Why Night Stalker Richard Ramirez is still ‘unique’ among serial killers 40 years later

Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker who terrorised Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, was ‘unique’ among modern serial killers because of his randomness and unimaginable violence.

He would creep into suburban homes in the dead of night and rape, torture and kill his victims with a savage ferocity, tearing the eyeballs from some and nearly decapitating others.

Unlike most serial killers, who prefer to target a specific victim type or use a particular weapon, Ramirez’s victims ranged in age from six to 83, and included males and females who were attacked with a revolver, knives, a machete, a lamp, a hammer, and electrical cords.

Despite the lack of any discernible pattern, he was eventually tracked down thanks in large part to the dogged work of two now legendary cops – Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno.

Gil, then the youngest detective in LA County Sheriff’s Homicide, was convinced early on the seemingly random crimes had one culprit, while Frank, the veteran who had already solved the ‘Hillside Strangler’ serial killings, took a little longer to convince.

Speaking to Metro from his home in California, Gil says of Ramirez: ‘I think he’s unique.

‘Nobody in criminal history up until that time – nor has anybody to this day – copied what he was doing and how he did it. It just hasn’t happened.

‘So, for me to try and convince old time investigators that one man was responsible for paedophilia with girls and boys, was raping old women, was killing some and not killing the others – it had never been heard of.

‘The one constant was the inconsistency.’

Ramirez was eventually convicted of 13 murders in 1984 and 1985 as well as charges of rape, sodomy, oral copulation, burglary and attempted murder.

He was handed 19 death penalties but died in prison at the age of 53 while awaiting execution in June 2013.

First Night Stalker murder

On the evening of June 27, 1984, Ramirez drove a stolen dark blue Toyota to LA’s Glassel Park neighbourhood where he broke into 79-year-old Jennie Vincow’s apartment.

Angry that there were no valuables to steal, he pulled out his hunting knife and repeatedly plunged it into her chest before drawing it across her throat.

Jennie’s son Jack, who lived upstairs, found his mother’s body when he went to visit her the following afternoon.

Gil’s introduction to the case as the serial killings begin

Gil’s first involvement with the case came when he was sent to Monterey Park, where Maria Hernandez, 20, and her roommate Dayle Okazaki, 34, had been shot.

Ramirez had struck again, creeping up on Maria as she went to open the door and firing his .22-calibre revolver at her head.

By some miracle the bullet ricocheted off the keys she was still clutching when her hands instinctively came up to protect her face.

The gunman then went inside and spotted Dayle cowering behind a worktop hoping she had gone unseen.

But she didn’t realise her killer was quietly standing on the other side with the barrel of his gun resting right where she would stick her head up to check to see if he had gone.

When she finally did, he pulled the trigger.

An hour later, Ramirez targeted Veronica Yu, 30, on the freeway, shooting her dead when he failed to drag her from her car in a bid to kidnap and rape her.

Gil saw a link between the murders immediately.

Early in his career he had taken an advanced criminal investigation course relating to sex crimes and figured the killer was getting off on the look of terror on his victims’ faces.

‘The instructor, Robert Morneau, who I owe so much to for giving me the knowledge to work this case, said there are those who will stick a gun in your face and to them that is foreplay,’ Gil says.

‘It’s the excitement of seeing someone in fear.’

Frank Salerno

Around the same time, another detective told Gil about a spate of child abductions all with similar suspect descriptions – a tall, thin, light-skinned Latino with dishevelled hair, discoloured teeth, and pungent body odour.

‘In the first week of April, I went to a meeting where they were talking about three or four child abductions from different ages in Los Angeles County,’ he says.

‘None of those cases were murders and I was an uninvited guest. I just showed up because I’d heard they were having it and they had a representative from the FBI there.

‘I told them I’m here because, although I don’t have a child sex crime, I do believe that they’re all connected. I believe one man is responsible and I told them why.

‘I told them what I thought I was looking for and I submitted all my paperwork.

‘Come July, we never heard anything back from the FBI. So my captain called Quantico and said, hey, you guys say you promise you’ll be there to help and they said we never received any paperwork.

‘The FBI agent took it upon himself to believe that (our case) wasn’t part of their child abductions. And every one of those kids were part of (the Night Stalker) investigation.’

Gil took his hunch to Frank, who suggested he look at recently released sex offenders for other crimes that may be linked, telling his junior colleague: ‘A man does not become a killer overnight.’

The Avia shoe print

The hunt for a serial killer really began when the same distinctive footprint started showing up at several crime scenes – an 11½ Avia shoe.

‘Without equivocation I can tell you that 1,356 pair of model 440 Avias arrived in New York for distribution throughout the US size 11½/12,’ Gil recalls 40 years later without pausing for thought.

‘Of those, six pairs ended up the State of California on the initial run. One pair ended up in the city of Los Angeles and Richard got them.

‘So when you see that footprint show up that’s almost as good as a thumbprint.’

It was found at the scene of the murders of Vincent and Maxine Zazzara and in the flowerbeds outside Lorraine and John Rodriguez’s home.

Ramirez left a bloody shoe print when he used his foot to rip the cord of Mabel Bell’s alarm clock so he could electrocute her after smashing her skull with a hammer.

There were perfect Avia prints on the porch and step into Max and Lela Kneiding’s home. Another could be seen on Joyce Nelson’s face after she was brutally murdered.

It was found at the scenes of eight murders in all, as well as the abduction of a young girl which helped to link the two sets of cases.

A devil haunting the City of Angels

The Night Stalker was front page news after those attacks and the entire population was gripped by fear.

Gun and guard dog sales rocketed, while locksmiths were being called out at all hours to fit new door locks and metal bars to homeowners’ windows.

Elderly women were terrified of being left alone, as were children who insisted on sleeping in their parents’ beds while husbands kept waited up all night to greet any intruder with a bullet or bat.

Gil’s wife was one of countless spouses who moved out of the family home to be somewhere safer.

All is nearly lost

The Avia shoe print was such a vital clue that the task force had to strike a deal with reporters to keep it out of news coverage of the case.

Gil made a video for law enforcement’s eyes only setting out everything they had on their suspect and emphasising how dangerous he was.

But he was dismayed when everything they had worked so hard to collect – the footprint, the description, the calibre of gun used – was revealed to the public by San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein.

‘There was never any doubt in my mind [Ramirez] was following the news to see what the cops know,’ Gil says. ‘It’s natural for any killer, not just a serial killer.

‘As it turned out he was. He knew what we were doing. He knew who I was, he knew who my partner was.

‘He admitted to us he heard Feinstein and he threw the shoes and the gun over the Golden State Bridge.’

Richard Ramirez is identified as the Night Stalker

On August 25, 1985, Ramirez stole an orange Toyota station wagon and rove to Mission Viejo where he entered the home of Bill Carns and Carole Smith.

He shot Bill three times in the head before ripping back the duvet cover and snarling at Carole: ‘You know who I am? I’m the Night Stalker.’

After ransacking the house and raping her, he told her: ‘Tell them the Night Stalker was here.’

Ramirez later ditched the car, carefully wiping away fingerprints from the steering wheel, gearstick and rear view mirror.

But he missed one on the mirror – as well as the young boy who spotted the Toyota on its way to the murder and told his parents about the car.

The print was useless by itself without a suspect to compare it to but by August 29 the task force were able to piece together the name Richard Ramirez using informants.

The Night Stalker’s reign of terror ends

Gil and his team, having poured so much blood, sweat and tears into the case, asked for 24 hours to find Ramirez before his name and photo were given to the media.

But he says he understands the decision to go public immediately.

‘If he’d have killed that night and we knew who it was, you know, that would have looked very, very bad, politically and publicly,’ he says.

‘So they did what they had to do, and I understand it. I’m not upset over it. And as it turned out, hindsight’s 20/20, it worked out to our advantage. He saw his picture on the morning paper.’

Having visited his brother in Arizona, Ramirez arrived back in LA on August 30 oblivious to the fact he was now firmly in the police’s sights as their serial killer.

He only realised when he got on a bus and started noticing fellow passengers doing double-takes, their eyes darting between his face and his mugshot plastered on their newspapers.

When the bus stopped, he jumped off, desperately looking for a car to steal so he could escape.

People he passed also called the police to report him and the cops followed the 911 calls to track Ramirez down.

‘He crossed the I-5 freeway, which is about eight or 10 lanes of traffic, over the 10-foot sound walls, and then over more fences,’ Gil says.

‘He tried to carjack two people. The first one was a total failure and then he went and grabbed lady.

‘She started screaming. Her husband grabbed a piece of pipe, ran out there, and hit Richard in the head.

‘And Richard, who is just tired, I mean he’s been running and jumping fences, tries getting away. He gets about four or five houses down and he’s just exhausted. He just gives up.’

Face-to-face with the Night Stalker

When he heard the news of Ramirez’s capture, Gil says he was ‘excited’ to get in and speak to him.

‘As it turned out, Richard liked me, only because I was Hispanic, like he was. We had some things in common culturally and I treated him good,’ he added.

‘He called me Gil and he called my partner Mr Salerno.’

The trial and the ‘Ramirez Groupies’

Following his arrest and while awaiting trial for his evil crimes, Ramirez began getting letters from Satanists who admired him, as well as scores of women who found him attractive.

Many attended the trial, preening in the public gallery for the serial killer just yards from the distraught survivors and victim relatives.

‘Richard had a routine every time he walked into the courtroom,’ Gil says. ‘As he’s walking in he’d scan the audience and he picked one out, whoever he thought was gonna be the lady he wanted to flirt with, you know. He’d look at her and smile, nod his head, and go sit down.

‘Well, one day these ladies were sitting right on the edge of the bench for the jury. They had a recess.

‘Richard comes walking by me, and as he’s walking by me he looks at this lady and she looked at him.

‘She blew him a kiss and spread her legs open. It was remarkable.’

Did Ramirez ever show any remorse for his killing spree?

‘He showed remorse with Whitney Bennett [a 16-year-old girl bludgeoned with a tyre-iron who only survived when the wire Ramirez used to choke her began sparking, convincing him Jesus had intervened to save her life],’ Gil says.

‘He also showed remorse for a girl who was nine or 10 at the time she was kidnapped [and sexually assaulted]. He said a little puppy got out and he felt sorry for the puppy and hoped the puppy made it back.

‘That’s the only thing he felt sorry about.’

Could there be more Night Stalker victims?

In 2009, Ramirez was linked by DNA to the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl whose body was found in the basement of a San Francisco hotel where he was living.

Given the randomness of his attacks and lack of motive, detectives quizzed Ramirez about other crimes he might be involved with.

‘He told us that he was good for four more cases that we didn’t find,’ Gil recalls. ‘And we didn’t tell him but we had looked at eight more cases.

‘But the evidence was all circumstantial. There wasn’t enough to go ahead and hold him to anything, and we didn’t want to put on a case where he might beat us.’

Ramirez was eventually sentenced to death for his crimes. He spent 23 years on death row before dying from complications linked to lymphoma.

‘You know, I I’m nota very religious man, but I’ve said it publicly so I’ll tell you,’ Gil says.

‘Every night when I say my prayers, I pray for Richard’s soul. People ask me, “Why do you do that man?” And he is the most vile man I’ve ever met.

‘My answer is simply because I know nobody else is. And if anybody needs help he does.’

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