In 1985, serial killer Richard Ramirez terrorized Southern California during a brutal murder spree that left at least 13 people dead across Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Night Stalker, as he became known, broke into homes in the San Gabriel Valley and Bay Area, sexually assaulting and killing victims ranging from children to the elderly. Detectives Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno led the homicide investigation that eventually used groundbreaking AFIS fingerprint technology and a rare Avia shoe print to identify Ramirez, leading to his conviction on 67 felonies and 19 death sentences.
So there's this moment in the summer of 1985 where an entire region of California basically stops sleeping. People are loading guns they've never fired before, installing bars on windows, double-checking locks they've checked three times already. Because someone is getting into homes, and nobody knows how, and nobody knows who's next. The victims are all over the map. An elderly woman. A six-year-old girl. A couple in their sixties. An eight-year-old boy. There's no pattern, no logic, no way to protect yourself because the only common thread is that this person comes at night and he's already inside before you know it. This is the story of Richard Ramirez, a man whose childhood was essentially a master class in how to create a monster, and the two detectives who had to figure out how to catch someone who broke every rule of criminal profiling. We're talking about rare shoe prints, a business card that cracked the case wide open, and a capture that ended with an angry mob in East LA beating the hell out of him before cops could even get there.
#NightStalker #RichardRamirez #TrueCrime #SerialKiller #LosAngeles1985 #UnsolvedNoMore #ForensicScience
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