Richard Ramirez - The Night Stalker

Nicknamed The Night Stalker by the terrified citizens of San Francisco and Los Angeles, Ramirez used his death-like stare to intimidate victims. By the time of his arrest, claiming to be the “right-hand man of Satan”, he had murdered 19 people and terrified many more. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If Richard Ramirez wanted to look like the fiend he admired, he certainly needed no make-up. Nature had done a first-class job. With bulging eyes, sunken cheekbones and high forehead, his gaunt Hispanic face made the perfect frame for a revolting row of rotting tombstone teeth. He had large, powerful hands, liked to dress in black and, as each terrified witness confirmed, he prowled for his victims at night. Yet this was no Halloween joke. This guy was for real. As a devoted disciple of Satan, 25-year-old Richard Ramirez genuinely believed that his perverted mission in life – he was responsible for 19 brutal murders, torture, sodomy and rape – was an offering to The Master he worshipped. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Often strung out on cocaine, LSD and PCP – the horse tranquiliser that can provoke violence in humans – Ramirez calmly shot victims at point-blank range, stabbed repeatedly with long-bladed knives, then carved the Devil’s symbols on their faces and bodies. The more blood he spilled the bigger the high. Indeed, so great was his quest for human blood that no-one was spared – children, young women and elderly couples. His aim: to sit at the right hand of Lucifer in Hell. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Apart from drugs, Ramirez had a passion for the mock-satanic music of groups like AC/DC. He kept tapes in his car – a battered 1978 Pontiac belting out hits from Razor’s Edge, Highway to Hell and If You Want Blood… But there was one tune he liked in particular: the AC/DC hit ‘Night Prowler’, which he adopted as his exclusive anthem. He would listen to it continuously as he went about his task of mutilation and murder, its mind-blowing beat booming full volume through headphones from a portable stereo in his pocket. In other pockets he kept his favourite hunting knife and handgun, the breech fully loaded, ready for use. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Before Ramirez shattered their peace in the summer of 1985, the folk of Southern California had become strangely accustomed to tales of bizarre killings from the likes of the Hillside Strangler and the Charles Manson family. But even in Los Angeles, the serial killer capital of the world, Ramirez was the new kid who had no place in the fantasy world of Disney, Universal Studios and the sexy glamorous world of movie stars. Yet the Stalker would soon be a fact of life. And for the first time anyone could remember, terror was about to grip the middle-class folk of two great American cities. The first in a series of murders began in LA on the morning of 28 June 1984. As a watery sun glinted on the skyscrapers still wreathed in a heavy mist, broadcasts were interrupted by reports of a gruesome murder in the small, leafy community of Glassel Park. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Seventy-nine-year-old Jenny Vincow had been sleeping soundly in her first-floor apartment. It was a warm night and Jenny had left the window open to help her sleep. She didn’t hear the throbbing music or the door handle of her room being turned by a gloved hand. Glancing at the frail, sleeping woman, Ramirez rummaged through a chest of drawers and cursed when he found nothing of value. So he turned his attention to the sleeping woman. He took his knife and plunged it deep into her chest. She screamed and tried to struggle but he pushed her back then calmly slit her throat from ear to ear, so violently her head was almost severed from her body. Finally, he gave her three more vicious stabs to the chest before slipping out the way he came in. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The police investigation drew a blank but concluded they were dealing with a cokehead. They saw no connection when abduction reports came in at the end of February concerning a six-year-old schoolgirl snatched from a bus stop and carried off in a laundry bag. Sexually abused by Raminez, she was dumped by the roadside, weeping. Two weeks later, it happened again. Another girl was snatched from her bedroom at Eagle Rock, raped then dumped in Elysian Park. But at least the girls survived and were able to give a description of their attacker. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ It was spring before the monster reappeared, this time with such savagery that even hardened policemen winced as crime-scene pictures began to come in. The date was Sunday 17 March 1985. It was 11.30pm. Hidden in the shadows of a large condominium in suburban Rosemead, Ramirez waited, gun in hand, as pretty Maria Hernandez, an attractive 20-year-old, stepped from her car. She told police later that her attacker was gaunt and wore a baseball cap with an AC/DC insignia. Blocking her path he fired the gun at point-blank range. Instinctively reaching out, the bullet deflected off the keys in her hand. She fell, pretending to be dead. Ramirez hesitated, then entered the flat to come face to face with Maria’s roommate, Hawaiian-born Dale Okazaki. Once again Ramirez fired. A single bullet entered her brain, killing the girl instantly. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Before leaving, he smeared a large pentagram on the wall in his victim’s blood. Then hearing voices, he fled, dropping his cap in the scramble to get away. This would provide the police with the first real piece of evidence as to the identity of the killer. Maria, still badly shaken, would also testify to his bulging eyes and widely spaced, rotten teeth. The same day, 30-year-old Tsai-Lian Yu, a native of Taiwan, was ambushed near her home in Monterey Park. Dragging her from her Chevrolet, Ramirez pressed his gun to her chest and fired several shots in rapid succession. She died the following day. Ramirez, by now full of confidence, eagerly devoured the newspapers, laughing at the real and imagined descriptions given by his victims. The publicity boosted his ego. Even if he was caught, Satan would find a way to set him free… ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On 27 March 1985, Peter Zazarra called round to his parents’ home in Whittier, near the San Gabriel freeway. It was a routine call and at first he thought they were out. But once inside, he gagged at the bloody carnage before his eyes. His father, 64-year-old Vincent Zazarra, a pizza shop owner, lay stiff on a sofa. He had been shot through the left temple, where there was a round, blackened hole. But his attractive mother, 44-year-old Maxine, had been butchered, virtually ripped apart with a knife. Worse, both eyes had been gouged from their sockets and, some reports said, neatly arranged in a jewellery box! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 14 May: A 65-year-old man, William Doi, is shot in the head. His wife Lillie, although badly beaten, is able to give the the police a description of her attacker. Footprints are also discovered and later linked to Ramirez. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 29 May: Two elderly sisters – Mabel Bell, 84, and Florence Lang, 81 – are savagely attacked in their Monrovia home, which is ransacked. Mabel, already dying, felt her attacker inscribe a pentagram in lipstick on her thigh and saw him draw another on the wall of the bedroom. Four days later the sisters were discovered by a horrified gardener. Florence would survive but Mabel, traumatised beyond comprehension, died soon after. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On 27 June in Burbank, a 41-year-old female schoolteacher was attacked in her home and found with her throat slashed in a near-fatal attack. After tying up the victim’s 12-year-old son, Ramirez woke the woman with a torch shining directly into her eyes. He spoke softly and she remembered the awful smell of his breath. With her hands tied with pantyhose he raped and sodomised her, then slashed at her with a knife. Before zipping up and leaving the terrified woman, he told her she was lucky. “I don’t know why I’m letting you live,” he whispered. Then he was gone into the night. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ By now, several victims had a terrifying picture of their attacker – the cold, penetrating eyes, his jet-black, unkempt hair, his stinking breath, constant references to Satan and, of course, those trademark give-away teeth. But the police still had no mugshot. True, in LAPD forensics they had his AC/DC cap and had linked the killer’s MO to some of the lyrics in the song ‘Night Prowler’: “Was that a noise outside the window?/ What’s that shadow on the blind?” And, “As you lay there naked like a body in a tomb/ Suspended animation as I slip into your room.” There was also the sneaker footprint found at a crimescene, the same as one imprinted on a victim’s face. But Ramirez was in no mood to be captured. Between the schoolteacher rape and August 1985, he would commit several more atrocious crimes before the police could finally match their records to the man who had taunted them for so long. Meanwhile, on 20 July, there were two more serious attacks. In Glendale, a 69-year-old man and his 66-year-old wife were slashed and shot to death in their home. There were cuts to the woman’s body that reached to the bone, probably inflicted with a machete. So deep was the gash on the man’s throat, his head was found hanging on by a thread. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The same night, in Sun Valley, a 32-year-old man, Chainarong Khovananth, was beaten and shot to death as he lay in bed with his wife, Sakima. The woman, seeing the attack, became hysterical and screamed, but fearing for her life and that of her child she was swiftly silenced by her attacker. “Swear upon Satan you won’t scream for help,” Raminez warned as he fumbled with her nightdress and pushed her back on the bed. After raping the woman twice, he forced her to have oral sex. But Ramirez hadn’t finished. Not satisfied with his evil night’s work, he sadistically slapped and sodomised their 8-year-old son, before making off with $30,000 worth of cash and jewellery. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ramirez felt elated. Certain that no-one could touch him, his attacks continued. In Northridge, on 6 August, Christopher and Virginia Petersen, aged 38 and 27 respectively, were critically injured by gunshot wounds. Both survived despite a bullet being buried deep inside Christopher’s brain, and another that left his wife facing the future with only half a face. Two days later, in the plush suburb of Diamond Bar, Ramirez struck again, this time killing 35-year-old Elyas Abowath in his home and sexually molesting the victim’s wife. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The police, who were now facing a barrage of criticism, were at last able to issue a photofit of the Stalker so detailed it could have been an actual mugshot. Realising that the game might soon be up, Ramirez panicked and fled to another city in the Golden State to continue with his errand of death. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The first killing took place 10 days after arriving in San Francisco, when he shot a middle-aged man named Peter Pan. His half-crazed eyes then focused on Mrs Pan, whom he beat savagely before shooting her. When the police arrived they found the woman still alive and satanic messages scrawled upon the walls in blood. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ By 22 August the net was closing fast, though Ramirez showed no sign he was about to lay low. Indeed, in the suburb of Mission Viejo the carnage continued when he shot 29-year-old Bill Carns with a single bullet to the head and raped his fiancée, Inez Erickson, before escaping in a stolen Toyota. But it spelled the end for the Stalker. A clear set of prints on the abandoned car matched those on record at police headquarters. Richard Ramirez was described as a drifter from Texas with a rap sheet of theft and drugs convictions a mile long. The Toyota also linked Ramirez to the scene of the crime. For the first time, the police had a picture of their killer. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On 30 August, an all-points bulletin (APB) was issued for his arrest. By noon, most Californians knew the identity and appearance of the man who had so effectively terrorised the state. Oblivious to all this and still wearing headphones blaring out heavy metal, Ramirez left a Greyhound bus at an LA terminal and headed downtown to score some cocaine. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As he entered a liquor store, not noticing the photo of himself and screaming headlines on the newsstands, a woman yelled, “It’s him. It’s the Stalker!” He looked up startled as other customers rose from their seats, forcing Ramirez to flee empty-handed, heading for the Hispanic quarter in East Los Angeles. With his heart thumping and legs about to give way, he ran for three miles then tried desperately to steal a getaway car. But the mob caught up with him and he was quickly surrounded by frenzied men and women all baying for his blood. As the cries of “El Matador” – The Killer – rose in crescendo, a posse of squad cars screeched to a halt, saving him from a lynching by the enraged Mexican community. Handcuffed as he cowered in the back of the squad car, he seemed puzzled by the noise and fury around him. Wasn’t he Ramirez, man of destiny, granted the power of life or death? In the end there was no-one there to answer. He was just another sicko the world could well do without. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The process of trying Ramirez took four years, during which time he married a life-long fan Doreen Lioy, then aged 41. True to tradition the bride wore white while the groom wore starched prison blues but no restraints. After exchanging vows the couple kissed. Three years later, on 20 September 1989, Richard Ramirez was found guilty on 43 counts : 13 murders and an assortment of charges including burglary, sodomy and rape. On 7 November, Judge Michael A Tynan, handed Ramirez the death sentence. But since death penalties are automatically appealed, he remains today on Death Row in San Quentin, still fantasising that Satan will arrive and set him free to continue his abominable task.

Home