Episode 4
Richard Ramirez: The True Story of the Night Stalker(Part 1)
Takeaways:
- This episode dives deep into the life of Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, and his horrific crimes.
- Ramirez's abusive upbringing and early exposure to violence played a crucial role in shaping his later psychopathic behaviors.
- The Night Stalker's attacks were characterized by their randomness and brutality, instilling fear across Southern California.
- Listener discretion is advised due to the graphic nature of the content discussed in this episode.
- We explore how Ramirez's fascination with Satanism and the occult influenced his actions and mindset during his crime spree.
- The episode concludes with a promise for part two, where we will discuss Ramirez's capture and the subsequent trial.
Links referenced in this episode:
https://linktr.ee/nocturnalnovels
Intro/Outro Theme Credited to-
Mechanolith Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Maria Hernandez identifying Richard Ramirez in court credited to KCBS Los Angeles.
All other sound effects and music downloaded from Pixabay.
Transcript
Monsters.
Speaker A:Do they exist?
Speaker A:Some may say they do, some may say they don't.
Speaker A:Some say that they lurk in the dark.
Speaker A:This monster is real and did indeed lurk in the night.
Speaker A:This monster is known as the Night Stalker.
Speaker A:If you listen to my earlier episodes on the Cecil Hotel, then you know that in Part one, I briefly spoke of Richard Ramirez and his stay at the hotel.
Speaker A: outhern California from April: Speaker A:He was convicted of 43 charges.
Speaker A:Warning this episode contains graphic topics including burglary, sexual abuse, drug abuse, violence, satanic topics, murder and mutilation.
Speaker A:I use music, sound effects and recordings that could be terrifying and eerie.
Speaker A:Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Clay Jones, and you're listening to nocturnal Novels.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:He was the youngest of five children in a family burdened by trauma, instability and violence.
Speaker A:His father, Julio Ramirez, was a former police officer who became a railway laborer and was an alcoholic whose rage shook the household.
Speaker A:Julio often beat his children, both physically and emotionally.
Speaker A:He demanded obedience and frequently pushed even minor missteps with harsh, sometimes unpredictable violence.
Speaker A:Witnesses later described Julio as controlling, volatile and intimidating, leaving Richard in a constant state of fear.
Speaker A:Richard's mother, Mercedes Ramirez, worked in a boot factory and was exposed to harsh chemicals.
Speaker A:During her pregnancy with Richard, Mercedes struggled with her own mental health and often turned a blind eye to her husband's abuse.
Speaker A:She could not protect her children, leaving young Richard exposed to fear, chaos and neglect.
Speaker A:He had older siblings, some of whom recall that Richard was often quiet, withdrawn and strangely fascinated by violent stories, while others noticed he had outbursts of rage and cruelty toward animals and smaller children.
Speaker A:This duality, shyness mixed with emerging aggression, would foreshadow the man he would become.
Speaker A:At the young age of 2, a dresser fell on Richard's head and he became unconscious for 15 minutes.
Speaker A:He had received 30 stitches.
Speaker A:At the age of five, he was hit in the head with a swing and was yet again knocked unconscious.
Speaker A:When he was 10, he started having seizures and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, which was likely caused by his head injuries.
Speaker A:Also, at around the age of 10, he would start sleeping in cemeteries to escape his father's rage.
Speaker A:Perhaps no influence was more pivotal than his cousin, Mike Ramirez, a Vietnam War veteran.
Speaker A:Mike returned home carrying stories of combat, death and brutality.
Speaker A:He showed Richard photographs of corpses, of women and bragged about how he sexually abused murdered dismembered and decapitated those women.
Speaker A:It is alleged that many of these photos depicted women being tied to trees or wooden posts both before and after they were sexually assaulted and killed by Mike.
Speaker A:Ramirez later stated while incarcerated that he was fascinated rather than repulsed by the images and stories his cousin shared with him.
Speaker A:Mike taught Ramirez some of his military skills, including stealth and kill tactics.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Like the graphic photos and stories of his cousin's war crimes in Vietnam, Ramirez later remarked similarly that witnessing the murder was not traumatic for him in any traditional sense, but rather a subject of fascination.
Speaker A:After the shooting, Ramirez became stolen and withdrawn from his family and peers.
Speaker A:Mike was found not guilty of Jesse's murder by reason of insanity, with the shooting attributed to PTSD from his military service.
Speaker A:For young Richard, these stories were fascinating rather than horrifying.
Speaker A:Mike's tales normalized death, desensitized him to violence, and provided a template for fearlessness in the face of brutality.
Speaker A:Psychologists later cited Mike's influence as a critical factor in shaping Richard's morbid obsessions.
Speaker A:During his early teenage years, Richard displayed an unusual fascination with death and decay.
Speaker A:He collected dead animals, visited cemeteries alone, and often spoke about corpses with a chilling curiosity.
Speaker A:He experimented with rituals, sometimes trying to recreate the violence he read about or witnessed and often blame others.
Speaker A:When he was caught.
Speaker A:These behaviors had intensified, combined now with drug experimentation.
Speaker A:Richard began smoking marijuana and then later started using cocaine, lsd, pcp, mushrooms, and peyote, in which some of those substances heightened aggression, impulsivity, and detachment from social norms.
Speaker A:Richard's early criminal activity was a harbinger of his later violence.
Speaker A:He engaged in petty theft, stealing cars, money, and property, animal cruelty, torturing and killing small animals, vandalism and burglary, breaking into people's homes, assaults on peers, sometimes sexual and sometimes purely violent.
Speaker A:While still in school, he took a job at a local Holiday Inn and used his master key to steal from sleeping patrons.
Speaker A:On at least one occasion, Richard sexually assaulted two children in an elevator at the hotel, but he was never reported or prosecuted for this act.
Speaker A:His employment ended abruptly after he attempted to sexually assault a woman in her hotel room and was caught in the act by the victim's husband.
Speaker A:Although the husband beat Richard at the scene, criminal charges were dropped when the couple, who lived out of state, declined to return to Texas to testify against him.
Speaker A:Each act reinforced a sense of power and control, a thrill he would later seek in his murders.
Speaker A:Even in adolescence, he displayed fascination with Satanism, reading occult books, performing rituals and drawing pentagrams.
Speaker A:His family recalled that he would sometimes chant in the dark over a candlelit altar, delighting their unease.
Speaker A:When he was 18, he went to San Francisco to meet Anton Lavey, the founder of the Church of Satan and the author of the Satanic Bible.
Speaker A:Before he turned to Satanism, he had an active upbringing in the Catholic Church.
Speaker A:As a young child at school, teachers described him as bright but disruptive, capable of charm whenever convenient, but prone to sudden outbursts of cruelty.
Speaker A:He had few friends, and those he did have often feared his temper and obsession with dark subjects.
Speaker A:This combination of neglect at home, fascination with violence, drug use, social isolation created fertile ground for the development of a psychopath.
Speaker A:Someone who could later kill without remorse, stalk without fear and revel in terror.
Speaker A: fore the school year ended in: Speaker A: By the late: Speaker A:Early exposure to violence and death.
Speaker A:A home filled with fear and abuse, influence from a war torn cousin, drug abuse that fueled aggression, fascination with Satanism and the occult, social isolation and early criminality.
Speaker A:Little did the world know that the boy from El Paso would grow into a man who terrified Southern California, leaving behind a trail of murder, sexual assault and terror.
Speaker A:Richard's spree escalated with terrifying speed.
Speaker A: From April: Speaker A:It wasn't random.
Speaker A:He prowled late at night, sometimes walking entire blocks in silence, scanning windows, testing doors, slipping into homes where people felt safest.
Speaker A:Each attack was unique.
Speaker A:Each victim were different ages, backgrounds, neighborhoods.
Speaker A:That was a part of the terror.
Speaker A:He didn't fit a pattern that police could easily predict.
Speaker A:Trigger WARNING this first crime of Richards contains abuse and murder to a young child.
Speaker A:You have been warned.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Now forgive me if I mispronounce this name.
Speaker A:He murdered Mei Leung, a nine year old girl in the basement of her apartment building in San Francisco.
Speaker A:May was with her 8 year old brother and looking for a lost $1 bill when Ramirez approached her and told her to follow him into the basement to find the dollar bill.
Speaker A:When they made it to the basement, he beat her, strangled her and sexually abused her before stabbing her with a switchblade and hanging her partially naked body from a pipe by her clothing.
Speaker A: s not linked to Richard until: Speaker A: In: Speaker A:Authorities had not publicly identified the suspect, but described as being a juvenile at the time, have not brought any charges due to the lack of evidence.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:79 year old Jeanne Vincow was found murdered in her apartment in Glassell Park, Los Angeles.
Speaker A:She had been stabbed repeatedly in the head, neck and chest while asleep in her bed and her throat slashed so deeply that she was nearly decapitated.
Speaker A:Richard's fingerprint was found on a mesh screen he removed to gain access through an open window.
Speaker A:This, his second known murder, established his pattern of committing particularly vicious murders and frequently burglizing his victims either before or after killing them, which was mainly to support his drug addiction and pay his rent.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Richard attacked 22 year old Maria Hernandez outside her home in Rosemead, shooting her in the face with a.22 caliber handgun after she pulled it into her garage.
Speaker A:She survived when the bullet ricocheted off the keys she held in her hands as she lifted them up to protect herself.
Speaker A:Maria played dead until Ramirez left the scene.
Speaker A:Inside the house, her roommate, 34 year old Dale Yoshi Okazaki, heard the gunshot and ducked behind a counter when she saw Richard enter the kitchen.
Speaker A:When she raised her head to get a look at what had happened, Richard, who was waiting for Okazaki to peek over the counter, shot her once in the forehead, killing her instantly.
Speaker A:The serial killer who became known as the Night Stalker was identified in court by a witness to one of the attacks.
Speaker B: ho tried to kill her in March: Speaker A:Do you see in the courtroom today the man that you saw that night that shot you?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Would you point him out for the jury?
Speaker B:The man on the end, what's he wearing?
Speaker B:Dark suit, dark glasses.
Speaker B:The defendant, Richard Ramirez.
Speaker B:For the record, by court order, Maria Hernandez could not be photographed.
Speaker B:In a steady voice, she told the jury how Ramirez approached her at gunpoint in her condominium security garage and fired one shot at her face before killing her roommate.
Speaker B:The bullet pierced her right hand, which she raised as a shield.
Speaker B:She said she was able to run out of the garage before seeing the defendant again, this time leaving through her apartment's front door.
Speaker B:I said something like, please don't shoot me again.
Speaker B:Shortly after I finished speaking, he lowered the gun and he ran away.
Speaker B:On cross examination, defense attorney Daniel Hernandez questioned whether the witness could be so sure Ramirez was the man now five years after the attack.
Speaker A:So in your memory today, you can't really point at Mr. Ramirez and say that's the person.
Speaker B:Not truthfully.
Speaker B:Deputy District Attorney Phil Halpin reminded the jury that the victim identified Ramirez in a lineup shortly after he was captured.
Speaker B:But despite media coverage, prosecutors believe that other victims testimony will convince the jury that Richard Ramirez and the Night Stalker are one and the same.
Speaker A:Within an hour of the Rosemead attack, Richard pulled 30 year old Cy Leon Yu, also known as Veronica, out of her car in Monterey park, shot her twice with a.22 caliber handgun and fled.
Speaker A:She was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
Speaker A:The two murders and an attempted third in a single day attracted extensive coverage from news media who initially dubbed the attacker described as curly haired with bulging eyes and wide spaced rotting teeth.
Speaker A:The Walk in Killer and the Valley Intruder.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Cesar's wife, 44 year old Maxine Lavina Zazara, was awakened by the gunshot.
Speaker A:Ramirez beat her and bound her hands while demanding to know where her valuables were.
Speaker A:While he ransacked the room, Maxine escaped her bonds and retrieved a shotgun from under the bed which she was unaware was not loaded.
Speaker A:She pulled the trigger just after he turned around and saw her.
Speaker A:The infuriated Richard shot her three times with his handgun, killing her, then fetched a large carving knife from the kitchen.
Speaker A:He mutilated her body by cutting an inverted cross into her chest, then removed her eyes and placed them in a jewelry box.
Speaker A:He attempted to have sex with her body but found himself so shaken by her attempting to shoot him that he was unable to achieve an erection.
Speaker A:He took the jewelry box containing her eyes and kept it at his apartment as a souvenir until his arrest.
Speaker A:Richard left footprints from a pair of Avia sneakers in the flower beds which the police photographed and cast.
Speaker A:Bullets found at the scene were matched to those found at previous attacks and the police determined that a serial killer was at large.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:William and Lillian Doy were asleep in their quiet home.
Speaker A:William, who was known as Bill for short, was a 66 year old disabled man who relied on an Oxygen tank.
Speaker A:Richard broke in through a window, found William in bed and shot him in the face.
Speaker A:Despite the grievous wound, William survived long enough to call out for help.
Speaker A:But Richard bound his 56 year old wife Lillian with thumb cuffs and sexually assaulted her and then ransacked their home for valuables.
Speaker A:William later died in the hospital.
Speaker A:This scene was brutal and it showed Richard's emerging pattern.
Speaker A:Not just to kill, but to terrify, to dominate, and to make survivors live with memories worse than death.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:A couple weeks later, with a stolen car, Richard arrived at the home of two elderly sisters.
Speaker A:Mabel Bale, who was 83 and disabled, 81 year old Florence Lang.
Speaker A:He bludgeoned and bound Lang in her bedroom, then bound and bludgeoned Bell before using an electrical cord to shock the woman.
Speaker A:After sexually assaulting Lang, he used Belle's lipstick to draw a satanic pentagram symbol on her thigh as well as on the walls of both bedrooms.
Speaker A:They were found two days later, alive but comatose and critically injured.
Speaker A:Bell died in the hospital from her injuries on July 15 and Laing was left with permanent brain damage and later died in August.
Speaker A:Now, before Richard would leave the scene of his crimes, he would go into the victim's kitchen and help himself to whatever snack he wanted.
Speaker A:Once he was finished with his snack, he would leave the scene of the crime like it was nothing at all.
Speaker A:Like it was no big deal.
Speaker A:Like he had no care in the world.
Speaker A:The next day, Richard drove the same stolen car to Burbank and snuck into the home of 42 year old Carol Kyle.
Speaker A:At gunpoint, he bound her and her 11 year old son with handcuffs.
Speaker A:Before ransacking the house.
Speaker A:He released Ms. Kyle to direct him to where the family's valuables were.
Speaker A:He then sexually assaulted her repeatedly.
Speaker A:Richard repeatedly ordered her not to look at him, telling her at one point he would cut her eyes out.
Speaker A:He fled the scene after retrieving the child from the closet and binding the two together again with handcuffs.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:The crime was not discovered until July 2nd when she failed to show up for work.
Speaker A:Her attacker had sodomized her, strangled her and slashed her throat.
Speaker A:Richard was charged with murder and burglary in relation to her death.
Speaker A:However, these charges were eventually dropped due to the lack of concrete physical evidence linking Higgins to the other murders.
Speaker A:Based on a statement Ramirez made to an investigator, he is also a suspect in the San Francisco double murder of 58 year old Christina Caldwell and 70 year old Mary Caldwell.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:While incarcerated, Richard openly bragged to a prison officer and other inmates about having killed more than 20 people.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:After quietly entering Cannon's home, he found her asleep in her bedroom.
Speaker A:He bludgeoned her into unconsciousness with a lamp and stabbed her to death using using a 10 inch butcher knife from her kitchen.
Speaker A:Richard repeatedly stabbed Cannon's body after she was already dead.
Speaker A:Okay, so I'm going to end part one here.
Speaker A:Stay tuned for Part two.
Speaker A:In Part two I'll tell you more about Richard's gruesome murders.
Speaker A:I'll tell you about his footprint he left behind at his crime scenes and other evidence.
Speaker A:I will tell you about how he was captured and the trial which basically made him into a celebrity.
Speaker A:Due to the extensive coverage from the media, you will hear from his surviving victims, his wife and Richard himself.
Speaker A:I will also tell you about how he was a character in Ryan Murphy's anthology series American Horror Story.
Speaker A:This was part one of the Night Stalker case.
Speaker A:If you've enjoyed the show so far, go ahead and follow if you haven't already so you get notified when a new episode is available.
Speaker A:Also, I have a merch store available with T shirts and other items.
Speaker A:I also have some new Halloween themed merch available as well.
Speaker A:Just Google Search Nocturnal Novels Merch Printify and it'll be the first link that pops up.
Speaker A:Don't forget to tell your friends and family about the podcast and for updates and more info, follow the podcasts on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker A:The Night Stalker Part 2 coming late September I'm Clay Jones and you've just listened to Nocturnal Novels Sam Sa.
