super floppy ash is eight months old now and bigger than ever but he's still a little cuddle pup who thinks he's a lap dog and she says she's never met a dog as slobbery as ash everywhere he goes he has at least a full slobber dangling from his mouth he loves to play with his bestie grace who belongs to megan's mother-in-law and he has a giant tennis ball that he absolutely cannot live without megan said that ash is super loyal and productive already and he's forged this really strong bond with her husband that's so sweet you guys ash made their family complete and they couldn't be any happier i will say that it's funny how when it's just the two of you and a dog so much of your relationship revolves around the dog

i my brother just came to live with us and we were like had to explain to him like 90% of the communication between my husband and i is us pretending to talk through charlie so i was like he's literally the rock that's kept us together so like again i'm not going there never mind come on keep going you're gonna cry again oh but so that's pretty much the end of the story but you know one of our favorite questions to ask about proparts is their favorite snacks love favorite snacks so i asked megan what his favorite snack was and she said he loves peanut butter ops but one of his absolute favorite things in the world is frosty paws dog ice cream girl which my dog niles and your dog charlie also absolutely i know and megan we have a hack for

you i know megan we are about to change your life and i'm about to change the life of all dog moms out there so we have a dog mom hack for everyone listening our dogs love the frosty paws treat but it's about a million dollars for four tiny cups that they eat in about 30 seconds flat so brit had this amazing recipe that she sent me and now i make it every single summer and even when it's not summer because charlie freaking loves it so much i buy these little plastic cups on amazon i can get like 100 of them for summer between like nine and 14 dollars depending on the amazon prices that day and then we buy like unflavored yogurt just plain yogurt which is really good for dog's skin and then we buy peanut butter and honey you throw all of that into like a blender or

mixer or food processor get it all mushy up you dump it into all these little containers and the ones that i get on amazon come with a little lid and everything so i put them all in the freezer stack them up and then i end up having what is a basically frosty paws for dirt cheap all summer and charlie is the happiest dog in the whole world and i know niles and ross are extremely happy too right yeah and sometimes i get really creative and drop a couple blueberries in there or a dog tree so they have an extra little like flavored ice cream it's like mint chip or cookie dough for them and they adore it and it's super like like ash said it's super cheap way cheaper than frosty paws and our dogs cannot live without it in the summer so i encourage you guys to make some for

your pups especially ash especially if he loves frosty paws yes and we'll put the we'll put the recipe on our website it's there's really no like one cup of this two cups of that just like do whatever your dog likes whatever feels good mush it all up i'll send you the link to these little cups it's perfect you guys are welcome for saving your summer if you guys want to donate that extra money you save to our homies at crime stoppers of central indiana you can go to crimetips.org we just came full circle we will see you next week