|
|
Richard Ramirez (born February 29, 1960) is a convicted serial killer awaiting execution on California's death row. Prior to his capture, Ramirez was dubbed the "Night Stalker" by the news media as he terrorized Southern California with a series of car and home abductions, rapes, and murders during the first half of 1985.
Ramirez committed his third known murder on March 17 and tried to kill his victim's roommate at the same time, but she was able to escape and give police a description of her attacker. Media attention increased, and started to cause general alarm after a second attack later that day of a 30-year-old woman, who was dragged from her car and shot. She died the next day. The news media dubbed the attacker, who was described as having long curly hair, bulging eyes and wide-spaced rotting teeth, "The Valley Intruder."
Three days later Ramirez abducted an Eagle Rock girl from her home and sexually assaulted her. On March 27 he killed a 64-year-old man, fatally stabbed his 44-year-old wife, and then proceeded to carve her eyes out while she was still alive. At this point a multi-county full-scale police investigation was in operation.
Ramirez then invaded the home of a 65-year-old man and his wife in Monterey Park. He shot the man in the head and was about to kill his wife when the dying man was able to scare Ramirez away by dialing 9-1-1. The man was pronounced dead when police arrived. A little more than a week later, Ramirez severely beat two women in their 80s after invading their home (one woman would later die of her injuries). Before leaving the home, he inked Satanic pentagrams on one of the women in her own blood.
In June and July, three more women were killed. Two had their throats slit, one was beaten to death, and all three had their homes invaded in the process. On July 20 he again struck twice. In Sun Valley he killed a 32-year-old man, beat and raped his wife, and proceeded to forcibly sodomize their 8-year-old son while making his bleeding mother listen. Later in the same day, Ramirez shot to death a Glendale couple aged in their 60s. On August 8 Ramirez critically wounded a Northridge couple by shooting them in their home.
Ramirez then left the Los Angeles area, and on August 17 he shot a 66-year-old man in San Francisco to death, also shooting and beating his wife. The wife survived her wounds and was able to identify her attacker as "The Valley Intruder" from police sketches. Since "The Valley Intruder" no longer fit the modus operandi of the attacker, the news media re-dubbed him the "Night Stalker."
The next big break in the case came on August 24 when Ramirez shot a 29-year-old man in his head and raped his fiance. The man was able to give a description of both Ramirez and his orange Toyota station wagon. The stolen car was found and police were able to obtain fingerprints. The prints belonged to one Richard Ramirez, who was described as a 25-year-old drifter from Texas with a long rap sheet that included many arrests for traffic and illegal drug violations. Two days later his mug shots were broadcast on national television and printed on the cover of every major newspaper in California. The next day Ramirez was mobbed and beaten by residents of a Latino neighborhood in East Los Angeles as he was trying to steal a car. Police had to break up the mob to prevent them from killing Ramirez.
The trial of Richard Ramirez was one of the hardest and longest criminal trials in history. Nearly 1,600 witnesses were interviewed, and some witnesses had a difficult time with memory recall four years after the crimes. However, others were quite certain of their identification of Richard Ramirez.
By the time of the trial, Ramirez had many female fans who were writing him letters and paying him visits. Starting in 1985, freelance magazine editor Doreen Lioy wrote him nearly 75 letters during his incarceration. In 1988 he proposed to her, and in 1996 they were married in California's San Quentin State Prison. |
The Night Stalker
By Phillip Carlo
Research is the strong suit of this book about darkly handsome Richard Ramirez, who terrorized Los Angeles for 14 months in 1984-85 with his penchant for breaking into homes dressed all in black, where he fiercely assaulted, sodomized, robbed, and (in 13 cases) murdered his victims. Carlo spent more than 100 hours interviewing Ramirez on death row, more than a month in El Paso, Texas, talking to Ramirez's family and friends, and another month hanging out with the two detectives who solved the case. He made visits to all 19 crime scenes in the middle of the night. His narrative maintains a steady focus on Ramirez, drawing no conclusions about his Satanism or his mental pathology and simply letting his appalling deeds and words speak for themselves. The trial and post-trial sections are long but interesting, covering Ramirez's rage attacks and his many "groupies" (one of them a juror!), especially Doreen Lloyd, whom he married in September 1996.
MORE... USA
MORE... UK
Night Stalker (A&E)
VHS
For a year, he held Los Angeles captive to fear. Dubbed the Night Stalker, he surprised his victims in their home in the dark, and as the bodies mounted, the public cryed out for the police to stop this horrifying killer. But the Stalker was careful, and the clues he left behind led nowhere. AMERICAN JUSTICE examines the case of The Night Stalker. Hear from the officers who investigated the horrifying crimes, and get a look at some of the crime scenes in police documents and photos. See how the case was finally broken and Richard Ramirez was identified and captured, and meet friends of Ramirez who put their own spin on the grisly acts. Finally, revisit the headline-grabbing trial that saw the Night Stalker put behind bars for the rest of his life.
MORE... USA
|
|
BACK | TOP
|
|