SEATTLE -- Gary Leon Ridgway, long suspected of being the Green River Killer, pleaded guilty Wednesday to 48 murders, more than any other serial killer in U.S. history.

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"I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight," he said in a confession read aloud in court.

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Gruesome Details In Ridgway's Confession

Ridgway, 54, uttered the word "guilty" 48 times in a plea bargain that will spare him from execution for those killings and result in a sentence of life in prison without parole.

"I wanted to kill as many women as I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could," he said in the statement. He said that he left some bodies in "clusters," and that he enjoyed driving by the sites afterward, thinking about what he had done.

Family members of Green River killer victims attended the hearing and brought flowers or photos of their loved ones. Several were weeping.

As the proceedings ended, some family members applauded King County Sheriff David Reichert when he left the courtroom.

No deal was cut that might spare him from death penalties in other jurisdictions. Ridgway has not been charged elsewhere, but admitted dumping victims outside the county and in Oregon.

Other serial killers have bragged of murdering dozens of victims, but Ridgway's plea agreement, signed June 13, puts more murders on his record than any other serial killer in U.S. history.

Since signing off on the deal, Ridgway has worked with investigators to recover still-missing remains of some victims, one of the most baffling and chilling serial killer cases the nation has ever seen.

Green River Task Force investigators confirmed what KIRO 7 Eyewitness News has long reported: that Ridgway himself visited body dump sites to point out where unfound remains were still hidden.

The King County Sheriff's Office released pictures taken while Ridgway showed investigators where to search for his victims.

The Green River Killer's murderous frenzy began in 1982, targeting women in the Seattle area, mainly runaways and prostitutes. The first victims turned up in the Green River, giving the killer his name. Other bodies were found near ravines, airports and freeways.

The killing seemed to stop as suddenly as it started, with prosecutors believing the last victim had disappeared in 1984. But one of the killings Ridgway admitted to occurred in 1990 and another in 1998.

In court Wednesday, Ridgway entered the 48 guilty pleas, one by one.

He said in his statement that he killed all the women in King County, mostly near his home or in his truck not far from where he picked them up. He said he enjoyed driving by the sites afterward, thinking about what he had done.

"In most cases, when I killed these women, I did not know their names," Ridgway said in the statement. "Most of the time I killed them the first time I met them, and I do not have a good memory of their faces."

He said he had several reasons for preying on prostitutes.

"I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex," he said. "I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught."

Ridgway, of the Seattle suburb of Auburn, was arrested in 2001 as he left his longtime job as a painter at a truck company. Prosecutors said advances in DNA technology had allowed them to match a saliva sample taken from Ridgway in 1987 with DNA samples taken from the bodies of three of the earliest victims.

In many cases, the killer had sex with his victim and then strangled her.

Ridgway had been a suspect as early as 1984, when the boyfriend of victim Marie Malvar reported that he last saw her getting into a pickup truck identified as Ridgway's.

But Ridgway told police he didn't know Malvar, and investigators cleared him as a suspect. Later that year, Ridgway contacted the King County sheriff's Green River task force -- ostensibly to offer information about the case -- and passed a polygraph test.

He is scheduled to be sentenced within six months to 48 consecutive life prison sentences without parole.