This is an article from the local paper on Thursday October 3, 1996 wrote by an AP writer.
Doreen Lioy was visiting the "Night Stalker" serial killer in prison for just the third timewhen she decided he was the man of her dreams. Richard Ramirez, on death row for torturing, sexually abusing and murdering 13 people in Souther California in the early 1980's, and Lioy were to marry today at San Quentin State Prison. They will be married along with nine other couples at the prison's visitors' center. Ramirez, 36, won't be allowed conjugal visits. "It's pretty sick," said Lioy's cousin Adam Yates, one of several relatives upset by the wedding. "Somebody marrying a mass murderer? I think everybody (in the family) is pretty disgusted." Another relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added: "She grew up in a very normal household. Everything was fine. She just went off the deep end, for whatever reason. I think everybody is embarrassed. Everybody is in shock." Loiy, a 41-year-old free-lance magazine editor from San Rafael, could not be reached for comment Wendsday and her telephone number is not listed. But in an interview published last month in the San Francisco Examiner, Lioy said she truly loves Ramirez and believes he's innocent. Instead of a vicious murderer, she sees an attractive, vulnerable man who still exhibits boyish qualities. " I never found the one who was everything rolled into one," Lioy told the newspaper. "It may sound strange, but that's who I believe Richard is." The Night Stalker generally entered homes through unlocked doors and left pentagrams, a symbol often associated with devil worship, scrawled at some crime scenes and on some victims. He once flashed a pentagram drawn on his hand during his trial and yelled "Hail Satan." Lioy's relatives say she is a reclusive woman who lives in a fantasy world. From the beginning, she showed an unusual fascination with the Ramirez trial. She attended hearings and corresponded with him while she was in prison. The two met after Lioy sent Ramirez a birthday card, worried that he wasn't being treated fairly while awaiting trial. Ramirez eventually invited her to visit him. On the third visit he proposed, Lioy told the Examiner. She immediately accepted. Lioy has told relatives that Ramirez has an overwhelming power with women, but relatives say the attraction probably has more to do with her craving for attention and affection. As the submissive twin to a domineering sister, she never got the attention she wanted, they said. "She's obviously in the limelight. She's obviously getting a lot of attention now," one relative said. Another theory is that marrying a man who will never leave prison is "safe," they said. "There's no way of consummating it," Yate's said. "It's sort of a fantasy that's as close as she wants to get to a real human relationship."
