Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker

 

Richard Ramirez was born on 29 February, 1960 in El Paso, Texas, US. He was the child of Julian and Mercedes Ramirez.

 His father was a police officer and was determined to provide for his family. But had anger management issues and would often abuse his wife and also Richard and his 4 other siblings. At the age of 2 he was struck in the head with a falling piece of furniture. That left a big injury in his head, When he was 5 he was struck again in the head with a swing. Perhaps all of this played a role in the person he was about to become. 

By the age of 10, Richard was spending a lot of time with his cousin Miguel. Now Miguel was much older and he had been in the army who served in the Vietnam war. Miguel would tell 10 year old Richard about all the horrible things he had witnessed and done in the war. He would even tell him how he raped and killed women. Miguel even went on to teach Richard some skills, such as how to murder or capture people. 

On 4th May, 1973 Richard was hanging out at Miguel's house, that is when Miguel got into a heated argument with his wife and ended up shooting her. Richard witnessed the entire situation. 

After Miguels arrest Richard ends up moving with his sister and her husband. He would take Richard to peep into the windows of neighbors where there were attractive women. 

As a teenager Richard worked at this hotel as a part time job. He would use this as an opportunity to steal from the guests. One time he found a women alone in the room and attempted to rape her but fortunately her husband showed up. Police arrested him but the couple dropped charges. Richard ended up losing his job and later dropped out of high school in ninth grade. 

At the age of 22 he had permanently moved to California. He went to San Francisco first, where he ended up assaulting and brutally murdering a 9 year old girl in the basement of a hotel. This was Richards first murder. 

Richard had over 25 victims. Here's a look into some of them:

• June 28th, 1984 Richard killed a 79 year old woman by the name of Jennie in her apartment in Los Angeles. She was stabbed repeatedly in her sleep. 
• March 27th, 1985 Richard broke into a home at 2am in Whittier. He shot 64 year old Vincent in his sleep and beat his 44 year old wife, and later shot her 3 times and pulled her eyeballs out with knife, while stealing from them. Police found a lot of evidence against him from this incident. 
• May 14th, 1985 Richard entered the house of 66 year old Bill and his 56 year old disabled wife Lillian. Richard shot Bill in the face and raped his disabled wife and stole their valuables. 
• July 20th around 4am Richard broke into another home. He killed the husband and proceeded to rape the wife. This couple also had a 8 year old son, so when Richard found him he bound him up and dragged him around the house to show Richard where the valuables were. Around this time he told the little boy to "swear to Satan" that he was not hiding any money from him.

The list of his crimes goes on.

A press conference took place and in this conference they gave him the name "The Night Stalker". During this conference they told everyone to be aware and lock their doors. But this made many angry, specially LA detectives, because they knew that Richard was going to watch it and get cautious.

On August 24th Richard tried to break into a house, a little far from LA. 13 year old James heard footsteps outside his house and woke his parents up. Which scared Richard, he got into his car and when he was driving away James ran outside and took notes about the car and contacted the police. 

On August 28th they found the vehicle and on the rear view mirror they found one fingerprint. They matched the fingerprint and sure enough they found a match. Now they had his name. Richard Ramirez.

They publicly announced his name and mugshot. Which frightened Richard so he decided to go to his brothers place in Tucson, Arizona. August 30th he took a bus to Tucson but didn't meet his brother. Instead he took a bus back to LA. 

On August 31st after he had gone back to LA, he stumbled across a newspaper rack and every paper had his photo on the front page. He panicked and started running. He tried to carjack a woman but people outside prevented him. He ran again to east LA, he tried to car jack again but a group of men saw him and weren't having it. They beat him up until the police showed up. That is when he finally got arrested. 

On his first court hearing, Richard had a pentagram drawn on his hand and was seen screaming "hail Satan". There were also rumors going around that Richard was planning to shoot the prosecutor in the court. 

Richard even had fans. Many thought he was a very good looking guy. His 'fans' wrote him letters, paid him a visit in the prison. Many even thought he was innocent. A woman by the name of Doreen was absolutely obsessed with him. She wrote him around 75 letters. 

One of the jurors got shot and later on was replaced by another juror, Cindy. Now Cindy was infatuated and obsessed with Richard. She would even write him letters and notes. Richard loved having a jury by his side. 

After a very interesting trial Richard was finally proven guilty and was sentenced to die in California's gas chamber. 

On October 3rd, 1996 he ended up marrying Doreen in California San Quentin State Prison. Doreen ends up leaving him after she found out that he had killed a 9 year old. 

On June 7th, 2013, at the age of 53, Richard passed away in prison After being sick for a while. That is the story of Richard Ramirez aka the Night Stalker.