For 14 months in the mid-1980s, one man terrorized residents across the Greater Los Angeles area and later the San Francisco Bay Area. He punched, pistol-whipped, and strangled many of his victims, using both his hands and, in one instance, a ligature. He stopped at least one victim to death in her sleep and tortured another by shocking her with a live electrical cord. The man, Ricardo Richard Olivia Muñoz Ramirez, would become known as The Night Stalker.
On August 30, 1985, Ramirez boarded a bus to Tucson, Arizona, to see his brother. He did not realize he had become the lead story in nearly every major newspaper and television news program in California. Ramirez returned to Los Angeles early on August 31 after failing to meet his brother. He walked past police officers who were staking out the bus terminal in the hopes of apprehending the killer, and into an East Los Angeles convenience store.
After noticing a group of elderly Hispanic women fearfully identifying him as “El Matador,” literally “the killer” in Spanish, Ramirez saw his face on the front page of the newspaper La Opinión with a headline calling him “El Visitante Nocturno,” meaning “Night Invader. ” He fled the store in a panic. Running across the Santa Ana Freeway, he attempted to carjack an unlocked Ford Mustang but was pulled out by Faustino Piñón, who was running across the street. He then attempted to take car keys from Angelina De La Torre, but her husband, Manuel De La Torre, witnessed the attempt and struck Ramirez over the head with a fence post.
A group of over 10 residents formed and chased Ramirez down Hubbard Street in Boyle Heights. They forced him down and beat him relentlessly. The crowd grew to several hundred people, all trying to get their hands on Ramirez. At around 8 A.
M. , police were called over a disturbance in the area with few details regarding indications of a fight. This ultimately saved him from being killed by the angry crowd, who now knew he was the Night Stalker. The responding officer, in an attempt to calm the angry crowd, stayed behind while Officer Jim Kaiser drove Ramirez to the Hollenbeck police station.
On July 22, 1988, jury selection for the trial began. Ramirez yelled “Hail Satan” during his first court appearance, raising a hand with a pentagram drawn on it. The Los Angeles Times reported on August 3, 1988, that some jail employees overheard Ramirez planning to shoot the prosecutor with a gun he intended to smuggle into the courtroom. As a result, a metal detector was installed outside, and people entering were subjected to extensive searches.
The trial was halted on August 14 because one of the jurors, Phyllis Singletary, failed to appear in court. She was found shot to death in her apartment later that day. The jury was terrified, wondering if Ramirez had somehow orchestrated this event from inside his prison cell and if he could communicate with the other jurors. However, it was eventually determined that Ramirez was not responsible for Singletary’s death.
She was shot and killed by her boyfriend, who later committed suicide in a hotel with the same weapon. The alternate juror who took Singletary’s place was too terrified to return home. Ramirez was ultimately convicted of all charges on September 20, 1989: 13 counts of murder, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries. On November 7, 1989, during the penalty phase of the trial, he was sentenced to death in California.
Following the death sentences, he told reporters, “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.
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On June 7, 2013, Richard Ramirez, best known as the Night Stalker, died of complications secondary to B-cell lymphoma at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, California.