Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Richardo ” richard” leyva minoz ramirez dubbed the night stalker ,the walk- in killer and the valley intruder was an American serial killer and sex offender whose crime spree took place in California from June 1984 until his capture in August 1985. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989, and died while awaiting execution in 2013
in 1985,los angeles would be terrorized by seriesbrutal rapes and murders.
Panic swept the county. people didn’t know if they were going to live to see the next morning.
men , women. the elderly and and children were all n the sadistic killer’sites. the final hours ere at thehands of someone who’s laughting as he tortured and raped and killed them.
a serial murderer who broke all the rules ,the suspect has used guns, knives, tire irons.
the atacker chistened the night night salker would go down as one of history’s moste heinous killers.
but who was the night stalker? and was he born to kill?
the 17 of march 1985 sunday evening , 10.40 at night. a call comes in ,very typical, one dead one wounded. another routine murder.
the police didn’t yet know it , but this murder would anything but routine. they enter the location on vilalge lane.
a women , dayle okasaki was lying on her back in the kitchen . she had sustained gnshot wound to the head.
34 year old dayle okazaki had been unoading groceries, when a man entered her apartment and executed her where she stood.
dayle’s flatmate 22 year old maria hernandez had also been shot at point -blank range but had survived.
she didn’t regognize her attacker and nothing had been taking from the property .
detectives had to woirk it out , they didn’t know if there was an angry boyfriend or it was a home invasion robbery gone wrong.
detective then learned that the killer had struck again. it acourred about a half hour later it wa in the same general area of the town.
in nearby monterey park , a 30 year old lawstudent Tsai-Lian Yu have been driving home
when another driver forced her to stop and then shot her twice in the chest at close range.
almost immediately the police were aware that they had some sort of series going on not knowing just how big it was going to get or grow.
the nature of the crime was not typical of a serial kiler, the owerwhelming majority of serial sexual killer murderes kill up close personal, manual strangultion ligature strangulation multiple stab wounds, blunt force trauma ,very rarely they shoot somebody. because it’s too cold and too impersonal.
on the morning of march the 27th.
the bodies of 64 old vincen zazara and his 44 year old wife maxine
wher discovered in their home.and the pleasant suburb of whittier. the same gun had bee used. but the behavior at the crime scene
was signigicantly different.vincent zazara had been shot as he slept
maxin had been shot and stappbed repeatedly and the killer had taken a gruesome souvenir. the woman’s eyes were gouged out. not to be found. many serial murderes take souvenirs from people that they kill wheter
it’s a piece of flesh , piece of jewelry ,something, it is a concrete reminder it’s something they can see. something they can hold onto. something that says ” wow, you did this.”
on april the 15th two weeks after the murder and mutilation of the zazaros, the killer had apear to struck again. home of lilian william and lillian doi. a couple in their mid-sixties there were cases on the living room floor
mr doi was stil in his bed and he had been shot.
mrs doi ‘s room was next to the master bedroom, she was an invalid so she had her own room.
she had been sexually assaulted . william doi had been quickly dispatchedwith a gunshot to the head.
63 old lillian had been restrained with thumb cuffs,beaten terrorized and raped. but he killer had let her live.it was unusual for a serial murderer to have two people ,shooting one and acting like a serial murderer with the other one.
men he was killing because they were the obstracle to get to his lust.-the women . it was an issue of control ite was an issue of not being overpowered what husband or man would lay there and not intervene. and trying to keep his partner from being attacked.
despite the many inconsistencies detectives suspected that just on man was responisble for all crimes.they very thought strongley there was a serial killer going on .
back at the time there were two renowned psychologist , one from new york and one from local here on the waest coast from UCLA that essentially said that the detectives were full of hot air that one man was not capable performing what detectives alleging.
six weeks later int he leafy ciity of monrovia two sisters both in their eighties were discovered in a home they shared.
one had been reaped.both had been sevely beaten with a hammer. here again there was something knew. there was a whole aspect of the occult .
some things written on the wall
there were some markings on the body, the crimes appeared related but defied the current therories regardings serial murders.
police were baffled ,they had no idea ,who was doing this ,how it was happening ,they wondering what type of person would have done this . was it a maniac? was it a group of people ? because ,dont forget in california they had charles mansion who with his cult went out to murdering an awful lot of individuals.
but police impression was that it was a single individual, it was someone who was not insane , not showing outrages behaviors and hthat he was probably young, he was probably either caucasian , hispanicbut he was certenlay not a standout in his community.
the press would dub the mystery killer the night stalker. and those wh ohad known him would never have suspected what he was capable of.
he was a normal kid no different than the rest of other kids.he was friendly , he was nice and he was funny.he would always make other children laughting.
and the night stalker’s reign of terror had had only just began.
may 1985 and the night stalker had only just began a series crimes that would both sicken and terrify the residents of california .
praying on the unsuspecting citizens o in their homes.he took a glee a in rape, murder and mutilation. as the crime escallated detectives raced to try to idetify who was responsible for the shockingly vicious attacks.
who was the night stalker
richards ramirez was born in 1960, the last of five children to mexican immigrants,living in the texas border of El paso.
El Paso was a town of about half a million people and across the Rio grande was Ciudad Juárez which had 1, 5 million people about tripple the size of el paso.
it’s a heavily hispanic population, it was basically a very quite town , a very guite place to live.
Ramirez had a humble upbringing typical to his neighborhood. it’s a low – income neighborhood but it was nice, it had green grass in front and the house was painted. it’ wasn’t shabby, but it was quite small.
like lower class people.and everybody used just to hang around together together at night. they would all play games and all the neighborhood kids would get together up until everybody’s parents calling the children in for dinner.
richard’s farher was hard- working and strict with his children. he was very much what everyone would classify as someone from mexico who had come up to el paso and had scratched out a living here, he worked for the railroad.
the younf richard ramirez appeard no different from his friends and neighbors, a normal neighborhood family just like other familys. he was an ordinary kid just like the rest of the neighborhood children.
the children went to school , minded their manneres, did what they had to do , no different then the rest of the chool children. ramirez was friendly , he was nice and and he was funny. he would allways have his friends laughting. ricards friends find him kind and caring.but by the time he runed 10.it apppeared al lwas not well with richard ramirez
he would have seizures ,he would be shaking, he was sick. remirez was diagnosed with epilepsy a coundtion that would affect for much of his shool life .
as ramirez approached his teens ,he grew distance to his father. and began to look up to his cousin mike. a vietnam veteran who boasted of many atrocities while in service.
the cousin kept multiple mementos of his time in vietnamn and he pulled out this box and showed all of these photgraphs of the women he was raping or the heads he was cutting off it was a fascination,it wasn’t recoiling in horror , it was like ” wow what you’ve done.”
at the age when his sexaulity being formed ,ramirez was exposed to images of rape, torture and murder.
this individuals are in teir fantasy lives from early adolescence and in some regards some respects their fantasy life is more real to them than rality.
their fantasy lives are filled with sadistic aggression where there’s a fusion of sex o and aggresion.
ramirez later claimed that his cousin mike gave him a front row view of his brutality. he wathched this cousin shoot his wife. after a petty argument at their apartment mike shot his wife in the face , killing her instantly.
and it stuck with him , not in the sense of it was a bad thing , not in the sense of that ” how could you do something so horrendous” he was fascinted
the fantasies of those that have committed serial crimes have been very carefully studied by the staff of FBI behavioral science over the years. the fantasies start very early in life and ofthen times are a result of some incident that trigger’s this thoughts.
and once the fatasies become t sexualized it becomes extremely dangerous because they start fantasizing about events of rape, torture , mutilation
friends of ramirez didn’t notised anything strange of him untile high school that’s when they noticed he was different and he had changeded . didn’t no longer say hello that kind of thing. he would hang out wit boys that did drugs.
a lot of second generation immigrants sometimes get involved in gangs and some of the thinking is that they see that their parents have come to america and have worked really hard and have very little to show for it, and there’s some people think that there’s a a disillusioning on their part like” why play by the rules if this is what you end up with” you could say that might have been a factor in the rebelliousness of ricky ramirez
ramirez became interested in hard rock and satanism. a lot of kids ,high school kids for instance were dabbling in this and they would give it on their own little touches and being high school kids ,brains still developing they’re developing a lot of them got in trouble and went the wrong way . we did have some kids that killed their parents and things like that.
ramirez dropped out of school and began living on the fringes of society.sometimes sleeping in the local cemetery. right from the get- go richard stole anything that was loose and anything that he could pry loose . he’s neigbhor started calling himd dido’s,fingers and they they call him ricky rabone. ricky the thief. after the attempted rape of a guiest in el paso hotel , ramirez moved to california.
he became a coccaine and alcohol addict he lived in what’s called skid row in los angeles which is a pretty scruffy area .people doing everything and taking everything and homelessness is not an unusual thing you live in what’s called a flop house.where you going and flop to get of your high or to recover.
now ,did the drugs affect h is brain functioning ,did it affect the way he saw the world.probably. but ut wasn’t causative, it didn’t lead to make him kill ,he was already primed.
ramirez lived day to day ,taking drugs,using prostitutes,stealing cars, breaking and entering.
so he would go out in the suburbs where often they did not lock their doors at night even they didn’t lock their windows.it was like heaven for him t his is exactly what he was looking for and he would go through
and then he got bolder and bolder and bolder. the vast majority of burglaries are for material gaine .this are usually drug people who want to get some money to buy drugs and they might do it witha friend or a partner.
but there ares small group of burglars that are sexually motivated with the burglary itself is motivated by an uge to look sexual stimulation through looking .
and since 50 percent of burglaries occure in the evening when the victim is likely to be home ,it’s very easy to see the progression from voyeurism to breaking entry to sexual assault or to sexual murder.
by nay 1985 richard ramirez killed at least eight times and his violent home invasions were about to ecalate. plunging of los angeles into panic.
1985 los angeles county was in the grip of vicious serial killer. ordnary citixens were no longer safer in their homes as the mysterious killer christened the night stalker , raped murdered and multilated in the name of satan.
the dreadful and indiscriminate crimes caused a wave of fear. evrybody was scared. everybody in the country of los angeles and sothern california. people are scared to death.
gun sales seriously went up vasincrease in gun sales during the summer of 85 people were keeping their windows was closed. it was a very very hot summer. people would not open the windows at night ,peaople sweltered in their house every night. bceause poeple was afraide somebody come in and kill people.
and still the violent attacks cointinued
in burbank on may the 30 th a 41 old woman was rapedwhile her 12 old son was locked handcuffed in a closet he was alo, she was allowed to live.
on the 27 th of june the body of 28 year old teacher was found in arcadia.
she’d been sodomized and her throat slit.
on july the 2nd again in acradia, a 65 year old women was found dead. she ‘d been beaten ,her throat cut and her home ransacked.
detectives was convinced just one man was at work ,but the facts flew in the face of received wisdom.
here they was crossing all the gamuts and only consistency was his inconsisitency in the way he was committeing his crimes .
what the FBI was telling detectives is that serial killers tend to operate in the same way they’ll use the same weapon over and over the same method of operation .
but there were different weapons used, there was two seperate guns that were used throughout these events.there were knives used in a couple of the occasions.there were bludgeons used on a couple of occassions. this are all differences in the method of operation.
on july the 5th, the night stalker targeted a quite suburban street in sierra madre.
in the bedroom of 16 year old school girl withney bennett. talk about a nightmare . her parents awakened to her her crying and coming down the hall, they find her in her bedroom on the floor covered in blood.
The suspect had entered the house,confronted her in in bed while she was asleep
and beat her with a tire iron and tried to strangle her and left her for dead.four feet of sutures ended up in her head took the close to the wound.
the 7th of july was another in s long run of swelteringly hot night .sophie dickman, a lady in her 60s had been sexually assualted she was robbed and raped and was handcuffed to her bed.
detectives recognized all the hallmarks of a night stalker attack.detectives learned that he had verbalized words , words that were common that they had heard in the past , words he had spoke there” where’s the money ,where’s the jewelry, shut up bitch ” there was no doubt in detectives mind they were dealing with the same guy.
detectives suspicions were confirmed by the discovery in a nearby home of the 61 year old joyce nelson.
beaten to death with a blunt object. the night stalker had struck twice in one night. and he would repeat the trick just two weeks later .
on the 20th of july,first shooting max and layla kneiding at their home in Glendale before moving on to sun valley.
the male had been executed in his sleep , the women had been sexually assaulted and there was a young boy that also had been assaulted.
ramirez had again dispatched the husband as he slept. he had repeatedly beaten, sexually assaulted and humiliated the mother, demanding that she pray to satan for her life. and then raped her eight – year old son .
it was not enough just to murder or to rape he had to torture and he loved to terrorize him , he would make him say ” hail satan”
humiliation of victims is very typical in serial sexual homicide, this is arousing to them ,this reassures the offender that they are in such complete control that they can degrade and humiliate the victim any way they want.
nothing could be more stimulating for an undividual with this deviant sexual araousal pattern.
no one was able to predict or prevent the night stalkers crimes.
it’s typical of serial killers to choose people who put themselves at risk somehow, like male or female prostitute, like hitchhikers but these other people thery were living their normal lives they weren’t doing anything at all that should have brought this down on them.
and the panic escalated
the publicity of the killings was like a drum beat.the more killlings the more publicity the more fear.
detectives knew how vicious and violent he really was and there was an enormous amount of pressure to stop before he hurt anybody else .
people were buying guns , people were buying guard dogs , people were scared to death nobody knew who he was , nobody where he was going to hit ,people didnt’ knwo if they were going to live to see the next morning.
and then, a shocking twist.
it was very obvious that there killer from southern california had now struck in the city of san fransisco
on the 17 of august the night stalker had shot another couple in their home ,leaving a satanic symbol on the wall.
a week later he struck again 50 miles south of los angeles, shooting the husband and sexually assaulted the wife.forcing to swear her love for satan.
with the killer on the move, detectives were now working night and day to try catch him before he struck again.
detectives didn’t yet know it. but before the end of the month they would be face to face with one of history’s heinous serial killers.
by august of 1985 the night stalker had killed at least 13, terrorized los angeles county and pushed investigators to to their limits.
now he appeared to be on the move and detectives feared he’d be even harder to catch.they had him localized in los angeles county
now all of the sudden he’s in the city of san fransisco that was of great concern. but by the end of the month a number of important leads finally came together.
detectives actually through informants that identified him , they knew where he hung out . he loved drugs and he used to hang around the skid row area.
at the same time there was a fingerprint recovered on the rear view mirror of a stolen car that the killer had used and they made richard ramirez off that fingerprint.
the sheriff of L,A county, the chief of police of L.A, city ,the chief of Glendale decided that they were going to release the picture of the killer ricard ramirez to the press immediately.
when they showed the picture .friends thought it was so weird because thery can’t comprehend him doing something like that . not with his personality.friends were in shock, they just knew what they knew of him as a child, they were just shocked.
in the morning of the 29 of august 1985. richard ramirez arrived in los angeles. after visiting a brother in arizona.
richard walked into the nearest convenience store to buy some candy and notice that people were lookinch at him and when he looked at them they’d look away of course and as he was waiting for his change he looked at the newspaper on the counter and every paper there were four or five of them from L.A . and from the area .
every paper had his picture ,his photograph and then one woman ,she said “it’s him el matador” which is killer in spanish.
ramirez panicked and fled.he started to running through yards, across over fences. he climbed a about nine foot barrier wall.
as he went through yards people were calling in. people were callin to the los angeles police departement saying somebody’s coming to my yard , i have a crawler.
members of the los angeles police departement were already on his trail, they were following the 911 calls continue running east in the northeasterly direction
and made it all the way to hubbard street
he tries to carjack a a female resident , she screams.
neighbors were a sleep, they heard a bang then a scream, neighbors ran out , they noticed a tall dark skinny guy running . they just came running as fast as they can to assist .
richard had been running for about two miles. the neighbors caught up to him about here and tackled him right here against this fence.
citizens come out and surround him
and he was right here , sitting down right here.he was bleeding because one of the neighbors had hit him with a fence post .
right over the head.he was perspirin and huffing and puffing and look very tired.and neighbors said he looked very scary.
with ramirez in custody , officers would now come face to face with the killer for the first time.
when detective’s saw him ,they said he just had this evil look in his eye , he just looked so sinister as he were possessed. he just lokked evil.
one of the detectives remember playing with his anciety level , trying to make it go up and come down , they wanted to see what they could do to raise it or lower it.
and richard was almost to the point of hyperventilation, his head was down on the table and for a millisecond .
just for a millisecond he becoming somewhat nervous, he knew this guy was into satanism and all of the sudden when he richard starts hyperventilating, and he said if this guy starts levitating i´m’ out of here .
this is a guy although at times there were photographs taken of him that he looked liked a wild man.
he was much more intelligent than detectives envisioned,people think he was crazy. he was much more articulate the n most murder suspect detectives interviewed.
ramirez revealed he was well schooled in murder. detectives impression they got from himwas that he was well read even though he dropped out of school after the ninth grade or so thereabouts.
he was very interested in murder and killing and past serial killers because he had done a lot of reading on that.
he could tell you everything about serial killers from the time of the romans fed the christian lines and modern day serial killer.
when detectives took him to his first cell and he found out that was the cell that angelo bono who was part of the hillside strangler duo, that was the cell he was in , he was excited.
the night stalker had petrified california and haunted detectives for five months. now he was finally behind bars.
in 1989 richard ramirez was found of 13 murders and 30 attempted murders rapes and sexual assaults. he was sentenced to death.
so what drove the knight stalker to his ultimate destiny?
as one of history’s most savage serial murdererswere the lessons he learned in his upbringing to blame?or was richard ramirez born to kill .
there was not anything in his upbringing that was any more unusual than a lot of people.
a lot of successful people have gone through hell being raised and come out just fine. this could be a case and it probably is a case of when he was conceived he’s a bad seed no matter how he was raised he was destinated to do what he did.
a lot of people grow up poor and a lot of people are abused in their childhood but they dont all grow up to do the things that richard ramirez did .
it does not appear that he was abused as a child or deprived or there’s certainly no evidence that was presented. so how did he grow up to do these things?
the best way to look at it, is from a biopsychosocial aproached ,but with a heavy emphasis on neurobiology, wheter it’s hormonal ,chemical, electrical, brain damage some combination of facts plus psychosocial stressors abuse never helps . many many things have to go wrong in order for one of these individuals to be created.
richard ramirez was born to kill.he began his life in the way everybody does seemingly normal, something happened in that gene that he has, something that was added on to by the experiences that he had in his environment and childhood.
it’s like a recipe. you have a basic thing , you add to that recipe ,and finally you have the born killer.
natured or nurtured.i dont’ believe anybody is born with this in him, this comes about from something they’ve learned ,they’ve seen and they ‘ve decided to do .
richard had the liberties to do whatever he wanted to do and was a drifter on in early age and you couple that with narcotics activity the drugs ,then that definitely causes problems in the mind and i don’t think anybody ‘s borned like that .they learne they see , and they do.
more details
While awaiting trial, Ramirez reportedly met actor Sean Penn.
Penn, who was jailed for 33 days in 1987 for reckless driving and assault of an extra on Colors (1988), claimed to receive a letter from Ramirez as a fellow inmate, to which he wrote back telling Ramirez he had no sympathy and hoped he died in the gas chamber.
By the time of the trial, Ramirez had fans who were writing him letters and paying him visits.Beginning in 1985, Doreen Lioy wrote Ramirez nearly seventy-five letters during his incarceration. In 1988 he proposed to Lioy, and on October 3, 1996, they were married in California’s San Quentin State Prison. For many years before Ramirez’ death, Lioy stated that she would commit suicide when Ramirez was executed. By the time of his death in 2013, Ramirez was engaged to a 23-year-old writer.
Ramirez in 2007
On August 7, 2006, Ramirez’s first round of state appeals ended unsuccessfully when the California Supreme Court upheld his convictions and death sentence. On September 7, 2006, the California Supreme Court denied his request for a rehearing.Ramirez had additional appeals pending until the time of his death. Ramirez died of complications secondary to B-cell lymphoma at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, California, on June 7, 2013.He had also been affected by “chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis C viral infection”.
His body was not claimed so it was cremated.