In the 1980s, California saw a number of notorious killers, such as the Original Night Stalker, the Grim Sleeper, and the Freeway Killer.
But there had never been one quite like Richard Ramirez, who, over a period of 14 months, killed 14 people and attempted to kill five more.
Known for using a wide variety of weapons, such as a handgun, knife, machete, tire iron, and hammer, Ramirez went down in history as one of the most ruthless serial killers of all time, earning him the flashy and fearsome tabloid nickname “The Night Stalker.”
Ramirez’s “Night Stalker” spree began on June 28, 1984, when 79-year-old Jennie Vincow was found murdered in her home in Glassell Park, Los Angeles.
Ramirez stabbed the elderly woman repeatedly in the head, neck, and chest while she was asleep in her bed and slashed her throat so deeply that she was nearly decapitated.
On March 17, 1985, Ramirez went on a rampage. In less than two hours, the madman committed two murders and attempted a third.
22-year-old Maria Hernandez, whom Ramirez ambushed and shot as she was pulling into her garage in Rosemead, California, survived after the bullet ricocheted off the set of keys she was shielding herself with. Her roommate, Dayle Yoshie Okazaki, succumbed to a single shot to the head.
Following the first attack, Ramirez headed to Monterey Park, where he shot Tsai-Lian âVeronicaâ Yu twice after pulling her out of her car and fled.
However, it was only nine months later that Ramirez’s reign of terror gained extensive media attention.
For the next five months, the “Night Stalker” continued his reign of terror. But it didnât take long for Ramirezâs shield of secrecy to begin to crumble.
On August 29, 1985, law enforcement officials released a mugshot of Richard Ramirez to the media after obtaining a positive identification of a fingerprint that the “Night Stalker” had left on a stolen car.
âWe know who you are now, and soon everyone else will. There will be no place you can hide,â officials said during the televised press conference.
On August 31, Ramirez entered a convenience store in East Los Angeles, where a group of elderly Mexican women fearfully identified him as “El Matador” (“The Killer”). Ramirez bolted out of the store and ran across the Santa Ana Freeway, where he attempted to carjack a woman but was chased away by bystanders who pursued him.
After attempting two more carjackings, Ramirez was subdued by a group of residents, one of whom had struck him over the head with a metal bar in the pursuit. The group held Ramirez down, relentlessly beating him until the police arrived and took him into custody.
In 1989, 29-year-old Richard Ramirez was convicted of thirteen counts of murder, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries.
The judge who sentenced Ramirez remarked that his deeds exhibited “cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding.”
