[dramatic music]
GISELE LAVIGNE: It was very, very hot.
It was that summer of unbelievable heat
in Los Angeles County.
Most people at that time were not
hesitant to leave windows open.
GLYNN MARTIN: That day, Jack Vincow walks
up to his mother's apartment.
The window's open, and the front door is unlocked.
Jack proceeds through the front door
and saw that the living room had been completely ransacked.
ALAN YOCHELSON: It looked like somebody
had gone through and taken property, or at least
looking for property.
GLYNN MARTIN: Jack continues through the apartment
to his mother's bedroom.
In there, he finds his mother partially covered by a sheet.
ALAN YOCHELSON: Her throat was horribly
slashed, almost to the bone.
Blood all over the place.
It's just a horrible, horrible scene.
GLYNN MARTIN: He phone's LAPD's 911 line and tells them,
someone has murdered my mother.
Please come quick.
[police sirens]
ALAN YOCHELSON: The police learned that Jennie
Vincow was 79 years old.
She had emigrated from the USSR to New York City.
She raised two sons and managed a rental property and later,
moved out to Los Angeles to be near her son Jack.
GLYNN MARTIN: Jack was undoubtedly horrified.
Who would do this kind of horrific thing
to an elderly woman?
[dramatic music]
Miguel, oh, man.
That guy, when he came back from Vietnam--
He bragged about killing women, Vietnamese and Viet Cong
women as well, molesting them, decapitating some of them
with a machete.
He's got puberty overlapping with exposure to violence.
And I think he started to realize that he was sexually
aroused by images of violence.
GARY BRUCATO: So there was a tragic incident
where Ramirez was spending time with his cousin.
GARY BRUCATO: For a healthy, average individual,
that would have been a horrendous
and traumatic experience.
I think for somebody like Ramirez,
all of the fore and violence at the moment
was probably profoundly exciting.
Unfortunately, Miguel became something
of a surrogate father figure to Ramirez
and, I think, really inspired him.
[music playing]
And people were telling me that he
was going through the garbage cans and eating.
I go, no way.
No way.
He wouldn't do that.
GARY BRUCATO: I think at this time,
Ramirez is also transient, homeless.
And drug use was really just ramping up more and more.
MICHAEL STONE: Cocaine is extremely destabilizing,
causing a diminished sense of self-control of one's
more improper urges.
GARY BRUCATO: He's basically supporting
himself and a serious drug habit with repeat burglary.
And then ultimately, I think, falls in love with satanism.
GARY BRUCATO: Ramirez clearly was
searching for a structured sense of self
to give him a personal identity.
And first, I think he latched on to Miguel,
and then Satan becomes something of a father figure.
[police sirens]
GARY BRUCATO: So it was a hot night.
Ramirez is really very high on cocaine.
He doesn't have a place to sleep.
He's just kind of driving around in a stolen car.
GARY BRUCATO: He's trying to put together enough money
through his various illegal activities
to possibly pick up a sex worker.
And he winds up in Glassel Park.
GARY BRUCATO: In one particular home, there is a open window.
[dramatic music]
Ramirez enters the home and begins
to rifle through the things that are in the home.
But there appeared not to be very much that you could steal.
It may have angered him.
GARY BRUCATO: And in that moment,
you have somebody who was looking
for an outlet for aggression and sexual excitement earlier
in that evening and didn't have it,
and he encounters the sleeping victim
kind of opportunistically.
GARY BRUCATO: Imagine somebody bristling with hostility who
would really think of you only in terms
of how they can take advantage of you, make use of you.
And he finds a knife there in the apartment
and then winds up exploding into a kind of a frenzy of violence.
GLYNN MARTIN: Jennie Vincow, even at
79 years old, tried to fend off her attacker.
She was doing everything she could to save her own life.
GARY BRUCATO: Ramirez winds up butchering Jennie Vincow.
She was really, ultimately mutilated by him.
He probably had a kind of orgasmic sexualized thrill
from the entire frenzy, and I think
would have been left with a feeling
of control, power, domination, feeling on top of the world.
[dramatic music]
ROBIN SANDOVAL: I have a tremendous amount of anger
with regard to how society glorifies serial killers, how
I guarantee you there won't be too many people that
know the name of victims, but they'll
know the name of the killer.
MAN: It's hard to have faith when you've lost so much.
I just try to live--
remember the good things.
WOMAN: Do I forgive him?
I will never forgive him.
He took my parents.
ROBIN SANDOVAL: They were the light.
They were the glue.
They were-- thank God I had them for the 19 years I had them.
That was a gift.
[somber music]