Richard Ramirez

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This article is about the serial killer Richard Ramírez. For the noise musician, see Richard Ramirez (musician). For other uses of the name Night Stalker, see Night Stalker.

Richard Ramírez
Police mug shot of Ramírez
Background information
Birth name:	Ricardo Muñoz Ramírez
Alias(es):	The Night Stalker
Born:	February 29, 1960 (1960-02-29) (age 48) El Paso, Texas
Penalty:	Death
Killings
Number of victims:	14
Span of killings:	June 28, 1984 through August 24, 1985
Country:	U.S.
State(s):	California
Date apprehended:	August 30, 1985

Ricardo Muñoz Ramírez (born February 29, 1960,^[1] in El Paso, Texas) is a convicted American serial killer awaiting execution on California's death row at San Quentin State Prison. Prior to his capture, Ramírez was dubbed the "Night Stalker," named after an AC/DC song, by the news media as he terrorized California.

Contents 1 Early life and influences 2 Victims 2.1 Jennie Vincow 2.2 Maria Hernandez and Dale Okazaki 2.3 Tsia-Lian Yu 2.4 Vincent and Maxine Zazzara 2.5 William and Lillian Doi 2.6 Malvia Keller and Blanche Wolfe 2.7 Ruth Wilson 2.8 Mary Louise Cannon 2.9 Whitney Bennett 2.10 Joyce Lucille Nelson 2.11 Sophie Dickman 2.12 Lela and Max Kneiding 2.13 Christopher and Virginia Petersen 2.14 Elyas and Sakina Abowath 2.15 Peter and Barbara Pan 2.16 William Carns and his fiancée 3 Pursuit and capture 4 Trial and conviction 5 Appeals 6 AC/DC 7 Quotes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Early life and influences

Ricardo Munoz Ramirez was born in El Paso, the youngest of five children to working class Mexican immigrants Julian Ramirez and Mercedes Munoz. Friends described him as a loner, even in childhood.

A big influence on Richard Ramírez's later murder spree was his cousin, Mike, a Special Forces Vietnam War veteran.^[2] Mike fascinated Ramírez with polaroids of Vietnamese women whom he boasted of killing and torturing.^[2] The two spent time smoking pot and driving around and, according to Ramirez, during that time Mike taught him to shoot and cut people for "maximum effect".^[2].

It was after the murder of Mike's wife that Richard (the epileptic youngest child^{[citation needed]} in a family of three boys and two girls) started skipping school. He began using marijuana and sniffing glue by the eighth grade. He soon took to stealing to support his drug use. He went to Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, though dropped out in the 9th grade; he was arrested twice during that period for drug possession.^[3]

He thereafter lived the life of a slacker, smoking marijuana and living on convenience store junk food, according to UPI reporters Aurelio Rojas and K. Mack Sisk. Because of his poor hygiene and sugar-rich diet, his teeth eventually started to rot, which made his breath foul and offensive. This halitosis fit in with the demonic personality that he was intentionally cultivating.^{[citation needed]} 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 1981 and Los Angeles in 1984.

Michael D. Harris, reporting for UPI, wrote that years later Ramírez' father would maintain that Richard was a "good boy" whose marijuana consumption "put him out of control." Richard often drew the five-point pentagram, a symbol sometimes associated with Satanism, on his own body, and at his trial he would shout "Hail Satan!" in open court. He was a big fan of hard rock and heavy metal bands who sang about Hell and the devil. Ramírez was said to be a particular fan of AC/DC and their song "Night Prowler," which aided in the creation of his "Night Stalker" nickname.

[edit] Victims

[edit] Jennie Vincow

On June 28, 1984, following a night of shooting cocaine, Ramirez removed a screen and entered the window of 79-year-old Jennie Vincow, of Glassell Park, Los Angeles.^[4] Vincow's son, Jack, discovered her body the next afternoon. She was sprawled out on the bed, stabbed repeatedly, her throat slashed so savagely she was nearly decapitated. The intruder also ransacked her apartment and helped himself to her valuables. Fingerprints were recovered from the window screen, and the autopsy revealed signs of sexual assault.^[5]

[edit] Maria Hernandez and Dale Okazaki

Ramirez stayed under the radar for ten months. Then, on March 17, 1985, 22-year-old Maria Hernandez was accosted as she stepped from her car in the garage of the condominium that she shared with a roommate, Dale Okazaki, age 34, in Rosemead, a middle-class town north-east of Los Angeles. Hernandez described the man who assaulted her as tall and dressed entirely in black, with a baseball cap pulled low over his brow. He was holding a gun. Ramirez stepped forward and shot at her face as she raised her hands in self-defense. The bullet hit Hernandez in the hand, having been deflected by her keys. She fell to the ground and Ramirez pushed her aside and entered the condominium. Hernandez lay still until sometime later. She heard the door closing, whereupon she opened the garage door and went outside. As she approached the front door of the condominium, Ramirez was leaving. She ducked down behind a car as Ramirez raised the gun at her. She asked him not to shoot her again and he lowered the gun and ran away.^[5]

Hernandez entered the condominium through the front door, which was ajar. She found Okazaki lying dead on the kitchen floor. She had been shot through the forehead from a short distance. Her blouse had been pulled up. Hernandez then summoned the police. At a subsequent autopsy, a .22-caliber bullet was retrieved from Okazaki's skull.^[5]

On the ground outside, police found a blue baseball-style cap with the name AC/DC on the front. At trial, a witness testified that the cap looked like one Ramirez wore. Hernandez identified Ramirez as her attacker at a police lineup and later at trial.^[5]

[edit] Tsia-Lian Yu

Around four days after the assault of Maria Sophia Hernandez and the murder of Dale Okazaki, a car driven by Tsia-Lian Yu was forced to a stop by a car driven by a man later identified as Ramirez, near Monterey Park. Ramirez approached the car and pulled Yu out of her car.^[5]

Joseph Duenas stepped out onto the balcony of his second-floor apartment after hearing a woman screaming for help. Duenas went inside and called the police, then stepped back onto the balcony. Duenas observed the scene as the man pushed Yu away, got into her car and drove away. As Ramirez drove, he passed a car containing Jorge Gallegos and his girlfriend. Gallegos saw the driver’s profile and noted the number of the license plate of the car. Both men later testified at trial.^[5]

Yu crawled a short way and lay still. Arriving police found Yu breathing but unconscious. Yu stopped breathing and CPR was administered until the ambulance arrived. Yu was pronounced dead at the Lake House Inn. The autopsy revealed that she had been shot twice in the chest at close range. The .22-caliber bullet recovered from Yu's body was fired by the same gun as the one that killed Dale Okazaki.^[5]

[edit] Vincent and Maxine Zazzara

Ramirez's next victims were found a few days later, on the morning of March 27, 1985. Vincent Zazzara, age 64, was a retired investment counselor who operated his own pizzeria. He was found dead that morning by his son Peter, who had come to visit. Peter rang the bell several times, but no one answered, so he let himself in. His father's body was on the sofa in the den, shot through the left temple. He appeared to have died instantly. Vincent's wife and Peter's mother Maxine Zazzara, age 44, was found stretched out in her bed, face up and naked. Her eyes had been gouged out and she had been stabbed repeatedly around the face, neck, abdomen, and groin. There was a large T-shaped knife wound in her left breast. An autopsy later revealed that, like her husband, she had first been shot in the head and probably died instantly, with the stabbing and mutilation done when she was already dead. The house had been ransacked and burglarized.

[edit] William and Lillian Doi

On April 15, two weeks after the murders of Vincent and Maxine Zazzara, Richard Ramirez returned to Monterey Park and broke into the home of William and Lillian Doi, ages 66 and 63 respectively, waking them from their sleep. Ramirez first shot Mr. Doi right above the upper lip, causing the bullet to go through his tongue and become lodged in his throat. Then Ramirez beat him into unconsciousness. After doing this he went into Mrs. Doi's room, slapped her, and warned her not to scream, saying "Shut up or I'll kill you bitch." He bound her hands behind her back with thumb cuffs to keep her still as he searched the house. After he found what he wanted, he returned to the bedroom and raped Mrs. Doi.

Mr. Doi, however, was not dead. Despite his severe head wound, he managed to crawl to Mrs. Doi's room where he dialed 911. He was unable to tell the dispatcher what the problem was, but the call was traced and an ambulance and patrol car were dispatched to the Doi's address. William Doi was rushed to the hospital but died in the ambulance. Lillian Doi was treated for her injuries and was able to give the police a description of the couple's attacker.

[edit] Malvia Keller and Blanche Wolfe

The attacks continued, throwing the city of Los Angeles into a state of panic. One police official referred to the killer-rapist as the "Valley Intruder". Several area newspapers dubbed him the "Midnight Stalker". But Ramirez was just getting started. In the spring of 1985, the frequency of his killing escalated, and by that summer reached its peak.

On May 29, Malvia Keller, 83, and her invalid sister, Blanche Wolfe, 80, were found in Keller's Monrovia home. Both women had been beaten so severely with a hammer that when the police found it, the handle was split. Wolfe had a puncture wound above one ear. An inverted pentagram with the tip pointing down had been drawn in lipstick on Keller's inner thigh. A second pentagram was found on the bedroom wall over Wolfe's body. Ramirez had raped Keller, 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 Wolfe, but Keller died soon afterwards.

[edit] Ruth Wilson

On May 30, Ruth Wilson, 41, 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 12-year-old son's room. Ramirez put the gun to the child's head, warning Wilson not to make a sound. He then handcuffed the boy and locked him in a closet.

Assuming that he was only a burglar, she offered to give Ramirez her most valuable possession, a gold-and-diamond necklace. She led him to the dresser in her bedroom where she kept it, hoping it would placate him. After rummaging through the house, however, he ordered her to put her hands together behind her back, tying them with pantyhose. He then pushed her onto the bed and raped her. She told Ramirez that he must have had a "very unhappy life" to have done this to her. He reportedly told her that she looked "pretty good" for her age and said he was going to let her live although he had killed many others. When she complained that the pantyhose around her wrists were cutting off her circulation, he loosened them and brought her a robe before releasing her son from the closet and handcuffing them side by side. He left them there and departed.

Afterward, the boy was able to get to a phone and call 911. When the police asked Wilson to describe her attacker, she told them that he was a tall Hispanic man with long dark hair.

[edit] Mary Louise Cannon

On July 2, the body of 75-year-old Mary Louise Cannon was found in her Arcadia home. Like Patty Higgins, she had been beaten and her throat slit. The house had been ransacked.

[edit] Whitney Bennett

On July 5, Ramirez returned to Arcadia and savagely beat 16-year-old Whitney Bennett, a junior at La Cañada High School, with a tire iron. Identified in some later accounts under the pseudonym "Deidre Palmer", Bennett required 478 stitches but survived her injuries. According to Philip Carlo's 1996 biography, Bennett later married Mike Salerno, the son of LAPD Sergeant Frank Salerno, the lead detective in both the Night Stalker case as well as the case of the Hillside Stranglers, after meeting the younger Salerno while waiting to testify at trial.

[edit] Joyce Lucille Nelson

Two days later, on July 7, the body of Joyce Lucille Nelson was found in her home in Monterey Park. The 61-year-old had been beaten to death with a blunt object.

[edit] Sophie Dickman

Later that same night in Monterey Park, Sophie Dickman, a 63-year-old registered nurse, was awakened at around 3:30 a.m. by a "tall, skinny man dressed in black". The man, who fit the description of the "Night Stalker", 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 could not maintain an erection. He was frustrated and humiliated, 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.

[edit] Lela and Max Kneiding

Less than two weeks later, on July 20, Ramirez chose a new location in the Los Angeles area, Glendale. He also brought along a new weapon; a machete. High school sweethearts Lela and Max Kneiding, both 66, had been following the crimes in the news. Although all the windows and doors were locked, the killer cut a screen on the French doors, reached in and unlocked them. Ramirez scanned the house and went to the bedroom. He turned on the lights and kicked the bed and said "Rise and shine, (expletive)". The machete came down on Max's neck and then at Lela, but missed. Ramirez figured the new weapon was not going to kill fast enough so he pulled out his .22 pistol. He pulled the trigger but the gun jammed. As the victims begged for their lives, Ramirez cleared the gun and shot them to death. Then, he horrifically mutilated them after death with the machete. The house was ransacked. Ramirez had a police scanner with him and fled the scene when a "shots fired" call came over the radio.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Christopher and Virginia Petersen

On August 6, Ramirez targeted another couple, Christopher and Virginia Petersen, ages 38 and 27. Following his pattern, Ramirez broke into the Petersen's Northridge home through a sliding glass door, which led to the living room. Before he entered their bedroom, he cocked his .25 automatic pistol. Virginia was a light sleeper and awoke to this metallic "click". Ramirez advanced towards her with both hands on the gun. She yelled at him and he told her to shut up as he shot Virginia under the left eye. The bullet went through the roof of her mouth and down her throat; exiting out the back of her neck. Chris awoke and in the initial confusion thought it was some kind of game. He looked at his wife's face and was shot by Ramirez in the right temple. The ammunition in the gun was old and the gunpowder had lost its potency, so the bullet could not pierce Chris's skull. He jumped up and attacked Ramirez only to be shot at two more times. Both shots missed. As they wrestled, Chris was flung over the killer's back and onto the floor. Ramirez fled out of the house the same way he gained entry. Chris and Virginia survived the brutal attack.

[edit] Elyas and Sakina Abowath

Two nights after the attack on the Petersens, Ramirez lashed out again, this time in Diamond Bar. Elyas Abowath, 35, was shot in the head and killed while he slept. With Elyas dead, Ramirez molested Elyas Abowath's wife, Sakina, 29. He raped her, sodomized her, and forced her to perform oral sex on him. Experts who profiled him believe that this was the way he preferred to attack, by killing any men and raping the women.

[edit] Peter and Barbara Pan

Los Angeles County was in a state of disarray; the Night Stalker's crimes were becoming more frequent. The off-periods between his crimes were shortening, and his severity was escalating. There was little doubt that he would strike again. But as it turned out, Ramirez decided to abandon his familiar territory. After the attack on the Abowaths, he headed north.

On August 18, 1985, Peter and Barbara Pan were found in their blood-soaked bed in Lake Merced, a housing development in San Francisco. Both had been shot in the head. Peter Pan, a 66-year-old accountant, was pronounced dead at the scene. Mrs. Pan, 64, survived but would be an invalid for the rest of her life. Scrawled on the wall in 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 Los Angeles's Night Stalker had moved to their precinct, homicide investigators sent a bullet removed from Mr. Pan to a forensic team in Los Angeles. The bullet matched others recovered from two of the Los Angeles County crime scenes.

Panic spread through the city of San Francisco. To quell fears, Mayor Dianne Feinstein talked publicly about the hunt for the Night Stalker, but in so doing angered detectives by giving away too many details of his crimes which, they felt, impeded their investigation. They did not want a repeat of the situation Los Angeles had just gone through. Fifteen unanswered attacks, including fourteen murders and five rapes, had been committed by a very elusive perpetrator.

But the San Francisco police caught a break when the manager of the Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin district came forward and claimed that a young man who fit the Night 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 bad. 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 17. Mr. and Mrs. Pan had been attacked that night.

Investigators then located a man from El Sobrante (east of San Francisco) who said he had purchased some jewellery—a diamond ring and a pair of cufflinks—from a young man who fit the Night Stalker's description. Further investigation revealed that these items had belonged to Mr. Pan.

[edit] William Carns and his fiancée

On August 24, while the police in San Francisco were scrambling to find the mysterious young man with rotten teeth, the Night Stalker had found another couple whom he planned to make his victims. However, this couple was not in the Bay Area, Mission Viejo, 50 miles south of Los Angeles.

Bill Carns and his 29-year-old fiancée had just drifted off to sleep when they were suddenly awakened by loud gunshots in the room. Instinctively, she reached out to her fiancé, but he had already been seriously wounded. Before she realized what was happening, the intruder grabbed her by the hair and pulled 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 coverage in the press and on television. He rummaged through the house, looking for valuables, but there was nothing small enough to steal easily. Angry that the couple had so little, he returned to her and raped her twice.

Afraid of what he might do next, she told him to look in a drawer where she knew her fiancé kept some money. "Swear to Satan", he told her. She did what he wanted and swore to Satan that she was telling the truth. Ramirez found the money, and as he counted it, he allegedly mocked her, telling her that this was what she was worth. She hoped that this was the end of it, that he would leave now that he had the money. But he was not through with her. "Swear your love for Satan", he demanded. 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 neckties, she was certain that he was going to shoot her just as he had shot her fiancé. However, Ramirez suddenly laughed at her and fled. She quickly worked herself free of the neckties and immediately called 911.

[edit] Pursuit and capture

Earlier that night, a teenager who had been working on his motorcycle in his parents' garage had noticed an orange Toyota driving into the neighborhood, and he noticed it again as it was leaving. It struck him as suspicious, so he wrote down the license plate number. The next morning, he called the police about the car. With the plate number, the police were able to determine that the 1976 orange Toyota had been stolen in Los Angeles's Chinatown while the owner was 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 24 hours in the hope that the Night Stalker would return for it, but he did not. A forensics team scoured the car for evidence and came up with one good fingerprint which they sent to Sacramento for analysis. Hours later the computer had found a match. The print belonged to Ricardo "Richard" Leyva 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 to find him before he struck again.

On August 31, Ramirez arrived in the downtown Greyhound bus station in Los Angeles, after coming back from his brother's home in Tucson, Arizona. As Ramirez was leaving the bus station, he noticed that the area was flooded with cops, but managed to slip away unnoticed, unaware that he was identified as the Night Stalker. As he walked into a corner store, the owners noticed his face from the mugshots, and one of them shouted out "El Asesino" ("The Killer"). Ramirez turned to the side, saw the newspaper rack with his face on several front covers, grabbed La Opinión, and ran.

Ramirez would run two miles in 12 minutes, heading east from downtown Los Angeles. Ramirez then tried to steal Faustino Pinon's red Ford 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 had been chased off the property next door to Pinon's home and wound up in Pinon's yard. Ramirez saw that the Ford Mustang parked in the driveway was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. He jumped in and started the engine, but had not noticed that the car's owner was underneath it, working on the transmission. As soon as Pinon, 56, heard the engine starting, he rolled out from under the car. Angry that someone was touching his prized possession, Pinon reached through the window and grabbed Ramirez around the neck. Ramirez warned Pinon that he had a gun, but Pinon ignored him. Ramirez put the car into gear and tried to drive away, but Pinon would not let go of him. The car crashed into a fence, then into the garage.

Pinon got the door open, pulled Ramirez out, and threw him to the ground. Ramirez scrambled to his feet and ran across the street just as 28-year-old Angelina de la Torres was getting into her Ford Granada. He ran up to her car and stuck his head through the driver's window, demanding that she give him the keys, threatening in Spanish to kill her if she did not. She screamed for help, and her husband Manuel, 32, 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 Burgoin, who had heard the struggle in Faustino Pinon's driveway, had called the police. He ran outside to help Pinon, and when he heard Angelina scream, he called to his sons (Jaime, 21, and Julio, 17) for assistance. As the brothers ran to help Mrs. De la Torres, they saw the stranger scrambling across the front seat of her car. Jaime recognized him from photographs in the newspapers and on television and yelled that this was the killer, and the men made a mad dash to catch him. Ramirez ran, but Manuel de la Torres caught up with him and hit him across the neck with the metal post he was still carrying.

Ramirez kept running, but de la Torres followed, hitting him repeatedly from behind. Jaime Burgoin caught up with Ramirez and punched him. Ramirez stumbled and fell but quickly got up and continued running with de la Torres and the Burgoin brothers on his heels. Finally, de la Torres swung hard and hit Ramirez on the head. The Night Stalker collapsed to the ground. Jaime and Jose Burgoin closed in on him to keep him down until the police arrived.

One day after Ramirez's face was made public, the Night Stalker was in custody and behind bars. Upon his arrest, Ramirez, 25, was charged with 14 murders and 31 other felonies related to his 1985 spree. He was also charged with a 15th murder in San Francisco and rape and attempted murder charges in Orange County.

[edit] Trial and conviction

Jury selection for the case started on July 22, 1988, and on September 20, 1989, Ramirez was found guilty of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries.^[6] During the penalty phase of the trial on November 7, 1989, he was sentenced to death in California's gas chamber. The trial of Richard Ramírez was one of the most difficult and longest criminal trials in American history. Nearly 1,600 prospective jurors were interviewed. More than one hundred witnesses testified, and while a number of witnesses had a difficult time recalling certain facts four years after the crimes, others were quite certain of the identity of Ramírez.

On August 3, 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported that some jail employees overheard Ramírez planning to shoot the prosecutor with a gun, which Ramírez intended to have smuggled into the courtroom.^[7] Consequently, a metal detector was installed outside of the courtroom and intensive searches were conducted on people entering. On August 14, the trial was interrupted because one of the jurors, Phyllis Singletary, did not arrive to the courtroom. Later that day she was found shot dead in her apartment. The jury was terrified; they could not help but wonder if Ramírez had somehow directed this event from inside his prison cell, and if he could reach other jury members. However, Ramírez was not responsible for Singletary's death; she had been shot and killed by her boyfriend, who later killed himself with the same weapon in a hotel. The alternative juror who replaced Singletary was too frightened to return to her home.

By the time of the trial, Ramírez had fans who were writing him letters and paying him visits. Freelance magazine editor Doreen Lioy has written him nearly 75 letters since his 1985 incarceration. In 1988 he proposed to her, and on October 3, 1996, they were married in California's San Quentin State Prison. Lioy has stated that she will commit suicide when Ramírez is executed.

[edit] Appeals

On August 7, 2006 his first round of state appeals ended unsuccessfully when the California Supreme Court upheld his convictions and death sentence.^[8][5] On September 7, 2006, the California Supreme Court denied his request for a rehearing.^[9]

[edit] AC/DC

Ramírez was considered a big fan of Australian rock band AC/DC and, according to police, wore an AC/DC shirt and left an AC/DC hat at a crime scene. The song "Night Prowler," which describes sneaking into a girl's room at night, was allegedly Ramírez's favorite song of the group and helped develop his nickname, "Night Stalker." This brought extremely poor publicity on the band and caused parents of the murder area to campaign against AC/DC's concerts and albums.

Years later, the incident was described on the AC/DC edition of VH1's Behind the Music. The band explained that while the song "Night Prowler" had been taken into a dark, murderous connotation by Ramírez, it was actually about a boy sneaking into his girlfriend's bedroom at night without her parents knowing.

[edit] Quotes

This section does not cite any references or sources. (April 2008) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

"I don't believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society."^[10]

"You don't understand me, you are not expected to, you are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil."^[10]

"I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and squirm all over the place, and then just stop. Or I would cut them with a knife and watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood."

"Serial killers do, on a small scale, what governments do on a large one. They are products of our times and these are bloodthirsty times."

"Killing is killing whether done for duty, profit or fun."

"I gave up love and happiness a long time ago."

"Big deal... Death always went with the territory. I'll see you in Disneyland." (before being sent to death-row)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Crime Library: The Night Stalker
• History Channel: Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker
• Richard Ramirez's Pen Pal ad on LostVault
• Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker at the Internet Movie Database, a 1989 TV movie
• About.com entry on Richard Ramirez - The Night Stalker