The Ramirez Killer: The Night Stalker’s Crimes, Capture, and Death

Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, was an American serial killer who terrorized Southern California and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area during a fourteen-month spree from June 1984 through August 1985. He was convicted in 1989 of thirteen murders, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries, and was sentenced to death.¹ He died of cancer on California’s death row in 2013 at age 53, never having been executed.²

The Crimes

Ramirez’s first confirmed murder was Jennie Vincow, a 79-year-old woman killed in her Glassell Park home on June 28, 1984.¹ The pace accelerated sharply in the spring of 1985. On March 17, he killed two women on a single night — Dale Okazaki in Rosemead and Tsai-Lian Yu in Monterey Park. Ten days after that, he murdered Vincent and Maxine Zazzara in their Whittier home.³

Through the spring and summer of 1985, the attacks continued across Southern California, in communities including Monterey Park, Monrovia, Arcadia, Glendale, Sun Valley, and Diamond Bar. Victims ranged from their early thirties to their eighties.³ His methods varied. He shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, and strangled. Many victims were sexually assaulted during home invasions, and at some scenes he left spray-painted pentagrams.⁴

He also struck in the Bay Area. He was linked to the August 1985 killing of 66-year-old Peter Pan near Lake Merced in San Francisco; he was charged but never tried in that case.⁵ In 2009, DNA evidence connected him to the April 1984 rape and murder of nine-year-old Mei Leung in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. No formal charges were filed in that case either.⁶

How Investigators Identified Him

The case was built by two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detectives, Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno. Carrillo was the first investigator to argue that a scattered string of burglaries, sexual assaults, and murders across different jurisdictions was the work of one person. Salerno, known for his work on the Hillside Strangler case, joined him.⁷

Three kinds of forensic evidence tied the scenes together. Distinctive Avia aerobics shoe prints appeared at six locations, starting in a flower bed outside the Zazzara home in March 1985.⁸ Ballistic analysis matched shell casings across multiple shootings, including a link between crimes in Diamond Bar, Northridge, and the Peter Pan murder in San Francisco.⁷ And a single partial fingerprint recovered from a stolen Toyota station wagon proved decisive. The California Department of Justice ran the print through its Cal-ID automated fingerprint system, which searched a database of 1.5 million known felons and returned a match: Richard Ramirez, who had prior arrests.⁹

Recognized and Beaten by a Mob

Once police had a name and photograph, they released both to the public. On August 31, 1985, Ramirez returned to Los Angeles and saw his face on the front page of every newspaper. Residents in East Los Angeles recognized him. A crowd chased and attacked him before officers pulled him from the mob and took him into custody.¹⁰

The Trial and Death Sentence

Ramirez was tried in Los Angeles Superior Court before Judge Michael Anthony Tynan. The trial opened on January 30, 1989, and ran more than a year, becoming one of the longest criminal proceedings in California history.¹¹ Deputy District Attorneys P. Philip Halpin and Alan Yochelson called 138 witnesses.¹² Their case combined eyewitness identifications from six female survivors, fingerprint and palm print evidence, ballistics, shoe prints, recovered stolen property, and a spontaneous statement Ramirez made after his arrest: “Of course I did it, you know that I’m a killer.”¹

Ramirez was represented by retained attorneys Arturo Hernandez and Daniel Hernandez, who had roughly five years of combined legal experience between them and had never handled a capital case.¹³ The court appointed an independent attorney to consult with him about his choice of counsel, but Ramirez refused to meet with that attorney and kept the Hernandezes. The defense argued that the crimes were not the work of a single person, attacked the reliability of eyewitness identifications with testimony from psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, and presented alibi testimony from Ramirez’s father.¹⁴

Deliberations were disrupted by a shocking event. On August 14, 1989, juror Phyllis Singletary, a 30-year-old Pacific Bell service representative, was found shot to death in her Carson apartment. Her live-in boyfriend, James Melton, was identified as the killer and died by suicide the following day, leaving a note attributing the shooting to domestic problems.¹⁵ Judge Tynan called the killing “irrelevant to this case,” seated an alternate, and instructed the remaining jurors not to let it affect their deliberations.¹⁶

On September 20, 1989, the jury convicted Ramirez on all counts: twelve counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, five attempted murders, four rapes, three counts of forcible oral copulation, four counts of forcible sodomy, and fourteen first-degree burglaries. The jury also found the special-circumstance allegations true.¹ On November 7, 1989, Judge Tynan imposed nineteen death sentences, calling the crimes “cruelty, callousness and viciousness beyond any human understanding.”¹⁷ Ramirez replied: “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”⁴

The California Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the convictions and death sentence on August 7, 2006, in an opinion by Justice Carlos R. Moreno.¹⁸ A federal habeas petition filed in December 2007 was still pending when he died.¹⁹

Death Row, Marriage, and Death

Ramirez spent nearly twenty-four years on death row at San Quentin State Prison. During that time he drew a following of admirers, and on October 3, 1996, he married freelance magazine editor Doreen Lioy in a six-minute ceremony in the prison visiting room. As a death row inmate, he was not permitted conjugal visits.²⁰ According to Ramirez’s niece, the couple was in the process of divorcing when he died.²¹

Ramirez died on June 7, 2013, at 9:10 a.m. at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, California. The cause was complications from B-cell lymphoma. He also had chronic hepatitis C and a history of chronic substance abuse.²² He was 53 and the fifty-ninth California inmate to die of natural causes while awaiting execution.²

Background

Ramirez was born on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas, the youngest of five children. His father, a laborer and construction worker, was physically abusive and prone to violent rages that often targeted the oldest brother. Ramirez sometimes slept in cemeteries to escape the house. As a child he suffered two significant head injuries and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy at age six.²³

The most direct influence toward violence came from an older cousin, Miguel “Mike” Ramirez, a Vietnam veteran. Starting when Ramirez was around twelve, Miguel showed him graphic Vietnam photographs, including images of women he claimed to have raped and tortured and a photograph of himself holding a severed head.⁷ At thirteen, Ramirez witnessed Miguel shoot his wife dead during an argument. Miguel was found not guilty by reason of insanity and released after four years.⁴ After the shooting, Ramirez began breaking into homes and using drugs. He dropped out of Jefferson High School at seventeen, later moved to Los Angeles, and developed a worsening cocaine addiction.²³

1
Stanford California Supreme Court. People v. Ramirez
2
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iNews. Richard Ramirez Victims List
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CBS News. DNA Links Night Stalker Richard Ramirez to 1984 Killing of Mei Leung
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CBS News. Richard Ramirez Night Stalker Murders
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Los Angeles Times. Avia Shoe Print Evidence in Night Stalker Trial
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Los Angeles Times. Cal-ID Fingerprint Matching System
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History.com. Los Angeles Mob Attacks Night Stalker
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Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Ramirez Appeal Ruling
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Daily News. Lawyer Wants Night Stalker Freed
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FindLaw. People v. Ramirez, California Supreme Court
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Washington Post. Night Stalker Juror Slain
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UPI. Stalker Judge Says Jurors Slaying Irrelevant to Case
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Los Angeles Times. Night Stalker Sentencing
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Los Angeles Times. California Supreme Court Rejects Night Stalker Claims
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CourtListener. Richard Ramirez v. Robert L. Ayers
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San Francisco Gate. Death Row Groom Wore Something Blue
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People. Where Is Night Stalker Richard Ramirez’s Wife Now
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Los Angeles Times. Night Stalker Died of Complications Due to Lymphoma
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Radford University. Richard Ramirez Serial Killer Case Study