With no apparent motive, the serial killer who would come to be known as the Night Stalker
attacked in the dead of night, savagely assaulting his victims.
Richard Ramirez was a self-styled devil worshipper who killed at random.
This is the horrifying true story of the Night Stalker.
Richard Ramirez was born Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez in El Paso, Texas, on Feb. 29, 1960.
His father, Julian Ramirez, a former police officer, was a stern man who had been physically
abused by his father and grandfather, and visited the same treatment upon his four sons.
As recounted in The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez, by Philip Carlo,
Julian also turned his rage upon himself.
Richard once witnessed his father beat himself bloody with a hammer.
To avoid his father's erratic temper, Richard often slept in a nearby cemetery.
A reclusive child prone to epileptic seizures, Richard became close to his cousin Miguel
Ramirez, a decorated Vietnam veteran.
Miguel regaled a teenaged Richard with violent tales and showed him graphic photographs of
decapitations and war crimes.
Ramirez would later quote his older cousin as saying:
"Having power over life and death was a high.
You controlled who lived and who died — you were God."
In 1973, 12-year-old Richard watched his cousin kill his wife with a 38-caliber pistol.
At age 13, Richard, unable to cope with his father's abuse, moved in with his older sister
Ruth and her husband Roberto Avala.
To Ruth's anger, Roberto, an obsessed peeping tom, took Richard with him on his nightly
rounds of spying in the windows of neighborhood women.
Under the cover of night, Richard went beyond peeping and began breaking into homes just
to see if he could enter and escape undetected.
Initially, Richard Ramirez's drug use was limited to marijuana, which he began experimenting
with at age 10.
He began to use the drug more regularly with his cousin Miguel Ramirez.
Miguel's killing of his wife seemed to flick a switch inside the troubled youth.
He never told his parents he had witnessed the killing.
Richard became more withdrawn and began getting into trouble at school.
As recounted in Night Stalker: A Shocking Story of Satanism, Sex, and Serial Murders,
by Clifford Linedecker, Richard's late night breaking and entering landed him in a youth
camp for juvenile delinquents.
At 15, Richard managed to get a job cleaning rooms and carrying luggage at a motel, where
he would perform break-ins and once attempted a sexual attack on an occupant.
After two failed attempts at the ninth grade, Richard left school at 17 with no direction,
a juvenile record, and reputation as a thief.
Soon, he started using LSD, mushrooms, and peyote, and believed he was developing a personal
rapport with Satan.
“Hail Satan.”
On April 10, 1984, 9-year-old Mei Leung and her little brother were playing in the apartment
building where they lived in San Francisco's Tenderloin district.
The little girl wandered off to the building's basement looking for a lost dollar.
Mei Leung's lifeless body was found hanging from a pipe by her brother.
She had been repeatedly stabbed and strangled.
Police, baffled by the lack of evidence, failed to identify a suspect, and the case went cold
until 2009, when DNA evidence found at the scene was positively identified as belonging
to Richard Ramirez.
According to author Philip Carlo, Richard Ramirez was coming down from a cocaine high
and desperate for cash on the evening of June 27, 1984.
He had spent much of the night cruising Los Angeles' skid row in a stolen car when he
decided to take the 10 Freeway to Glassell Park, a neighborhood near Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Searching for a house to rob, he settled on a shabby, pink apartment building.
His target was the first floor apartment of 79-year-old widow Jennie Vincow, who had moved
to Los Angeles from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, just three years prior.
Carefully surveying his surroundings, Ramirez donned a pair of gardening gloves and sneaked
across the building's small courtyard.
Vincow's window was open with only a flimsy screen between her and her killer.
Unable to pry the screen off, Ramirez removed his gloves to make the job easier.
Slipping through the open window, he carefully searched the apartment.
Enraged when he found nothing of value, Ramirez descended on Vincow as she slept.
He viciously stabbed the elderly woman, nearly decapitating her.
The bloody era of the Night Stalker had begun.
According to Carlo, Richard Ramirez bought a 22-caliber pistol off the street in March 1985.
The small gun was easy to conceal and relatively quiet, and would be deadly at point blank range.
Clad in his customary black, he pulled down his dark blue AC/DC cap.
With his favorite band's Highway to Hell album blaring over his headphones, he stole a car
from a nearby gas station and followed 22-year-old Maria Hernandez to her Rosemead, California home.
Under cover of night, he followed Hernandez into her garage.
Closing to a distance of two feet, he fired at her.
The terrified young woman instinctively raised her hands.
Miraculously, the small caliber bullet ricocheted off her keys.
Lucky to be alive, Hernandez slumped to the floor and played dead.
Hernandez's roommate, Dayle Okazaki, 34, wouldn't be so lucky.
After she moved from her hiding place below a kitchen counter, Ramirez killed her with
a single shot to the head.
Fleeing the scene in his stolen car, an emboldened Ramirez followed 30-year-old Veronica Yu onto
North Alhambra Avenue.
While stopped at redlight, Ramirez entered Yu's vehicle from the passenger side.
The killer shot her in the side and back.
Yu was pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby hospital.
Believing he was working under the guidance and protection of Satan, Richard Ramirez went
on a bloody rampage of assault, robbery, and murder throughout Southern California and
San Francisco.
Striking in the dead of night, Ramirez killed indiscriminately.
The killer had no immediately discernible pattern or method in carrying out his crimes,
leaving behind few clues, save for the mark of the inverted pentagram left at some of
the crime scenes.
Counting the early killing of Mei Leung, a total of 14 innocent lives would end at the
hands of the Night Stalker.
Among the dead were 64-year-old retired accountant Vincent Zazzara - shot to death in his sleep.
Ramirez tied and beat Zazzara's wife Maxine before shooting her three times and mutilating
her body with a kitchen knife.
Many of Ramirez's victims were elderly.
Sisters Mabel Bell, age 83, and Florence Lang, 81, were killed on May 29, 1985.
Leaving his mark for the first time, the killer scrawled a pentagram on Bell's body and bedroom
walls with lipstick.
Lying comatose for two days before being found, Lang survived in a vegetative state, but Bell
soon succumbed to her injuries.
As recounted in The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez, young Richard
Ramirez's obsession with Satan began at an early age.
Growing up in a devoutly Catholic household, Ramirez understood God, Satan, Heaven, Hell,
and sin as concrete realities.
As Ramirez entered adolescence, his sexual fantasies began to focus on violence, bondage,
and death.
Yet, his dark thoughts inspired guilt born of his religion.
Soon, he came to feel that Satan would approve of his secret self, and perhaps, the devil
might be a more fitting deity for him to follow.
At some point, Ramirez stumbled upon the writings of the Church of Satan's Anton LaVey and made
a pilgrimage to San Francisco to meet him.
The Church of Satan founder later told the press:
"When I met Richard Ramirez, he was one of the nicest, most polite young men you'd ever want to meet."
Yet, Ramirez's brand of Satanism was a far cry from LaVey's theatrical atheism.
By the time of the Night Stalker murders, he regarded Satan as a malevolent force to
whom he was a willing servant.
The more depraved his acts, the more his evil master would smile upon him and protect him.
“This is a wicked, wicked world.
And in a wicked world, wicked people are born.”
Although stealthy, Richard Ramirez nevertheless left behind clues.
Among the first was a single fingerprint left on a window screen belonging to victim Jennie Vincow.
Unable to get a grip on the screen, Ramirez had removed his gloves.
Ramirez also left behind a dark blue baseball cap emblazoned with the lightning bolt logo
of his favorite band, AC/DC, at the scene of his attack on Maria Hernandez.
Ramirez later left the print of his size 11-and-a-half Avia sneakers in dirt, mud, blood, and on
the face of victim Joyce Nelson.
Most critically, he left behind 15 battered survivors who could provide an accurate, physical
description of the killer who made them, quote, "swear to Satan."
Initially, authorities believed that many of the killings were unrelated because of
Ramirez's erratic, motiveless methods.
Undaunted, lead detective Gil Carrillo was certain he was on the trail of a serial killer.
Ramirez, however, kept an eye on the local media.
With the heat on in L.A., he headed for San Francisco.
Bay Area police were temporarily hamstrung in their investigation when San Francisco
mayor Diane Feinstein leaked details about the crimes to the press, including the shoe
print evidence.
Ramirez disposed of his Avias and headed back to L.A.
When a single fingerprint from the rearview mirror of a stolen car used by the killer
was matched to Ramirez, the police knew they had their man.
When his mugshot was released to the press, the Night Stalker had no place to hide.
Back in Los Angeles after a failed trip to visit his brother in Tucson, Arizona,
Richard Ramirez was unaware that he'd become the lead story on every newscast and newspaper in the city.
While picking up a cup of coffee and pastry at a nearby liquor store, he noticed some
elderly Hispanic women staring at him.
He clearly heard one of them exclaim, "El matador! (the killer!)"
Dropping his eyes to a newspaper rack, he saw his own face staring back at him.
As he dashed for the exit, Ramirez formulated a plan.
He'd steal a car, head for Mexico, and blend in.
As Ramirez ran, he noticed a crowd was giving chase behind him.
Desperate for escape, he attempted to carjack Manuela Villanueva while she waited for her
boyfriend, Carmello Robles, outside a bakery.
Beaten away by Robles and barber Arthur Benevedes, Ramirez fled on foot, bounding over fences
and running through backyards.
He made two more attempts at carjacking.
The second attempt would be his undoing.
When Ramirez pulled Angie De La Torre from her automobile parked outside her home, he
met his match in her husband, Manuel.
Brandishing a heavy iron bar, Manuel struck Ramirez in the head.
The killer wouldn't make it much further before the angry crowd descended on him, beating
him with fists, feet, barbecue tools, and anything they could get their hands on.
Fortunately for Ramirez, the police arrived to take him into custody.
Because of the sheer volume of crimes involved in the Night Stalker case, it took two years
before Richard Ramirez could be brought before the court for a preliminary hearing on March 6, 1988.
His inexperienced attorneys, Arturo and Daniel Hernandez, delayed the trial for years with
requests for postponement and pretrial motions.
Jury selection for what would be one of California's most expensive trials at last began in July 1988.
During the delays, Ramirez consciously perfected his image as a bad boy outsider.
He played the role of a rockstar killer to the hilt, flashing Satanic symbols, staring
down the prosecution and jury, and praising Satan.
When prosecutor Philip Halpin completed his methodical presentation of the gruesome evidence,
the jury convicted Ramirez of 13 counts of murder.
After being sentenced to die in California's gas chamber, Ramirez quipped:
"Big deal.
Death always went with the territory.
I'll see you in Disneyland."
During and after Richard Ramirez's trial, the killer experienced a kind of adulation
usually reserved for celebrities.
The Night Stalker received thousands of letters from the curious and the lovelorn.
Overwhelmingly, Ramirez's admirers were women.
Attracted by his boyish looks and fascinated by the brutality of his crimes, a dedicated
group known as "the women in black" attended his hearings and visited the killer behind bars.
One such groupie told San Francisco TV station KRON:
"Everyone makes him look so bad.
I know that he's a nice person because I've met him..."
Ramirez's most ardent admirer, journalist Doreen Lioy, received 75 love letters from
the serial killer over a period of 11 years.
In 1996, she and Ramirez married.
According to some sources, Lioy cut off contact with Ramirez when DNA evidence linked him
to the 1984 slaying of 9-year-old Mei Leung.
As of January 2021, Lioy's whereabouts are unknown.
On June 7, 2013, death claimed the Night Stalker.
However, Richard Ramirez would not die in a California death chamber.
Suffering from liver failure, Ramirez, who had become increasingly reclusive in his final
years, was transported from San Quentin State Prison to Marin General Hospital.
His deteriorating health manifested in his complexion, which reportedly took on a sickly green hue.
As reported by USA Today, a report from the Marin County Coroner's office revealed that
Ramirez was suffering from B-cell lymphoma, a deadly form of blood cancer.
His autopsy also stated that a history of drug use and a hepatitis C infection also
contributed to his death.
Ramirez was 53 years old at the time of his passing.
With appeals still pending, he likely wouldn't have faced execution until he was 71.
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