Criminal beginnings ...
Ramirez was born in February 1960, the youngest of seven children of a Mexican-American railway worker, Julian Ramirez,
who lived in El Paso, Texas. Ricky, as he liked to be known, was a sad and solitary child who would play truant and spend hours
in the town's video arcades, glue sniffing or smoking marijuana.
At a young age he began shoplifting, picking pockets and burgling homes to raise money for his drug habits and his
school reports were woeful. He was sent to a home for juvenile delinquents in 1977, the same year that his criminal record
began. Ramirez came to the police's attention several more times before finally being given probation in 1982 for possession
of marijuana.
Fed up with El Paso, he quit and moved to San Francisco and later to Los Angeles, where he developed an interest in guns and knives, got hooked on cocaine and took an unhealthy interest
in Satanism.
At
this time, Ricky Ramirez was not a pleasant sight.
He slept rough, wore dirty black t-shirts and jeans, had bad teeth because he never cleaned them and bad skin because
of a diet of junk food, cola and cakes.
But despite having no job he always had money.
He boasted to friends
about possessing a master key to several cars, which he stole at whim, and burgled homes and warehouses for electrical appliances
and jewellery, which he sold on to finance his cocaine habit. Eventually the LAPD caught up with him and he spent time in
jail for car theft. Not long after his release in
the spring of 1984 he embarked
on the road to becoming a serial killer.
Making the headlines ...
June 28th 1984 was a balmy evening
in the LA suburb of Eagle Rock, and 79-year-old Jennie Vincow left her window open to let some air into her stuffy ground
floor apartment.
Ramirez spotted the opportunity and grabbed it with both hands.
He slipped his skinny frame through the gap, attacked the pensioner in her bed, sexually assualted and stabbed her.
Her apartment had been ransacked and the killer had left his bloody fingerprints all over the place. Mrs Vincow's body
was found in the morning by her son, who lived in the apartment above, but had heard nothing during the night.
In a city as violent as LA the crime did not make major headlines, but nine months later the press did take notice
of a bloody spree in the prosperous middle-class suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley.
On 27 March 1985 retired investment adviser Vincent Zazzara, 64, and his lawyer wife Maxine, 44, were found murdered
in their home. Mrs Zazzara's eyes had been gouged out and her upper torso had been stabbed repeatedly.
Ten days earlier Hawaii-born Dayle Okazaki, 34, had been shot dead in his apartment in the suburb of Rosemead. His flatmate Maria Hernandez survived
when a bullet deflected off her car keys as she arrived home. The killer fled, leaving behind a live witness and another clue
- a baseball cap bearing the logo of the Australian heavy metal band AC/DC.
Clearly dissatisfied with his night's work Ramirez struck again a few hours later in Monterey Park, shooting dead 30-year-old Taiwan-born
Tsai Lian Yu, known to her American friends as Veronica. The press, unaware of the link to Mrs Vincow's death, dubbed the
attacker the 'Valley Intruder', but they soon came up with a far more chilling moniker.
The best description yet ...
In May, Ramirez struck again, claiming the life of Bill Doi, 66, and attacking his wife Lillie aged 56. Mr Doi was
shot dead and his wife was handcuffed, interrogated about her valuables, raped and then left for dead.
A fortnight later he attacked 42-year-old Carol Kyle, robbing, raping and sexually assaulting her as her 11-year-old
son cowered in a cupboard. Before Ramirez left his Burbank home he told her: "I don't know why I'm letting you live. I've killed people before. You don't believe
me, but I have."
Carol Kyle was able to give police their best description yet - a tall, thin, dark-haired Hispanic man with bad teeth.
The LAPD released a photofit of the suspect, which was published in newspapers all over California and shown repeatedly on television.
But the violence continued unabated ...
On June 1st 1985, 83-year-old Mabel Bell was beaten to death with a hammer in her home in Monrovia but her sister Florence Long, 80, survived.
Later the same month Patty Higgins, 29, had her throat cut at her home in Arcadia.
Five days later another pensioner, Mary Cannon, was found brutally murdered at her home; not far from where Miss Higgins
had lived.
Another girl, aged 16, survived a crowbar attack in Arcadia three days later.
Panic gripped LA, as the spiral of violence accelerated and the gaps between attacks became shorter. On 7th July, grandmother
Joyce Nelson was found dead at her home in Monterey Park. Another woman, a 63-year-old nurse, survived being robbed and raped by Ramirez the same night.
The terror escalates ...
Two weeks later the Night Stalker went on a violent spree unprecedented even by his standards.
First he shot dead Maxson Kneiding, 66, and his wife Lela, and then he descended on a house in Sun Valley where the Khovananth family lived.
Ramirez shot dead 32-year-old Chainarong as he slept and then dragged his wife, Somkid, out of the bed and assaulted
her while forcing her to swear to Satan that she would not call for help. He then tied her up and sexually assaulted her eight-year-old
son, before fleeing with $30,000 belonging to the family.
On 8 August he shot dead Elyas Abowath and brutalised his wife.
The police came under intense pressure to catch the maniac who was spreading terror throughout the Greater
Los Angeles area ...
By early August, a special Night Stalker task force had been set up with 200 dedicated detectives working on the case
day and night. Detective Sergeant Frank Salerno, who headed the taskforce, called in the FBI's offender profiling unit and
he even consulted with experts in devil worship and the occult. The taskforce distributed leaflets and wanted posters bearing
the composite sketch of the killer.
Posters soon hung on every street and notice-boards all over Los
Angeles.
It was impossible to drive to work or take the kids to school without coming face to face with the Night Stalker's
distinctive features.
The populace became more prepared and Ramirez found easy targets harder to come by.
Neighbourhood Watch schemes sprung up all over the city and vigilantes patrolled the streets at night. Patrol cars
and unmarked cars were everywhere and residents took to buying guard dogs and burglar alarms or even making cardboard cut-outs
which they would pose in lighted windows to frighten off the killer.
A new hunting ground
The heat was on and it forced Ramirez to flee LA and find a new hunting ground.
He washed up in Lake Merced,
near San Francisco and attacked an elderly Chinese couple, Peter and Barbara Pan on the night of 17 August 1985. Mr Pan, 66, was shot dead
and Mrs Pan, 62, was sexually assaulted and left paralysed by a gunshot wound. Ramirez had enough time to daub Satanic symbols
and slogans across the walls in lipstick. The Satanic element immediately rang alarm bells with San Francisco police, who realised the Night
Stalker had arrived on their turf.
A week later he struck again in Mission Viejo, halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. William Carns, 29 survived being shot three times and his girlfriend Renata Gunther, 27, was sexually
assaulted but left alive.
It was to be the Night Stalker's last attack and the net was tightening.
The vital clue came from a sharp-eyed teenager in Mission Viejo, James Romero III, who had taken down the registration of a Toyota station wagon after becoming suspicious when it drove
past his house three times. A few hours later Renata Gunther saw the Night Stalker drive away in the same car.
The appliance of science
Police put out an all points bulletin (APB) on the Toyota and two days later it was found in a car park in the Rampart suburb of LA. Revolutionary technology
was used in an attempt to obtain the Night Stalker's fingerprints. A saucer of Superglue was placed inside the car, which
was then locked up with the windows tightly shut. The theory was that the fumes from the Superglue would spread throughout
the car and reacted with moisture to show up any latent prints, which would then be enhanced by a laser beam which was focused
on the car.
Forensic scientists held their breath as the glue did its work.
They unlocked the car and found a single print.
A copy was sent off to a new California state computer in Sacramento where it came up with an almost instant match - 25-year-old Richard 'Ricky' Ramirez, who had been convicted
in 1983 of car theft. Detectives from the Night Stalker taskforce brought up his mugshot from police records and knew instantly
that the tall, scruffy and skinny Hispanic in the picture was their man.
The mugshot was splashed across the front of the Los Angeles newspapers.
Caught!
When Ramirez stepped off a Greyhound bus in LA on Saturday 31st
August after arriving from Phoenix - where he had been buying cocaine - he soon realised that his luck had run out.
He glanced down
at the newspaper rack as he walked into Tito's Liquor Store in the Hispanic heartland of East LA to buy his usual sugary breakfast - a can of Pepsi and a packet
of doughnuts. He found himself staring at his own photo under the headline Police Identify Stalker Suspect.
Ramirez knew the game was up.
He turned on his heels and ran for two miles. Police cars descended on the area amid reports that the Night Stalker
had been spotted. Ramirez tried to commandeer a car but the driver fought him off and a group of bystanders rushed to her
aid. He fled, jumping over fences and into the back gardens of homes in this tough East
LA neighbourhood.
It was an area where many Hispanic fugitives from justice might expect to be hidden by locals simply because of their
ethnic origins. But the Night Stalker's horrific and indiscriminate crimes granted him only hatred and contempt from the Mexican-American
community.
Carpenter Luis Munoz hit him with his barbecue tongs when he emerged over his garden fence. But Ramirez escaped and
found 56-year-old Faustino Pinon working on his car. He got into the driver's seat and was about to turn the ignition key
when Mr Pinon gripped him in a headlock. Eventually Ramirez broke free and ran towards a car that Angelina de la Torres was
just about to drive off in.
He ordered her out and shouted: "Te voy a matar! (I'm going to kill you!)"
"El Matador! El Matador! (The Killer!),"she screamed and whacked him with the car door. Her husband, Manuel, came to
her aid and soon Ramirez was surrounded by a mob of neighbours, many of whom were armed with steel bars and tools. He ran
but was soon cornered, beaten to the ground and then pinned there until police arrived and took him into custody. A mob had
to be held back as they surrounded the police station and shouted: "Hang him!"
Ramirez is said to have told police: "I did it, you know. You guys got me, the Stalker."
He also hummed the tune of AC-DC's song Night Prowler and told detectives: "You think I'm crazy, but you don't know
Satan."
It seemed like an open and shut case but when it came to trial - after repeated delays caused by Ramirez
firing his lawyers - he claimed he was innocent and a victim of mistaken identity.
His attorney, Ray Clark, said repeated use of pictures of Ramirez on television had contaminated the identification
evidence of key witnesses.
Witness identification expert Elizabeth Loftus told the trial that research showed that people often have difficulty
identifying people of a different race and often make mistakes when their attention is focused on his gun or knife.
Julian Ramirez also claimed his son had been at home in El Paso on the night of Mabel Bell's murder.
Guilty
Eventually after numerous delays - one juror was murdered and had to be replaced and another was substituted after
falling asleep - Ramirez was found guilty of 13 murders and 30 other offences. At a later hearing Mr Clark tried to claim
Ramirez may have been possessed by the Devil.
But the jury did not buy it and he was given 19 death sentences.
He told the judge: "You don't understand me. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good
and evil."
While on Death Row at San Quentin jail Ramirez received fan mail from dozens of girls, many of whom sent him revealing
pictures of themselves.
In October 1996 he married Doreen Lioy, a 41-year-old freelance magazine editor with an IQ of 152, in a simple ceremony
at San Quentin.
In an interview she said: "The facts of his case ultimately will confirm that Richard is a wrongly-convicted man, and
I believe fervently that his innocence will be proven to the world."
Ramirez remains on Death Row but continues to appeal against his conviction and sentence. Many would say that Ramirez
would be eminently suitable for the gas chamber.
The Night Stalker's victims:
