The jury convicted him of 11 murders in Southern California and two others in the San Francisco area.Ī death sentence followed. Simpson’s murder trial years later.Īs horrific and dramatic as the allegations against him, Ramirez’s antics during the proceedings added to the intrigue – like when he’d draw a pentagram on his hand and yell out, “Hail Satan.” The whole prosecution cost Los Angeles County more than $1.8 million, a record amount that stood until O.J. Residents of an east Los Angeles neighborhood, though, spotted him trying to steal two cars, caught and subdued him, then held him down until police arrived.Īfter years of delays, Ramirez’s case went to trial in 1989. bus station after his image had been splashed across newspapers. After a bus trip to Tucson, Arizona – where he’d been visiting his brother – he was finally recognized at a store near a downtown L.A. He attacked again on August 24 in Los Angeles. Yet authorities were still grasping for clues in August 1985, when a manager at a hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district recognized descriptions of the suspect as a man who’d stayed at his hotel periodically for a year and a half.īy then, Ramirez had already left the Bay Area for Southern California. Some victims survived – in some cases without the assailant’s apparent knowledge, in others seemingly spared for whatever reason – and then talked to police. All were used with evident malice, and all contributed to the fear and frenzy that gripped the region. The killing weapons varied: guns, knives, fists. There were reports of pentagrams being scrawled at crime scenes, as well as snippets from heavy metal songs. While some victims were in their 60s and older, others were in their 20s and 30s. There was also the 41-year-old woman bound and raped, as her 12-year-old son was handcuffed and locked in a closet. Like 30-year-old student Tsai-Lian Yu, found lying bloody on the ground near her running car in Monterey Park, California, according to media reports. There were gory exceptions to this scenario. Then the man who’d become known as the “Night Stalker” would ransack the home looking for valuables. A female might be raped, sometimes more than once. On several occasions, a man who happened to be inside was killed quickly. It was then that horrific tales began to surface of a man breaking into homes, mostly in Southern California, in the wee hours of the morning. Media reports indicated that he had a history of drug use, some arrests on relatively minor charges, and no evident purpose in life over his first few decades.īut some time in the mid-1980s, things turned drastically. He was in his late teens when he landed in Southern California in the 1970s. Ramirez was born to a large family in El Paso, Texas. So how did the “Night Stalker” come to be? Ramirez became the 59th inmate in the state to die in this manner while awaiting execution, not including 22 who committed suicide and six dead of other causes. Instead, on Friday morning, Richard Ramirez died of natural causes at Marin General Hospital north of San Francisco, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Neither did the state’s plan to execute him. The vengeance that Ramirez promised apparently never came to fruition. Richard Ramirez was all those things, but to Californians terrorized during his violent spree in the spring and summer of 1985, he was simply the “Night Stalker.” He’d just been sentenced to death following his conviction for 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries.Ī serial murderer, a serial rapist, a Satan worshiper, a man who inflicted physical and emotional pain on his victims in myriad ways. Richard Ramirez was 29 when he spoke those words in a Southern California courtroom in 1989.
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