Burglar, kidnapper, child molester, rapist, serial killer. These are all words used to describe Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker.
Who was Richard Ramirez
Ricardo “Richard” Levya Muñoz Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas, on February 29, 1960. He was the youngest of five children born to Julián and Mercedes Ramirez. Julián was a Mexican national and former Ciudad Juárez policeman who later became a laborer on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. He was also an alcoholic, prone to fits of anger that often resulted in physical abuse towards his family.
Undoubtedly it was his father’s influence that led him to drinking alcohol, and smoking marijuana by the time he was just 10.
Ramirez had an older cousin who served as a Green Beret in the United States Army. Miguel “Mike” Ramirez was less than a good influence. He often told Ramirez of his time spent in the Vietnam War. Mike not only told stories of war, but also boasted about his many war crimes. He went so far as to show him polaroid photos of the Vietnamese women whom he had raped, murdered, and dismembered or decapitated. Ramirez was fascinated.
Mike taught him some of his military skills including how to be stealthy, and to remain hidden in the shadows, especially at night. Using those skills, he escaped his violent home life and began sleeping in a local cemetery.
On May 4, 1973, Ramirez was spending time with his cousin when a fight broke out between him and his wife, Jessie. The argument, like so many, turned ugly and ended when Mike shot Jessie in the face with a handgun. As a witness you would expect Ramirez to be horrified and traumatized, but it didn’t have that effect on him. Rather, he was fascinated. In fact, the only discernible change was that he became more withdrawn.
As for Mike, he was found not guilty of Jessie’s murder by reason of insanity, with the shooting being attributed to PTSD from his service in Vietnam. He was hospitalized at the Texas State Mental Hospital.
Shortly thereafter, he moved in with his older sister, Ruth, and her husband, Roberto. Roberto was an obsessive “peeping tom” who had no problem taking Ramirez with him as he sought women to spy on. When Mike was released from the mental hospital in 1977, he joined the two men in their exploits.
By the time he was 14, Ramirez was a regular user of LSD and began to cultivate an interest in Satanism and the occult. He began having sexual fantasies, involving violence, rape, forced bondage/BDSM, murder.
Things began heating up when he took a job at a local Holiday Inn. There, he had access to unsuspecting victims. He used his passkey to rob guests. On at least one occasion, he molested two children in an elevator – but was never reported and therefore never prosecuted for the horrific act.
One night, he let himself into a woman’s room, intent on raping her, but was caught by the woman’s husband. He was arrested and fired from his job. Unfortunately the charges were dropped, when the couple, who lived out of state, declined to return to Texas to testify..
Richard Ramirez didn’t finish High School, instead he chose to drop out when he was in ninth grade.
In 1982, at the age of 22, he moved to California where he discovered cocaine. Living a nomadic lifestyle between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and having a new addiction to feed, he turned to theft and burglaries. But those crimes would only do so much to satisfy him.
The killing begins
In April 1984, Ramirez was living in an apartment building in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco when he committed his first known murder.
Ramirez came upon 9-year-old Mei Leung, a Chinese-American girl, and her 8-year-old brother. The two were looking for a lost one-dollar bill, and when he approached the little girl, he told her to follow him into the basement to find it. There he beat her, strangled her, and raped her before ultimately stabbing her to death with a switchblade.
He hung her partially nude body from a pipe by her blouse.
While not initially considered one of Richard Ramirez’s victims, Mei Leung was connected to him in 2009, when DNA taken from the crime scene was finally linked to him. Another sample of DNA was also identified at the scene of her murder, but police have yet to identify the suspect.
On June 28, 1984, 79-year-old Jennie Vincow was found brutally murdered in her apartment in Glassell Park, Los Angles. The woman had been stabbed repeatedly in the head, neck, and chest as she lay sleeping in her bed. Her throat had been slashed so severely that she was left nearly decapitated.
Among the evidence located at the scene was a fingerprint, found on a mesh screen that had been removed to gain access through an open window.
On March 17, 1985, a third victim was identified. 22-year-old Maria Hernandez had been attacked outside her home in Rosemead, California. Maria had been shot in the face with a .22 caliber handgun after she pulled into her garage. Shockingly, she survived. She rose her hands to protect herself, as he fired the gun. The bullet ricocheted off the keys she held in her hands.
Maria played dead until he left the scene. Inside the home, Maria’s roommate, Dayle Yoshie Okazaki ducked behind a counter as soon as she saw Ramirez enter the kitchen. She poked her head to get a look at what happened and was met with a bullet to the forehead. She died instantly.
But he wasn’t finished yet. Within an hour, Ramirez came upon Tsai-Lian “Veronica” Yu in her car in Monterey Park. He pulled her from the car, shot her twice with the .22 caliber handgun, then fled. She was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
The two murders and attempted murder gained Richard Ramirez headline news. He was described as “curly-haired with bulging eyes and wide-spaced, rotting teeth.” They dubbed him “The Walk-in Killer” and “The Valley Intruder.”
Fear was made worse because of his varying victimology. Some were old, some were young. Some men, some women. Race did not seem to play a role in how he chose his victims. And he didn’t always use the same weapon.
Ten days later, on March 27, he entered a home in Whittier, California at approximately 2am. He had burglarized this home about a year prior and was already relatively familiar with it. Inside he encountered 64-year-old Vincent Charles Zazzara. As the man lay sleeping, Ramirez shot him in the head with the .22 caliber handgun.
Woken by the gunshot, Vincent’s wife, 44-year-old Maxine Levenia Zazzara was next. She was beaten and bound while he demanded to know where her valuables were. While he searched the room, Maxine managed to free herself from her bonds and quickly retrieved a shotgun from under the bed. Unfortunately, the shotgun was not loaded.
Furious, Ramirez shot her three times before fetching a large carving knife from the kitchen. Not only did he stab her several times, he opted to mutilate her further by removing her eyes, which he later placed into a jewelry box that he took with him when he left. The box containing the eyes was kept as a souvenir, found by police upon his arrest.
The bodies of Vincent and Maxine were discovered by their son, Peter. Investigators found footprints from a pair of Via sneakers in the flower beds, which were photographed and cast. Bullets found at the scene were matched to Ramirez’s previous attacks, but otherwise there was no further evidence.
California police now knew they were dealing with a serial killer.
On May 14, 1985, Ramirez entered the home of 66-year-old Bill Doi and his disabled wife, 56-year-old Lillian. Surprising Bill in his bedroom, he shot the older man as he went for his own gun, this time using a .22 semi-automatic pistol. Wounded, but not dead, Ramirez moved in and beat him into unconsciousness before turning to Lillian.
Ramirez found Lillian in her room then proceeded to bound her using thumbcuffs before raping her. He ransacked the home for valuables before fleeing the scene. Bill Doi later died of his injuries in the hospital.
May 29, 1985, he stole a car and drove to Monrovia where he stopped at the house of 83-year-old Mabel “Ma” Bell and her disabled sister, 81-year-old Florence “Nettie” Lang. There, Ramirez found a hammer in the kitchen and used it to bludgeon Nettie in her bedroom before tying her up. He bound and bludgeoned Ma then used an electrical cord to shock her.
He went on to rape Nettie before using Ma’s lipstick to draw the Satanic pentagram symbol on her thigh as well as on the walls of both bedrooms.
He didn’t kill the women, they were found two days later, comatose and critically injured. Ma ended up dying of her injuries in the hospital.
The next day, Ramirez found himself in Burbank where he snuck into the home of 42-year-old Carol Kyle. There he bound her and her 11-year-old son with handcuffs before tearing the house apart, looking for valuables. Not satisfied with what he found, he released Carol to direct him to the valuables before raping her repeatedly.
Ramirez ordered Carol to not look at him. He told her that he would “cut her eyes out.” Before he fled the scene, he bound Carole to her son with handcuffs.
On the evening of July 2, 1985, Ramirez drove a stolen car to Arcadia where he randomly selected the house of 75-year-old Mary Louise Cannon as the site of his next attack. He quietly entered her home and found her asleep in her bedroom. He beat her into unconsciousness with a lamp before stabbing her to death using a 10-inch butcher knife from her kitchen.
Though she was already dead, he continued to stab her over and over again.
Three days later, on July 5, he broke into a home in Sierra Madre where he bludgeoned 16-year-old Whitney Bennett with a tire iron as she slept in her room. He searched the kitchen for a knife but when he failed to locate one, he returned to strangle her with a telephone cord.
When sparks began to emanate from the cord, and Whiteny began to breathe, Ramirez fled, believing that Jesus Christ had intervened to save her. Whitney survived, but required 478 stitches to close the lacerations to her scalp.
Two days later, on July 7, Ramirez found himself at the home of 60-year-old Joyce Lucille Nelson, in Monterey Park. He found Joyce asleep on her living room couch and proceeded to beat her to death by stomping on her face repeatedly. Investigators found the shoe print from an Avia sneaker imprinted on her face.
He wasn’t done for the night though – he drove through two other neighborhoods before returning to Monterey Park where he chose the home of 63-year-old Sophie Dickman as his next target.
Richard Ramirez assaulted and handcuffed Sophie at gunpoint. He attempted to rape her and stole her jewelry. When she swore that he had taken everything of value from her, he told her to “swear on Satan.”
The next day, police found a stolen Toyota, believed to have been driven by the killer. Though there were no fingerprints inside the vehicle, they did find a business card for a local dentist in Chinatown. When they visited the dentist’s office, they discovered that their suspect had visited, just five days earlier.
Their suspect was using the alias, “Richard Mena” as well as a fake address. The dentist, eager to help, gave the police the x-rays taken of Ramirez, which showed an impacted tooth. Their suspect was almost guaranteed to return.
Investigators placed two of their own detectives in the waiting room to survey the dental office, hoping to catch their killer when he returned. It didn’t take long for their department to determine that it was a waste of money and pulled the detectives, but not before placing an alarm inside the office in case he returned.
Sure enough, the day after the detectives were pulled from the office, Ramirez returned. The alarm malfunctioned, and their suspect had slipped through their fingers.
On July 20, 1985, he purchased a machete before driving a stolen Toyota to Glendale, California. There he came upon the home of 66-year-old Lela Kneiding and her husband, 68-year-old Maxon. He broke into their home then burst into their bedroom while they slept before hacking them with the machete. He finished the couple off by shooting them in the head with the .22 caliber handgun.
Satisfying his love for the macabre, he took the time to further mutilate their bodies with the machete before robbing them and fleeing to Sun Valley.
At approximately 4:15am, he broke into the home of the Khovananth family. There, he first encountered a sleeping Chainarong Khovananth whom he shot in the head with a .25 caliber handgun, killing him instantly.
Next he came upon Somkid Khovananth whom he raped repeatedly before tying up the couple’s 8-year-old son and dragging Somkid around the house to reveal any valuable items. During the assault, he demanded that she “swear to Satan” that she was not hiding any money from him.
On August 6, 1985, he drove to Northridge where he broke into the home of Chris and Virginia Peterson. In the bedroom, he found 27-year-old Virginia, and shot her with a .25 caliber semi-automatic handgun when he startled her.
When he encountered Chris, he shot him in the neck and attempted to flee. But Chris wasn’t about to go down without a fight. He fought back and avoided being hit by two more shots during the struggle before Ramirez was finally able to escape. The couple survived.
Ramirez was out of control. Two days later, he drove a stolen car to Diamond Bar, California and this time chose the home of 27-year-old Sakina Abowath and her husband, 31-year-old Elyas Abowath. Sometime after 2:30am, he entered the home and went straight for the master bedroom. He immediately killed Elyas with a shot to the head from a .25 caliber handgun.
Next he handcuffed and beat Sakina while forcing her to reveal the locations of the family valuables. Then he raped her. Once again, he demanded she “swear on Satan” that she would not scream during his assaults. When the couple’s 3-year-old son entered the bedroom, Ramirez tied him up before continuing to rape Sakina.
He left her and her son alive. Once he was gone, Sakina untied her son and sent him to the neighbors to get help.
On August 18, he found his next victims in the San Francisco area. He entered the home of 66-year-old Peter Pan, and his wife, 62-year-old Barbara. In the bedroom he wasted no time shooting Peter in the temple with a .25 caliber handgun, killing him instantly.
He sexually assaulted Barbara before shooting her in the head and leaving her for dead. Before he left, he used lipstick to draw a pentagram and the phrase, “Jack the Knife” on the bedroom wall.
Investigators on the scene found a shoe print, belonging to an Avia sneaker. They contacted the manufacturer of Avia shoes and discovered that the specific pair of shoes was not common at the time. Moreover, tracking based on the size of the show showed that only six pairs existed in the United States, with five of them having been shipped to locations in Arizona – and the sixth to a shoe store in Los Angeles.
With only a single pair of that specific shoe and size in the state of California, they dug deeper. The San Francisco police discovered that their shoe print evidence matched that of the Los Angeles crimes.
Eager to get the information out to the public, San Francisco’s then-mayor, Dianne Feinstein held a televised press conference. She informed the public everything they knew, from the shoe type and size, to the gun caliber. She didn’t consider that the killer would be watching the news.
Ramirez took the opportunity to destroy evidence that would link him to the crime. He dropped his size 11.5 Avia sneakers over the side of the Golden Gate Bridge and remained in the area for just a few more days before returning to Los Angeles. He wasn’t finished yet.
On August 24 he stole an orange Toyota and traveled 76 miles south of Los Angeles to Mission Viejo. That night, he arrived at the home of James Romero Jr. The Romero’s had just returned from a trip to Mexico, and that night while everyone was sleeping, James’s 13-year-old son went outside to retrieve a pillow from their truck. Outside, he heard a rustling sound, and assuming it was an animal, went to investigate. Not finding anything, he shrugged it off and went into the garage instead.
Then he heard footsteps and saw someone through his bedroom window. He immediately went to wake his parents. Ramirez fled, but not before James was able to note the color, make, style of the car and even got a partial plate number. He contacted the police, thinking he had just encountered a thief.
Not swayed by almost being caught, Ramirez found himself at the home of 30-year-old Bill Carns and his fiancée, 29-year-old Inez Erickson. He entered through a back door and entered the couple’s bedroom. Bill was awoken to the sound of Ramirez cocking his .25 caliber handgun. He didn’t have time to do anything before he was shot three times in the head.
Turning on Inez, he told her he was the “Night Stalker” and forced her to swear she loved Satan as he beat her and bound her with neckties from the closet. He gathered all the valuables he could find before proceeding to rape Inez. He then demanded cash and more jewelry before demanding she “swear on Satan” that there was no more.
Before he left the home, Ramirez told her, “Tell them the Night Stalker was here.”
As soon as he was gone, Inez fought to untie herself before running to a neighbor’s house for help. Bill was rushed to the hospital where surgeons were able to remove two of the three bullets from his head. He survived.
Inez was able to give police a detailed description of her assailant.
Back at the Romero home, police found a footprint, though it did not match the Avia shoe from previous crime scenes. Four days later they found the stolen Toyota, in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
Richard Ramirez’s Mistake
Although Ramirez had been careful to wipe down the car, he missed a spot and police found a single fingerprint on the rear-view mirror. From that fingerprint, they were able to identify Richard Ramirez, who had been arrested numerous times for traffic and illegal drug violations.
Investigators considered the identification of Ramirez from his print a “near miracle” as the system they used to identify him was only recently installed, and the system only contained fingerprints of criminals born after January 1, 1960. Ramirez was born in February 1960.
On August 29, police released a mugshot of Ramierez from a 1984 arrest. At a press conference, they announced, “We know who you are now, and soon everyone else will. There will be no place you can hide.”
On August 30, Ramirez took a bus to Tucson, Arizona to visit his brother. He had not seen the news and had no idea his face had been plastered across every major newspaper and television news program across California. When he returned to Los Angeles the next morning, he walked right past police officers who were staking out the bus terminal.
Ramirez, still unaware that he had been identified, casually walked past a group of elderly Hispanic women, who were fearfully identifying him as “el matador” or “the killer”. That’s when he saw his face on the front page of the newspaper La Opinion, calling him “Invasor Nocturno” or “Night Invader”. He fled in a panic.
He attempted to steal an unlocked Ford Mustang, but was pulled out by angry resident, Faustino Pinon. He ran again, this time across the street where he tried to take car keys from Angelina De La Torre, but was unsuccessful when her husband, Manuel witnessed the attempt and struck him over the head with a fence post.
Authorities were called and the search began. Seven police cars and a helicopter tracked him throughout the city. A group of over ten residents formed and chased him down Hubbard Street in Boyle Heights. They forced him down and beat him unconscious. When police arrived, they took him into custody.
Jury selection for the trial began on July 22, 1988. Ramirez appeared at his first court appearance and raised his hand, with a pentagram drawn on it. He yelled, “Hail Satan!” That was just the beginning of what would prove to be a difficult trial.
On August 3, 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported that some jail employees had overheard Ramirez planning to shoot the prosecutor with a gun, which he planned to have smuggled into the courtroom. As a safety precaution, a metal detector was installed outside, and everyone who entered was searched.
On August 14, one of the jurors failed to arrive. She was later found, shot to death, in her apartment. Terrified, the jury began to fear for their own lives, wondering if somehow Ramirez had found a way to kill her from inside prison. However, an investigation discovered that her death had nothing to do with Ramirez. In fact, her boyfriend was responsible, and later committed suicide in a hotel.
After just over a year, on September 20, 1989, Richard Ramierz was convicted of thirteen counts of murder, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries.
He was initially charged with the murder of 32-year-old Patty Elaine Higgins, who was killed in her Arcadia home. She was killed on June 27, 1985, but was not discovered until July 2, when she didn’t show up for work. She had been sodomized and had her throat slashed. Charges in this case were dropped due to a lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime.
He also confessed to the double murder of Christina and Mary Caldwell, who were found stabbed to death on February 20, 1985. He bragged to other inmates about having killed “more than 20 people.”
Richard Ramirez was sentenced to death in California’s gas chamber on November 7, 1989. He appeared unfazed. In fact, after the sentencing, he told reporters, “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”
According to psychiatrist, Michael H. Stone, Ramirez was a “made” psychopath, as opposed to a “born” psychopath, lending itself to the “nature vs nurture” argument. He said that Ramirez’s schizoid personality disorder contributed to his indifference to the suffering of his victims, and his inability to be treated.
Stone said he had been knocked unconscious and almost died on multiple occasions before he was 6-years-old due to the abuse from his father. Because of that developed temporal lobe epilepsy, aggressivity, and hypersexuality.
Weird, or disgusting depending on how you look at it, Richard Ramirez earned himself a female fan-base. He had numerous fans who not only wrote him letters, but also visited him in prison. One such fan, Doreen Lioy, wrote to him regularly, and in 1988, Ramirez proposed to her. The couple was married on October 3, 1996 in San Quentin State Prison.
Lioy stated that she would commit suicide when he was executed, but all that changed in 2009, when DNA confirmed that he had raped and murdered 9-year-old Mei Leung. But that didn’t stop other women from vying for his affection. By the time of his death, in 2013, he was engaged again, this time to a 23-year-old writer.
The appeals process delayed his death sentencing, and he ultimately died of complications secondary to B-cell lymphoma at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae California on June 7, 2013 – long before his execution would have ever taken place.. Medical reports also state that he had been affected by “chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis C viral infection”
Next: Read about Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer.
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Incredible!