The story of The Night Stalker

    When I was brainstorming ideas about how my first blog post should look like, lots of ideas came to mind. Should I talk about the justice system? Forensics? Types of true crime? However one of those ideas seemed more interesting than the other ones. I want to write something that will be shocking but fun to read and that's the reason why I chose to write about one of the most infamous serial killers of the history,

The Night Stalker a.k.a. Richard Ramirez.

    Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez was born in El Paso, Texas on 29th of February 1960 into a Mexican family and was the youngest of five children. His childhood wasn't very cheerful mainly because of his father, an ex-police officer who was now working on the Santa Fe railroad, who was said to be very violent, irritated and physically abusive. In his early childhood, Richard suffered two wounds on the head. First, when he was only two years old a piece of furniture fell onto him and second, when he was five years old a swing on a playground hit him so hard that he was actually knocked unconscious. An interesting thing here is that there are many theories about how a person becomes a serial killer and due to multiple killers experiencing some sort of head trauma in an early age, some may think that it is not a coincidence. What about you? Did any of you ever injure your head in early childhood? Anyways, back to Richard.

    Richie (as his family called him) was always trying to escape his toxic household and hang out somewhere else. He went to his cousin's house very often. His cousin, Miguel, was much older than Richard and an U. S. Army Green Beret veteran who served in the Vietnam war. Every time that Richard came over, Miguel would tell him about his time in Vietnam and about all of the terrible and gruesome sexual assaults that he and his army buddies committed on the local women. He also had many polaroid pictures of himself posing with his victims such as a photo of him holding a severed head of a woman that he had raped. Mind you, Richard was only about ten years old at this time so god know what listening to these stories and looking at those polaroid did to his mental health. Over time Miguel was becoming even more mentally unstable which culminated when he solved a domestic argument with his wife by shooting her in the face with a revolver (which obviously killed her) while Richard was there witnessing it all. 

    After the shooting, Richard decided to move in with his sister and her husband. The husband, Roberto, was a peeping tom. This meant that he enjoyed sneaking up to people's windows at night and watching them. After Richard moved in, he started going to these creepy night trips together with his brother-in-law.

    As a teenager, he started experimenting with drugs such as LSD or marijuana. He also got a job at a local Holiday Inn, a hotel chain. while working here, Ramirez took advantage of his master key and robbed the guests while they were gone. One time, he broke into a room not knowing that it is not completely empty. This room belonged to a couple however the husband had just left the room to go somewhere so there was  only his wife there. When Richard realized this, he tried to sexually assault her but the woman was able to fight back until her husband returned who tackled Richard to the ground. The police was called and he was arrested. Strangely, the couple didn't end up testifying against him at the court, so the case was dropped. However he ended up loosing his job at the hotel. He also dropped out of high school. This all happened when he was in ninth grade.

    We are going to jump a few years forward because not much is known about what happened to him after he dropped out of school until he was twenty two.At the age of twenty two, Ramirez moved to California. He first stayed in a hotel in San Francisco. Sadly, this was the same hotel where he committed his first murder. He brutally beat, assaulted and stabbed a nine year old girl in the basement. This case was not connected to Richard up until fairly recently (2009) when they matched his DNA and the DNA from the scene. This was the only "non-nightstalker" murder he ever committed.

    On the 28th of June 1984, a 79 year old lady was found murdered in her bed in her own apartment. She had multiple stab wounds and her throat was slashed so deep, that some would say that she was nearly decapitated. to the investigators it was pretty obvious that the intruder got into her apartment via a window. This murder was later connected to Ramirez when the police found a fingerprint that he left at the window frame.

    On the 17th of March 1985, a woman named Maria was pulling up to her garage and when she stepped out  of the car, she was shot in the head by Richard. Miraculously, the bullet was ricocheted my her car keys which she held up to her head. Maria had a roommate called Dayle who hid under the kitchen counter when she heard the gunshot. Curious about the whereabouts of the intruder, she raised her head over the counter which made her visible to Ramirez who shot her immediately. After this he robbed their house. Not even two hours later Richard ambushed a woman who was sitting in her car, pulled her out, shot her twice and ran. I think that it's kind of strange that he just ran away instead of driving her car somewhere which was his original intension. These two murders (and one attempted murder) in one day made Richard very infamous and local media gave him the nicknames such as "The Walk In Killer"and "The Valley Intruder".

Ramirez's footstep

    Ten days after, Richard broke into a house in Whittier, California at 2 a.m.. In this house he found a couple sleeping in the bedroom. He immediately shot the husband and proceeded to tie the wife limbs to the bed and asks her where the valuable possessions are. After he leaves the bedroom, the wife managed to untie herself from the bed and grab a shotgun which they kept under the bed for safety. Just as Ramirez got back to the room, she pointed the gun at him, pushed the trigger and...the gun was not loaded. He proceeded to shoot her three times. He also mutilated her eyes with a knife. While fleeing the scene, he left footprints of his sneakers in the wet flower beds. This double murder made the police realize that there was a serial killer in the area.

    On the 14th of May 1985, Richard invaded the home of Bill and his disabled wife Lilian. He shot Bill who was reaching for his own gun, assaulted Lilian and robbed the house.

    Fifteen days later, using a stolen car, he got to the house of two elderly sisters, Mabel and Florence. In the house, Richard found a hammer which he used to beat Florence with. He used electric wires to shock both of them, he assaulted Florence and using one of their lipsticks, he drew a pentagram on Mabel's thigh and on one of the walls. Only Florence survived her injuries.

     Next day he broke into the house of Carol and her son. He bound her and her eleven year old son. After searching through the house himself, he untied Carol and ordered her to head him to the valuables. Then he violently assaulted her and when she tried to look at him told her not to or he would cut her eyes out. Then he bounded her once again and fled the scene.

    On the 5th of July, he beat a sixteen year old with a tire iron when she was asleep in her bedroom. Richard couldn't find a knife in the kitchen, so he strangled her with a telephone wire. However, electric sparks started appearing on the cord and Ramirez was convinced that this meant that Jesus Christ was here to protect that girl so he quickly fled the house. The girl survived but required 478 stitches on her head.

    Two days later (once again), Ramirez found an old woman named Joyce sleeping on her couch. He beat and kicked her to death. He left the same shoe print on her face, as earlier on the flowerbed. Only a few hours later, he held another woman at gunpoint, tried to assault her and made her "swear on satan" that she wasn't hiding anything valuable from him. After these crimes, he decided that he needs a better weapon to commit his crimes with. After a bit of thinking, he went into a store and bought a machete. On July the 20th he got into the house of and elderly couple with his brand new machete, shot them, mutilated their bodies using the machete and stole their possessions. At 4:15 a.m. Richard broke into the house of another family and once again shot the husband, sexually assaulted the wife, tied up the child and stole everything valuable. He once again made the wife "swear on satan".

    On the 8th of August, Richard stole another car and drove himself to another home. He once again shot the husband and assaulted the wife and made her "swear on satan" to not scream. The couples three year old son woke up and Ramirez tied him up.

     All of his crimes have been covered by media and during a televised conference he was given the nickname "The Night Stalker". It was also this conference when they openly told the public to lock their doors and windows because anyone could be next. This kind of angered the LAPD who knew that Ramirez followed the news everyday and this could make him destroy some evidence and they were right. After driving to San Francisco once again, he took of his shoes (those that left the footprints all over the scenes) and threw them from the Golden Gate bridge. After that he once again returned to Los Angeles.

James Romero

    After returning to LA, Ramirez was once again seeking out a house that he could rob. He found a house  near LA and started sneaking around it. Luckily for the family which lived there, their thirteen year old son James was awake and heard Richard's footsteps. At this point everybody, including young James knew that there was a serial killer on the loose. The young boy, ran to his parents bedroom and alerted them about what he heard. The family starts making lots and lots of noise hoping, that The Night Stalker would hear them and leave them alone. It worked and Richard got scared and went back to his car and started driving away. Then James got a great idea. He quickly got a pen and a notepad and sprinted out the door so he could write down as many things about the car as possible. How brave! I really don't know what I would do in such a terrifying situation but running out of the house probably wouldn't even cross my mind. What would you do? Anyways, after that James contacted the police and gave them every bit of information that he gathered. The police found the car a few days later and even though Richard always carefully wiped of every surface, they managed to get one fingerprint from the mirror. Using this one fingerprint, they managed to get a match. The fingerprint belonged to someone called Richard Ramirez. He  already had a long lists of arrests, mainly due to drug use. They decided to release a mugshot of Richard to the public at a conference and The Night Stalker finally had a face. They also released a message addressed to Richard personally: "We know who you are now, and soon everyone else will. There will be no place you can hide.".

    Richard realized that it was no longer safe for him to live in California so he drove to Arizona where his brother lived. His brother was probably unaware of anything that was going on. When in Arizona, he feared that meeting his brother would put him in danger too and  he took a bus back to LA. Once he got of the bus back in LA, he saw a newspaper stand and the front cover of every newspaper had his face on it. This makes him panic so much, that he actually sprinted across the speedway where he tried to carjack a woman's car but the people from the cars around him prevented him from doing so. He takes of running again, jumps over fences and attempts two more carjackings. When he tried to steal the second car, he was currently in a rougher area of LA and a group of men saw him, stopped him from stealing the car, called the police and while waiting for the officers to arrive beat him with their fists and an iron bar. After that he got arrested and was waiting for his first court date. 

    On his first tour he carved a pentagram into the palm of his hand and yelled "Hail satan!" multiple times. He also liked bragging about how he was going to shoot the jury and one day when one jury didn't arrive the whole court got terrified. As it turns out, she was actually shot in her apartment but Richard had nothing to do with it and it was actually her ex-boyfriend revenge. Another terrifying thing that happened was Richards fanbase. Yes, you hear that right! This disgusting individual had a fanbase. Some would say that Richard was a handsome individual and because of this, he started receiving hundreds of fan letters. Young women would even go to his courts and act like they are at a concert and he is their favorite singer. This got so far, that when they needed to get a replacement for the jury that got shot, the woman who replaced her was a Ramirez fangirl and even she would send him love letters and slip him notes. I actually find it depressing that when you search "Richard Ramirez stan" or something similar on social media like Twitter, fan pages dedicated to this man still pop up. Yes, dedicated to this evil evil man. However doesn't only happen to Ramirez. There are fan pages dedicated to murderers such as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer or the Columbine shooters which try to portray these psychopaths as some sad, dreamy and romantic boys from a romance novel which is extremely disturbing and disrespectful towards the victims.

Ramirez and Doreen Lioy

    On September 30th 1989 Richard was convicted of all charges. This meant: 13 counts of murder, 5 counts at attempted murder, 11 sexual assaults and 14 counts of burglary. His criminal penalty ended up being 19 death sentences. While on death row, he ended up proposing to one of his girlfriends, Doreen Lioy and they actually got married in the San Quentin state prison. Doreen even stated, that she would commit suicide when Richard gets executed. However, over time Lioy probably started becoming more sane and eventually left Ramirez. After she left him, Richard got engaged to another woman.

    Even though Ramirez got nineteen death sentences and was supposed to be executed in the gas chambers, he never actually died there. Ramirez died of B-cell lymphoma, chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis C infection. He passed away on June 7th at the age of 53 and was on death row for 23 years.

    This was the story of The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. He was the personification of the fears that many of us have. The fear that somebody is watching your every move. The fear that something is hiding in the darkness of your room. The fear of falling asleep. The fear of leaving doors unlocked. I hope that everyone reading this is staying safe, locking their doors and being careful because you never know what's hiding under the blanket of night. 

-Amélie Anna