Killer Summer
In the summer of 1985, Richard Ramirez — the serial killer known as the Night Stalker — unleashed a seven-month reign of terror across Los Angeles, leaving a trail of murder, rape, and home invasion that stretched from the San Gabriel Valley to San Francisco. He became the most feared man in California, and one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Killer Summer is a narrated memoir podcast about what it was like to be nine years old in the San Fernando Valley while all of it unfolded. Writer and narrator Scott A. Weiss grew up in Canoga Park, just miles from where Ramirez struck. This is his story — and the story of a city that locked its windows, bought guns, and held its breath through the hottest summer on record, waiting to find out who would be next. Drawn from personal memory, contemporaneous Los Angeles news broadcasts, and the historical record, Killer Summer weaves true crime investigation with coming-of-age memoir — the Night Stalker case told through the eyes of a kid who lived inside the fear, organized a neighborhood watch with his friends, and watched the capture unfold on live television on a Labor Day weekend that changed everything. Topics covered across three episodes: the Night Stalker murders, Richard Ramirez, LAPD and LA County Sheriff's investigation, the San Fernando Valley in the 1980s, serial killer psychology, the Boyle Heights capture, Los Angeles true crime history, childhood trauma, and the end of innocence. If you grew up in Los Angeles in the 1980s, you remember that summer. This is for you. Visit the show website at https://killersummerpodcast.com for additional details.
Episodes
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In the summer of 1985, a nine-year-old boy growing up in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley has no idea his idyllic suburban childhood — Cabbage Patch Kids, Dodger games, backyard pools — is about to collide with the murder spree of the Night Stalker. As the Los Angeles Times connects a string of random home-invasion killings across the region, a boy home alo...
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As Los Angeles descends into full-blown panic, the killer finally gets the name that will define him: the Night Stalker. Told through the eyes of a ten-year-old and his cul-de-sac friends, this episode follows a ragtag neighborhood watch — flashlights, a notebook, and a porch stakeout that nearly ends in disaster — set against real archival news coverage of detec...
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Episode 3 captures the extraordinary morning the Night Stalker's reign ended — not with a SWAT raid, but with East L.A. residents Manuel de la Torre and Faustino Penon chasing down and subduing Richard Ramirez with their bare hands and a lead pipe. Woven from archival broadcast audio of the capture, the crowds outside the police station, and Mayor Tom Bradley's on-came...
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Episode 4 traces the internal aftermath of the Night Stalker's capture, exploring how the residue of childhood horror metabolizes into a lifelong relationship with dark stories. Beginning in the autumn after Ramirez’s arrest, the narrative follows a young narrator moving past the immediate terror only to face the daily anxieties of middle school, the ground-shaking dis...
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