Green River Killer pleads guilty to 49th murder (Reuters)

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Convicted "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty on Friday to his 49th murder charge, after being shouted down in court by a man in the audience as he tried to apologize.

Ridgway, who is considered the nation's most prolific serial killer, spoke in a hoarse voice as he entered the guilty plea on his 62nd birthday, admitting that he killed 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero, who was last seen alive on December 3, 1982.

Under a plea deal Ridgway made in 2003, he was spared the death penalty in exchange for confessing to all of the murders linked to him at the time or any that were later discovered.

Ridgway, who is serving a life prison term without the possibility of parole, had previously confessed to Marrero's murder but prosecutors said at the time that they didn't have enough evidence include her killing in the plea deal.

The convicted killer started to apologize in court on Friday for Marrero's murder, but was cut off when an unidentified man sitting with the victim's family began shouting obscenities at him.

The victim's sister, Mary Marrero, her 79-year-old mother standing shakily at her side, told King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts that her family has been devastated by the murder and wished that Ridgway faced the death penalty.

"The day she came up missing I wanted to kill myself," Mary Marrero said, her voice breaking. "I still feel that today ... There is so much anger. What does it take to get the death penalty in the state of Washington? I do not agree with this plea deal."

"If I had one thing to ask today, it would be to kill him," she said.

"I appreciate you are not content with the outcome of this case," Roberts said to Marrero's family. "But I hope find some justice in it."

Ridgway has confessed to nearly 70 murders, most of his victims young female prostitutes or runaways. He was dubbed the Green River killer because the bodies of several of his victims in the early 1980s were found in or near the river, which runs through south King County.

Marrero's skeletal remains were found by teenagers December 23 of last year.

Rebecca Marrero, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, was last seen alive leaving a motel near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb)

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Man charged with 3 murder counts in N. Va. attacks (AP)

MANASSAS, Va. – A Salvadoran man who was ordered deported nearly a decade ago but never left has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in a series of shootings and a knife attack in a Virginia suburb of Washington, authorities said Friday.

Jose Oswaldo Reyes Alfaro, an illegal immigrant, was charged in the pair of attacks blocks apart Thursday night that left three people dead and three others injured, Manassas Police Chief Doug Keen said.

Reyes Alfaro knew all of the victims, he said, but police were still sorting out the exact relationships. The county's chief prosecutor said he'll likely seek to upgrade the charges to capital murder, which could carry the death penalty.

The killings touched off further discussion of illegal immigration in Manassas and surrounding Prince William County, which was one of the early flashpoints in the national debate over whether local authorities should play a role in enforcing the nation's immigration laws.

"It's another abject failure of the federal government," said state Delegate Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, a former city council member and police officer. "Now we have three innocent victims in my city — about a mile from my house there's a murderous rampage. I am furious. ... Yet it happens over and over and over again, and then we have to hear all of these apologetic excuses as to why we shouldn't be addressing criminal illegal aliens on the state or local level. It's just disgusting."

A similar uproar ensued in August when an allegedly drunken driver struck a car carrying three nuns, killing Sister Denise Mosier, 66. The man charged in that crash, 23-year-old Carlos Martinelly Montano, had been turned over to immigration authorities but was released pending a deportation hearing.

Nancy Lyall of the immigrant advocacy group Mexicans Without Borders said it was misleading to link an isolated criminal case with the issue of illegal immigration. In Prince William County, she said, "the undocumented population is a very, very low percentage of those who are accused of violent crimes."

She predicted that advocates of tougher immigration enforcement would use the Alfaro case to "stereotype every person that's here without documentation."

Chief Keen said that an immigration judge ordered that Reyes Alfaro be deported in 2002 after he failed to show up for a hearing. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Cori Bassett said in a statement that Reyes Alfaro officially was classified as a fugitive in 2006 and that the agency placed a detainer on him Friday, after his arrest on the murder charges.

While the Georgetown South development where the killings happened has been plagued with crime and some gang activity, Keen said the slayings were not gang-related.

Brenda Ashcraft, 56, and her son William Ashcraft, 37, were shot and killed in the first attack, which was called into police shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday. A 34-year-old woman was injured and remains hospitalized, and a 15-year-old girl was treated and released.

In the second attack, Keen said 48-year-old Julio Cesar Ulloa was shot and killed, and a 77-year-old woman suffered head wounds from a large knife.

Brenda Ashcraft's niece, Melissa King, said Friday that her aunt had been a victim of domestic violence by her boyfriend, whom she only knew as "Jose."

"He'd been causing trouble but she was too afraid to call police," King said, standing a few doors outside Ashcraft's home.

"They were good, good family, just full of love and support. This was not drug-related. This was not gang-related ... It was just domestic violence."

King said she has lived in the same neighborhood as her aunt her entire life.

"I know it's a bad neighborhood with crime, but so many people came out last night to offer us support. It was really like one big family," she said. She called her aunt "one of the rocks in our family. She'd give you her last piece of bread, her last dollar."

Reyes Alfaro made an initial appearance Friday morning in Prince William General District Court, and was ordered held without bond. His court-appointed lawyer, Kimberly Irving, declined to comment Friday except to say that she had only spoken with her client briefly.

Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert said Friday that it's likely the charges will eventually be upgraded to capital murder — which would make Reyes Alfaro eligible for the death penalty — but a final decision has not been made because the investigation is still ongoing.

"Of course it's a very heinous crime," Ebert said.

Manassas, a city of nearly 37,000 about 30 miles west of the nation's capital, has averaged about two homicides a year since 2005, according to annual crime reports through 2009.

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Associated Press writers Dena Potter in Richmond and Ben Nuckols in Washington contributed to this report.

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