Richard Ramirez walked into a Los Angeles courtroom wearing sunglasses and shackles, charged with 43 crimes, including 13 murders, multiple rapes, robberies, and acts of sodomy. He was the man the media had dubbed the Night Stalker. He was born Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas, the youngest child of Julián and Mercedes Ramirez. His father, a former Juárez city policeman who later worked for a railway, was an alcoholic prone to violent outbursts against his wife and children.
Richard, known to his family as Richie, was smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol by the age of 10. As a 12-year-old, Richard was deeply affected by his older cousin, Miguel “Mike” Ramirez, a decorated Green Beret combat veteran. While serving in Vietnam, Mike had become a serial killer and rapist. He bragged about his war crimes to the young Richard, showing him Polaroid pictures of Vietnamese women he had raped, killed, and mutilated.
Instead of being repulsed, Richard was fascinated. Mike taught his cousin survival skills, including how to kill quietly and how to conceal himself in the dark. Around this time, Richard took to sleeping in a nearby graveyard to escape his father’s fury. On May 4, 1973, a domestic dispute ended with Mike shooting and killing his wife, Jesse.
Richard was present. He later said the murder was more a matter of curiosity than a trauma. Mike was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state mental hospital, his actions attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder from Vietnam. Afterwards, Richard moved in with his older sister Ruth and her husband Roberto, a peeping Tom who accompanied Richard on nighttime excursions.
When Mike was discharged in 1977, he often joined them in watching women in the neighborhood. By the time Richard was 14, he was regularly using LSD, a drug he shared with his cousin. He also developed an interest in Satanism and began combining his sexual fantasies with graphic acts of violence, including rape and murder. Working at a nearby Holiday Inn while still in school, Ramirez used his passkey to rob sleeping guests.
He sexually assaulted two children in the hotel’s elevator, though no charges were ever filed. He was fired after being caught trying to rape a woman by her husband, but the charges were dismissed when the couple declined to travel from out of state to testify. After dropping out of high school, Ramirez moved to California at age 22 and settled there. He began using cocaine, his drug of choice, and committed thefts and burglaries to fund his addiction.
He drifted between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a pattern he continued throughout his year-long crime spree. On April 10, 1984, nine-year-old Mei Leung was lured into the basement of her San Francisco apartment building by Ramirez, who told her he would help her find a lost dollar bill. He beat, strangled, and raped the child before killing her with a switchblade and hanging her partially clothed body from a pipe. His involvement in this murder was not established until 2009, when his DNA was matched to evidence from the scene.
Jenny Vincow, 79, was found murdered in her Los Angeles apartment on June 28, 1984. She had been stabbed repeatedly and her throat slashed so deeply she was nearly decapitated. A fingerprint from Ramirez was found on a screen he had removed to enter the home. This established his pattern of burglary and brutal, heinous murder.
On March 17, 1985, Ramirez shot 22-year-old Maria Hernandez in the face outside her Rosemead home. The bullet ricocheted off keys she was holding, and she survived by pretending to be dead. Minutes later, he shot and killed 34-year-old Dale Okazaki when she raised her head inside her home. Within the hour, he pulled 30-year-old Tsai-Lian “Veronica” Yu from her car in Monterey Park and shot her dead.
The three attacks in a single day drew the media’s attention, which named the unknown attacker the Walk-In Killer and the Valley Intruder. Ramirez entered a home in Whittier on March 27, 1985, shooting sleeping Vincent Zazzara in the head. He then beat and bound Vincent’s wife, Maxine, while demanding valuables. After she retrieved an unloaded shotgun from under the bed, Ramirez shot her three times, retrieved a carving knife from the kitchen, mutilated her body, and removed her eyes, placing them in a jewelry box he took as a souvenir.
Police found his footprints from Avia sneakers, some of the only evidence they had at the time. On May 14, 1985, Ramirez shot William Doi in his Monterey Park bedroom and then raped Doi’s disabled wife, Lillian, after binding her with thumb cuffs. Doi died in the hospital. On May 29, he attacked 83-year-old Mabel Bell and her disabled sister, 81-year-old Florence Lang, in Monrovia, beating them with a hammer.
He raped Lang and drew a pentagram on her thigh and on the walls with lipstick. Bell died from her injuries a day later. In Burbank, Ramirez broke into Carol Kyle’s home, handcuffed her and her 11-year-old son, and ransacked the house. He raped Kyle repeatedly, threatening to cut her eyes out if she looked at him.
On July 2, he killed 75-year-old Mary Louise Cannon in Arcadia, knocking her unconscious with a lamp before stabbing her to death with a butcher knife from her own kitchen. On July 5, 1985, Ramirez bludgeoned 16-year-old Whitney Bennett with a tire iron as she slept in Sierra Madre. He attempted to strangle her with a telephone cord but fled, later claiming he saw electrical sparks and believed Jesus Christ had intervened. Bennett survived but needed 478 stitches.
Two days later, Ramirez beat Joyce Nelson to death by stomping on her face, leaving a shoe print from his Avia sneaker. After assaulting another woman who told him she had nothing left to steal, he forced her to swear on Satan. On July 20, he broke into the Glendale home of Maxon and Lela Kneiding, hacking them with a machete and shooting them in the head. Hours later, in Sun Valley, he shot Chainarong Khovananth in the head and repeatedly raped and beat his wife, Somkid, forcing her to swear on Satan she had no hidden money.
On August 6, 1985, Ramirez shot Chris and Virginia Peterson in their Northridge home. Though seriously injured, the couple fought back and survived. On August 8, he killed Elias Abowath in Diamond Bar and brutally raped his wife, Sakina, after making her reveal where valuables were hidden and swear on Satan she would not scream. She sent her three-year-old son to the neighbors for help after he was freed.
Following the media coverage of his crimes, Ramirez fled to San Francisco. On August 18, 1985, he killed Peter Pan and sexually assaulted his wife, Barbara, before shooting her in the head. At the scene, he left a pentagram and the phrase “Jack the Knife” scrawled in lipstick. When ballistics linked the San Francisco crime to the Los Angeles series, Mayor Dianne Feinstein revealed the connection in a televised press conference, a leak that infuriated detectives who knew the killer would watch the coverage.
Ramirez did, and that night he threw his size 11½ Avia sneakers off the Golden Gate Bridge. Back in Los Angeles, Ramirez broke into the home of Bill Carnes and his fiancée, Inez Erickson. He shot Carnes in the head three times and then beat and sexually assaulted Erickson, forcing her to swear she loved Satan. Before leaving, he told her: “Tell them the Night Stalker was here.
” Erickson survived and gave a detailed description of her attacker. Against the odds, Carnes also survived after surgeons removed two bullets from his head. On August 28, 1985, the stolen car Ramirez had used was found abandoned in Koreatown. Despite his careful attempts to wipe the car clean, police obtained a single fingerprint from the rear-view mirror.
It was positively identified as belonging to Richard Ramirez, a 25-year-old Texas drifter with a lengthy rap sheet. The identification was described as a miracle, as the fingerprint system had only recently been installed and only contained prints of criminals born after January 1, 1960, less than a month before Ramirez was born. The following day, law enforcement released a mug shot of Ramirez from a 1984 auto theft arrest. At a press conference, they announced: “We now know who you are and soon everyone else will.
There will be no place you can hide. ” The public finally had a face for the Night Stalker, but catching him would prove to be another ordeal.