Criminology - "The Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez

Episode Date: October 3, 2021

Before he was known as the "Golden State Killer", Joseph DeAngelo terrorized people all over the state of California. It was in Orange County that he was known as the Night Stalker. But while Joseph DeAngelo's reign of terror was winding down in the mid-1980's, another killer in the Los Angeles area was just getting started. He too would be given the name 'The Night Stalker.' Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the frightening and bizarre crimes of serial killer Richard Ramirez. The details of the crimes committed by Ramirez are brutal. Descriptions provided by survivors were eery right down to their description of his rotting teeth and horrible breath. It took some incredible police work to identify Ramirez and an angry mob to bring him down. Once images hit the newspapers and television, it was evident that Ramirez looked the part of a serial killer and he made sure to play that image to the hilt. But what drove Ramirez to kill? Events that unfolded during his younger years may have played a pivotal role in his murderous desires. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 177 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Mike Morford, what's going on with you, buddy? Not a lot. I got the kids back to school, and I'm getting some extra work done. And we're going to do a big episode, a case that a lot of people have suggested. And I'm excited about this one. What's new with you? Yeah, I'm excited about this episode too.

You know, I'll echo the sentiments that you just made. My girls are back to school. My wife is back to school. She's a teacher. So much different than, you know, it was last year because everybody was home. And, you know, I'm used to being home by myself. But that last year where my wife and daughters was home was very nice, obviously not good. the reason why it happened, but the fact that they were home and we were getting to spend a lot of time together was really nice.

So it's been hard, readjusting. And hopefully everything can get back to normal and everybody can get back on track, get on schedule. Yeah, I think that's what we're all hoping for. We've got some new Patreon supporters. So let's give shoutouts to Carol Laura, Tanya, Jenny L, Eileen Messina, Valerie Snell, Stephanie Gross and Lisa Land. That's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you so much. We give you all a round of applause. That means a lot to us. If there's anyone that would like to help support criminology, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. All right. Let's jump right into this episode.

You know, California has been terrorized by so many different serial killers throughout the years in the late 60s, the Zodiac started to to terrorize the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California, shooting unsuspecting victims on lover's lanes. Then in the 70s, you had the Santa Rosa hitchhiker killer who left a trail of dead young women in rural spots in that area. The grim sleeper, Lonnie Franklin Jr., sexually assaulted and killed women in Los Angeles for many years.

Before he was known as the Golden State Killer, Joseph the Annie. He said people all over California, over a decade. In Vysalia, he was known as the Vysalia ransacker. In Sacramento, he was dubbed the East Area rapist. In Galita, he was known as the Creek Killer. It was an Orange County that he was known as the Nightstocker. But while Joseph DiAngelo's reign of terror was winding down in the mid-1980s, another killer in the Los Angeles area was just getting started.

He, too, would be given the name the Nightstocker, and it would stick. In this episode, we're talking about the frightening and bizarre crimes of serial killer Richard Ramirez. On June 28, 1984, 79-year-old Jenny Van Cowell was found in her Glasshole Park, Los Angeles apartment. She had been stabbed multiple times in the head, neck, and chest while she was asleep. Her throat had been deeply slashed, almost decapitating her. Authorities found a fingerprint. On the screen, her attacker removed in order to enthrase. the apartment, but it didn't match any known criminals in their records.

At the time, police were dumbfounded. Who would attack such a vulnerable, older victim with such viciousness? They thought it was an isolated incident. On March 17, 1985, 22-year-old Maria Hernandez was attacked in the garage of her Rosemite California home. She was shot in the face by the assailant, but she raised her hands instinctively to protect herself, and the bullet actually ricocheted off the keys she was holding. She fell to the ground and quickly decided to play dead, lying still while her attacker walked into her home. Her roommate,

34-year-old Dal Yoshio Kusaki, heard the commotion and saw the attacker coming into the kitchen. She ducked behind the kitchen counter to hide, but peeked over the counter and was shot in the head and killed. The attacker fled the scene and Maria Hernandez called police. She was able to describe the attacker for them as having curly hair, bulging eyes, and wide spaced rotting teeth. It was a very detailed description, and it was clear that the killer's appearance was as frightening as his actions. While Maria had managed to escape with her life that night, her attacker wasn't finished. Less than an hour later. 30-year-old Veronica Yu was pulled out of her car in Monterey Park just nine minutes from Rosemite.

She was shot twice, and her killer fled. Veronica was pronounced dead at the hospital. So you had two murders and a third attempted murder in less than an hour in the same area. And police were quick to connect the attacks and theorized that they were likely committed by the same man. The press took notice and reported on the attacker. L.A. residents started to become aware that someone who the press was giving monikers such as the walk-in killer and the valley intruder due to a home invasion was moving amongst them. The community hoped that this violent killer was just someone passing through, and he wouldn't strike again. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

On March 27, 1985, 64-year-old Vincent Charles Azara was shot in the head while sleeping in his bed at around 2 a.m. in his wittier home, 44-year-old Maxine Levina Zazara woke up after hearing the gunshot and her assailant beat her and tied her hands up, making her tell him where any valuables were. Maxine managed to get her hands untied, and she grabbed an unloaded shotgun from under the bed and pointed it at the attacker. But rather than run off, he shot Maxine three times, killing her.

Her killer then got a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her lifeless body multiple times before cutting her eyes out and putting them in a jewelry box, which he stole and carried away from the house. When police were summoned to the Zazaar's home, they found footprints in the flower beds outside. Police determined that they were from a pair of size 11.5 of V.S. Shoes. At the time, the shoeprint, while being an important clue in the case, didn't stand out to investigators. But as time went on, they would see the same

shoe prints at many crime scenes. Police also matched 22-calibular bullets from the Zazara crime scene to the same weapon that Veronica Yu, Dalokazaki, and Maria Hernandez had been shot with. Police knew that they had a serial offender on their hands, but unfortunately, they didn't know when or where he would strike again. On May 14, 1985, 66-year-old Bill Doye was shot in the face in the bedroom of his Monterey Park home. He had been surprised by an intruder and was in the process of trying to grab his own gun when he was shot. The attacker also beat him until he was unconscious. Bill's wife, 56-year-old Lily and Doye was bound with thumb cuffs and the attacker robbed the home before sexually assaulting

her. After the attacker fled, Bill was able to crawl to a phone and call 911 but he wasn't able to say anything. The open line allowed the call to be traced and police arrived on scene and summoned emergency personnel, and the badly injured doys were rushed to the hospital. Sadly, Bill died as a result of his injuries, but Lillian survived and was able to describe their attacker. On May 29, 1985, an intruder entered the Monrovia home of 83-year-old Mabel Ma Bell and her 81-year-old sister, Florence Nettie Lang. The attacker grabbed the hammer from the kitchen and went into Florence's bedroom,

where he bludgeoned her and tied her up. He then went into Mabel's room and tied her up, beat her, and also shocked her with an electrical cord. He sexually assaulted Florence and used a tube of her own lipstick to draw a pentagram on her thigh and two more on the walls of each victim's bedroom. Two days later, the comatose women were found in their home and rushed to the hospital. And unfortunately, Mabel died from her injuries. On May 30th, just a day after Mabel and Florence were attacked.

an intruder broke into the Burbank home of 42-year-old Carol Kyle, tied her up with panty hose, and locked her handcuffed 12-year-old son in a closet before robbing the home. He untied Carol and forced her to tell him where anything of value was before sexually assaulting her multiple times. He warned her a number of times not to look at him or he would hurt her. Some sources claim that the man threatened to cut her eyes out, while others state that he threatened to shoot her. Carol had perhaps the most interaction with the attacker of any of his victims. She told him that the panty hose were digging into her wrists and hurting her.

And the man loosened the bindings for her and even got her a bathrobe after assaulting her. The assailant took Carol's son out of the closet and handcuffed them together before he took off. Carol was able to describe her attacker as an Hispanic man with long, dark hair, and what she described as awful breath. On July 2nd, a man snuck into the home of 75-year-old widow Mary Louise Cannon. She was bludgeoned with a lamp while she was sleeping and remained unconscious after the beating. the assailant then took a butcher knife from Mary's kitchen and stabbed her, killing her. At autopsy, it was determined that Mary's killer repeatedly stabbed Mary's dead body. To police, this was overkill and sadistic, and it matched some of the other cases in its brutality.

On July 5th, 16-year-old Whitney Bennett was bludgeoned with the tire iron while she was sleeping in her Sierra Madre home. The intruder made his way into the kitchen, looking, through the knife drawer, but apparently didn't find one he wanted because he instead strangled Whitney with a telephone cord until sparks began to come out of the court, causing him to flee. Now, Whitney Bennett survived this brutal attack, but only barely. She needed approximately 400 stitches in her head. The second attack in three days around the Independence holiday came during a heat wave when temperatures in the LA area were hitting well over 90 degrees. Police were battling the heat and searching for a dangerous and violent predator. And the last thing that police wanted

was an entire community in fear. Detectives across Los Angeles were connecting the dots of a serial killer, one that killed indiscriminately, attacking both men and women of all ages. He attacked out in public, and most frighteningly of all, he attacked inside people's homes, sometimes while they were sleeping in their own beds. These detectives were scouring for any clues or leads that might help them stop the dangerous predator that was wreaking havoc on Los Angeles. A recent traffic stop related to an attempted kidnapping, interested detectives near Eagle Rock in northeast Los Angeles, an unidentified young woman had fought off an attempted kidnapping and the attacker fled in a Toyota.

After driving off, the driver committed a traffic violation and was pulled over by police. While the officer was calling in the stop, the driver dressed in dark clothing bolted from the car and ran off into the night. The car thief and would-be kidnapper matched the descriptions given of what the press had been calling the walk-in killer or the valley intruder. When police searched the abandoned Toyota, they found that the driver had drawn a pentagram in the dust on the inside of the windshield. The police found out that the car had been stolen and they brought it to an impound lot. Detectives working the unsolved murder cases connected to their serial predator requested access to the car. They hoped it would yield prints or other clues, but for some reason, which isn't exactly clear, they couldn't get access. to it. And it sat in the impound lot for almost a month. In the meantime, the driver, who they suspected

might be the killer they were hunting, was out roaming free. Following the July 4th holiday, the staggering heat wave dissipated as temps dropped into the 70s. For a brief moment, the community was relieved. Then, on July 7th, 60-year-old Joyce Nelson was asleep on the couch in her Monterey Park home. When someone broke in, and killed her by stomping on her face multiple times. The killer left Joyce's home and went to 63-year-old Sophie Dickman's home, where he broke in and handcuffed her at gunpoint, before attempting to sexually assault her and then stole her jewelry.

While she was being robbed, Joyce told her attacker that she swore he had all the valuables and money in the house, and the assailant then forced her to swear it to Satan. Sophie survived her attack and relayed what had happened to police. the swear to Satan remark, coupled with the pentagrams, was an ominous clue that the serial killed on the loose might very well be a Satanist. Police examined the crime scene at Joyce Nelson's home. While looking over her body, they found a disturbing but by now familiar clue on her face. What they found was the imprint from the bottom of a size 11 and a half of Via Shoe. Police had no doubt,

who was responsible, they just didn't know who this person was. Detectives were finally able to search the stolen Toyota that had been used in the attempted Eagle Rock kidnapping. Inside, they found a business card for a dentist in Chinatown. It was perhaps their biggest clue yet. When detectives talked to the dentist, they determined that the suspect had visited the dentist and had used the name Richard Minna. police couldn't find anyone by that name.

And so they felt that it was likely made up. But still, since this mysterious Richard Minna had sought treatment for a very painful, impacted tooth, they thought most likely he would return to the dentist for further treatment. So they staked out his office. But their attempts proved fruitless when Richard Minna didn't return. In the early morning hours of July 20th, the Glendale Homey, of Leela and Max Needing was broken into. The assailant attacked the sleeping couple with the

machete before shooting them in their heads with a 22 caliber handgun. Later ballistics test would match this case to the other shootings, so police knew this was their serial predator. The killer mutilated the Needing's bodies with the machete before robbing the home and fleeing. But this monster's sadistic appetite for violence was apparently not satisfied, because after killing the needings, he immediately sought out another victim. At around 4.15 a.m. He broke into the Covenanth home in Sun Valley. Chanoronged Covenanth was shot in the head while he slept. Only this time, the killer used a 25 caliber handgun. He then beat Somkid Covenanth and sexually assaulted her. The Covenant's eight-year-old son was tied up and the

assailant took Somkid around the house, forcing her to tell him where all of their valuables were. He made some kids swear to Satan that he had all the valuables. The attacker also sexually assaulted their eight-year-old son before fleeing. There was no doubt in the minds of police they needed to catch this person. He was killing multiple people in some cases, in multiple homes within a span of hours, and he had now sexually assaulted a child. It appeared that there was nothing this killer wouldn't do, and that anyone could be the next victim.

By this point, the press and people in the community were widely calling this unknown predator the night stalker. Locksmiths were busy as people tried to make sure their homes were secure, gun sales went up, people were taking self-defense classes, and many residents formulated plans on what to do if they encountered the night stalker. Meanwhile, police were keeping vigilant and increased their patrols in suspected target areas. They hoped that their efforts would help prevent the night stalker from striking again. But unfortunately, it didn't work.

On August 6th, an attacker broke into the Northridge home of Pris and Virginia Peterson. He shot Virginia in the face and shot Chris in the neck. But Chris fought back and chased the assailant out of the house. Fortunately, both of the Peterson survived the attack and provided a description to police that matched other night stalker attacks. Then on August 8th, just two days after the Peterson's were attacked in the middle of the night, An intruder broke into the home of Sakina and Elias Avala in Diamond Bar. He shot 31-year-old Elias in the head with a 25 caliber handgun while he slept, killing him.

The assailant then handcuffed Sakina and beat her, forcing her to tell him where their valuables were before sexually assaulting her. During this attack, he forced her to swear to Satan multiple times that she wouldn't scream. the Abelah's three-year-old son entered the master bedroom during the attack, and the assailant tied him up and continued to sexually assault Sakina. After the attacker fled, Sakina untied her three-year-old son, and he went to a neighbor to get help. While residents of the L.A. area were in full panic over the Nightstocker crimes, the people in San Francisco 400 miles north,

only had to hear about the shocking crimes when they read the paper. or turned on the nightly news. The nightstocker crimes didn't affect them directly, but that all changed on August 18, 1985. The nightstocker moved north and broke into the home of Peter and Barbara Pan in San Francisco. Sixty-nine-year-old Peter was shot to death with a 25-caliber handgun as he slept. The attacker then sexually assaulted and beat 62-year-old Barbara before he shot her in the head, killing her. The couple were found dead by their son. When investigators arrived at the home, they found that the killer had drawn a pentagram and wrote jacked a knife on the wall and lipstick, which was a reference to the Judas Priest song, The Ripper. A via shoe prints were also

found at the Pan Home. Initially, detectives in Northern California thought that this attack couldn't possibly be the Nightstocker, but the similarities and the clues couldn't be ignored. Sure enough, the bullets and the shoe prints from the Panholm match the bullets and shoe prints from the L.A. area murders. Because of V-S-S-Us were not all that common at the time, L.A. detectives Frank Salerno and Gil Carrillo reached out to the manufacturer, ultimately finding out that only one pair of size 11 and a half of VSA shoes in that style had been sent to a store in Los Angeles. The other five pairs in that size were sent to Arizona. This was a very valuable clue, but it was sort of like

a Cinderella situation. They had no way to know who that shoe belonged to, and they would almost have to find a suspect that could be matched to that shoe. And we mentioned it more that this was not a popular brand at the time. They're more popular now. I think when you narrow it down to the size and the style, you know, to think that only six pairs in that size and style were even in the United States. I mean, I think that just gives you an idea of how rare these were back then. When police verified that the nightstocker had come to San Francisco, the San Francisco Mayor, Diane Feinstein, held a televised press conference.

She announced that the ballistics and shoe prints from the Los Angeles murders and the Pan murders in San Francisco matched. Investigators believe this was a huge blunder on her part, because the killer would now know to get rid of the only pair of size 11 and a half of via shoes in the entire state of California. However, some good did come from that press conference. The manager of the Hotel Bristol in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco came forward, and he informed police of a man who would run a room off and on from him, a man with rotting teeth who drew a pentagram on the bathroom door.

The man had checked out on August 17th just before the pans were murdered. Detectives went to the hotel and checked out the room, even removing the door with the pentagram on it. It's not clear if the tenant had supplied the manager with his real name when he ran in the room. While police were scrambling, looking in San Francisco for clues, unbeknownst to them, the nightstocker moved back down to Southern California. According to an article written by Paul Buchanan for LA Magazine and

published in May of 2017 on August 24th, 1985, a 13-year-old boy in Mission Viejo named James Romero the third was restless after coming home from a trip, riding in his family's camper trailer. In the middle of the night, he decided to head outside to get a pillow he had forgotten in the camper. He heard a noise and he looked up to see someone standing on his property in the shadows. He raced back inside, telling his parents that there was someone outside. James then ran to his garage to get another look at the trespasser. He saw a man in dark clothes walking briskly towards an orange Toyota hatchback with a distinctive chrome roof rack. James got a good look at the car's license plate as it sped away from the scene and was able to remember part of the license plate 482T.

his family called police and reported the details of what had happened along with the vehicle's description and partial plate number. And to me, more, this is amazing. You have a 13 year old boy who sees someone and makes the connection that, okay, something's not right here to the point where he takes the initiative to get a look at this guy's vehicle and is able to, able to remember part of the license plate. To me, that is amazing for a 13-year-old to do. Especially because it was at night, it was dark out, he might have been half asleep, and to have the wherewithal to catch all those details, it was an important clue that would later help the police. After James apparently scared off the intruder, the man drove the

orange Toyota to the home of Bill Carnes and his fiance, Inez Erickson. and broke into their home through the back door. 30-year-old Bill and 29-year-old Inez were asleep, but Bill woke up when the attacker cocked his handgun. The intruder shot Bill three times with a 25-caliber gun, and then beat Inez and tied her up with neckties he got out of the closet. The man told her that he was the night-stalker, and then he robbed the home. He then took Inez to another room and sexually assaulted her.

He asked Inez for more money and for jewelry, and forced her to swear on Satan that she had given him everything. Before the assailant left, he said, tell them the Nightstock was here. Inez got herself loose from the necktie and was able to see her attacker getting into an orange Toyota driving off. She called 911 and police and EMTs to send it on the home. At the hospital, surgeons were able to remove two of the three bullets in Bill's head, and he survived the attack. Inez was able to give a detailed description of the Nightstocker, right down to the overwhelming stench of his breath. So this is multiple instances where this guy has described as having jagged, rotten teeth and stinking breath.

I mean, his actions speak for themselves. He's already a horrendous individual. But to have this look that goes along with his actions to make him look like the monster that he actually is is very frightening. Well, it's a good point, Morif. And I think it's one of the things that draws so many people to this case. Obviously, what the night stalker did, his actions, they were horrific. But when you see him, there's something about his look that almost correlates to what he did. I don't know if that makes sense. You know, you have a lot of serial killers who, when they're ultimately found out, when police figure out who they are, you look at them and think, well, they don't look all that scary. Now, what they did was horrible, right?

Obviously, no doubt about that. When you look at the night stalker, and we're going to get into who it is and everybody knows who it is. But when you look at him, he's scary just in his appearance. Yeah, a lot of these guys will often look normal or average or you get someone like Ted Bundy that's described as handsome and not everyone looks like the monster under the bridge. But I always compare someone to Audist Tool or to Henry Lee Lucas that look like they could be serial killers. And I think the Nightstocker fits that bill. Yeah, I agree. He's definitely on that side of the fence for sure.

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The 1976 orange Toyota station wagon, which the night stalker had stolen, was found abandoned in downtown L.A. on August 28th. The car had been wiped clean of most prints, but investigators were able to find one usable fingerprint on the rearview mirror. The problem they had was that they needed someone to match the fingerprint too. And it was the 1980s. There were no computer data. databases to help them out, they decided to track down a leak that a woman had passed on two detectives. She said that her father thought he knew who the nightstocker was. He said he believed it was a man named Rick from El Paso, Texas. And his belief was formed because he said Rick had information about the crimes that wasn't public. So no doubt, police were highly interested because the name Rick matched the information from the dentist office. Rick being short for Richard, but that wasn't the only lead that police had. An investigation into a stolen bracelet revealed that a man named Richard Ramirez from El Paso had fenced the item. Rick

finally had a last name and the print finally had a match. It belonged to 25-year-old Ricardo Richard Lever-Rameras, a transient from Texas with a lengthy criminal record. mostly full of traffic violations and drug charges. His fingerprint also matched a fingerprint taken from the Pan home in San Francisco. Police finally knew who they were looking for. The Night Stalker had a name, Richard Ramirez. Now they just had to catch him before he killed again. On August 29, 1985, police released a mugshot of Richard Ramirez from a previous auto theft arrest to the media,

with an accompanying statement that read, We know who you are, and soon, everyone else will. There will be no place you can hide. The news of the identification spread like wildfire all over California, and people all over the state were looking for Richard Ramirez. On August 30th, Richard Ramirez took a bus from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona, where he intended to meet his brother. But for whatever reason, Ramirez didn't end up meeting with his brother and instead

returned to L.A. on the morning of August 31st, a decision that would result in, his reign of terror, finally coming to an end. The Nightstalker was the headliner lead on virtually every piece of news media in California. Richard Ramirez's face had been seen by countless people. Police officers were watching bus terminals in hopes of catching the Nightstocker, fleeing on a bus. Ramirez saw the officers in the East Los Angeles bus terminal, and he ran into a convenience store to get away from them. In the store, a group of women spotted him and pointed him out yelling El Matador, or the killer in Spanish. And it was ironic because he was standing near a newspaper rack with his face on the front of just about every newspaper on the rack.

Ramirez fled from the store and ran across the I-5 freeway. He tried to steal the Mustang of a man named Faustino. He was in his driveway working on his cars, so the keys were in the car. the ignition. As Ramirez tried to back out of the driveway, Faustino reached through the window and grabbed him, keeping a hold of him and causing Ramirez to lose control of the car. Fostino dragged Ramirez out of the car, and he got up and ran across the street. He tried to steal Angelina Deloress's car, but she fought back and screamed for help, and bystanders chased him away. Neighbors ran outside and instantly recognized Ramirez from all of the coverage. It was the nightstocker,

and he was standing in front of them. The neighbors chased Ramirez as he jumped over fences to try to get away from them until one person, Angelina Delo Torres's husband, actually hit Ramirez in the head with a metal fence post. Ramirez had made it only about one block before the neighborhood residents subdued him. The group held him down and they beat him while they waited for the police to arrive. It was poetic in a way. Someone that had hidden himself in the darkness attacking Los Angeles residents was now exposed in the light of day.

And now he was the one who was in danger. When police finally showed up, they found an angry mob of people beating Richard Ramirez, the feared nightstocker. He yelled out to police almost crying for help, saying, it's me. It's me. so that officers could identify him faster and get him to safety.

And I think more, he probably was lucky that the police got to him before he was hurt even worse or possibly even killed. He told police as they grabbed him that he was happy that they got to him. So I just think it kind of really illustrates the anger that this mob. that this mob had, you know, this was a person who had struck a great deal of fear into the city. Once they knew it was him, man, they were not going to let him go. Yeah, it seems like this could have been a case of some vigilante justice.

And I think it would have been, most likely, if police had not gotten there in time. According to a May 1986 LA Times article, Officer Daniel Rodriguez stated that Ramirez actually started crying and asked, Why don't you just go ahead and kill me? He also confessed to the murders and said, I just feel like dying, and I'm sorry for everything I've done. Because Ramirez hadn't been read as Miranda right yet, officers didn't question him. At that point, they were there just to save him. When police got Ramirez to the station, he yelled out that he just. just wanted the electric chair. He also hit his head on the table and asked for a gun to play

a Russian roulette with. Police read Ramirez's rights and arrested him for the nightstocker crimes. The news quickly got out and residents of Los Angeles breathed a little easier with the prolific predator apparently being in custody. On September 3rd, 1985, Ramirez was taken to a prison dentist, Dr. Alfred Otero, who wound up repairing nine of the killer's teeth. over a period of nine months. But as often happens more, if it took a number of years to get Ramirez into court, on July 22nd, 1988, during his first court appearance for jury selection, Ramirez grinned at females in the courtroom from behind his sunglasses,

which he refused to take off, but he was smiling, showing off his new dental work. Ramirez yelled out, hail Satan and raised his hand, revealing a pentagram. He had drawn on it. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. On August 3rd of that year, it was reported in the New York Times that Ramirez was plotting to smuggle in a gun and shoot the prosecutor. So authorities installed metal detectors outside of the courtroom and they hand-searched people coming inside. Well, people were, drawn to the Ramirez case because they wanted to learn more about the horrible person at the center of the nightstocker crimes. Some people were drawn to him for other reasons. Ramirez began

getting fan mail. As we've seen in a lot of cases of notorious killers, some people wind up feeling connected to the people that do these horrible things. Ted Bundy, for example. Ramirez proposed to one of the women that reached out to him, 41-year-old freelance magazine editor, Doreen Loy, who had written him almost 75 letters while he was in jail. Doreen was one of many women that had a relationship of sorts with Richard Ramirez while he was behind bars, flirting, sending letters, and visiting. Doreen even got into a physical altercation with another one of Ramirez's so-called girlfriends. But in the end, she won out and got the man she wanted all to herself. And more, I'm sure you've heard me say this before, I'll say it again.

I don't understand why women are drawn to, these men, even after all of the details have come out about how vicious their crimes were, drawn to them to the point where they want to write them, they ultimately want to marry them, I don't get it. Now, we know it happens with men too. They're drawn to women who have committed unspeakable crimes. I don't understand any of it. I think that's a whole other level of interest in these kind of cases because it always seems to draw people that you would think normally would be repulsed by these killers and to find out that they're not and they want to create relationships with them. It's just another layer to think about. Well, and we all have a

fascination with killers, crime. I mean, it's why we do what we do. It's why we listen to true crime podcast. It's why we watch those type of television shows. But to me, this is much different. This is not, you know, trying to understand what made someone do what they did or trying to understand the crime so that maybe you can keep something like this from happening to yourself. This is actually falling in love with a person who has hurt so many people. I, I, I just will never understand it. On April 14th, 1989, the prosecution rested after entering 137 witnesses and 521 exhibits at trial, along with eyewitness testimony, fingerprints, ballistics, and the rare shoe prints.

The crimes had been linked together. And to Ramirez, through the inverted pinagrams drawn on victims at crime scenes, and in a stolen car with his print Senate. Jury deliberations began on July 26, 1989. Jurors had to wade through about 8,000 pages of transcripts. On August 14th, juror Phyllis Singletary didn't show up to court. She was found dead in her apartment. She had been shot and killed.

And this terrified the rest of the jury who wondered if Ramirez had somehow targeted Singletary and may want to harm them as well. It turned out that Phyllis had been killed by her boyfriend, James Melton. The weapon used to kill her was matched to the weapon he used to take his own life with in a hotel. The juror that replaced Phyllis was too afraid to go back to her own home. The defense tried to have the judge to clear a mistrial, but he refused. The trial to hold the Nightstocker accountable for his crimes was the most expensive trial in California history up to that point. It cost $1.8 million, or the equivalent of $3.76 million today,

and was unsurpassed until O.J. Simpson's 1994 murder trial. In the end, Richard Ramirez was convicted of five counts of attempted murder, 11 counts of sexual assault, 13 counts of murder, and 14 counts of burglary on September 20, 1989. He was given 19 death sentences on November 9, 1989. When he left the courtroom, the media yelled out for Ramirez to comment on the sentence. He yelled back, big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland. On October 3rd, 1996, Richard Ramirez married Doreen Lyo at California San Quentin State Prison.

Doreen was very obsessed with Ramirez. She claimed that when he was executed, she would take her own life. Doreen Ramirez knew that most people would. wouldn't understand her choice to marry the serial killer, and the two started their married life separated by walls and bars. In 2006, the California Supreme Court rejected Ramirez's appeal, doomed him to stay on death row as he awaited his execution. While he awaited death, he was connected to yet another victim who died at his hands. In 2009, DNA from Ramirez was matched to DNA from the April 10th, 1984 murder of 9-year-old May Linda Loon, San Francisco.

Ramirez had been living in an apartment in the Tenderling District of San Francisco, and saw Linda and her eight-year-old brother looking for a dollar bill she had dropped. He told her he knew where the dollar bill was and asked her to fall into the basement, where he beat, strangled, and sexually assaulted the little girl, before stabbing her to death with a switchblade and hanging her from a pipe with her own shirt. It was a brutal and heinous crime that might not have ever been solved their link to Ramirez without DNA. But shockingly, Ramirez hadn't acted alone when he killed Linda. In 2016, authorities revealed that a second suspect was involved in Linda's murder and that he was also matched through DNA.

Seamen with DNA matching this convicted felon along with seaman from Ramirez and Linda's blood were on the the same handkerchief found in the tenderloin district basement where Linda was killed. However, the identity of this accomplice was not made public because this person was a minor at the time of the crime. There's also apparently a lack of evidence of their involvement in the actual murder of the little girl because authorities have never pressed any charges against him. authorities have stated that Linda's family have been ruled out as suspects in her murder. After the DNA from Linda's murder scene matched Richard Ramirez, proving he had sexually assaulted a nine-year-old.

Doreen left Richard Ramirez. So I think, you know, when you look at all of his crimes more, a lot of them were extremely heinous. We've said that, but apparently once Doreen learned about this one, this was it, this was the crime that crossed the line in her mind. There's one more suspected victim of the nightstocker, though Ramirez has claimed more than 20 victims. On July 2nd, 1985, 32-year-old Patty Lane Higgins didn't show up for work. And when people became concerned, they went to our home in Arcadia, California, to check on her. That's when they discovered her dead. Police recalled, and it was determined that she had been murdered on June 27th, five days earlier.

She had been strangled, sexually assaulted, and her throat had been slashed. Due to the very similar MO in the area, police believe that Ramirez is responsible for her death, but apparently don't have the physical evidence to prove it. A woman named Anastasia Ronas recently talked about her ordeal with the Nightstocker on Netflix's four-part series Nightstalker the hunt for a serial killer. When Anastasia was just six years old, in February and March of 1985, there was a series of child abductions in the greater Los Angeles area. Anastasia recalled seeing a man outside of her window and being carried out of her home

through a window and taken to a car. The man told her to open the glove compartment. And when she did, she saw a gun. He forced her to touch him and then put her into a duffel bag and took her inside a home. She remembers as being what she called Dengie. The man sexually assaulted her before putting her back into a duffel bag and then back in the car. The man finally pulled over and told her to go into a gas station and call 911 so that she could go home. Anastasia was shown a photo lineup of men by police from which she picked out Richard.

Richard Ramirez. Many people still to this day, almost 40 years after he began terrorizing California, have no idea that Richard Ramirez molested and sexually assaulted children. They think of him as someone who only attacked adults. So it's very possible that Ramirez did abduct an assault and Estasia, but he was never charged in connection to her case. On June 7, 2013, 53-year-old Richard Ramirez died from complications of B-cell lymphoma. He was a patient at Marin General Hospital in Greenbury, California. He also suffered from a chronic hepatitis C infection, probably due to his chronic substance abuse. His skin was reported a green shade due to his illness when he died. Ramirez would have likely been on death row for another 20 years before being executed, if ever, due to the appeals process in California.

Whatever secrets Ramirez had related to any crimes unconnected to him, he took to his grave. Ramirez may have been gone, but the questions remained. How did he turn into the nightstocker in the first place? And what had led him down such a dark path? A glimpse in Richard Ramirez's life as a child and young adult is troubling to say the least. Richard Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas on February 29, 1960. His mother was exposed to chemicals while pregnant with him. him and all of his siblings who all had various birth defects, his father Julianne drank a lot

and often had angry episodes where he would physically abuse his children. Sometimes it would get so bad that Richard would often sleep in a local cemetery just to be safe from his own father. On May 4, 1973, when Richard was 12 years old, his cousin Miguel Mike Ramirez showed him Polaroid photos of himself, a Green Beret veteran, sexually assaulting female Viet Cong rebels and other Vietnamese women and girls who were suspected of loyalty to communist forces. Richard was also shown photos of these women being killed with a machete and decapitated after being sexually assaulted.

Miguel taught Richard some of the things he learned as a Green Beret. skills that Ramirez later used to break into homes and kill people. Miguel himself was a serial killer and rapist while serving in Vietnam and helped shape Richard Ramirez before he was even in high school. Ramirez and Miguel would smoke pot and drink alcohol together, a bonding ritual that had started when Ramirez was just around 10 years old. While drinking and smoking, Miguel would regal Ramirez with his stories from the Vietnam War and all the crimes he had committed overseas.

He even taught Ramirez how to quickly and quietly kill. Ramirez recounted that he was never traumatized or grossed out by images or stories of rape and murder. Instead, he simply found them fascinating. In 1973, Miguel and his wife were arguing and he shot her in the face, killing her. Richard, who was just 13 years old at the time, witnessed the murder. He later admitted that he didn't feel traumatized. by this event. Again, he just found it interesting. Miguel was incarcerated for the murder and Ramirez moved in with Ruth, his older sister and her family. Ruth's husband, Roberto, was a peeping

Tom and he sometimes took Richard with him when he went prowling at night. Ramirez started experimenting with LSD and looking into Satanism during this time period. Miguel was found not guilty of his wife's murder by reason of insanity. He had very severe PTSD from his time in combat and spent four years at the Texas State Mental Hospital. Miguel was released in 1977 and continued to talk with and influence Richard Ramirez, with the two still smoking, drinking, and doing drugs together. Miguel would even go with Roberto and Richard when they went out prowling at night, or I guess you could say night stalking, peeking through windows and spying on

and unsuspecting women. Richard started stealing as a teenager to support his habitual drug abuse. Richard Ramirez took a job working at a holiday inn and began dabbling in some of his earliest known crimes. He would rob sleeping hotel guests by using his employee pass key and he was actually caught molesting two children in the elevator. However, unbelievably, he was never arrested or even reported for any of this. he was still employed at the holiday inn up until the time he tried to sexually assault a woman

staying at the hotel and her husband interrupted him and beat him badly. It was after this event that Richard was charged for this rape attempt, but the charges were dropped because the couple lived out of state and they refused to return to testify against him. When Richard Ramirez was a freshman in high school at Jefferson High School in El Paso, Texas, He dropped out of school. He moved to California when he was 22 years old. Two years later, when Ramirez was 24, his first known crime as an adult, the murder of 9-year-old May Lung and San Francisco was committed.

Whoever the second person was at the scene of her murder, he would be in his mid-50s at most today. And it's unclear whether they're still in prison. Because his identity has been kept confidential, the public has no way to know of someone who possibly helped kill a 9-year-old, or at the very least. sexually assault her and was never held accountable for it, has been released and is out there someplace. Psychiatrist Michael Stone believes that Richard Ramirez developed temporal lobe epilepsy, aggressivity, and hypersexuality due to multiple occasions of being hit on the head and becoming

unconscious. These events happened before he was six years old. When Richard was two, a dresser fell on his head. And when he was five, a swing hit his head and he became unconscious. Whatever was the true cause for Richard Ramirez to embark on his life of violent crime may never be known. Maybe it was a combination of things. Or perhaps Ramirez was just truly an evil person. And he believed in his mind he was serving Satan. What we do know is that he'll go down in the books as one of California's, if not the nation's most infamous serial killers. And more normally we would talk about, you know, a killer's kind of upbringing or things that happened to them early on up front in the episode, this time we chose to kind of talk about it

at the end. But I do think some of these things are important to analyze. We've talked a lot about head trauma. I think it's well known that a lot of serial killers experienced head trauma. There's some type of connection there. But what I think is so different about Richard Ramirez than what we see in the cases of many serial killers is him having almost a mentor or multiple mentors who, you know, talking about crimes. We're showing him pictures of crimes and also giving him advice on how to commit crimes and get away with it. I just don't think that's something that we see in the background of a lot of killers. Yeah, a lot of times you look for one thing specifically, but here there's so many possibilities, the head injuries, the bad mentors, and a lot of that can have an effect on

children with developing minds. But I think also it's important to point out that a lot of people probably had bad people in their lives showing them bad things or suffered head trauma as kids. And a lot of them didn't become serial killers. So you have to wonder why certain people grow up to be serial killers and people that have gone through similar types of trauma go on to lead normal lives or at least not become serial killers. Oh yeah. I mean, I've heard from so many different people, fans of the podcast that we do who have said, you know, they experienced some of the very same things that we talk about in the

childhoods of some of these serial killers. And they grew up to be fine. And I think that's in a very important point to make. These things that we talk about, you know, the bedwetting, the animal cruelty even, the fire starting, the head injuries, they don't absolutely necessarily mean that someone is going to grow up to be a bad person, right? Are those things good? No, bedwetting's kind of normal, but, you know, starting fires and being cruel to animals, that stuff is not good, but people can grow out of that and lead completely, you know, normalize, be very valuable to society. So it's not an all in situation. But I just find Richard's kind of upbringing to be fascinating because we've all had, let's say, an uncle who maybe we looked up to,

let us do some things, maybe that our parents wouldn't let us do the cool uncle, right? But I don't think many of us, I hope not, have had a person, an uncle in our lives who went to this extreme, you know, describing sexual assaults and murders, showing pictures. I mean, what does that do in the mind of a young impressionable person? Yeah, I don't think there's any question that that's going to affect them in a negative way. But I think a lot of people, it's hard to feel any sympathy, no matter what the cause for Richard Ramirez because of the crimes he committed were so heinous. He attacked young children. He attacked the elderly men, women.

No one was off limits. And we talked about how he even continued to sexually assault a woman in front of her child. It's just so many demented things, bizarre and disgusting things that he did. And I think a lot of people, in the end, they don't really care what the root cause was that are just happy that he was stopped. Well, I'll disagree with you in just one point. I agree that you're not going to get a lot of sympathy for a guy like Richard Ramirez. But I think that people do care about what happened just from the standpoint of trying to figure him out, right? putting the pieces together to see, you know, was it this, was it that? Or was it just a combination

of everything? Or like we said, was this kid just evil? And no matter what he was exposed to, he was going to do some bad things. But I think that's part of the fascination of, you know, some of these killers trying to figure out how they became what they ultimately became. Thanks goes out to Sunny Landon for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends, that word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group,

Criminology Podcast, Discussion, and Fans. So more if that's it for our episode on Richard Ramirez, the night stalker, no doubt, one of the most infamous serial killers, you know, didn't have the numbers that maybe some others did, but the look, the scariness of what this guy looked like, the pentagrams, the, you know, just the whole persona that came out after he was captured, it captivated. the nation and kind of catapulted him into a different level, I guess I would say, in the pantheon of serial killers because of some of the things that, you know, he did even after his crimes were known about.

Very scary guy. No question. Yeah, no doubt about that. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morf. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.