🌙 "Night Stalker: Satan's Favorite Serial Killer"

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
The bride wore a calf length white wedding dress with
long lace sleeves. The groom or a start set of
prison blues. The pants a little too long, the shirttails
hanging out. She was glowing, He was nervous. On October third,
nineteen ninety six, the ceremony took place in the large,

(00:43):
gray walled main visiting room of California's San Quentin Prison.
According to Jim Doyle, writing the San Francisco Chronicle, the bride,
Dorian Leoi, aged forty one, was a freelance magazine editor
with a bachelor's degree in English and an IQ of
one hundred and fifty fifty two. The groom, serial killer
and rapist Richard Ramirez, was on death row awaiting execution.

(01:07):
Seven years earlier, in nineteen eighty nine, Ramirez had been
convicted on forty three counts, including thirteen murders, and the
authorities have good reason to believe that he had committed
several others. For over a year, starting in the spring
of nineteen eighty five, the residents of Los Angeles County
lived in fear of the anonymous night stalker, as he

(01:28):
was called, forcing many to alter their nighttime habits, install
better locks on their doors and windows, and invest in
electronic security systems. The newspapers dubbed him the night Stalker
because he always attacked at night like a vampire. The
visiting room at San Quentin, with its rows of orange
plastic seats bolted to the floor and various vending machines

(01:50):
lined up against one wall, was crowded that day with
other prisoners and family members who had come on their
appointed visiting day. Many of them stared at the infamous
inmate and kept their distance, even though the Nightstalker seemed
considerably less ferocious than he had been when he had
spooked the courtroom at his lengthy trial back in nineteen

(02:10):
eighty nine. Instead of his signature dark glasses, Ramirez, now
aged thirty six, wore round prescription glasses. He moved a
bit hesitantly and seemed ill at ease. The long haired brunette,
who longed to be the Nightstalker's bride, had first contacted
Ramirez after his arrest in nineteen eighty five and had
written him nearly seventy five letters during his incarceration. He

(02:34):
finally proposed to her in nineteen eighty eight, but prison
rules delayed their wedding. Other women tried to steal him
away from her, visiting him in prison and lavishing him
with all kinds of attention. Doren often ran into them
when she came for her visits, and at least one
woman threatened physical violence if Dorene didn't abandon her claim

(02:54):
on the Nightstalker. But Doreen persevered, and in the end
she got her man. She claimed to be a virgin
at the time of their wedding, and marrying Ramirez wouldn't
change that because conjugal visits are not permitted for death
row inmates. According to Philip Carlow, author of The Nightstalker,
Ramirez was drawn to her precisely because she was a virgin.

(03:17):
Doren had been raised a Roman Catholic, but she considered
herself an agnostic and could accommodate Ramirez's professed Satanism. When
she had purchased their wedding rings, she'd bought a gold
band for herself, but a platinum band for her husband,
to be Satanists don't wear gold, it'd explained to her.
The civil ceremony started at eleven ten am and was

(03:39):
performed by mister l Weister, who joined two other inmates
to their brides that morning. Ramirez's sister Ruth, his brother Joseph,
and Joseph's teenage daughter attended. Ramirez cautioned his niece to
pull down her skirt. He knew other inmates were ogling her.
As the couple said their vows, Doreen was bursting with

(04:00):
joy and happiness. Her long awaited dream was finally coming true.
She was becoming missus Richard Ramirez. Doreen chose not to
believe the mountain of evidence that had been presented at
her husband's trial, especially the testimony that described his gruesome methods.
Richard Ramirez typically came in the night, sneaking into his

(04:22):
victim's bedrooms. Males were dispatched quickly, usually with a bullet
to the head. Females were kept alive to be savored
after he ransacked the homes looking for valuables. After raping
and degrading the women, sometimes repeatedly, who would most often
kill them, or at least try to. Amazingly, some of

(04:42):
his victims managed to survive his various attacks. Of all
the serial killers who have plagued the modern world, the
Nightstalker was perhaps the most sensational in how he committed
his crimes. He was a living nightmare, a boogieman who
invaded bedrooms and tore innocent people from their dreams. His

(05:03):
method was worthy of a B grade Hollywood horror movie.
He was a killer tailor made for his prime hunting ground,
Los Angeles. In nineteen seventy eight, eighteen year old Ricardo
Levia aka Richard Ramirez, moved to southern California from El Paso, Texas,
his hometown. According to UPI reporters Aurelio Rojas and K.

(05:27):
Mack Sisk, he dropped out of the ninth grade and
had been living the life of a slacker, smoking marijuana
and living on convenience store junk food. His diet was
so rich in sugar his teeth eventually started to rot,
which made his breath foul and offensive. But as halitosis
fit in with a demonic personality he was intentionally cultivating.

(05:48):
His habitual pot smoking led to several arrests for possession
as well as a misdemeanor theft charge in California. He
was twice arrested for auto theft in Pasadena in nineteen
eighty and Los Angeles in nineteen eighty four. His father
would remain that Richard was a good boy whose marijuana
consumption put him out of control, but it would be

(06:10):
hard to pinpoint precisely what influences sent Richard Ramirez in
the direction of devil worship. He often drew the five
point pentagram, the symbol of the devil, on his own body,
and after his trial he would shout Hail Satan in
open court. He was a big fan of rock bands
who sung about Satanism, particularly the Australian heavy metal band

(06:32):
ac DC, whose album Highway to Hell was Ramirez's absolute favorite.
One song on the album Night Prowler contains the lyrics
was that a noise outside your window? What's that shadow
on the blind as you lie there naked like a
body in a tomb, suspended animation as I slip into

(06:53):
your room? But it's hard to believe that rock songs
in marijuana alone could turn a misdirected youth into one
of the most heenous serial rapists and murderers in modern history.
The turning point in Ramierz's life might well have been
the night he witnessed his cousin Mike murder his wife.
Mike had fought as a green beret in Vietnam, but

(07:14):
the war had changed him. After returning home, he boasted
torturing and mutilating the enemy, and had brought back polaroids
to prove it. He and his thirteen year old cousin, Richard,
would hang out all day getting high, which is just
what they were doing. When Mike's wife started to nag
him about getting his life together and finding a job,
Mike pulled out a gun to shut her up and

(07:36):
shot her in the face, killing her. Ramirez was splattered
with the woman's blood. Mike's lawyer pointed to the incredible
stress of his horrible war experiences as a mitigating factor.
He was ultimately convicted, but the judge was lenient in
his sentencing. Mike had a significant influence on Richard, who
became fascinated with Mike's war victims horrible photographs. After the

(08:00):
murder of Mike's wife, Richard, the epileptic youngest child in
a family of three boys and two sisters, started skipping
school and smoking pot as much as he could every day.
He soon took to stealing to support his drug use.
The police have no evidence that Richard Ramirez killed at
any time before he reached Los Angeles, and little is

(08:21):
known about his activities in the first few years he
lived there. No doubt his crimes were escalating during this period.
Simple theft had led to breaking and entering, and eventually
he must have become adept at it. Initially, he probably
stole whatever valuables he could find, then quickly left before
he was caught. But as he grew more proficient, he

(08:43):
also grew bolder, staying longer in the houses he burglarized.
Perhaps he stayed to watch the inhabitants sleeping in their beds.
Maybe he took souvenirs, particularly items that belonged to the
female residence, like his cousin Mike. He might even have
taken photographs that he could rent later. This, no doubt
excited him and helped him develop the depraved fantasies that

(09:06):
took over his thinking. But eventually he felt compelled to
do more. The horrible scenes that ran through his mind
like a horror movie on a continuous loop, weren't satisfying
him anymore. They had to emerge from his mind and
become a reality. When Richard Ramirez finally crossed that line
and started to play out his fantasies, the nightstalker was born.

(09:29):
Whether by conscious decision or inevitable evolution, Ramirez began to
insert himself into his depraved fantasies and actively participate in
their reenactment for his own gratification. His first known victim
was a seventy nine year old Glassal Park resident named
Jenny Vincow on June twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four. She

(09:51):
had left a window open because it had been hot
that evening. Ramirez simply removed the screen and climbed in.
Vincow's son, who lived in the apartment over her ground
floor apartment, discovered her body sprawled out on the bed.
She had been stabbed repeatedly, and her throat was slashed
so savagely she was nearly decapitated. The intruder also ransacked

(10:13):
her apartment and helped himself to her valuables. Fingerprints were
recovered from the windowsill, and the autopsy revealed signs of
sexual assault. The nights Talker's fantasy had finally become a reality.
It would be eight months before he struck again. No doubt,
Richard Ramirez, like most budding serial killers, fed off the

(10:35):
memory of his first victim, Reliving the experience of rape
and murder over and over again in his mind. If
he had taken what criminal profiles call a souvenir, a
hair brush, a piece of underwear, eyeglasses, any object intimately
connected with a victim, he might have used that to
stoke his recollections and help him elaborate on his fantasy.

(10:57):
But eventually the mental reenactment of that initial crime wouldn't
be as satisfying as it had once been. The killer
would need a new experience to replenish the fantasy. He
might have tried to control himself for a period, but
the pressure within him was mounting. Eventually he would give
in to his compulsion and do it again. On March seventeenth,

(11:19):
nineteen eighty five, at eleven thirty pm, twenty year old
Angela Barrios was just returning home from a long day
at work. She lived in a condominium that she shared
with a roommate in Rosemead, a middle class town northeast
of Los Angeles. She pulled her car into the driveway
and opened the garage door with a remote control. She

(11:39):
was tired and hadn't had dinner yet. All she wanted
to do was get inside and unwind, But as she
got out of her car, she heard something behind her.
A dark figure suddenly rushed up to her. He was
tall and dressed entirely in black. A navy blue baseball
cap was pulled down low over his brow. He was

(11:59):
whole a gun. He pointed the gun in her face,
holding it just inches from her nose. She pleaded with
him not to kill her. She tried not to look
at his face, hoping that he might spare her, but
she couldn't help but look. His eyes were cold and hard.
She continued to beg for mercy, but he ignored her.

(12:20):
Perhaps he was angered by her pleading, and he pulled
the trigger. The sound of the gunshot was like an
explosion in the enclosed garage. Angela collapsed on the concrete floor.
She was alive, but too afraid to move. The gunman
stepped over her and went to the door that led
to her condo, kicking her body out of the way

(12:40):
so he could open it. Angela lay perfectly, still, playing dead.
After a while, she didn't know how long, she realized
that her hand was bleeding. Her keys were still in
that hand. She'd raised her hands instinctively when the man
had menaced her with the gun, and the bullet had
miraculously hit the keys and ricochet away. Angela collected herself

(13:02):
and got to her feet. She had started to run
out of the garage when she heard another gun shot
behind her. She kept running, just hoping to escape, but
she ran into the man in black as he came
out the front door of her condo. She tried to
get away from him, but her legs were shaky. She
stumbled back towards her car in the garage, convinced that

(13:22):
he was going to finish her off, but instead of
pursuing her, the man shoved the gun into his belt
and fled. Angela Barrios was saved from this madman. Her roommate,
Dale Okakazi, aged thirty four, wasn't so lucky. Angela found
her face down on the kitchen floor in a pool
of her own blood. There was blood everywhere on the walls, furniture,

(13:47):
and appliances. Angela ran to her side to check for
signs of life, but Okakazi had been shot through the forehead.
Angela grabbed the phone and called nine one one. Later,
when the police searched the crime scene, they found the
killer's baseball cap in the garage. What happened exactly inside
the condominium is unknown, but for some reason, killing Dale

(14:09):
Okazaki was not the experience Richard Ramirez had hoped for. Incredibly,
that same night, he struck again in nearby Monterey Park.
According to Arthur Clifford L. Line Deecker, a policeman was
dispatched to investigate an empty yellow Chevrolet parked with its
motor running. The transmission was in reverse. The car park

(14:30):
behind it was keeping it from moving any farther. When
the officer got out of his patrol car to check
inside the vehicle, he found an unconscious woman lying on
the ground near by. The officer ran to her and
immediately checked her vital signs. He noticed that her stockings
were ripped and that there was an ugly bruise on
her leg. She was alive, but just barely. He ran

(14:52):
back to his car and radioed for an ambulance. When
he returned to the woman, he discovered a metal medallion
and a torn section of a twenty dollars bill on
the pavement. He tried to revive her, hoping she could
tell him what had happened, but her breathing was labored.
He could tell she was in trouble and needed immediate
medical attention, but in the dim light, he hadn't noticed

(15:13):
that she had been shot several times. The woman, a
thirty year old Taiwanese native named Sia Leannue known to
her friends as Victoria, died before the ambulance arrived. The
killer was in a frenzy killing dale. Okazaki had not
satisfied his need, so on the spur of the moment,

(15:33):
he had attacked Sia Lianyu, but murdering and assaulting her
might not have done it for him, because he murdered
an eight year old girl in Eagle Rock, California, three
days later. A week later, on March twenty seventh, nineteen
eighty four, he emerged again, and this time he found
an mo o that worked for him. On the morning
of March twenty seventh, nineteen eighty four, Peter Zazzera arrived

(15:57):
at his parents' home in Whittier, California. His sixty four
year old father, Vincent, had retired from investment counseling and
now operated his pizzeria. His mother, Maxine, forty four, was
an attorney. Peter rang the bell several times, but no
one answered, so he let himself in What he found
was horrifying. His father's body was on the sofa in

(16:21):
the den. He'd been shot through the left temple. He
appeared to have died instantly. Missus Zazara was found stretched
out in bed, face up and naked. Her eyes had
been gouged out, the bloody sockets empty. She'd been stabbed
repeatedly around the face, neck, abdomen, and groin. There was

(16:41):
a sizeable T shaped knife wound in her left breast.
An autopsy later revealed that like her husband, she'd first
been shot in the head and had probably died instantly.
The stabbing and mutilation were done post mortem. The house
had been ransacked and valuables were taken. With these killings,
Richard Ramirez had discovered a method that accomplished his goals

(17:05):
and satisfied his fantasy. For he repeated it many times.
Dispatched the mail quickly to get him out of the
way so that he could have his perverse way with
the woman in the house. The man was just an
impediment and not part of the fantasy. The woman was
the real object of desire. Six weeks later, Richard Ramirez

(17:25):
returned to Monterey Park and broke into the home of
Harold and Jean Wu, waking them from a sound sleep.
Ramirez took care of mister Wu first, shooting the sixty
six year old man through the head. He pummeled missus Wu,
sixty three, viciously with his fists, demanding to know where
she kept her money. She was too worried about her

(17:45):
husband to be coherent, so we bound her hands behind
her back with thumbcuffs to keep her still as he
searched the house. After he found what he wanted, he
returned to the bedroom, dragged the tiny woman to the
side of the bed, and raped her. When he was fit,
he left. Mister Wu, however, was not dead. Despite his
terrible head wound. He'd managed to crawl to the den,

(18:08):
where he dialed nine one one. He could not tell
the dispatcher what the problem was, but the call was
traced and an ambulance and patrol car were dispatched to
the Wu's address. Harold Wu was rushed to the hospital
but died later that night. Jean Wu was treated for
her injuries. She was able to give the police a
physical description of her attacker. Two weeks later, on May thirtieth,

(18:32):
Ruth Wilson, forty one was awakened in the middle of
the night by a flashlight shining in her face. Ramirez
had silently broken into her burbank home and was holding
a gun to her head. He ordered her to get
out of bed and go to her twelve year old
son's room. Ramirez jumped on the boy's bed and put
a gun to the child's head, warning Ruth Wilson not

(18:54):
to make a sound. He handcuffed the boy and locked
him in a closet. Don't look at me, Ruth. If
you look at me again, I'll shoot you. Assuming he
was a burglar, she offered to give him her most
valuable possession, a golden diamond necklace. She led him to
the dresser in her bedroom, where she kept it, hoping
that this would placate him, but it didn't. After rummaging

(19:17):
through the house, he ordered her to turn around and
put her hands together. He tied her up behind her
back with a pair of pantyhose. He then shoved her
onto the bed as she pleaded with him. After tearing
off her pink nightgown, he raped and sodomized her. His
breath was so hot and foul as he lay on her,
she nearly gagged Ruth. Wilson told Ramirez he must have

(19:39):
had a very unhappy life to have done this to her.
He told her she looked pretty good for her age,
and said he would let her live, even though he
had killed many others. When she complained that the pantyhose
around her wrists were cutting off her circulation, he loosened
them for her and brought her a robe, before taking
her son out of the closet and handcuffing them side

(20:00):
by side. Ramirez left them there. Later, the boy was
able to get to a phone and call nine one one.
When the police asked Ruth to describe her attacker, she
told them that he was a tall Hispanic with long
dark hair. The attacks continued, throwing the city of Los
Angeles into a state of panic. One police official referred

(20:20):
to the killer rapist as the Valley Intruder. The newspapers
dubbed him the Midnight Stalker, conjuring up images of a
modern day Dracula or Jack the Ripper. But Ramirez was
just getting started in the spring of nineteen eighty five,
who's going through a period of escalation. By the summer,
he was on a full blown rampage. On May twenty ninth,

(20:43):
Malvia Keller eighty three and her invalid's sister, Blanche Wolf
eighty were found in Keller's Monrovia home. Both women had
been beaten so severely with a hammer that the handle
was split when the police found it. Blanche had a
puncture wound above one ear. An inverted pentagram with a
tip pointing down had been drawn in lipstick on Malvia's

(21:05):
inner thigh. A second pentagram was found on the bedroom
wall over Blanche's comatose body. Ramirez had tried to rape Malvia,
the older sister. Police experts estimated that the sisters had
been there about two days after the attack before being discovered.
Doctors were able to revive Blanche, but Malvia soon died

(21:25):
of her injuries. One month later, on June twenty seventh,
the nightstalker raped a six year old girl in Arcadia.
A day later, the body of thirty two year old
Paddy Elaine Higgins was found in her Arcadia home, her
throat slit. Five days later, on July second, the body
of seventy five year old Mary Louise Cannon was found

(21:47):
in her Arcadia home. Like Patti Higgins, she had been
beaten her throat slit. The house had been ransacked. On
July fifth, Ramirez returned to Arcadia and beat sixteen year
old Deirdre Pomme more savagely with a tire iron. She
survived her injuries. Two days later, on July seventh, the

(22:07):
body of Joyce Lucille Nilson was found in her home
in Monterey Park. The sixty one year old had been
beaten to death with a blunt object. Later that same night,
in Monterey Park, Linda Fortuna, a sixty three year old
registered nurse, was awakened at around three thirty a m
by a tall, bony man dressed in black. The man,

(22:28):
who fit the description of the nightstalker, was pointing a
gun at her. He ordered her out of bed and
into the bathroom, warning her to be quiet. After ransacking
the house, he returned to her, forcing her back onto
her bed. He attempted to rape and sodomize her, but
he could not maintain an erection. He was frustrated and humiliated,

(22:48):
and she was sure he would kill her. He screamed
at her furiously, but then gathered up the valuables he
wanted and left. She was astounded that he had spared
her life. Less than two weeks ks later, on July twentieth,
the night stalker chose a new location in the Los
Angeles area Glendale. Maxon Kneeling and his wife Leela, both

(23:09):
sixty six, were found in their bed, both shot in
the head and horribly slashed with a knife. Maxon had
been butchered so brutally his head was barely attached to
his body. Police experts had difficulty recreating the attack. Based
on the evidence, It's possible that the stalker killed them
both quickly with his gun, then mutilated them post mortem,

(23:30):
but given his developing mo O, it's possible that he
kept Missus Kneeling alive to play out his perverse fantasy.
But he also might have failed to perform sexually with
Missus Kneeling, just as he had with Linda Fortuna. So
he turned July twentieth into a double header, striking again,
this time in Sun Valley chatat Assawahem thirty two, was

(23:53):
shot in his sleep. His wife Sakima twenty nine, was raped,
forced to perform oral sex on the intruder, then beaten mercilessly.
He then sodomized the couple's eight year old son, Ramirez
tied missus assawahem in her bedroom and left, but not
before taking thirty thousand dollars in cash and jewelry. On

(24:14):
August sixth Ramirez targeted another couple, Christopher and Virginia Peterson,
ages thirty eight and twenty seven. Following his pattern, Ramirez
broke into the Peterson's Northridge bedroom and shot them both
in the head, but they didn't die. In fact, mister Peterson,
a powerfully built truck driver, got out of bed and

(24:34):
chased the intruder away despite having a bullet lodged in
his brain. Miraculously, the Petersons survived their wounds. Two nights
after the attack of the Petersons, Ramirez lashed out again,
this time in Diamond Bar, California, and this time he
had it his way. Ahmedzia thirty five, was shot in

(24:56):
the head and killed. While he slept. With the husband
out of the way, Ramirez was free to play out
his fantasy with Zia's wife, Sue Kiezia twenty eight. The
nightstalker raped her, sodomized her, and forced her to perform
fellatio on him. This was ramirez m o played out
the way he liked it, and the experts who profiled him,

(25:17):
believed that this was the way he would attack again
and again, probably adding a little something more each time,
a new perversion, a twist on an old predilection, and
most likely increasing the physical brutality. Los Angeles County was terrified.
The Nightstalker's crimes were becoming more frequent, the cooling off

(25:37):
periods were shortening, and his rage was escalating. There was
little doubt that he would strike again. The only question
was where and when. But as it turned out, Ramirez
decided to abandon his familiar territory. After the attack on
the Ziaz, he headed north. On August eighteenth, nineteen eighty five,

(25:58):
Peter and Barbara Pan were found in their blood soaked
bed in Lake Merced, a suburb of San Francisco. Both
had been shot in the head. Mister Pan, a sixty
six year old accountant, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Missus Pan, sixty four, survived, but would be an invalid
for the rest of her life. Scrawled on the wall

(26:19):
and lipstick were an inverted pentagram and the words Jack
the Knife, which is from a song called The Ripper
by the heavy metal band Judas Priest. Local police determined
that the killer had come in through an open window.
Fearing that ELA's nightstalker had moved into their precinct, homicide
investigators sent a bullet removed from mister pan to a

(26:41):
forensic team in Los Angeles. The bullet matched others removed
from two of the Nightstalker's Los Angeles County crime scenes.
Police in San Francisco searched their unsolved homicide files and
came up with two incidents that fit the stalker's mo
On February the twentieth, nineteen eighty five, his sisters Mary
and Christina Caldwell, ages seventy and fifty, had been stabbed

(27:04):
to death in their Telegraph Hill apartment. If this was
indeed the work of the Nightstalker, he had committed this
crime about a month before the night he killed Dale
Okazaki and Cian Lenieu and wounded Angela Barrios. The police
also discovered that on June second, the day after the
murders of the elderly sisters Blanchewulf and Malvia Keller, Theodore

(27:26):
Wilding's twenty five, was shot in the head while he
slept in his apartment in the Cow Hollow section of
San Francisco. His girlfriend, Nancy Bryan twenty five, was then
brutally raped by the killer. Could the night Stalker have
been active in San Francisco and Los Angeles throughout nineteen
eighty five and the police in San Francisco didn't realize it.

(27:49):
Panics spread through the city by the Bay to twelve fears.
Mayor Diane Feinstein talked publicly about the hunt for the Nightstalker,
but in doing so angered to TeVeS by giving away
too many details of his crimes, thus impeding their investigation.
They did not want to repeat of the situation. Los
Angeles had just gone through fifteen unanswered attacks, including fourteen

(28:13):
murders and five rapes, had been committed by a maddeningly
elusive perpetrator. But the San Francisco police caught a break
when the manager of a flophouse in the Tenderloin district
came forward and claimed that a young man who fit
the Stalker's description had stayed at his establishment from time
to time over the past year and a half. The
manager remembered that the man had rotten teeth and smelled terrible.

(28:37):
The police checked the room he had last stayed in.
On the bathroom door, they found a drawn pentagram the
man had checked out during the day. On August seventeenth,
Mister and missus Pan had been attacked that night. Investigators
then located a man from the El Sobrante district who
said he had purchased some jewelry, a diamond ring, and
a pair of cufflings from a young man who fit

(28:59):
the stalker description. Further investigation revealed that these items had
belonged to mister Pan. On August twenty fourth, while the
police in San Francisco were scrambling to find the mysterious
young man with rotten teeth, the nightstalker had found another
couple whom he could use to play out his violent fantasy.
Except this couple was not in the Bay Area. They

(29:21):
were asleep in bed in Mission Viejo, fifty miles south
of Los Angeles. A computer engineer and his twenty nine
year old fiancee had just drifted off to sleep when
loud gunshots suddenly awakened them in the room. Instinctively, she
reached out to her fiance, but he had been seriously wounded.

(29:41):
Before she realized what was happening, the intruder grabbed her
by the hair and hauled her into another bedroom, where
he tied her ankles and wrists with neckties. The man
then asked her if she knew who he was, admitting
that he was the killer who was getting all the
press coverage and on television. He rummaged through the house
looking for valuable but there was nothing small enough to steal.

(30:02):
Easily angry that the couple had so little, he returned
to her and raped her, not once, but twice. The
horrible stink of his breath made her gag. The man
was still angry that there was nothing worth stealing. Afraid
of what he might do next, she told him to
look in a drawer where she knew her fiance kept
some money. Swear to Satan, he bellowed at her. Out

(30:25):
of fright, She did what he wanted and swore to
Satan that she was telling the truth. The stalker found
the money, and as he counted it, he mocked her,
telling her that this was what she was worth. It
was what had saved her, he said. She prayed that
this was the end of it, that he would just
leave now that he had the cash, but he wasn't
through with her yet. Swear your love for Satan, he demanded,

(30:49):
afraid of what he might do. Next, she did as
he asked, I love Satan. She mumbled. He ordered her
to say it again and again. He yanked her by
the hair and made her kneel, then forced her to
perform oral sex on him. When he was finished, he
stepped back and stared at her, still bound by the
neck ties. She was sure that he was going to

(31:10):
shoot her, just as he had shot her fiance, but
he didn't. He laughed at her, then suddenly he was gone.
She quickly worked herself free of the neckties and went
to the window in time to see him getting into
an old orange colored Tyota station wagon. She immediately called
nine one one. Earlier that night, a teenager working on

(31:32):
his motorcycle in his parents' garage noticed the orange Toyota
driving into the neighborhood, and he saw it again as
it was leaving. It struck him as suspicious, so he
jotted down the license plate number. The next morning, he
called the police about the car with the plate number.
The police determined that the nineteen seventy six orange Toyota
had been stolen in ELA's Chinatown while the owner was

(31:54):
dining at a restaurant. An alert was put out for
the car, and two days later. It was located in
the Rampart section of Los Angeles. The police kept the
car under surveillance for nearly twenty four hours, hoping that
the Knights Talker would return for it, but he didn't.
A forensics team scoured the car for evidence and came
up with one good fingerprint, which they sent to Sacramento

(32:16):
for analysis. Hours later, the computer had found a match.
The print belonged to Ricardo Richard Leva Ramirez. Further analysis
revealed that this print matched a print taken from a
window sill at the Pans House near San Francisco. At
long last, the police knew who their suspect was. Now
they had defined him before he struck again. Seven days

(32:40):
after the attack on the computer engineer and his fiancee
in Mission Viejo, Ramirez was on the prowl for another
vehicle he could steal. Unfortunately for him, he chose the
wrong neighborhood to go shopping for cars. The thirty seven
hundred block of East Hubbard Street in Los Angeles is
in a largely Hispanic area. Perhaps Mirez felt that he

(33:01):
could blend in there, but he had no idea how
fiercely these residents would protect their property. Ramirez's first mistake
was trying to steal Faustino Pignon's prized red Mustang. Ramirez,
who was wearing a black Jack Daniel's T shirt, had
been hopping fences between yards searching for a car he
could steal easily. He'd been chased off the property next

(33:22):
door to Pignon's home and wound up in Pignon's yard.
Ramirez must have thought luck was with him because a
Mustang parked in the driveway was unlocked and the keys
were in the ignition. He jumped in and started the engine,
but he hadn't noticed that the car's owner was underneath
the car on his back working on the transmission. As
soon as Pignon fifty six, heard the engine start, he

(33:45):
rolled out from under the car in sense that anyone
would dare touch his prize possession. Pignon reached through the
window and grabbed Ramirez around the neck. I've got a gun,
Ramirez warned, but Pignon didn't care. No one was going
to take his car. Ramirez put the car in to
gear and tried to drive away, but Pignon wouldn't let

(34:07):
go of him. The vehicle crashed into a fence, then
into the garage. Pignon got the door open, hauled Ramirez
out and threw him to the ground. Ramirez scrambled to
his feet and ran across the street. Just as twenty
eight year old Angelina de la Torres was getting into
her Ford Grenada. He ran up to her car and
stuck his head through the driver's window, demanding that she

(34:30):
give him the keys, threatening in Spanish to kill her
if she didn't. She screamed for help, and her husband,
Manuel thirty two, came running from the backyard. According to
Nancy Skelton in the Los Angeles Times, he grabbed a
length of metal fence post as he passed through the
gate along the side of the house. In the meantime,
Jose Belgoyne, who had heard the rucus in Faustino Pignon's driveway,

(34:54):
had called the police. He ran outside to help Pignon,
and when he heard Angela's scream, he called to his uns,
Jamie twenty one and Julio seventeen, to come quick. As
the brothers ran to help Missus de Latorrees, they saw
the skinny stranger scrambling across the front seat of her car.
Jamie recognized him from photographs that had been published in

(35:15):
the newspapers and broadcast on television. He yelled that this
was the killer, the Nightstalker. The men made a mad
dash to catch him. Ramirez ran for his life, but
Manuel de Latorees caught up with him and hit him
across the neck with a three and a half foot
metal post. Ramirez kept running, but de Latorrez stayed on him,

(35:36):
whacking him repeatedly from behind. Jamie Belgone caught up with
Ramirez and punched him. Ramirez stumbled and fell, but quickly
got up and continued running, with de Latorrees and the
Bargoyn brothers on his heels. Then, unexpectedly, Ramirez stopped and
faced them. His eyes flashed as he laughed and stuck

(35:57):
out his tongue at them. He played the part of
the madman, but his pursuers were taken aback for only
a moment. They lunged at him, and the chase continued. Finally,
a block away from where it all began, De la
Torres swung hard and hit Ramirez on the head. The
night Stalker collapsed to the ground. Jamie and Jose Belgoyne

(36:19):
closed in on him to keep him down until the
police arrived one day after Richard Ramirez's face was made
public and the night stalker was in custody and behind bars.
Ramirez twenty six, was charged with fourteen murders and thirty
one other felonies related to his nineteen eighty five murder, rape,

(36:40):
and robbery spree. Upon his arrest. The fifteenth murder in
San Francisco also hung over his head, with a potential
for a trial in Orange County for rape and attempted murder.
Early in the case, two public defenders were appointed to
Richard Ramirez, but he disliked them. Another defense attorney came
and went before the Ramirez family returned Daniel and Arturo Hernandez.

(37:02):
They had never before tried a death penalty case, but
had worked together on homicide cases. Their presentation wasn't helped
much when at the arraignment in October nineteen eighty five,
Ramirez flashed a pentagram drawn on his palm and shouted
Hail Satan. This kind of behavior raised anxiety levels because
on another occasion, when the courtroom lights suddenly went out,

(37:25):
the deputy marshals drew their pistols and told everyone to
hit the floor. They then dragged Ramirez out of the courtroom.
The Hernandezz began their long list of pre trial motions
by filing for change of venue, insisting that the adverse
publicity in Los Angeles County had infected the entire community
and hence the jury pool. Ramirez could not receive a

(37:48):
fair trial, they claimed because many middle class people in
the area had an image embedded in their consciousness of
the nightstalker breaking into their homes. In fact, a survey
they had done indicated that ninety three percent of three
hundred people polled had heard about Ramirez, and the majority
believed that he was guilty. On January tenth, nineteen eighty seven,

(38:10):
the Los Angeles Times reported the decision. In this thirteen
day hearing a taste of things to come, Judge Dion
Morro said that given the substantial pool of potential jurors
in the county, he did not believe that argument was sound.
This is the largest community, I think, he stated, of
any court system in the country. As Ramirez was led

(38:32):
in chains from the courtroom, he grinned at his growing
cottery of female supporters. Some believed in his innocence, others
just thought he was cute. In another hearing, Judge Elva
Soper granted a request for a gag order on both sides.
By May. A trial date was set for the end
of September that proved to be highly optimistic. This case

(38:54):
was going to spread into other states and even Mexico
seeking witnesses and evidence. The defense team would also introduce
an exhausting round of delays, from appeals to out of
town interviews to outright disappearances. Ramirez testified in pre trial
proceedings clad in a three piece gray suit and red tie.

(39:14):
He denied that he had spontaneously told Sergeant Ed Esquieda
upon his August thirty first arrest, I did it. You
know you guys got me the stalker. His lawyer said
that the officer had not recorded the statements and they
wanted them stricken. Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan, who would
sit for the trial, denied the motion. Sergeant George Thomas

(39:36):
would later testify at the trial that he wrote down
that Ramirez had said, of course I did it, so
what shoot me? I deserved to die. Then he had
hummed a tune called night Prowler. Other than that appearance,
Ramirez sat through most of his numerous hearings, slouching in
his chair, drumming his fingers on the table, and bobbing

(39:57):
his head as if listening to rock music. Semed oblivious
to the seriousness of the charges. When the Hernandezez insisted
throughout the final months of nineteen eighty seven that they
needed more time to prepare, the trial date was moved
to February. They considered buying more time by pursuing the
Orange County trial first in November to avoid an extra trial.

(40:20):
One murder and one felony count were dismissed. All the
prosecution had for the murder was the delayed statement of
a witness who had spotted Ramirez a block from the
crime scene. Then Judge Tynan also said that he would
not allow Ramirez to leave the county, which meant he
could not be prosecuted in Orange County. The defense attorneys

(40:41):
seeking another ploy prepared to ask for at least six
separate trials to avoid having cases with little good evidence
become stronger by association with those that had it. By January,
it appeared that the trial for case number A seven
seven seven one two seven to two would be postponed
another six months because an appellate court required that the

(41:03):
prosecution team supplied defense attorneys with records of all crimes
over a period of six months in Los Angeles County
of a similar nature to those of Ramirez. This was
a move by the Hernandezes to link some of those
that Ramirez was charged with to other cases and possibly
other offenders. Prosecutor Phil Helpen called this an onerous burden

(41:25):
for the cops and asked the court to reconsider Both
sides took it to the state Supreme Court, which would
not hear it. San Francisco authorities had tentatively linked Ramirez
to four homicides, a rape, and ten burglaries in March. Still,
since they had no physical evidence in most of those crimes,
they had narrowed their focus to one killing, Peter Pan,

(41:48):
and one attempted murder Penn's wife, and a burglary that
had yield evidence that led to discovering Ramirez's last name.
They were awaiting the conclusion of the la trial to
decide on a day in July, as the case neared
three years since the arrest, The Times reported that Ramirez
had decided against entering a plea of not guilty by

(42:09):
reason of insanity. The judge ordered jury selection to begin.
The paper quoted the judge as estimating that this alone
could take six to eight months. The Hernandezez had sought
to have tinne And disqualified based on prejudice against their client.
They failed, but once again they claimed they needed more

(42:29):
time to prepare. Impatient with the defense motions, mostly to
suppress evidence that numbered nearly one hundred, La County Prosecutor
Phil Halpen finalized his case and filed the charges, taking
the defense by surprise. He claimed he had almost one
thousand potential witnesses and hundreds of thousands of pages of statements, reports,

(42:52):
and photographs, admitting that it was one of the most
complicated criminal cases he had seen. He projected a two
year period for the trial. Thus far, the case had
cost over one million dollars and one witness had already died.
The defense asked for yet another extension, but it was
time to begin. On July twenty first, nineteen eighty eight,

(43:15):
jury selection began. At the same time in Orange County,
the jury was being selected for the trial of Randy Craft,
accused of killing sixteen young men. Judge Tynan decided that
they would need twelve jurors and twelve alternates, all of
whom had to be impartial and also willing and able
to serve for up to two years, a rather tall

(43:36):
order even for that county. Carpenters were hired to enlarge
the jury box. Tynan figured that to get what they needed,
they would have to interview as many as two thousand people.
It turned out to be just short of sixteen hundred.
Alan Jokulsen joined Halpin for the prosecution team. Throughout the Voudo,
Halpin and Daniel Hernandez traded so many insults that the

(43:59):
judge told told them to take their macho posturing into
a boxing ring. He called them both unprofessional. He also
assigned a public defender, Ray Clark, to assist Daniel Hernandez,
since Oartiro seemed inclined not to be there at times.
The team had not yet disclosed their strategy. They still
had numerous appeals pending, particularly one asking to overturn the

(44:22):
judge decision, who had refused to remove Tynan from the case. Ramirez,
often choosing all black, Garb began to don sunglasses as
part of his mysterious persona, although he remained shaggy haired
throughout reinforcing his rebellious reputation, he got more involved in
the proceedings. On August third, the La Times reported that

(44:44):
jail employees had overheard a plan by Ramirez to shoot
and kill the prosecutor with a gun that someone was
going to slip them in the courtroom. A metal detector
was installed inside the courtroom, and even the lawyers were searched.
Ramirez seemed surprised, and no gun was ever found. Finally,
after several months, a jury of twelve with alternates was seated.

(45:06):
Then one juror was dismissed from making racially biased statements
about the death penalty. In January nineteen eighty nine, a
state appeals court found Daniel Hernandez deficient in presenting another
client in an earlier murder trial. Reportedly, he was not
surprised by the decision. He also had a record of
seeking delays for medical conditions caused by stress. No one

(45:30):
knew why the family had hired such an inexperienced attorney.
He continued to seek delays by the end of the
month January thirtieth, the trial began with Halpin's two hour
opening statement about the thirteen murders and thirty felony charges.
He intended to introduce at least four hundred exhibits as evidence,
including fingerprints, ballistics evidence, and shoe impressions, one of which

(45:53):
had been on the face of one victim. On that
same day, The Times reported that in jail in nineteen
eighty five, Ramirez had referred to himself as a super criminal,
claiming he loved to kill and had murdered twenty people.
I loved all that blood. A sheriff's deputy quoted him
as saying, Helpin hope to enter these statements as evidence.

(46:15):
Hernandez declined to make an opening statement at this stage.
His strategy remained veiled. Then the case really began. While
some witnesses had a difficult time with memory recall four
years after the crimes, others were quite certain of their
identification of Richard Ramirez. A few offered lengthy descriptions of
their ordeal at the hand of Ramirez, sometimes while he

(46:38):
leafed through a notebook of bloody crime scene photos. The defendant,
when asked, refused to remove his sunglasses. Helpin used circumstantial
evidence to link Ramirez with the Avius shoes that left
Prince at crime scenes. With his appearance in the vicinity
of the crimes, with his shifting mo and with possession
of items removed from the victims or their homes. He

(47:01):
also had fingerprints and signature evidence. On April fourteenth, after
using one hundred and thirty seven witnesses and five hundred
and twenty one exhibits, the prosecution rested its case. But
then it had become clear that the defense strategy would
be that the eight eye witnesses, some of whom were survivors,
had all mistakenly identified Ramirez, some other guy had done

(47:25):
it all. They were granted two weeks to prepare. One
hurdle the defense team had to jump was the numerous
pentagrams left at crime scenes in a car that bore
Ramirez's fingerprint on the thigh of a victim, on Ramirez
and in his cell. This was a means of linking
the crimes, mostly since Ramirez was a self proclaimed Satanist.

(47:46):
He had allegedly forced one surviving victim to swear allegiance
to Satan as he assaulted her and shot her husband.
Besides fingerprint and impression evidence from Avius shoes allegedly worn
by Ramirez, though they could not be found, ballistics and
showed the use of four different guns, one of which
was traced to a man who said he had gotten
it from Ramirez. The defense began three weeks later on

(48:09):
May ninth, in part because on May second, one of
the prosecution's witnesses was ordered to retestify. He had admitted
to withholding information while under oath, as he had described
jewelry and consumer items linked to the victims and received
from Ramirez. Halpin himself had uncovered the deception and said
it was not damaging to the case. Hernandez withheld judgment

(48:31):
but looked for an appeal opportunity. On May fourth, The
Times ran a piece about Ramirez's state of mind, saying
he was gloomy and distraught and that he did not
want to put on a defense. The lawyers told the
judge that this was a possibility, although they had advised
him otherwise. Tynan granted a recess so they could talk
further with their client. Ultimately, it was decided to go

(48:53):
on with the trial, and they brought in thirty eight witnesses.
The defense team essentially claimed that the prosecution's evidence was
inconclusive or defective. They noted that there were many fingerprints
of the crime scenes that remained unidentified, and that hair
and blood samples were found that did not belong to
the victims or Ramirez. In a surprise move, they had

(49:13):
Ramirez's father, Gulian Ramirez Tapia, take the stand to say
that Richard had been in El Paso, Texas for eight
days starting around May twenty fourth, nineteen eighty five. A
rape victim had placed him in her home on Memorial Day,
and another attack, which had ended in murder, had also
occurred between May twenty ninth and June first. The defense

(49:35):
attorneys also found testimony to the effect that police officers
had covertly alerted witnesses to Ramirez's position in the line
up after his arrest. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, an expert in
eyewitness testimony from the University of Washington, testified that the
stress of assault might have affected the witness's ability to
recall details accurately. She also pointed out that errors are

(49:57):
more likely when the attacker and victims are of different races,
Yet she conceded under cross examination that those victims who
had more than a fleeting exposure to Ramirez were likely
to be more accurate. On May twenty fifth, defense witness
Sandra Hotchkiss, claimed to have been Ramirez's accomplice in numerous
daytime burglaries in nineteen eighty five, some of which had

(50:19):
occurred during his alleged murder spree. She said that none
of these incidents was violent. She added that he was
jumpy and amateurish. She broke off with him, but was
eventually arrested and convicted of other burglaries. Throughout this trial phase,
several disturbances occurred, such as charts falling from easels, Daniel

(50:39):
Hernandez sweating profusely, and evidence being erroneously represented. The newspapers
pointed out that not once had the defense attorneys claimed
their client was innocent. Hernandez commented in the papers that
they merely wanted to prove that the prosecution's case was faulty.
Rebuttal witnesses for the prosecution contradicted the testimony of Ramirez's

(50:59):
fim by showing that Ramirez was in fact in Los
Angeles having dental work done at the time that his
father said he was in El Paso. A comparison of
Ramirez's teeth to the charts left no doubt. Though Ramirez
had used an alias a newspaper reporter David Hancock also
contradicted the alibi by indicating that he had interviewed Ramirez

(51:20):
Tapia in August nineteen eighty five. At that time, the
man had claimed that he had not seen his son
in at least two years. Daniel Hernandez was allowed to
fly to Texas to seek out more witnesses who might
have seen Ramirez. The jury was allowed to go on
vacation until July tenth. Hernandez found two witnesses, but Halpin

(51:40):
made the point that if he'd gone by plane, Ramirez
could still have made it back in time to commit
both attacks. One survivor had identified a piece of jewelry
as hers that had admittedly been found in the El
Paso room of Ramirez's sister. Yet relatives of the woman
murdered in May nineteen eighty five had photos of appliances
from her her home that had been in Ramirez's possession.

(52:03):
In closing arguments that lasted from July twelfth to twenty fifth,
each side emphasized the other side's cases weaknesses and the
strengths of its own. Halpin pointed out that Hernandez had
raised issues that he never substantiated. Throwing them at the
jury as mere diversions. When he was finished, Ramirez turned
to the court room and smirked. The judge took two

(52:25):
days to instruct the jury, letting them know that a
handgun was missing from the evidence inventory, but they had
a photograph of it. After nearly a year, the jury
finally started deliberations on July twenty sixth, with eight thousand
pages of trial transcripts and six hundred and fifty five
exhibits to consider. Within a week, one juror who kept
falling asleep was replaced. Then, on August fourteenth, Phyllis Singletary

(52:50):
did not arrive. The judge summoned the jury and told
them they could not continue without her, and the court
was recessed for the day. Yet, the papers reported that
Miss singles Terry had been shot to death in her apartment,
and this news passed through the jury and ate remaining
alternatives like wildfire. They could not help, but wonder if
Ramirez had managed this from his prison cell, and if

(53:12):
he might do something similar to another of them. He
certainly had plenty of black clad groupies who came to
court each day to show their support. They were called
the Charles Manson cult of nineteen sixty nine. Judge Tynan
called them into court the next day and told them
that an abusive boyfriend had shot miss Singletary. He assured
them the incident was unrelated to the case. An alternate

(53:35):
was chosen to replace her, although the woman was so
overcome with fear she could not walk to her place.
Yet more news was forthcoming. Miss Singletary's boyfriend used the
same weapon with which he'd killed her to commit suicide
in a hotel. He left behind his written confession. They
had been arguing over the Ramirez case, and he had

(53:55):
become enraged by her disapproval of Ramirez's lawyers. The defense
team tried hard to get a mistrial declared, which Halpern opposed.
The case must not go down the drain, he insisted.
Debates emerged in the newspapers over the issue, with one
psychologist believing the shooting would unconsciously influence the jury against
the defendant. However, the jury foreman assured the judge that

(54:19):
they would continue. When Ramirez heard this in court, he
shouted that it was all pat up and had to
be restrained. He continued to act out during the rest
of the deliberations, saying that the trial had not been fair,
and he was allowed to waive his right to be
present in court whenever brief hearings were needed. The proceedings
were piped into his holding cell. On September twentieth, almost

(54:42):
two months after they had begun, the jury announced that
they had reached a unanimous decision. Ramirez elected not to
attend the reading, neither did his coterie of girlfriends. On
each of the forty three counts the jury had voted
guilty and had affirmed nineteen special circumstances that made him
eligible for the death penalty. Upon leaving his cell, Ramirez

(55:07):
flashed a devil sign two fingers for horns at photographers
and made a single comment evil. The defense team asked
Ramirez to assist with the penalty phase, because without mitigating factors,
he surely would be condemned to death. Dying doesn't scare me,
he responded, I'll be in hell with Satan. He told

(55:28):
his lawyers that he would not beg so, to everyone's surprise,
they offered no witnesses and did not call him to
plead for his life. Halpin said later that this decision
had caught him flat footed. Clark argued before the jury
that something was wrong with Ramirez and they should be
compassionate sympathy even for the devil. Helpin reviewed his arguments

(55:50):
from the trial and urged them to give him his
just desserts. On October third, nineteen eighty nine, after four
days of deliberations, the jury said they'd voted for death
for Richard Ramirez. The female members were crying. Ramirez, who
is present for all of this, was led from the
courtroom smiling big deal. He said, death always went with

(56:13):
the territory. Later, as he was led in shackles back
to the county jail, he added for reporters, I'll see
you in Disneyland. On November ninth, he was officially sentenced
to death nineteen times. Ramirez chatted with his attorneys throughout Afterward.
He added to his dark image with his somewhat incomprehensible

(56:34):
speech to the court. You do not understand me. I
do not expect you to. You are not capable of it.
I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and
evil legions of the night night Breed, repeat not the
errors of night Prowler, and show no mercy. I will

(56:54):
be avenged Lucifer dwells within us all. He denounced the
court officials as liars, haters, and parasitic worms. He said
that he'd been misunderstood as he was led away to
eventually join the two hundred and sixty two inmates already
on death row in San Quentin, including freeway killer Randy Kraft,
sentenced a month before. He asked, where are the women?

(57:17):
He then flashed his two fingered devil symbol at a
busload of female prisoners who called out killer. That made
him smile. To understand Richard Ramirez and his passion for
the devil, we need to examine more than just his life.
We must also look at the times Ramirez committed his
murder spree in nineteen eighty five amid the Satanic panics

(57:39):
that swept the country throughout the decade, Anxiety over Satanists
and evil conspiracies mounted on a cultural scale, and narratives
told by people in therapy about ritual abuse by secret
Satanic rings showed many common elements and no evidence. Full
masses of people developed similar physical symptoms that were primarily
emotional in origin. The idea of ritual abuse was heavily

(58:02):
promoted by journalists therapists, physicians, drug companies, and whoever else
might find some stake in them. Serial killers two adopted
satanic robes during that decade. Robert Burdella killed six men
in Missouri for satanic purposes. Antony Costa killed four women
in Cape cod in rituals. Thomas Creech admitted to forty

(58:24):
seven satanic sacrifices, and Larry Eyler buried four of his
twenty three victims under a barn marked with an inverted pentagram.
Nurse Donald Harvey, suspected of the deaths of forty seven patients,
admitted to a fascination with black magic. Leonard Lake, who
had teamed up with Charles Ing for a series of
torture murders, was affiliated with a witch's coven. One killer

(58:47):
targeted homeless men, wringing his victims with a circle of salt.
A teenager who wanted to follow the devil murdered his
parents in their beds. During the nineteen eighties, a former
associate of John Wayne Gays named Robin Getched inspired a
group of three other men known as the Ripper Crew
in killing an estimated eighteen women. They would murder a

(59:08):
victim sever her left breast with a thin wire, clean
it out for use for sexual gratification, and then cut
it into pieces to consume. Ostensibly, they were worshiping Satan,
and eating the flesh was the form of demonic communion.
The nightstalker had the same devilish persuasion. He'd creep up
in the night dressed in black and enter home surreptitiously.

(59:32):
Sometimes he removed the eyes of his victim, as if
for a ritual. He bludgeoned two elderly sisters and left
satanic symbols on the thigh of the one who died
in the form of a pentagram. He also drew pentagrams
on the walls in lipstick. When he was arrested, Ramirez
reportedly said he was a minion of Satan, sent to
commit the dark One's dirty work. Was this admission some

(59:55):
kind of preparation for an insanity defense or something he
truly believed? If he believed it, did it inspire more savagery?
Did it cause him to kill? Let's review some of
the influential factors of his life that have been commonly
linked to violent temperament development. He was born in El Paso, Texas,
in nineteen sixty the youngest of five children. He was

(01:00:17):
a quiet boy, according to neighbors with hard working parents. However,
Richard's father had a temper and sometimes beat the kids.
The abuse model in the form of a parent can
often be a bad start for a child, especially a
boy watching his father. Add to that possible abuse from
a male teacher, and Richard had two role models who
demonstrated how to use others for their own frustrating ends.

(01:00:41):
Richard was afraid of his father, and he would leave
home to hang out in a nearby cemetery, even spending
the night. He found peace among the dead, which may
have been where he first developed an attraction to the macabre.
A means for getting over one's fears is to identify
with what's frightening you. One way to do this is
to become a frightening person yourself. More than one criminal

(01:01:04):
has become the very thing that scared him, turning from
victim into a victimizer. Yet Ramirez would take this transformation
another step. It would become more than just frightening people.
He would want to mutilate them, to grade them and
radiate their fear in larger ripples. At others, Ramirez also
suffered from epileptic seizures, possibly viewed as a weakness in

(01:01:28):
that South Texas culture since it forced him to give
up football, and he became something of a loner in school.
He was thin and girlish in appearance, so he may
have been ridiculed. Yet he had ambitions to become famous.
He wanted people to know him. He wanted to make
a difference. He looked up to an older cousin named Mike,

(01:01:48):
who may have become a father substitute. Mike loved to
prove how tough he was, especially by fighting. As Richard
hung out with him day after day, absorbing Mike's life philosophies,
he learned and knew out look, Mike had survived the
rigors of Vietnam, and when he returned, even more hardened
and covered in tattoos, he became larger than life in

(01:02:08):
Richard's eyes. He'd come through an ordeal and he had
secrets from an exotic place That was pretty exciting. But
even better were the photographs that Mike liked to show
Richard of the butcher dead, including women. He said that
killing made him feel like a god, and there was
nothing more powerful. Mike bragged that he had raped and

(01:02:28):
murdered several women, and he had the photos to prove it.
While Richard may have been shocked initially, he eventually got
used to such sights, mostly since it was essential to
show Mike that he could handle it. Mike might have
been testing young Richard, not yet even an adolescent, but
Richard was up to the test. He took it in
and wanted more. The key insight here is that Richard's

(01:02:53):
exposure to Mike's atrocities occurred at a time in his
life when he was also becoming a young man. And
often when things get associated with physical excitement and intrigue
during early sexual development, they also become eraticized. Thus they
become part of the mental landscape as well. Sexual fantasies
can develop from the associated images, and those fantasies become

(01:03:16):
repetitive and more detailed throughout one's life and may lay
the groundwork for later acts. Richard supposedly had viewed polaroids
of Mike and sexual activity in which the woman was
a helpless victim, and of Mike murdering these same women.
He saw how his idle could do these things without
a qualm. Undoubtedly got excited by the naked women in

(01:03:36):
sexual positions, and probably learned that women could be easily
used as objects for degradation. It was all part of
being a real man, yet it was also forbidden, which
gave Mike's macho realm an added allure. In addition to that,
Mike also taught Richard the art of hunting as a predator.

(01:03:56):
They would go out into the desert at night and
observe and sneak up on animals. Mike then would show
Richard how to kill an animal with a knife or gun,
and it's likely they indulged in some bloody aspects of
this sport. As Richard developed, Mike became his role model,
and whatever Mike did without fear Richard wanted to do

(01:04:16):
that set him up for one more incident that would
prove everything that Mike had demonstrated thus far. One day,
Mike got into a fight with his wife, who wanted
him to get a job, and decided to end her harassment.
He drew a revolver and shot her. Then he told
Richard to leave. For this crime, Mike went to a
mental institution judged to have been temporarily insane. Yet right

(01:04:40):
after the incident, Richard went into the home with his
father and saw and smelled the blood. He felt a
connection with the dead, he later confessed to author Philip
Carlow in The Knightstalker, which bordered on the mystical. Some
psychologists pinpoint this killing as a turning point for him. Still,
it's more likely than he had already become accustomed to death,

(01:05:02):
especially with women, via the photographs Mike had shown him
and by killing animals up close. This incident was probably
not as traumatic for him as it might have been,
given what he'd already been exposed to. The numbness had
already developed in him. Otherwise, we might expect that he'd
have run from the apartment and gone to the police,
or gone into depression and avoided his cousin. After that,

(01:05:25):
he told no one that he had witnessed the crime.
What may have been just as instrumental in his development
is that he did attend church, so that to be
able to worship and also accept his cousin's violent attitudes
indicated that he'd already begun to compartmentalize, to act and
think differently in different contexts. That's the most dangerous kind

(01:05:46):
of person because it becomes difficult for others to recognize
the violent side and make it difficult for them to
stop their own violent acts. He may not even view
them as bad. Eventually, Richard discover the Church of Satan,
and that seemed to draw all the threads of his
temperament together in the right way. The themes of dominance, control,

(01:06:07):
and power called to him, as did the idea of
something sacred, even if it was evil. All of this
might have made him able to erase his feelings of weakness. Then,
when he was eighteen, he moved to California. He had
nothing much to do there, so he stole cars, listened
to music, and look for opportunities. Whatever they might be.

(01:06:28):
He would steal without compunction and buy drugs. He still
sought something that might make him significant. Richard Ramirez had
perceived in the culture around him. He was not far
from where teachers had been arrested in nineteen eighty three
at the McMartin priest School and accused as a ring
of Satanists corrupting children. That people were afraid of Satan,
and to him, that probably meant that aligning himself with

(01:06:51):
a prince of darkness would uniquely empower him. People would
actually fear him so he cultivated Satan's trappings that were
popular during the nineteen seventies and eighties pentagrams, black clothing,
demonic eyes, stealthy ways, and a penchant for the night.
He took his cue from the song Night Prowler, noting

(01:07:12):
how the person who made others afraid was the person
in control. So he went on his murder spree, was
caught and went through a trial. He was certainly making
a name for himself, but it wasn't enough just to
be another serial killer. There were plenty of those by
the nineteen eighties, even a trial in Orange County. At
the same time, he perceived that he had set himself

(01:07:34):
apart with his Satanic incarnation, and he played that up
for the press. Ramirez flashed a pentagram and his preliminary
hearing that he'd had tattooed onto the palm of his hand.
When he was convicted, his lawyers warned him that he
could get the death sentence. I'll be in hell, then,
he said, with Satan. He saw the newspaper articles talking

(01:07:56):
about him as the devil and understood that he was
a sallet celebrity. Now. The more he flashed the pentagram
or talked about serving Satan. The more he was quoted
in the papers, he adopted sunglasses to enhance his mystique.
He embraced the idea that he was a monster, even
during the trial when one juror was murdered. The incident

(01:08:17):
made other jurors wonder if Ramirez had called forth demons
to attack that person. They were fearful that he might
pick them off. He'd often tried to intimidate them individually
with his stars. He was sentenced to death and sent
to death row in San Quentin. When talking to police officers,
he was quite curious as to whether there would now
be books about him, as there were about Ted Bundy

(01:08:39):
and Jack the Ripper. He loved the idea that someone
had made a movie. During the nineteen nineties, Jason Moss
wrote to Ramirez as part of his project to write
to serial killers, and Ramirez reportedly wanted him to become
a Satanist. Since Ramirez's beliefs seemed fundamental to his desire
to be notorious and unique, it's difficult to note to

(01:09:01):
what degree he was sincerely devoted to Satan, Yet it's
likely that his desire to kill and how he committed
his crimes had more to do with his cousin. Mike's
psychological influence, coupled with his notion that killing makes one
a god s

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