Richard Ramirez, aka, The Night Stalker,
sits in court after being sentenced to death. He growls, “You maggots make me sick!”
He composes himself and goes on, “You don’t understand me. You are not expected to…I
will be avenged… Lucifer dwells in all of us.” That’s one reason this man was called “evil”.
He was a serial killer that seemed to accept he was evil, perhaps doing the devil’s bidding.
He also seemed to relish his celebrity status, much like other maniacal serial
killers such as Ted Bundy. One of the categories that serial killers
sometimes fall into is the missionary type, murderers who, for some messed up reason, think
they are doing the work of a higher power. They would usually say they are working
for God, cleaning up the streets, getting rid of the human garbage, etc, but
Ramirez seemed to think Satan had hired him. Hired for what, you might wonder? More of
his ranting in court might explain that, if not entirely, given the
magnitude of his madness. He said: “I don’t believe in the hypocritical,
moralistic dogmas of this so-called society. I need to look beyond this room to see the
liars, haters, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards; truly trematodes of the
Earth, each one in his own legal profession.” If you’re wondering what a “trematode''
is, it’s a kind of parasite. Ramirez blasted society for what he
saw as hypocrisy, saying there are those that “kill for policy, clandestinely
or openly, as do governments of the world, which kill in the name of God or country.”
Ok, Richard, some people might have thought back then. Maybe you’re right in that governments of
the world in the name of imperialism and economic power have done some rotten things, but how does
that excuse what you have done, namely some of the worst crimes in the history of the USA?
Let’s now go back a few years. On June 28, 1984, a 79-year-old woman named
Jennie Vincow was found dead in her apartment in northeast Los Angeles. Police believed she’d
been sleeping when an intruder entered the property and attacked her with a knife. The
assault had been so brutal that cops didn’t immediately think this was a break-in gone wrong.
The killer had made a point to be excessive. Ramirez didn’t strike again until almost
a year after. That was when he shot 22-year-old Maria Hernandez. She survived, but
her roommate didn’t. Less than one hour later, he shot and killed a 30-year old woman.
Two murders and one attempted murder in the space of an hour even in violent LA was a big
deal. The press reported that some kind of ghoul was lurking in the night hours, describing
him as having rotten teeth and bulging eyes. Some called him “The Valley Intruder” in the
media, a boogeyman if ever there was one. He was just getting started.
Ten days later, he killed a married couple, Vincent and Maxine Zazzara. When police arrived
at the scene, they found Maxine’s body mutilated with the eyes removed. The same kind of gun
in the previous murders had been used, but now they had another clue. That was the footprint in a
flowerbed made by a pair of sneakers: Brand, Avia. About a month and a half later, he killed another
couple. Two weeks later, he attacked two sisters, both in their 80s. He beat them viciously
with a hammer and even used an electrical cord to torture one of them. Amazingly,
they both survived, although one of the women died soon after from her injuries.
This time the intruder had left another clue. He’d used some lipstick he found in the house to
scrawl a Satanic pentagram on the bedroom walls. He’d also drawn a pentagram
on one of his victim’s thighs. Just one day after, he entered the home
of a woman and her 11-year old son. This time he left no dead bodies, although
while attacking the woman, he shouted at her, “Don’t look at me, or I’ll cut out your eyes.”
One time, he was trying to strangle a victim using a telephone cord when he thought he saw electrical
sparks appear. He later said he left that woman alone after that, believing that Jesus had made
his presence known and acted on her behalf. Did he really believe that?
We think he probably did. With another victim he had tied up, he demanded to know where all the
valuables in the house were. He screamed at her to tell the truth, saying, “Swear on Satan.”
He did that the same night he killed another elderly woman. Footprints were found on
her battered face. They could be traced back to a pair of Avia sneakers. Two weeks
later, he used a machete and a gun to kill another elderly married couple. Again,
he took many valuables from the house. Ok, so what were the police looking at?
In terms of criminal profiles, this case was a little bit unusual in the sense that the
serial killer stole from the victims. Many serial killers have no interest whatsoever in monetary
gain. The act of killing is psycho-sexual, the impetus is gratification, not
having cash to spend on new things. Then there were the Satanic symbols and that
talk about Satan. Ramirez had also signed one of his murder scenes with “Jack the Knife”,
perhaps in relation to the infamous Jack the Ripper. Like the never-caught Jack in London,
this killer wanted recognition for his crimes. But in the terminology of FBI profilers,
the LA killer didn’t seem to be “organized”, or at least not very organized. Organized
killers, like Ted Bundy, have usually studied police tactics and go to great pains to avoid
arrest. They are often quite bright and can be the guy next door with a good job, rather than
street-hustling, heavy drug users like Ramirez. If Ramirez was what criminologists call
“forensically aware,” he sometimes didn’t show it. He left footprints behind when a more
astute killer would have known not to do that. He was also seen by some of his
victims, and he let them live. According to the FBI’s serial killer catching
folks, named the Behavioral Sciences Unit – think Silence of the Lambs – this killer didn’t
really fit into any kind of category. He was a bit of everything. He obviously
got off on having power over his victims. He was no doubt a sadist, given how he tortured
some of them, but he was also a two-bit thief. On top of that, serial killers, or at least
the organized type, usually plan their murders, sometimes meticulously. With this killer, it was
as if he was going on some kind of mad rampage. His crimes came one after the other.
Another of them involved Ramirez entering a family home. He killed the man immediately,
and after viciously attacking the woman, again he made her “Swear on Satan” as he asked her
where all the valuables were kept. In this case, he didn’t just not attack the child, but he sent
him to a neighbor where he said he’d be safe. Police then got a break. Yet again, after
another attack, they found a footprint, and it was almost certainly from a pair of
Avia shoes. Detectives discovered that this particular style wasn’t all that common
in the US, which was great for the case. They found out that very few pairs of that
style shipped in the US were size 11 and a half. In fact, to get that size in LA was almost
impossible, given that only one store in the city had received a pair. They could also
link the crimes with ballistic evidence. But, there’s a good reason the police don’t
tell the press or anyone else about their leads. The reason, of course, is if matters of
their investigation get out, the killer will be tipped off. It goes without saying that
most killers follow their crimes on the news. Sure, police release sketches of criminals because
then the public can come forward if they think they know the person, but cops also hold a lot
back. One reason is not to tip the criminal off, and another is so during interrogation,
the accused might say something only the perpetrator could possibly know.
In this case, the then-mayor of San Francisco, Dianne Feinstein, held a press conference and
talked about the shoes and the caliber of the gun. “Without a doubt, Mayor Feinstein made a big
mistake,” a detective later said. The mistake was about as foolish as the Nazis publicly releasing
the details of their up-and-coming Blitzkrieg. So, what did Ramirez do after watching that on
the TV? Of course, he got rid of the shoes, taking them to the Golden Gate Bridge and throwing them
down into the water. This was a massive setback for the cops. Imagine they’d have arrested Ramirez
with the matching gun and a pair of shoes that were pretty much the four-leaf clover of footwear.
Feinstein, by the way, had been told about the details of the LA crimes because of a
similar crime in San Francisco, but she wasn’t meant to talk about the details in public.
She did at least do some things right, one was stating the obvious. She said, “This is a very
serious situation. The killer goes into a home at night and kills at random. Somewhere in the Bay
Area, someone is renting a room, an apartment, or a home to this vicious serial killer.”
Still, Ramirez was a bit stupid because he didn’t throw away the gun like just
about every detective thought he would. About a week later, he was skulking
outside another family home, this time in Orange County. He was chased away
but the man of the house could describe to cops the car and part of the license number. He had
no idea it was the car of the Nightstalker. That same night, Ramirez entered another
house and shot a man in the head three times. He tied up the man’s wife, beating her and
telling her to repeat to him that she loved Satan. He left her alive and told her to inform the
police, “Tell them the Night Stalker was here.” The man actually survived after surgery.
Police not only found another footprint but despite Ramirez’s best efforts
to clean his dumped stolen car, a fingerprint was taken from the rear-view mirror.
What Ramirez didn’t know is that California had recently acquired a new machine. That was a $25
million computer system with the name “Cal-ID.” Police could run a fingerprint
through that, and it would be matched with fingerprints from other crimes.
This was pretty high-tech back in those days. While it’s said this solved the case, that isn’t
strictly true. Police already had a bunch of leads from all the stuff that Ramirez had stolen from
his many victims. He’d fenced them on the streets, and some of the items police had a trail
on. The person that had sold them they were told was named Ricardo or perhaps just Rick.
Cops then released a mugshot of Ramirez that had been taken after he was arrested for stealing a
car in 1984. They also issued a statement, saying, “We know who you are now, and soon everyone
else will. There will be no place you can hide.” They knew they were looking for a 25-year old
drifter from Texas with a history of drug use. What they didn’t know is this kid
had witnessed a murder when young and on top of other traumas he
was a pretty messed up youngster. Not that many people knew Ramirez because
he was mostly a loner who moved around taking drugs wherever he could find them. Alone
at home, he watched just about every variety of slasher movie when he wasn’t listening to Black
Sabbath, AC/DC, and post-Sabbath Ozzy Osborne. We won’t criticize his music choices,
but for Ramirez, listening to dark tunes was a way to rebel against his violent father
and a very religious mother. Mix in a bit of LSD, amphetamine, and PCP, and sprinkle on that
the murder he saw and some more violence, and as one serial killer author put it, by the time
Ramirez was 17, his brain was “seriously fried.” Ramirez moved on to cocaine through
the mainline, and at times when high, he would read the Satanic Bible and attend
Satanic rituals. After that, he started killing. He was now in hiding, although he hadn’t checked
the news and had no idea countless people had seen his photograph. His face was plastered over just
about every front-page newspaper in California, but he didn’t know that when he got on a
bus heading to see his brother in Arizona. If he’d only gone to a newspaper stand he’d
have seen his face staring back at him. This guy was walking around when the vast majority
of people wouldn’t have minded lynching him. He managed at one point to walk past
some cops who were looking for him, and then he walked into a convenience store.
The thing was, a group of elderly women had seen him. They were almost shaking, saying to each
other, “el matador”, “the killer” in Spanish. Inside the store, things had changed
for Ramirez. That’s because he now saw in front of him newspapers showing
his face. He walked back outside, where there were more people pointing at him.
He made a run for it, sprinting across the freeway and then unsuccessfully trying to steal a
car. He ran some more, jumping over garden fences, and tried again to steal a car. Now
helicopters were buzzing overhead. Ramirez managed to get inside one car
whose occupant was Angie De La Torre. He punched her in the stomach and got hold
of the keys, but her 57-year old neighbor, Jose Burgoin, was soon on the scene.
This is what Burgoin later told the media, “I ran to defend her, and he told me, ‘Don’t get
closer or I’ll shoot you.’ I didn’t see a gun, so I opened the door and pulled him out of the car.”
More people arrived on the scene, and it was mayhem. The Night Stalker was now a daytime
brawler, and he wasn’t so good at that. De La Torre’s husband turned up, and he
furiously whacked Ramirez over the head with what he described as a BBQ utensil.
Ramirez fled again, only to be chased down a street that was starting to look
like the gauntlet in a version of Mexican-American Gladiators where the weapons
of choice were not made out of soft rubber. Someone hit Ramirez over the head with a
fence post, and that was it, he was down. The jostling crowd now laid into him and
beat him badly. He might have received a public execution there and then had some
folks not held back and police intervened. Ramirez was later given a date with the gas
chamber. As often happens with serial killers, women sent him fan mail while he was in prison.
He even married a woman during his incarceration. The Night Stalker never was killed by the
state, dying instead from complications due to B-cell lymphoma in 2013. He was 53.
Now you need to watch “How They Actually Caught Jeffrey Dahmer.” Or, see another psycho
in “How They Caught Serial Killer Ted Bundy.”
