January 13, 2023 • 53 mins
Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Ramirez aka The Night Stalker was an American serial killer from El Paso, TX that moved to California and began assaulting, burglarizing and murdering citizens throughout California between June 1984 and August 1985. In part one of this chilling tale, we take you back to the tragic early life of Ramirez and the terrifying stories of just several of his murders and what happened.
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Sources:
The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez , Carlo Philip 1996
The Twisted Tale Of Richard Ramirez, The ‘Night Stalker’ Serial Killer Who Terrorized 1980s California , Serena, Katie Oct , 2021
https://allthatsinteresting.com/richard-ramirez-night-stalker
"Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer" 2021
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Richard Ramirez". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Jun. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Ramirez. Accessed 13 January 2023.
Penn State, RICHARD RAMIREZ: HEAD INJURIES GALORE
Nov. 2019
https://sites.psu.edu/kcruzpassionblog/2019/11/07/richard-ramirez-head-injuries-galore/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Before we start today's episode, we just wanted to give a quick content warning.
(00:04):
Today's episode will cover sexual assault and child abuse.
If that's something that you don't really want to hear right now, we understand completely.
And we will see you in the next episode.
Listener discretion is advised.
Why on earth would you have hurt those people?
Why did you kill those people?
(00:25):
I know you've come.
No comment.
I cannot answer that at this time.
I'm Kendall.
And I'm Bree.
And this is When the Light...
Goes out.
(00:49):
Hey!
Hey.
To my coyotes.
I know.
Hey everyone.
You know it's been a minute since we've made our debut appearance this year.
So I'm sorry for that.
It's only been two weeks.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Yeah.
Your guys are like, that was like what?
How long ago?
It's cool.
Just a fresh...
(01:09):
What's the day's date?
Today's 11...
12?
Get fresh 12 days ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, we're making this right before we release it, which is not new for us, but
it's fine.
It's kind of my fault.
Everybody wish Kendall good luck.
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
It's been a long week.
(01:33):
I feel like it's been a long couple weeks for I think both of us.
I'm not gonna lie.
I had ended up going to Toronto for New Year's, which was really fun I guess.
And you know, with some friends.
I got really sick throughout Christmas, which really sucked.
That was icing on top of the cake and on top of that, I just really...mental health
(01:59):
things.
Guys, make sure that you're taking care of your mental health because I get it.
These days it's rough.
It really is.
I don't know.
It kind of went into 2023 stumbling, but we're making it through.
Nevertheless, we'd aggress.
And progress.
Yeah, seriously though.
But we are making up for it today.
(02:21):
We're here today.
It's also, when it comes out at least, Friday the 13th.
So happy Friday the 13th everybody.
Ah!
Ah!
No.
We're gonna insert some blood curdling screams.
Oh, I will put that in there.
Let's do that.
Cool.
It's in there.
Love.
Love.
Well, so we had got some things pushed back because we have not been able to release
(02:50):
some things in the last couple of weeks.
We just really needed that time to just recuperate, which all of us need it.
All of us need it sometimes, yeah.
So we put some things back, but we don't want to erase everything.
We kept what we initially wanted.
Some things to get rearranged.
It's okay.
It happens.
But today we are covering the case of Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker.
(03:21):
Yeah, I know.
I think we should come on guys.
Yeah.
I think, I feel like we both been a little excited to do this for a minute now.
So we'll see how that goes and when we dive into everything.
But before we do that to Brie Huff, you Ben, I haven't seen you in like, so long.
It's been so long.
(03:41):
I've been chilling.
You've been chilling.
I get it.
I know you've had a like the last like, what, couple days?
Last, yeah.
Just a week ago at Mom PTO.
So you guys, I've just been like chilling, relaxing, getting things done.
Yeah.
Doing stuff that I need to do.
(04:02):
I know, Brie does not take days off.
That's the thing with her.
I do not take days off.
I don't know how she does it because I need days off or I will go fucking crazy.
So I get it though.
Every once in a while.
Yeah.
The little where I like accidentally sleep until like 2pm and then my day is kind of
over because I slept in.
(04:23):
No, I get that.
But you're not enough to have days off because I always, always, always have to be there.
I mean, you're still hard working.
You're still hard working though.
I mean, you have the show, you have your site business and you have your full time job.
Like you're doing a lot and I give you an applause for that guys.
Let's all clap.
School.
School is back in session.
It started this week.
(04:43):
Oh, that is true.
That is true.
Oh my God.
I actually have to take a syllabus quiz.
Wow.
This is your last semester of college though.
So you're almost done.
I'm so proud of you.
Finally graduate.
I love it.
Finally.
No, it's about time.
It's about damn time.
I'm so glad to not have it on my plate anymore.
(05:05):
Good.
No, it's going to be like a big way lifting off your shoulders and telling you it's going
to be so nice.
Oh, I know.
This week of not having to deal with it.
Like the whole break, I guess, of not like focusing on school is crazy.
You'll have more time for your boyfriend.
Yeah, more time for your bestie.
Now, hell yeah.
More time for everything.
(05:26):
Yeah, no, seriously.
It's fair.
I think before I dive into the case, no, like I haven't really personally been on social
media for the last several weeks and I honestly also have not really been caught up on the
news.
I don't know if there's any new cases or things like that going on.
I do know that we talked about how the guy who had committed the it's a.
(05:52):
Idaho murder.
Idaho murderers.
Yeah.
And I caught the guy, which is really good.
Very unfortunate for the four people that had ended up losing their lives.
But you know, hopefully they, their families do find justice because that is very important,
of course.
And in terms of horror movies lately, I saw Megan.
(06:16):
I said, yeah, I actually kind of liked it.
I was going and expecting it to be a lot like Chucky or something.
It was it had its own little flair to it.
So I know that it was produced by Jason Blum and James Wan, which are two big, really big
like Hollywood or movie producers or whatever, you know, like Blumhouse and whatever else.
(06:41):
So they did a good job on the movie.
I liked it.
Go see it guys.
It was really good.
So yeah, that's all the horror movie news I have today.
Sorry, that's short and sweet.
But let's dive into the case because we have a lot to get through.
It's a big one.
It's a big one.
And we're going to do it in two parts.
Each part is 11 that pages long of notes.
(07:02):
So strap in.
I know we put a little disclaimer at the beginning, but seriously, guys, this is a pretty, pretty
gruesome one.
So definitely strap in and get ready because it's story time.
It's story time.
It's still a time.
All right.
So today we dive in to a story about pure evil, a being so malignant that some even
(07:27):
referred to the serial killer as one of the most evil of them all.
This is Richard Wemiras, a.k.a. the Night Stalker.
I'm sure most of you guys have heard this.
It's a very, very popular, like infamous serial killer.
Yeah, no, it really is.
And he does some really fucked up shit.
(07:49):
I just do most of the people we talk about.
It's the murder podcast where he's supposed to do, I guess.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Well, Wemiras is a brutal murderer that killed at least two and plus 15 people.
So it's just insane that, you know, that might have been everything we know of, but
we don't know for sure.
(08:10):
You never really know what these people, if they committed more murders, things like
that.
Yeah, it was in and around Los Angeles and San Francisco, California between June 1984
and August of 1985.
This is a man that stood six feet and sorry, that was weird.
(08:31):
That was a man that stood six one and always wore a ACDC cap covering his wavy black hair
and a rich of teeth with a grin so frightening that many claim to have seen the devil right
through his piercing black eyes.
He was also very kind of like lean and skinny.
Very yeah.
He was very lean and skinny.
(08:51):
Very tall, skinny.
He had very gross messed up teeth.
Yeah.
Very gaunt.
Very yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And from what I hear, everyone says how he always was very smelly.
Like he always had a weird potent punch in.
Yeah.
If you guys look up photos of this guy, he is fucking.
(09:13):
He looks like he has a halotide skin.
Yeah.
And it's just, I can only imagine going into this already how these victims had to go through
this because oh my God, I have literally not even kidding you guys.
I've had nightmares about this guy just researching him for the last couple weeks now.
And it's off.
He did a lot of fucked up shit.
(09:34):
His first alleged murder victim was a 79 year old woman by the name of Jenny Vinko.
On June 28th, 1984, son of Jenny, Jack Vinko actually lived in the same apartment complex
as his mother, which was in Eagle Rock, the Eagle Rock apartments in Los Angeles.
It was kind of weird for Jack that day because he hadn't been called over by his mother that
(09:59):
morning well into the afternoon.
And they were like butter on toast.
They were really, they communicated all the time.
They were always close to each other.
So they always had that kind of going on for them.
And the last time he had seen his mother was a day prior.
So nearly 24 hours later, a little worried, Jack goes down to check in on his mother,
(10:22):
assuming that he could just let himself in with his mother's spare key.
Jack goes to let himself into her apartment, but then realizes that the apartment door
of his mother Jenny was left unlocked, which was unusual and definitely not like her at
all.
So Jack later testifies saying, quote, I looked around the living room and I saw everything
(10:45):
thrown around the floor.
As he proceeded to look for her, it was then after entering her bedroom where he had found
his mother laying sprout out on the bed in the dark.
After several times of calling her name, he got no response.
After a close glance, his eyes adjusted to a truly horrifying scene.
(11:09):
We're diving right in, guys.
Jack had seen a brutally slain Jenny Vinco sprout out on her bed.
She had been stabbed, sexually assaulted, and her throat had been slashed so deeply
that her head had nearly been decapitated from her body.
How did anyone know this was the murder from one truly terrifying monster?
(11:45):
Richard Ramirez was originally born Ricardo Livia Ramirez on February 28, 1960.
He was born El Paso, Texas, to Julian Ramirez and Mercedes Ramirez.
Richard was actually the youngest of seven, though his childhood alone was not very sweet
(12:07):
at all.
He actually had a pretty terrible childhood, and most of that was left in the hands of
his abusive father Julian and his own cousin Mike.
There was not a ton of information on Richard's mother or anything that I kept finding, Mercedes,
other than both of his parents being Mexican immigrants, but according to reports, Richard's
(12:28):
father was violent towards him and his siblings.
Richard's siblings alone were exactly raised to be innocent either.
There had been a report of Richard's older brother Ruben that had said he was arrested
on a car theft.
(12:48):
He said it developing this weird glue sniffing addiction.
The oldest of the siblings, Robert, had developed a drug problem.
Like we have mentioned before too, we don't blame you for feeling sorry for the child
version of a serial killer because I feel like kids really need to be nurtured and cared
(13:12):
for.
I think out of 10, these aren't the situations where they turn out being the greatest in
the long run.
It's unfortunate and I feel bad for Richard because he didn't really get the chance to
...
Yeah, it's out of his control that he grew up in that environment, I guess.
(13:32):
Yeah, it really is just terrifyingly sad that... and you'll see in a minute that he just
really went through a lot and he didn't really get a chance from the start, from the jump.
It wasn't in his favor to be some... maybe he could have been in a band or he could have
been some cool business dude or something.
(13:53):
But to clarify that doesn't mean anything for his actions.
No, not at all.
Like we said in the last couple episodes, there have been many of people who have had some
terrible childhoods and did not grow up to be serial killers.
Yeah, they changed things.
They didn't justify his actions or anything, but it is very unfortunate that he did have
to have a childhood like that.
(14:15):
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, and many researchers speculate and justify this behavior that he had later on by many
saying that it was a result of all the head injuries that his father may have inflicted
on him.
They suggest that he may have developed temporal lobe epilepsy.
There have also been several sources I shared about how at an early age of two, two years
(14:40):
old, Trester had fallen on top of Richard, giving him a forehead laceration.
Another time at the age of five, according to AETV.
Wait, and those like dressers in like the 60s and 70s were heavy.
That was not no IKEA press board.
Hell no.
That was so... oak.
(15:00):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
This is mahogany, sorry.
No, seriously.
Yeah, no, you're right.
That shit is not like at all.
To think about that, it's just terrifying that a kid had had that happen to them.
Yeah, that's not like that IKEA mall.
It's been falling on a kid.
No, not at all.
(15:20):
It's like a wooden oak tree.
Jesus.
And so, and another time at age five, according to AETV, he was swinging on a swing and somehow
knocked was knocked unconscious.
It was then that he started experiencing epileptic seizures.
So two things like that to happen on top of your father allegedly being abusive.
(15:41):
And then next on top of that, his cousin, Mike, was definitely a bad influence and definitely
the definition of a bad influence.
Mike was fairly young at the time, maybe I want to say like early to mid-20s.
He had moved into the Ramirez home after returning from war.
He'd tell Richard about all this fascinating stories, quote, unquote, about the torture
(16:08):
and mutilation he once inflicted on these women.
I've heard this.
And then...
Yeah, keep going.
Oh, sorry.
No, it's okay.
I spoiled it.
No, it's okay.
And now I was just going to say, yeah, he inflicted so much torture on these Vietnamese
women that he had, Matt, when he was serving in the Vietnam War.
But Mike wouldn't just share these stories.
(16:29):
He followed up with the stories by sharing terrifying Polaroid photos.
He had taken of these women that he had raped, tortured and killed.
Still a child.
Richard really just started seeing his cousin as a role model because of this.
Yeah, like his cousin almost inspired him.
Yeah, you literally almost did.
He was kind of like his person to look up to.
(16:54):
And I'm like...
Also, can we talk about how his cousin is also a serial killer, but just a war?
Yeah, a war?
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
Like, Jesus.
And keep in mind, like I said, Richard is so young at this time.
So it's like, this is what you're learning.
This is what you're taking from.
It's just...
Oh, it's crazy.
(17:14):
And it's like, this is a crazy family.
It was one of those kind of like, you know, from the start from the jump, the family was
just awful.
So like I said, Mike wouldn't share these stories.
He would share these horrific and terrifying Polaroid photos with him.
And they were just disgusting photos.
Still a child.
(17:36):
Richard had really started seeing his cousin as the role model.
And around this time, Richard was about 12 years old.
So the two would casually just smoke marijuana, which would spark Richard's interest to
jerk use, which is insane because the kid is 12 years old.
What the fuck?
Man, I think I was still playing on Barbie's.
(17:56):
I was playing on Barbie's myself.
Like, what?
I...
Yeah, it's just insane.
And by the age of 13, according to the book The Night Stalker, The Life and Crimes of
Richard Ramirez by Philip Carlo, Richard really idolized his cousin and began to become
a rouse from the violent stories that his cousin would tell to him about this Vietnam
(18:17):
woman that he would just torture.
So in addition, Ramirez had also been in the company of his cousin when his wife and
him had gotten to this altercation.
And his cousin, Mike, literally shoots his wife at point-blank range in the face.
Ah!
(18:38):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Girl.
Like, literally, he was just there as a kid and I want to, like I said, he was like 13
years old at this time.
His fucking cousin shoots his wife in the face in front of this kid.
Ah!
Over an altercation?
Over an altercation, yeah.
Oh, oh my God.
(18:59):
Yeah.
Crazy enough, somehow, Mike had only been given four-year prison sentence.
Why?
And was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity.
Why?
Oh, thank you.
It's not insanely crazy.
It's just, oh.
Okay, I will be leaving, I'm packing out my bags and I am moving to outer space.
(19:21):
Crazy.
It's just like, from the jump, I'm finding.
That's not insanity.
Thank you.
Yeah, like you're- There's no insanity.
You've killed your wife, and not only did you kill your wife, but these people don't
even know about the fact that he kills all these Vietnamese women.
I'm sorry, how is that insanity?
This man is a serial- Oh my God.
(19:42):
Okay, I had a story for a different day.
So it was not until 1977 at the age of 17 when Richard faced his first arrest.
Crazy enough, it was just from a marijuana possession.
So some sources suggest that he was arrested for a string of petty crimes between 1977
(20:03):
and 1982.
The most referenced it being just from a marijuana possession.
So that's what I found, that's just what I'll go with for now.
But shortly after being released is when Ramirez picked up and moved to Texas to California.
Nothing good progressed from this move.
(20:24):
He started to rely on cocaine and soon developing a pretty gnarly cocaine addiction, began
burglarizing homes, became fascinated with weapons, and began educating himself on Satanism
and infamous serial killers such as Ted Bundy and the Hillside Stringler.
For anyone unaware, the story flows into the 80s and many, and especially in California,
(20:50):
or Southern California that is, were very fearful of anyone that claimed to practice
witchcraft or groups that roamed around claiming to worship Satan.
All the more in Southern California residents were already just dealing with the crimes
of the Hillside Stringler like I just said, and the crimes of the Manson family.
(21:11):
That ranged between the late 60s.
And this cult definitely does some damage, girl.
So that alone helped promote the Satanic Panic well into the 70s and 80s.
So the making of this monster really just made everything way worse in the realm of
the western United States.
(21:31):
And like we mentioned, where Tuamirez had a list of pretty crimes, and it just kept
growing and growing between the late 1970s and early 80s, already being the product of
abuse and neglect by his father and having a murderous cousin that murdered his life right
in front of him as a child, definitely is a starter pack for a co-buddied killer.
(21:53):
So I'm just saying that.
And as we have seen from countless other serial killers, like Brie had said, after experiencing
a terrible childhood trauma, being shown that torturing people is an option to them, dabbling
in hardcore drugs and starting off with petty crimes, it's always some reason like the structure
of a serial killer for some reason.
(22:16):
It's just weird.
It's crazy that that works like that.
I'm not saying it's everybody, but it seems to be a lot of the people at least we've covered.
So, but being that Ramirez has hit all these points leads up to what we believe is Richard's
first murder.
Of course, this comes from a full circle to the beginning of our story when we had talked
(22:37):
about June 28th, 1984, when Ramirez tragically murdered 79 year old Jenny Vinko in her apartment
in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles.
It is not unusual that Ramirez still have right into this murder so unhinged.
Most murders this gruesome are usually connected to someone the victim knew or was close to
(23:02):
because of how personal the slaying is, but the thing about Richard Ramirez is that he
didn't have an MO.
He just killed.
Yeah, he just did it to do it.
Yeah, the reason he is found to be one of the most terrifying serial killers is because
he never had a vendetta, never had one.
He just found a hobby and wondering into anyone's home, raping, murdering them, robbing them,
(23:27):
and for fun of it just doing it just to do it.
Yeah, and he didn't really have a, correct me if I'm wrong, but he didn't really have
like a type either.
Like it was just any woman.
Any woman.
Yeah, you're right.
No, any woman and he did do some things to little boys too and huh, whole sleep passes
it, but yeah, he really had no specific MO.
(23:52):
Yeah, it was just like.
Most of the time he did and of course like I said, we'll go into it in a minute here,
but he often went for the man first just to get him out the way and then of course went
for the woman if she was in the house at the time.
So, yeah, this was an individual that broke into homes not knowing who do you find on
(24:14):
the other side of the door and had no problem hurting the men, women or children.
Oftentimes he did this in middle of the night, which is even more terrifying.
Hence his alias that we will talk about a little later, but it is also crazy to think
that that all occurred in the 80s revolving around the serial killers because I feel like
(24:37):
there was a lot of serial killers around this time for some reason in the 80s, just at least
active, especially in Western America at least.
There was around this time the BTK killer that had also been active.
He was active in Wichita, Kansas around this time.
His actual name was Dennis Lynn Raider.
(24:58):
BTK, fine torture killed.
Yeah, yeah, he would bound, yep, his female victims, he would torture them and he would
kill them, hence the name.
And it's just truly terrifying that unfortunately this is also happening around the same exact
(25:19):
time as Wichita Ramirez being active in California.
And oftentimes he would take them out of the bed, he would do it when they were sleeping
and force their husbands to watch.
Don't know if he'll cover that someday, but it's a pretty crazy and early case.
After the murder of Jenny Vinko, several months had gone by before Ramirez was struck again,
(25:43):
and believe it or not things got crazier from here because on March 17th, 1985, 22 year
old Maria Hernandez was just coming back from work and was pulling up to her condo in Rosemead,
California, that she had also shared with her then 34 year old roommate, Del Okazoski.
(26:05):
As Maria had pulled into the garage and began to get out, a tall, strange man dressed in
all black from head to toe wearing a black AC DC cap walks right into the garage and
slams his head down on the car.
She then turns around to see this guy standing right before her.
(26:30):
Well, as soon as she looks down, she sees him holding a.22 caliber pistol, he raises
it and shoots her.
As soon as he shoots, she quickly raises her arm to protect her face.
She flies backwards to the ground and Ramirez just steps right over her and heads into her
home where Del Okazoski was unpacking her groceries in the kitchen.
(26:56):
But Ramirez did not realize that Maria was not dead.
Maria had actually been hit at all because the bullet she had been shot with ricocheted
off her car keys when she had raised her arms which had forcefully pushed her to the ground.
What a lucky shot.
What a lucky move.
(27:16):
It's like an unlucky, lucky shot.
When a few minutes go by, Maria just lays there, she lays still.
First of all, she's recovering from that blow to the ground, but also until she hears her
attacker close the door from behind him, she's very clever about this.
(27:37):
She's a bad bitch.
The next thing she is thinking is, ok, odds are he's going to come back through that door
at any moment and he could still shoot me and kill me for good measure, so I need to go
and find help.
So she gets up and starts running down this alleyway between the condominiums, but she
(27:58):
hears a shot ring out from inside the condo and becomes conflicted because she knows her
roommate is inside but knows that she also needs to get help.
So she turns around and she heads back to the condo, the condo's front door, this time
to avoid running into her attacker again.
For a while, inside of the condo, when Maria had first pulled into the garage, Dale herself
(28:20):
had just gone grocery shopping and was unpacking groceries when she hears a gun go off right
outside of the back door to the garage.
So she crouches down behind the kitchen's counter and it's dead quiet.
After she hears the back door open and close, a couple minutes go by and she peeks up from
(28:42):
behind the counter through the groceries where Richard Ramirez had been standing right there
staring dead at her on the other side of the counter.
It was around this time that Maria heard a gun go off inside of the condo and she turns
back around to go help her roommate and just as she reaches the front door thinking that
(29:05):
he's about to come out the exit in the house that he came through, he comes out of the
front door and they both stare at each other dead in shock because Richard had thought
he shot her dead and so Richard raises his arm with a.22 caliber and just as he does,
Maria says, you already shot me once, do you really want to shoot me again?
(29:28):
At that moment, Ramirez lures his gun and just casually walks away.
She's sassy.
I like her.
Oh my god.
She said, you failed once.
Are you really going to try again?
This is a bad bitch.
I'm telling you.
She is a bad.
If I was roommates with her, I feel like I would have just ran and got help.
I feel like I would have not went back.
(29:49):
Yeah.
See, that has always like the question of what, because I get where she's coming from.
Oh yeah.
Like save your friends.
Save your friends.
But I feel like I'd be like, I'm so sorry.
I love you.
I'm going to live with regret for my whole life, but like I need help.
You have to protect yourself too.
Like I need help.
Yeah.
And I just almost got shot.
I need help.
I'm just going to get in my house.
How did she know that would work?
(30:10):
She didn't.
She's a bad bitch.
I love her.
What's her name?
Maria.
Yeah, Maria.
Maria.
If you're still alive, you're a bad bitch.
Let me tell you.
And spoiler, she does live and this girl comes back later and let me tell you.
Oh, look.
Okay.
She fucks it up cause.
Okay, period.
Come on.
Keep going.
So thereafter, Maria had rushed into the condo and locked the door behind her.
(30:35):
And as soon as she walked into the ransacked kitchen, she had seen her roommate, Dale Akazoski,
laying dead in the kitchen.
She had received a bullet to the forehead at point blank range.
See, that's all I'm saying is she heard that gunshot.
So I'd be like, there's no way.
There's no way.
Yeah.
So I would have just kept her.
She's lucky that he decided to just let her go.
(30:58):
Oh, I'm just thinking about it too.
And I'm like, it would have been for no reason.
She would have turned back for no reason.
Like I can't imagine this happening, but imagine you're like, okay, you're trying to be, you're
trying to be that final girl, right?
But you're like, okay, I'm conflicted.
Like I just heard that and I'm scared for my friend.
Like, I don't know what to do.
(31:20):
Like Lord forbid this ever happened.
Like what?
I don't know why I would do in that situation.
Yeah, I don't want to like go get help and go protect myself.
But at the same time, I see again what she was doing.
But I couldn't, that trauma must sit with you.
And honestly, I don't know how I would feel after that, but I can only imagine the scary
(31:42):
fact that this man had randomly walked up to me and just held a gun to my face and shot
me and I had really threw it and then my roommate didn't.
I mean, the whole experience is traumatic.
Oh, it's just so sad.
So fortunately, sorry, fortunately, Maria was able to live through this just traumatizing
(32:03):
event.
Like I said, she called 911 or she gave a pretty accurate description of their attacker.
He was about six one wearing a black members only bomber jacket, which was very popular
brand at the time.
She wore black pants, black shoes and a black AC DC cap, which mistakenly Richard had left
(32:28):
behind at the crime scene on the floor of the garage.
Dummy.
Dumb bitch.
Yeah.
As I run as long as it took for anyone to catch this man, he had a pretty bad habit
of leaving shit behind as evidence at these crime scenes.
And you will definitely see in a moment that he did it almost at every crime scene.
So only 40 minutes after the murder of Dale Okazosky, one mile away from that crime scene
(32:54):
and the city of Monterrey Park, a 30 year old woman by the name of Si Leon, sorry, Si
Leon Yao had been yanked out of her car and shot in the chest.
God, the forensic department later connected the cases together as being both victims of
a 22 caliber pistol.
(33:15):
But somehow annoyingly.
They didn't even choose to believe that these two deaths could be by the same person.
So that's really fucking annoying right now.
And I think that the LOPD is going to pistol off a little more throughout this.
Don't come for us, but we'll get through it.
So March 27, 1985, 10 days after the two murders of Dale Okazosky and Si Leon Yao, police got
(33:44):
another report of a double murder in Whittier County.
What happened that night?
Gotta brace yourself, because this is pretty gnarly.
So when Meera's goes into this house by climbing through an unlocked bathroom window and finds
his balance by stepping on a plastic paint can that was against the wall, he creeps in
(34:05):
quietly, takes out his 22 caliber and fires it into the temple of the sleeping 64 year
old Vincent Cesara that had been asleep on the living room couch.
He then goes into the bathroom where he finds the terrified wife of Vincent, 44 years old
Maxine Cesara.
(34:26):
He begins to stab her several times above her vaginal region, rapes her, and then proceeds
to cut her eyes out of her head, and he takes them with him as leaving the same way he entered
through the bathroom window.
Oh my god.
I know, I know.
I'm really sorry about that, that was bad.
And so, like I mentioned, Ramirez was never too careful because he ransacked their home
(34:51):
and left behind evidence like crazy.
Outside of the window, he climbed through with a wet flower bed, and on the plastic paint
can he had stepped on to get in and out of the house, was a shoe print of 11 to 12 men's
shoe.
So the LAPD has some piling evidence.
They just need to catch this guy in some way.
(35:14):
Not long after, maybe a couple days later, police receive a call from two girls that
reported being followed by a strange man that happened to match the description of the
composite sketch as they depicted him as also being tall in a light-skinned Hispanic
male with dark curly hair.
And they also got a plate number.
(35:36):
Police checked out this tip, they tracked down the plate number, brought the guy in,
and even had Maria Jorinda's, one of the survivors we talked about, checked during a lineup to
see if this was her attacker.
But unfortunately, this was not their guy.
It was literally just some creep that was just trying to pickle him in up throughout
the city.
(35:57):
So May 14th, 1985, police find themselves at yet another unfortunate and gruesome crime
scene.
The victim had actually succeeded in calling the police prior to their death.
This was 66-year-old William Doy, who had been shot to death.
His wife, William Doy, was later found raped and beaten to an unrecognizable degree, while
(36:21):
the house had been ransacked and the walls had been painted with blood sputter.
This part is very graphic again.
Fair warning.
When they found Lillian, she had been noticeably restrained with metal thumb cuffs that were
on the ground.
During the attack, Lillian attempted to escape the thumb cuffs and pried her thumb so hard
(36:45):
that she ripped her thumbs off.
What?
Yeah.
Like, her thumbs were clean off when they found this at the scene.
Wow.
I cannot imagine if you look up a picture of what thumb cuffs look like, they're fucking
terrifying.
Like, they're really medieval-like looking and it's just cool.
(37:06):
So wait, why are they made?
I don't know.
Why are any, why are a lot of things made?
That's also so random.
Like, why thumb...
Why thumb cuffs?
Like, cool.
As a torture device.
Invented that.
Yeah.
Oh, that's a good question.
Yeah.
No, seriously.
Like, burrrr, what reason?
Yeah.
No, seriously.
Okay.
So, thumb cuffs.
(37:26):
Like, what a weird, uh, yeah, thumb.
Like, you guys can see it, but like, your thumbs, let me show you a picture.
I have to show you a picture of it.
They sell them on Amazon.
Why?
Why are they, why are they like that easily accessible?
(37:47):
They shouldn't be.
I think they're supposed to be as-
Is this like a sexual thing?
Like, what is this?
No, no, no, no, no.
I hope not.
What the fuck is it for?
Yeah, this is for bondage.
It looks like it.
Look at this picture.
Stop.
That is bondage for sure.
But why is it- It looks like it's half metric, half BDSM, half like, torture.
(38:13):
I don't know why the fuck people create thumb cuffs.
Why the thumbs?
And to think like, her, you see the way that looks.
Like look it up everyone, like, thinking of prying your thumbs apart.
Like, ouch.
Oh no, like- To the point where she cut them off.
To where she, they came off.
(38:33):
That's crazy.
Oh my god.
And so at first, oh sorry, where was I shit?
Wow.
Okay, so during this time, there also been a string of child abductions where- I'm sorry,
let me get some water.
I forgot this in my family.
A little Chardonnay.
(38:53):
I need a drink of Chardonnay.
Oh, that's so good.
Glad you like it.
It's been sitting in my fridge for like a couple months.
It was worth it.
It's good as fuck, y'all.
I'm back.
Okay.
Woo!
Yeah, so yeah, thumb cuffs are not it guys.
Don't buy those, please.
Don't buy them for your significant other.
(39:15):
Don't buy them for friends.
Don't buy them.
Jeff Bezos, take it off of Amazon, please.
Yeah, what the?
Listen, news to me, I've never heard of that.
Never.
Well, pfft.
Haven't heard of it until I started researching this shit.
I'm like, that's a thing.
So also during this time, there had also been a string of child abductions where a predator
(39:36):
in Los Angeles, Metro Area, had been abducting children, both girls and boys.
This was Richard Ramirez and he had sexually assaulted these children and just released
them.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
What kind of fucking monster?
Oh my god.
And you let life use kids go through that for the rest of their lives.
I was about to say at that point, like, dude, they want, oh god.
(39:59):
Like, I don't know what you're going to say.
Like, is it worth it?
Like, should we just kill them?
Yeah, like he had to go through the rest of your life having traumatizing effects.
A lot of these kids.
I thought you were literally sexually abused by a serial killer.
Yourself?
You would want to do that to other people?
That's crazy.
And what's more terrifyingly, just a thought for me, and I didn't put these in my notes
(40:21):
or anything, but it's just the thought that a lot of these kids I read had to go through
a lot of therapy, obviously.
And a lot of them didn't turn out doing very well.
I think some of them actually ended up killing themselves later on in life.
And I think some of them just had a lot of mental instabilities.
You really fucked someone up.
(40:41):
But not only, like, obviously being sexually abused at all by anyone is already a crime.
Traumatizing.
It has to be traumatizing in itself, but being sexually abused by a known or soon to be known
serial killer, like, how would you live with that?
That's, yeah.
Yeah, it's truly...
No, for me.
Yeah.
(41:02):
But at first, the police had thought that these crimes were two different people, and
when I say crimes, I'm referring to William Doi and Lillian Doi and the kids that were
being sexually assaulted and talking about all of us.
They did not connect these together at first.
They always thought that these were just two different people, up until one of the scenes
(41:24):
where one of the children were brought to had had a shoe print of a men's shoe print
size 10 to 11.
That matched the same print from This Is Our Home.
So now, police are thinking, okay, we have a match, and we know whoever this guy is is
really going for anyone right now.
(41:46):
It doesn't matter who it is.
Boys, girls, like I said, husbands, wives, he's knocking anyone off.
This is killing the kill.
And he's just truly unhinged.
It's just causing chaos all over the Tri-State area.
So Detective Frank Solerno, who is also famously known for cracking the Hillside-Shingler case,
which we'll have to cover at some point in the future, and Detective of LAPD at the time,
(42:12):
Gil Corillo, begins to team up and put their heads together to start developing suspects
and a case against this molester and seo killer.
So meanwhile, as this case is being built, on June 28, 1985, in Arcadia, tragedy strikes.
32-year-old Patty Elaine Higgins had been found on her bathroom floor with her throat
(42:39):
slashed.
Then on July 2, 1985, only five days later, 75-year-old Mary Canan, like
Patty, had her throat horrifically slashed.
Three days after Mary and I said Canan Canan, three days after Mary Canan's murder, on
(43:03):
July 5, 1985, in Sierra Madre, a 16-year-old girl whose name remains very confidential,
had just gone to bed while her parents were away.
In disarray, she turns over to see a man standing directly above her bed and begins to beat
her with a tire iron.
(43:25):
He had climbed through the window and been good about not leaving behind any fingerprints
because he had used black grinning gloves.
He severely wounded and left her soaking in her own blood.
This victim did luckily survive, but to let it end, it's just horrific that this
(43:45):
16-year-old girl had gotten...
Imagine laying in your bed and I'm sorry to scare you guys like this, but it happens.
It really happened.
This girl was laying in her bed, asleep, binding her own business.
You look up and you see someone standing above you.
Try your best to get the fuck out of there, because Jesus Christ.
(44:08):
And with a fucking tire iron?
Like what?
What the fuck?
So it's just crazy to me.
So the typical spacing murder that he was, Ramirez had left behind a bloody footprint
on the gray comforter he stepped on while attacking this girl.
So this footprint was another match from the last two crime scenes.
(44:29):
And now please know that this is all the same guy at this point.
They're really just connecting them together.
At this point in my research, I kind of thought, okay, these various police forces all over
Southern California have to have some lead as to who this person is.
But they actually had no idea who this guy was, because he had this evidence, but you
(44:55):
don't know who the guy is.
You don't know what he looks like.
You can't connect it to anything.
So at this point, he got killed using knives, guns, manual and liquor, stringolation, and
blunt force trauma via tire iron.
So he has no defining patterns to his reign of terror.
So it just made the search just that much more difficult to figure out.
(45:19):
So not to mention, yes, he had found it easier to break into homes in the middle of the night.
And that was pretty common.
But at the same time, the children were disappearing left and right at any time of the day.
And the two girls in the condo were attacked in the middle of the day.
So no one is safe in Southern California right now.
And residents are just getting really on edge.
(45:41):
It's also the 80s in California.
So it's not uncommon to see it with your window open and even come home and leave your door
unlocked for maybe even a couple minutes.
So fortunately we know now.
Don't do that.
Don't leave your fucking door open because girl, people crazy out here, especially your
(46:02):
window.
I'm just saying, you never know.
Even if you live on the second story, do you have your window open?
You never know.
Even if I lived on the fifth floor, I would still leave my windows closed.
Yeah, yeah.
You never know though.
Even if you don't have one of those fire escapes, you don't know what people can do.
For some reason, I always think, I always picture for some reason, somehow they have
(46:24):
a rope ladder and they attach it to the high of the wall.
Yeah.
I don't even think that's possible.
But you never know.
Scary.
You never know.
You never know.
Scary.
You never know.
Who's to say, even if you daily leave your door unlocked, who's to say they won't?
I don't know.
Like, just don't.
I'm like, my windows are locked.
(46:44):
And I know, okay.
And I just remember quick sight story in college.
I feel like everyone off campus or on campus left their shit unlocked.
Oh my God.
I know.
Me and my roommate though, we were super good about locking your door.
Okay, good.
I tell no.
We were just talking about the Idaho murders.
Not to say they didn't lock their doors.
(47:07):
I don't know for sure.
But even then, it's like, even if they locked the door, they still were like, and you're
just letting the killer, if there is one, get in a lot easier.
Just because you might, let's say for instance, you live in a certain campus or something
and nothing has happened.
There's been no murders.
You don't know if people are capable of coming on campus.
Yeah.
(47:27):
I mean, just because you're like in a group of people your own age that you feel like
you can trust.
I mean, not only like murder, but also stealing and stealing.
But people are crazy.
In my dorm, I have my MacBook.
I have like all my nice stuff.
Like, hell no.
No, no.
I think I'll bitch unlocked.
Hell no.
Don't lock your doors.
Lock the doors.
(47:47):
Lock the windows.
Yes.
Don't go outside.
Keep your keys in fighting position.
Yes.
Lock and corner immediately.
Listen, my mama has me paranoid as hell.
Don't try me.
So try me.
Hey, motherfucking man.
Snaps.
If you're talking about something, I'm already on to you.
(48:12):
Seriously though, we're speaking facts because guys, like, I, there's so many young people
and I can't say it's everybody, but there are so many young people out there that think
that it's okay to leave their doors on.
I don't leave them on live to lock your doors.
You don't know.
Even if you live in one of the, it's always like those, those, um, it's always less stories
too that it's like, it was a quiet town.
(48:33):
Nothing ever happens.
And then boom, murder, murder.
Correct.
Like, guys, we don't want to be telling your story.
Just saying like, just lock your doors.
But any who, sorry, we got way off topic.
We're talking facts out like a door.
(48:54):
So like I said, um, sorry, where was I?
Okay.
So July 6th, 1985, Lorraine Rodriguez had been sleeping when she hears a loud, cracking
noise coming from the other side of her home.
Assuming what was her husband, who had actually been a sheriff at the time, she had called
for him not to wake the children, but she received no answer in the house.
(49:19):
She calls for John again and this time he answers, but she can tell he had just woken
up from the couch where he had fallen asleep watching television shaken by her voice.
John says, that wasn't me making that noise.
So he grabs his rifle and heads into the bathroom to a window that had never been opened by
(49:39):
this family because it always had been painted shut.
Well, I feel like we've seen that before.
We've all seen like that one painted the landlord special, the landlord special.
Yes, literally that.
Yeah, it had been painted shut.
So it was not caught.
It was really out of the blue that this was just open like that.
(50:00):
It was just wide open.
Luckily, whoever the intruder was, cough cough or shirt Ramirez, he had been scared off when
they heard the homeowners locking up.
So to the advantage of the police, they caught another shoe print that had been matched with
the rest of the prints.
And that's another crime scene, so Richard Ramirez is a dumbass right now.
(50:22):
And he has always been.
I'm sorry, he has always been a dumbass and he's just collecting evidence for this police
to have a strong case against him when they do figure out who this guy is.
So there's that though this time when the police were able to lift the print, they got
a clear print of the match so clear that if they could tell that it was an 11 and a half
(50:46):
aerobics of via shoe that was very uncommon at the time because this specific shoe had
had been made or barely even manufactured in the United States.
LA County Sheriff Gary Burke is assigned to inspect everything you cut up out the shoe
prints and the shoe itself.
So he goes and reaches out to Jerry Settlefield, which is the creator of the via.
(51:10):
Settlefield provides a spreadsheet of the sales made in the U.S. that year and everything
that had just released miraculously.
They were able to track down the shoe print to the specific shoe type, which was an aerobic
440.
Sorry, I thought he could knocking.
I got so scared for a minute.
It's when outside miraculously, they were able to track down the shoe print to the specific
(51:35):
shoe type, which was an aerobic 440s men fitness black via shoe and only six of these shoes
in the size 11 and a half have been sold in the U.S. Five in Arizona and only one was
sold in Los Angeles.
Damn!
So, unfortunately, this still makes things difficult because the buyer paid cash and
(52:00):
was unnamed.
And they hit another dead end.
They would have had them, but they didn't.
And that leads us to the end of part one.
But you guys know why?
(52:20):
Should we make them wait a little bit or should we just, you know, come out with the next
one?
Just give it to them.
I guess just give it to them.
Let's just give it to them.
You know why?
Let's just do it.
And let's switch it up a little bit.
Let's have Brie read part two.
Ah!
Because I'm falling asleep, people.
(52:41):
No, seriously, though.
That's not bedtime.
No, it's a late night.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
It's actually that was bedtime.
I guess I'll let it out.
Yeah, it is past my bedtime.
This is a late night when the light goes out.
But you know what?
It's cool.
We have part two coming out for you guys.
Get next and we'll see you when the light goes out.
Before we start today's episode, we just wanted to give a quick content warning.
(00:04):
Today's episode will cover sexual assault and child abuse.
If that's something that you don't really want to hear right now, we understand completely.
And we will see you in the next episode.
Listener discretion is advised.
Why on earth would you have hurt those people?
Why did you kill those people?
(00:25):
I know you've come.
No comment.
I cannot answer that at this time.
I'm Kendall.
And I'm Bree.
And this is When the Light...
Goes out.
(00:49):
Hey!
Hey.
To my coyotes.
I know.
Hey everyone.
You know it's been a minute since we've made our debut appearance this year.
So I'm sorry for that.
It's only been two weeks.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Yeah.
Your guys are like, that was like what?
How long ago?
It's cool.
Just a fresh...
(01:09):
What's the day's date?
Today's 11...
12?
Get fresh 12 days ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, we're making this right before we release it, which is not new for us, but
it's fine.
It's kind of my fault.
Everybody wish Kendall good luck.
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
It's been a long week.
(01:33):
I feel like it's been a long couple weeks for I think both of us.
I'm not gonna lie.
I had ended up going to Toronto for New Year's, which was really fun I guess.
And you know, with some friends.
I got really sick throughout Christmas, which really sucked.
That was icing on top of the cake and on top of that, I just really...mental health
(01:59):
things.
Guys, make sure that you're taking care of your mental health because I get it.
These days it's rough.
It really is.
I don't know.
It kind of went into 2023 stumbling, but we're making it through.
Nevertheless, we'd aggress.
And progress.
Yeah, seriously though.
But we are making up for it today.
(02:21):
We're here today.
It's also, when it comes out at least, Friday the 13th.
So happy Friday the 13th everybody.
Ah!
Ah!
No.
We're gonna insert some blood curdling screams.
Oh, I will put that in there.
Let's do that.
Cool.
It's in there.
Love.
Love.
Well, so we had got some things pushed back because we have not been able to release
(02:50):
some things in the last couple of weeks.
We just really needed that time to just recuperate, which all of us need it.
All of us need it sometimes, yeah.
So we put some things back, but we don't want to erase everything.
We kept what we initially wanted.
Some things to get rearranged.
It's okay.
It happens.
But today we are covering the case of Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker.
(03:21):
Yeah, I know.
I think we should come on guys.
Yeah.
I think, I feel like we both been a little excited to do this for a minute now.
So we'll see how that goes and when we dive into everything.
But before we do that to Brie Huff, you Ben, I haven't seen you in like, so long.
It's been so long.
(03:41):
I've been chilling.
You've been chilling.
I get it.
I know you've had a like the last like, what, couple days?
Last, yeah.
Just a week ago at Mom PTO.
So you guys, I've just been like chilling, relaxing, getting things done.
Yeah.
Doing stuff that I need to do.
(04:02):
I know, Brie does not take days off.
That's the thing with her.
I do not take days off.
I don't know how she does it because I need days off or I will go fucking crazy.
So I get it though.
Every once in a while.
Yeah.
The little where I like accidentally sleep until like 2pm and then my day is kind of
over because I slept in.
(04:23):
No, I get that.
But you're not enough to have days off because I always, always, always have to be there.
I mean, you're still hard working.
You're still hard working though.
I mean, you have the show, you have your site business and you have your full time job.
Like you're doing a lot and I give you an applause for that guys.
Let's all clap.
School.
School is back in session.
It started this week.
(04:43):
Oh, that is true.
That is true.
Oh my God.
I actually have to take a syllabus quiz.
Wow.
This is your last semester of college though.
So you're almost done.
I'm so proud of you.
Finally graduate.
I love it.
Finally.
No, it's about time.
It's about damn time.
I'm so glad to not have it on my plate anymore.
(05:05):
Good.
No, it's going to be like a big way lifting off your shoulders and telling you it's going
to be so nice.
Oh, I know.
This week of not having to deal with it.
Like the whole break, I guess, of not like focusing on school is crazy.
You'll have more time for your boyfriend.
Yeah, more time for your bestie.
Now, hell yeah.
More time for everything.
(05:26):
Yeah, no, seriously.
It's fair.
I think before I dive into the case, no, like I haven't really personally been on social
media for the last several weeks and I honestly also have not really been caught up on the
news.
I don't know if there's any new cases or things like that going on.
I do know that we talked about how the guy who had committed the it's a.
(05:52):
Idaho murder.
Idaho murderers.
Yeah.
And I caught the guy, which is really good.
Very unfortunate for the four people that had ended up losing their lives.
But you know, hopefully they, their families do find justice because that is very important,
of course.
And in terms of horror movies lately, I saw Megan.
(06:16):
I said, yeah, I actually kind of liked it.
I was going and expecting it to be a lot like Chucky or something.
It was it had its own little flair to it.
So I know that it was produced by Jason Blum and James Wan, which are two big, really big
like Hollywood or movie producers or whatever, you know, like Blumhouse and whatever else.
(06:41):
So they did a good job on the movie.
I liked it.
Go see it guys.
It was really good.
So yeah, that's all the horror movie news I have today.
Sorry, that's short and sweet.
But let's dive into the case because we have a lot to get through.
It's a big one.
It's a big one.
And we're going to do it in two parts.
Each part is 11 that pages long of notes.
(07:02):
So strap in.
I know we put a little disclaimer at the beginning, but seriously, guys, this is a pretty, pretty
gruesome one.
So definitely strap in and get ready because it's story time.
It's story time.
It's still a time.
All right.
So today we dive in to a story about pure evil, a being so malignant that some even
(07:27):
referred to the serial killer as one of the most evil of them all.
This is Richard Wemiras, a.k.a. the Night Stalker.
I'm sure most of you guys have heard this.
It's a very, very popular, like infamous serial killer.
Yeah, no, it really is.
And he does some really fucked up shit.
(07:49):
I just do most of the people we talk about.
It's the murder podcast where he's supposed to do, I guess.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Well, Wemiras is a brutal murderer that killed at least two and plus 15 people.
So it's just insane that, you know, that might have been everything we know of, but
we don't know for sure.
(08:10):
You never really know what these people, if they committed more murders, things like
that.
Yeah, it was in and around Los Angeles and San Francisco, California between June 1984
and August of 1985.
This is a man that stood six feet and sorry, that was weird.
(08:31):
That was a man that stood six one and always wore a ACDC cap covering his wavy black hair
and a rich of teeth with a grin so frightening that many claim to have seen the devil right
through his piercing black eyes.
He was also very kind of like lean and skinny.
Very yeah.
He was very lean and skinny.
(08:51):
Very tall, skinny.
He had very gross messed up teeth.
Yeah.
Very gaunt.
Very yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And from what I hear, everyone says how he always was very smelly.
Like he always had a weird potent punch in.
Yeah.
If you guys look up photos of this guy, he is fucking.
(09:13):
He looks like he has a halotide skin.
Yeah.
And it's just, I can only imagine going into this already how these victims had to go through
this because oh my God, I have literally not even kidding you guys.
I've had nightmares about this guy just researching him for the last couple weeks now.
And it's off.
He did a lot of fucked up shit.
(09:34):
His first alleged murder victim was a 79 year old woman by the name of Jenny Vinko.
On June 28th, 1984, son of Jenny, Jack Vinko actually lived in the same apartment complex
as his mother, which was in Eagle Rock, the Eagle Rock apartments in Los Angeles.
It was kind of weird for Jack that day because he hadn't been called over by his mother that
(09:59):
morning well into the afternoon.
And they were like butter on toast.
They were really, they communicated all the time.
They were always close to each other.
So they always had that kind of going on for them.
And the last time he had seen his mother was a day prior.
So nearly 24 hours later, a little worried, Jack goes down to check in on his mother,
(10:22):
assuming that he could just let himself in with his mother's spare key.
Jack goes to let himself into her apartment, but then realizes that the apartment door
of his mother Jenny was left unlocked, which was unusual and definitely not like her at
all.
So Jack later testifies saying, quote, I looked around the living room and I saw everything
(10:45):
thrown around the floor.
As he proceeded to look for her, it was then after entering her bedroom where he had found
his mother laying sprout out on the bed in the dark.
After several times of calling her name, he got no response.
After a close glance, his eyes adjusted to a truly horrifying scene.
(11:09):
We're diving right in, guys.
Jack had seen a brutally slain Jenny Vinco sprout out on her bed.
She had been stabbed, sexually assaulted, and her throat had been slashed so deeply
that her head had nearly been decapitated from her body.
How did anyone know this was the murder from one truly terrifying monster?
(11:45):
Richard Ramirez was originally born Ricardo Livia Ramirez on February 28, 1960.
He was born El Paso, Texas, to Julian Ramirez and Mercedes Ramirez.
Richard was actually the youngest of seven, though his childhood alone was not very sweet
(12:07):
at all.
He actually had a pretty terrible childhood, and most of that was left in the hands of
his abusive father Julian and his own cousin Mike.
There was not a ton of information on Richard's mother or anything that I kept finding, Mercedes,
other than both of his parents being Mexican immigrants, but according to reports, Richard's
(12:28):
father was violent towards him and his siblings.
Richard's siblings alone were exactly raised to be innocent either.
There had been a report of Richard's older brother Ruben that had said he was arrested
on a car theft.
(12:48):
He said it developing this weird glue sniffing addiction.
The oldest of the siblings, Robert, had developed a drug problem.
Like we have mentioned before too, we don't blame you for feeling sorry for the child
version of a serial killer because I feel like kids really need to be nurtured and cared
(13:12):
for.
I think out of 10, these aren't the situations where they turn out being the greatest in
the long run.
It's unfortunate and I feel bad for Richard because he didn't really get the chance to
...
Yeah, it's out of his control that he grew up in that environment, I guess.
(13:32):
Yeah, it really is just terrifyingly sad that... and you'll see in a minute that he just
really went through a lot and he didn't really get a chance from the start, from the jump.
It wasn't in his favor to be some... maybe he could have been in a band or he could have
been some cool business dude or something.
(13:53):
But to clarify that doesn't mean anything for his actions.
No, not at all.
Like we said in the last couple episodes, there have been many of people who have had some
terrible childhoods and did not grow up to be serial killers.
Yeah, they changed things.
They didn't justify his actions or anything, but it is very unfortunate that he did have
to have a childhood like that.
(14:15):
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, and many researchers speculate and justify this behavior that he had later on by many
saying that it was a result of all the head injuries that his father may have inflicted
on him.
They suggest that he may have developed temporal lobe epilepsy.
There have also been several sources I shared about how at an early age of two, two years
(14:40):
old, Trester had fallen on top of Richard, giving him a forehead laceration.
Another time at the age of five, according to AETV.
Wait, and those like dressers in like the 60s and 70s were heavy.
That was not no IKEA press board.
Hell no.
That was so... oak.
(15:00):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
This is mahogany, sorry.
No, seriously.
Yeah, no, you're right.
That shit is not like at all.
To think about that, it's just terrifying that a kid had had that happen to them.
Yeah, that's not like that IKEA mall.
It's been falling on a kid.
No, not at all.
(15:20):
It's like a wooden oak tree.
Jesus.
And so, and another time at age five, according to AETV, he was swinging on a swing and somehow
knocked was knocked unconscious.
It was then that he started experiencing epileptic seizures.
So two things like that to happen on top of your father allegedly being abusive.
(15:41):
And then next on top of that, his cousin, Mike, was definitely a bad influence and definitely
the definition of a bad influence.
Mike was fairly young at the time, maybe I want to say like early to mid-20s.
He had moved into the Ramirez home after returning from war.
He'd tell Richard about all this fascinating stories, quote, unquote, about the torture
(16:08):
and mutilation he once inflicted on these women.
I've heard this.
And then...
Yeah, keep going.
Oh, sorry.
No, it's okay.
I spoiled it.
No, it's okay.
And now I was just going to say, yeah, he inflicted so much torture on these Vietnamese
women that he had, Matt, when he was serving in the Vietnam War.
But Mike wouldn't just share these stories.
(16:29):
He followed up with the stories by sharing terrifying Polaroid photos.
He had taken of these women that he had raped, tortured and killed.
Still a child.
Richard really just started seeing his cousin as a role model because of this.
Yeah, like his cousin almost inspired him.
Yeah, you literally almost did.
He was kind of like his person to look up to.
(16:54):
And I'm like...
Also, can we talk about how his cousin is also a serial killer, but just a war?
Yeah, a war?
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
Like, Jesus.
And keep in mind, like I said, Richard is so young at this time.
So it's like, this is what you're learning.
This is what you're taking from.
It's just...
Oh, it's crazy.
(17:14):
And it's like, this is a crazy family.
It was one of those kind of like, you know, from the start from the jump, the family was
just awful.
So like I said, Mike wouldn't share these stories.
He would share these horrific and terrifying Polaroid photos with him.
And they were just disgusting photos.
Still a child.
(17:36):
Richard had really started seeing his cousin as the role model.
And around this time, Richard was about 12 years old.
So the two would casually just smoke marijuana, which would spark Richard's interest to
jerk use, which is insane because the kid is 12 years old.
What the fuck?
Man, I think I was still playing on Barbie's.
(17:56):
I was playing on Barbie's myself.
Like, what?
I...
Yeah, it's just insane.
And by the age of 13, according to the book The Night Stalker, The Life and Crimes of
Richard Ramirez by Philip Carlo, Richard really idolized his cousin and began to become
a rouse from the violent stories that his cousin would tell to him about this Vietnam
(18:17):
woman that he would just torture.
So in addition, Ramirez had also been in the company of his cousin when his wife and
him had gotten to this altercation.
And his cousin, Mike, literally shoots his wife at point-blank range in the face.
Ah!
(18:38):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Girl.
Like, literally, he was just there as a kid and I want to, like I said, he was like 13
years old at this time.
His fucking cousin shoots his wife in the face in front of this kid.
Ah!
Over an altercation?
Over an altercation, yeah.
Oh, oh my God.
(18:59):
Yeah.
Crazy enough, somehow, Mike had only been given four-year prison sentence.
Why?
And was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity.
Why?
Oh, thank you.
It's not insanely crazy.
It's just, oh.
Okay, I will be leaving, I'm packing out my bags and I am moving to outer space.
(19:21):
Crazy.
It's just like, from the jump, I'm finding.
That's not insanity.
Thank you.
Yeah, like you're- There's no insanity.
You've killed your wife, and not only did you kill your wife, but these people don't
even know about the fact that he kills all these Vietnamese women.
I'm sorry, how is that insanity?
This man is a serial- Oh my God.
(19:42):
Okay, I had a story for a different day.
So it was not until 1977 at the age of 17 when Richard faced his first arrest.
Crazy enough, it was just from a marijuana possession.
So some sources suggest that he was arrested for a string of petty crimes between 1977
(20:03):
and 1982.
The most referenced it being just from a marijuana possession.
So that's what I found, that's just what I'll go with for now.
But shortly after being released is when Ramirez picked up and moved to Texas to California.
Nothing good progressed from this move.
(20:24):
He started to rely on cocaine and soon developing a pretty gnarly cocaine addiction, began
burglarizing homes, became fascinated with weapons, and began educating himself on Satanism
and infamous serial killers such as Ted Bundy and the Hillside Stringler.
For anyone unaware, the story flows into the 80s and many, and especially in California,
(20:50):
or Southern California that is, were very fearful of anyone that claimed to practice
witchcraft or groups that roamed around claiming to worship Satan.
All the more in Southern California residents were already just dealing with the crimes
of the Hillside Stringler like I just said, and the crimes of the Manson family.
(21:11):
That ranged between the late 60s.
And this cult definitely does some damage, girl.
So that alone helped promote the Satanic Panic well into the 70s and 80s.
So the making of this monster really just made everything way worse in the realm of
the western United States.
(21:31):
And like we mentioned, where Tuamirez had a list of pretty crimes, and it just kept
growing and growing between the late 1970s and early 80s, already being the product of
abuse and neglect by his father and having a murderous cousin that murdered his life right
in front of him as a child, definitely is a starter pack for a co-buddied killer.
(21:53):
So I'm just saying that.
And as we have seen from countless other serial killers, like Brie had said, after experiencing
a terrible childhood trauma, being shown that torturing people is an option to them, dabbling
in hardcore drugs and starting off with petty crimes, it's always some reason like the structure
of a serial killer for some reason.
(22:16):
It's just weird.
It's crazy that that works like that.
I'm not saying it's everybody, but it seems to be a lot of the people at least we've covered.
So, but being that Ramirez has hit all these points leads up to what we believe is Richard's
first murder.
Of course, this comes from a full circle to the beginning of our story when we had talked
(22:37):
about June 28th, 1984, when Ramirez tragically murdered 79 year old Jenny Vinko in her apartment
in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles.
It is not unusual that Ramirez still have right into this murder so unhinged.
Most murders this gruesome are usually connected to someone the victim knew or was close to
(23:02):
because of how personal the slaying is, but the thing about Richard Ramirez is that he
didn't have an MO.
He just killed.
Yeah, he just did it to do it.
Yeah, the reason he is found to be one of the most terrifying serial killers is because
he never had a vendetta, never had one.
He just found a hobby and wondering into anyone's home, raping, murdering them, robbing them,
(23:27):
and for fun of it just doing it just to do it.
Yeah, and he didn't really have a, correct me if I'm wrong, but he didn't really have
like a type either.
Like it was just any woman.
Any woman.
Yeah, you're right.
No, any woman and he did do some things to little boys too and huh, whole sleep passes
it, but yeah, he really had no specific MO.
(23:52):
Yeah, it was just like.
Most of the time he did and of course like I said, we'll go into it in a minute here,
but he often went for the man first just to get him out the way and then of course went
for the woman if she was in the house at the time.
So, yeah, this was an individual that broke into homes not knowing who do you find on
(24:14):
the other side of the door and had no problem hurting the men, women or children.
Oftentimes he did this in middle of the night, which is even more terrifying.
Hence his alias that we will talk about a little later, but it is also crazy to think
that that all occurred in the 80s revolving around the serial killers because I feel like
(24:37):
there was a lot of serial killers around this time for some reason in the 80s, just at least
active, especially in Western America at least.
There was around this time the BTK killer that had also been active.
He was active in Wichita, Kansas around this time.
His actual name was Dennis Lynn Raider.
(24:58):
BTK, fine torture killed.
Yeah, yeah, he would bound, yep, his female victims, he would torture them and he would
kill them, hence the name.
And it's just truly terrifying that unfortunately this is also happening around the same exact
(25:19):
time as Wichita Ramirez being active in California.
And oftentimes he would take them out of the bed, he would do it when they were sleeping
and force their husbands to watch.
Don't know if he'll cover that someday, but it's a pretty crazy and early case.
After the murder of Jenny Vinko, several months had gone by before Ramirez was struck again,
(25:43):
and believe it or not things got crazier from here because on March 17th, 1985, 22 year
old Maria Hernandez was just coming back from work and was pulling up to her condo in Rosemead,
California, that she had also shared with her then 34 year old roommate, Del Okazoski.
(26:05):
As Maria had pulled into the garage and began to get out, a tall, strange man dressed in
all black from head to toe wearing a black AC DC cap walks right into the garage and
slams his head down on the car.
She then turns around to see this guy standing right before her.
(26:30):
Well, as soon as she looks down, she sees him holding a.22 caliber pistol, he raises
it and shoots her.
As soon as he shoots, she quickly raises her arm to protect her face.
She flies backwards to the ground and Ramirez just steps right over her and heads into her
home where Del Okazoski was unpacking her groceries in the kitchen.
(26:56):
But Ramirez did not realize that Maria was not dead.
Maria had actually been hit at all because the bullet she had been shot with ricocheted
off her car keys when she had raised her arms which had forcefully pushed her to the ground.
What a lucky shot.
What a lucky move.
(27:16):
It's like an unlucky, lucky shot.
When a few minutes go by, Maria just lays there, she lays still.
First of all, she's recovering from that blow to the ground, but also until she hears her
attacker close the door from behind him, she's very clever about this.
(27:37):
She's a bad bitch.
The next thing she is thinking is, ok, odds are he's going to come back through that door
at any moment and he could still shoot me and kill me for good measure, so I need to go
and find help.
So she gets up and starts running down this alleyway between the condominiums, but she
(27:58):
hears a shot ring out from inside the condo and becomes conflicted because she knows her
roommate is inside but knows that she also needs to get help.
So she turns around and she heads back to the condo, the condo's front door, this time
to avoid running into her attacker again.
For a while, inside of the condo, when Maria had first pulled into the garage, Dale herself
(28:20):
had just gone grocery shopping and was unpacking groceries when she hears a gun go off right
outside of the back door to the garage.
So she crouches down behind the kitchen's counter and it's dead quiet.
After she hears the back door open and close, a couple minutes go by and she peeks up from
(28:42):
behind the counter through the groceries where Richard Ramirez had been standing right there
staring dead at her on the other side of the counter.
It was around this time that Maria heard a gun go off inside of the condo and she turns
back around to go help her roommate and just as she reaches the front door thinking that
(29:05):
he's about to come out the exit in the house that he came through, he comes out of the
front door and they both stare at each other dead in shock because Richard had thought
he shot her dead and so Richard raises his arm with a.22 caliber and just as he does,
Maria says, you already shot me once, do you really want to shoot me again?
(29:28):
At that moment, Ramirez lures his gun and just casually walks away.
She's sassy.
I like her.
Oh my god.
She said, you failed once.
Are you really going to try again?
This is a bad bitch.
I'm telling you.
She is a bad.
If I was roommates with her, I feel like I would have just ran and got help.
I feel like I would have not went back.
(29:49):
Yeah.
See, that has always like the question of what, because I get where she's coming from.
Oh yeah.
Like save your friends.
Save your friends.
But I feel like I'd be like, I'm so sorry.
I love you.
I'm going to live with regret for my whole life, but like I need help.
You have to protect yourself too.
Like I need help.
Yeah.
And I just almost got shot.
I need help.
I'm just going to get in my house.
How did she know that would work?
(30:10):
She didn't.
She's a bad bitch.
I love her.
What's her name?
Maria.
Yeah, Maria.
Maria.
If you're still alive, you're a bad bitch.
Let me tell you.
And spoiler, she does live and this girl comes back later and let me tell you.
Oh, look.
Okay.
She fucks it up cause.
Okay, period.
Come on.
Keep going.
So thereafter, Maria had rushed into the condo and locked the door behind her.
(30:35):
And as soon as she walked into the ransacked kitchen, she had seen her roommate, Dale Akazoski,
laying dead in the kitchen.
She had received a bullet to the forehead at point blank range.
See, that's all I'm saying is she heard that gunshot.
So I'd be like, there's no way.
There's no way.
Yeah.
So I would have just kept her.
She's lucky that he decided to just let her go.
(30:58):
Oh, I'm just thinking about it too.
And I'm like, it would have been for no reason.
She would have turned back for no reason.
Like I can't imagine this happening, but imagine you're like, okay, you're trying to be, you're
trying to be that final girl, right?
But you're like, okay, I'm conflicted.
Like I just heard that and I'm scared for my friend.
Like, I don't know what to do.
(31:20):
Like Lord forbid this ever happened.
Like what?
I don't know why I would do in that situation.
Yeah, I don't want to like go get help and go protect myself.
But at the same time, I see again what she was doing.
But I couldn't, that trauma must sit with you.
And honestly, I don't know how I would feel after that, but I can only imagine the scary
(31:42):
fact that this man had randomly walked up to me and just held a gun to my face and shot
me and I had really threw it and then my roommate didn't.
I mean, the whole experience is traumatic.
Oh, it's just so sad.
So fortunately, sorry, fortunately, Maria was able to live through this just traumatizing
(32:03):
event.
Like I said, she called 911 or she gave a pretty accurate description of their attacker.
He was about six one wearing a black members only bomber jacket, which was very popular
brand at the time.
She wore black pants, black shoes and a black AC DC cap, which mistakenly Richard had left
(32:28):
behind at the crime scene on the floor of the garage.
Dummy.
Dumb bitch.
Yeah.
As I run as long as it took for anyone to catch this man, he had a pretty bad habit
of leaving shit behind as evidence at these crime scenes.
And you will definitely see in a moment that he did it almost at every crime scene.
So only 40 minutes after the murder of Dale Okazosky, one mile away from that crime scene
(32:54):
and the city of Monterrey Park, a 30 year old woman by the name of Si Leon, sorry, Si
Leon Yao had been yanked out of her car and shot in the chest.
God, the forensic department later connected the cases together as being both victims of
a 22 caliber pistol.
(33:15):
But somehow annoyingly.
They didn't even choose to believe that these two deaths could be by the same person.
So that's really fucking annoying right now.
And I think that the LOPD is going to pistol off a little more throughout this.
Don't come for us, but we'll get through it.
So March 27, 1985, 10 days after the two murders of Dale Okazosky and Si Leon Yao, police got
(33:44):
another report of a double murder in Whittier County.
What happened that night?
Gotta brace yourself, because this is pretty gnarly.
So when Meera's goes into this house by climbing through an unlocked bathroom window and finds
his balance by stepping on a plastic paint can that was against the wall, he creeps in
(34:05):
quietly, takes out his 22 caliber and fires it into the temple of the sleeping 64 year
old Vincent Cesara that had been asleep on the living room couch.
He then goes into the bathroom where he finds the terrified wife of Vincent, 44 years old
Maxine Cesara.
(34:26):
He begins to stab her several times above her vaginal region, rapes her, and then proceeds
to cut her eyes out of her head, and he takes them with him as leaving the same way he entered
through the bathroom window.
Oh my god.
I know, I know.
I'm really sorry about that, that was bad.
And so, like I mentioned, Ramirez was never too careful because he ransacked their home
(34:51):
and left behind evidence like crazy.
Outside of the window, he climbed through with a wet flower bed, and on the plastic paint
can he had stepped on to get in and out of the house, was a shoe print of 11 to 12 men's
shoe.
So the LAPD has some piling evidence.
They just need to catch this guy in some way.
(35:14):
Not long after, maybe a couple days later, police receive a call from two girls that
reported being followed by a strange man that happened to match the description of the
composite sketch as they depicted him as also being tall in a light-skinned Hispanic
male with dark curly hair.
And they also got a plate number.
(35:36):
Police checked out this tip, they tracked down the plate number, brought the guy in,
and even had Maria Jorinda's, one of the survivors we talked about, checked during a lineup to
see if this was her attacker.
But unfortunately, this was not their guy.
It was literally just some creep that was just trying to pickle him in up throughout
the city.
(35:57):
So May 14th, 1985, police find themselves at yet another unfortunate and gruesome crime
scene.
The victim had actually succeeded in calling the police prior to their death.
This was 66-year-old William Doy, who had been shot to death.
His wife, William Doy, was later found raped and beaten to an unrecognizable degree, while
(36:21):
the house had been ransacked and the walls had been painted with blood sputter.
This part is very graphic again.
Fair warning.
When they found Lillian, she had been noticeably restrained with metal thumb cuffs that were
on the ground.
During the attack, Lillian attempted to escape the thumb cuffs and pried her thumb so hard
(36:45):
that she ripped her thumbs off.
What?
Yeah.
Like, her thumbs were clean off when they found this at the scene.
Wow.
I cannot imagine if you look up a picture of what thumb cuffs look like, they're fucking
terrifying.
Like, they're really medieval-like looking and it's just cool.
(37:06):
So wait, why are they made?
I don't know.
Why are any, why are a lot of things made?
That's also so random.
Like, why thumb...
Why thumb cuffs?
Like, cool.
As a torture device.
Invented that.
Yeah.
Oh, that's a good question.
Yeah.
No, seriously.
Like, burrrr, what reason?
Yeah.
No, seriously.
Okay.
So, thumb cuffs.
(37:26):
Like, what a weird, uh, yeah, thumb.
Like, you guys can see it, but like, your thumbs, let me show you a picture.
I have to show you a picture of it.
They sell them on Amazon.
Why?
Why are they, why are they like that easily accessible?
(37:47):
They shouldn't be.
I think they're supposed to be as-
Is this like a sexual thing?
Like, what is this?
No, no, no, no, no.
I hope not.
What the fuck is it for?
Yeah, this is for bondage.
It looks like it.
Look at this picture.
Stop.
That is bondage for sure.
But why is it- It looks like it's half metric, half BDSM, half like, torture.
(38:13):
I don't know why the fuck people create thumb cuffs.
Why the thumbs?
And to think like, her, you see the way that looks.
Like look it up everyone, like, thinking of prying your thumbs apart.
Like, ouch.
Oh no, like- To the point where she cut them off.
To where she, they came off.
(38:33):
That's crazy.
Oh my god.
And so at first, oh sorry, where was I shit?
Wow.
Okay, so during this time, there also been a string of child abductions where- I'm sorry,
let me get some water.
I forgot this in my family.
A little Chardonnay.
(38:53):
I need a drink of Chardonnay.
Oh, that's so good.
Glad you like it.
It's been sitting in my fridge for like a couple months.
It was worth it.
It's good as fuck, y'all.
I'm back.
Okay.
Woo!
Yeah, so yeah, thumb cuffs are not it guys.
Don't buy those, please.
Don't buy them for your significant other.
(39:15):
Don't buy them for friends.
Don't buy them.
Jeff Bezos, take it off of Amazon, please.
Yeah, what the?
Listen, news to me, I've never heard of that.
Never.
Well, pfft.
Haven't heard of it until I started researching this shit.
I'm like, that's a thing.
So also during this time, there had also been a string of child abductions where a predator
(39:36):
in Los Angeles, Metro Area, had been abducting children, both girls and boys.
This was Richard Ramirez and he had sexually assaulted these children and just released
them.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
What kind of fucking monster?
Oh my god.
And you let life use kids go through that for the rest of their lives.
I was about to say at that point, like, dude, they want, oh god.
(39:59):
Like, I don't know what you're going to say.
Like, is it worth it?
Like, should we just kill them?
Yeah, like he had to go through the rest of your life having traumatizing effects.
A lot of these kids.
I thought you were literally sexually abused by a serial killer.
Yourself?
You would want to do that to other people?
That's crazy.
And what's more terrifyingly, just a thought for me, and I didn't put these in my notes
(40:21):
or anything, but it's just the thought that a lot of these kids I read had to go through
a lot of therapy, obviously.
And a lot of them didn't turn out doing very well.
I think some of them actually ended up killing themselves later on in life.
And I think some of them just had a lot of mental instabilities.
You really fucked someone up.
(40:41):
But not only, like, obviously being sexually abused at all by anyone is already a crime.
Traumatizing.
It has to be traumatizing in itself, but being sexually abused by a known or soon to be known
serial killer, like, how would you live with that?
That's, yeah.
Yeah, it's truly...
No, for me.
Yeah.
(41:02):
But at first, the police had thought that these crimes were two different people, and
when I say crimes, I'm referring to William Doi and Lillian Doi and the kids that were
being sexually assaulted and talking about all of us.
They did not connect these together at first.
They always thought that these were just two different people, up until one of the scenes
(41:24):
where one of the children were brought to had had a shoe print of a men's shoe print
size 10 to 11.
That matched the same print from This Is Our Home.
So now, police are thinking, okay, we have a match, and we know whoever this guy is is
really going for anyone right now.
(41:46):
It doesn't matter who it is.
Boys, girls, like I said, husbands, wives, he's knocking anyone off.
This is killing the kill.
And he's just truly unhinged.
It's just causing chaos all over the Tri-State area.
So Detective Frank Solerno, who is also famously known for cracking the Hillside-Shingler case,
which we'll have to cover at some point in the future, and Detective of LAPD at the time,
(42:12):
Gil Corillo, begins to team up and put their heads together to start developing suspects
and a case against this molester and seo killer.
So meanwhile, as this case is being built, on June 28, 1985, in Arcadia, tragedy strikes.
32-year-old Patty Elaine Higgins had been found on her bathroom floor with her throat
(42:39):
slashed.
Then on July 2, 1985, only five days later, 75-year-old Mary Canan, like
Patty, had her throat horrifically slashed.
Three days after Mary and I said Canan Canan, three days after Mary Canan's murder, on
(43:03):
July 5, 1985, in Sierra Madre, a 16-year-old girl whose name remains very confidential,
had just gone to bed while her parents were away.
In disarray, she turns over to see a man standing directly above her bed and begins to beat
her with a tire iron.
(43:25):
He had climbed through the window and been good about not leaving behind any fingerprints
because he had used black grinning gloves.
He severely wounded and left her soaking in her own blood.
This victim did luckily survive, but to let it end, it's just horrific that this
(43:45):
16-year-old girl had gotten...
Imagine laying in your bed and I'm sorry to scare you guys like this, but it happens.
It really happened.
This girl was laying in her bed, asleep, binding her own business.
You look up and you see someone standing above you.
Try your best to get the fuck out of there, because Jesus Christ.
(44:08):
And with a fucking tire iron?
Like what?
What the fuck?
So it's just crazy to me.
So the typical spacing murder that he was, Ramirez had left behind a bloody footprint
on the gray comforter he stepped on while attacking this girl.
So this footprint was another match from the last two crime scenes.
(44:29):
And now please know that this is all the same guy at this point.
They're really just connecting them together.
At this point in my research, I kind of thought, okay, these various police forces all over
Southern California have to have some lead as to who this person is.
But they actually had no idea who this guy was, because he had this evidence, but you
(44:55):
don't know who the guy is.
You don't know what he looks like.
You can't connect it to anything.
So at this point, he got killed using knives, guns, manual and liquor, stringolation, and
blunt force trauma via tire iron.
So he has no defining patterns to his reign of terror.
So it just made the search just that much more difficult to figure out.
(45:19):
So not to mention, yes, he had found it easier to break into homes in the middle of the night.
And that was pretty common.
But at the same time, the children were disappearing left and right at any time of the day.
And the two girls in the condo were attacked in the middle of the day.
So no one is safe in Southern California right now.
And residents are just getting really on edge.
(45:41):
It's also the 80s in California.
So it's not uncommon to see it with your window open and even come home and leave your door
unlocked for maybe even a couple minutes.
So fortunately we know now.
Don't do that.
Don't leave your fucking door open because girl, people crazy out here, especially your
(46:02):
window.
I'm just saying, you never know.
Even if you live on the second story, do you have your window open?
You never know.
Even if I lived on the fifth floor, I would still leave my windows closed.
Yeah, yeah.
You never know though.
Even if you don't have one of those fire escapes, you don't know what people can do.
For some reason, I always think, I always picture for some reason, somehow they have
(46:24):
a rope ladder and they attach it to the high of the wall.
Yeah.
I don't even think that's possible.
But you never know.
Scary.
You never know.
You never know.
Scary.
You never know.
Who's to say, even if you daily leave your door unlocked, who's to say they won't?
I don't know.
Like, just don't.
I'm like, my windows are locked.
(46:44):
And I know, okay.
And I just remember quick sight story in college.
I feel like everyone off campus or on campus left their shit unlocked.
Oh my God.
I know.
Me and my roommate though, we were super good about locking your door.
Okay, good.
I tell no.
We were just talking about the Idaho murders.
Not to say they didn't lock their doors.
(47:07):
I don't know for sure.
But even then, it's like, even if they locked the door, they still were like, and you're
just letting the killer, if there is one, get in a lot easier.
Just because you might, let's say for instance, you live in a certain campus or something
and nothing has happened.
There's been no murders.
You don't know if people are capable of coming on campus.
Yeah.
(47:27):
I mean, just because you're like in a group of people your own age that you feel like
you can trust.
I mean, not only like murder, but also stealing and stealing.
But people are crazy.
In my dorm, I have my MacBook.
I have like all my nice stuff.
Like, hell no.
No, no.
I think I'll bitch unlocked.
Hell no.
Don't lock your doors.
Lock the doors.
(47:47):
Lock the windows.
Yes.
Don't go outside.
Keep your keys in fighting position.
Yes.
Lock and corner immediately.
Listen, my mama has me paranoid as hell.
Don't try me.
So try me.
Hey, motherfucking man.
Snaps.
If you're talking about something, I'm already on to you.
(48:12):
Seriously though, we're speaking facts because guys, like, I, there's so many young people
and I can't say it's everybody, but there are so many young people out there that think
that it's okay to leave their doors on.
I don't leave them on live to lock your doors.
You don't know.
Even if you live in one of the, it's always like those, those, um, it's always less stories
too that it's like, it was a quiet town.
(48:33):
Nothing ever happens.
And then boom, murder, murder.
Correct.
Like, guys, we don't want to be telling your story.
Just saying like, just lock your doors.
But any who, sorry, we got way off topic.
We're talking facts out like a door.
(48:54):
So like I said, um, sorry, where was I?
Okay.
So July 6th, 1985, Lorraine Rodriguez had been sleeping when she hears a loud, cracking
noise coming from the other side of her home.
Assuming what was her husband, who had actually been a sheriff at the time, she had called
for him not to wake the children, but she received no answer in the house.
(49:19):
She calls for John again and this time he answers, but she can tell he had just woken
up from the couch where he had fallen asleep watching television shaken by her voice.
John says, that wasn't me making that noise.
So he grabs his rifle and heads into the bathroom to a window that had never been opened by
(49:39):
this family because it always had been painted shut.
Well, I feel like we've seen that before.
We've all seen like that one painted the landlord special, the landlord special.
Yes, literally that.
Yeah, it had been painted shut.
So it was not caught.
It was really out of the blue that this was just open like that.
(50:00):
It was just wide open.
Luckily, whoever the intruder was, cough cough or shirt Ramirez, he had been scared off when
they heard the homeowners locking up.
So to the advantage of the police, they caught another shoe print that had been matched with
the rest of the prints.
And that's another crime scene, so Richard Ramirez is a dumbass right now.
(50:22):
And he has always been.
I'm sorry, he has always been a dumbass and he's just collecting evidence for this police
to have a strong case against him when they do figure out who this guy is.
So there's that though this time when the police were able to lift the print, they got
a clear print of the match so clear that if they could tell that it was an 11 and a half
(50:46):
aerobics of via shoe that was very uncommon at the time because this specific shoe had
had been made or barely even manufactured in the United States.
LA County Sheriff Gary Burke is assigned to inspect everything you cut up out the shoe
prints and the shoe itself.
So he goes and reaches out to Jerry Settlefield, which is the creator of the via.
(51:10):
Settlefield provides a spreadsheet of the sales made in the U.S. that year and everything
that had just released miraculously.
They were able to track down the shoe print to the specific shoe type, which was an aerobic
440.
Sorry, I thought he could knocking.
I got so scared for a minute.
It's when outside miraculously, they were able to track down the shoe print to the specific
(51:35):
shoe type, which was an aerobic 440s men fitness black via shoe and only six of these shoes
in the size 11 and a half have been sold in the U.S. Five in Arizona and only one was
sold in Los Angeles.
Damn!
So, unfortunately, this still makes things difficult because the buyer paid cash and
(52:00):
was unnamed.
And they hit another dead end.
They would have had them, but they didn't.
And that leads us to the end of part one.
But you guys know why?
(52:20):
Should we make them wait a little bit or should we just, you know, come out with the next
one?
Just give it to them.
I guess just give it to them.
Let's just give it to them.
You know why?
Let's just do it.
And let's switch it up a little bit.
Let's have Brie read part two.
Ah!
Because I'm falling asleep, people.
(52:41):
No, seriously, though.
That's not bedtime.
No, it's a late night.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
It's actually that was bedtime.
I guess I'll let it out.
Yeah, it is past my bedtime.
This is a late night when the light goes out.
But you know what?
It's cool.
We have part two coming out for you guys.
Get next and we'll see you when the light goes out.
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