Richard Ramírez

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Richard Ramírez (2007)

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez (also known as Richard Ramirez ; born February 29, 1960 in El Paso , Texas , † June 7, 2013 in Greenbrae, California ) was an American serial killer .

Prior to his arrest, Ramírez was dubbed the Night Stalker in the media . He murdered 13 people and raped at least 11 people in California in 1985 .

biography

youth

Richard Ramírez was born the youngest of five children to Julian and Mercedes Ramírez. Two of his older siblings were born with birth defects, and his mother was advised against carrying the child to term early in her pregnancy with Richard. But she ignored the medical advice. Ricky suffered epileptic seizures at school, possibly related to two head injuries he sustained as a child. When Ramírez was nine years old, one of his brothers, and possibly he, was sexually abused by a special needs teacher . One of his cousins ​​was a Green Beret in the Vietnam War and bragged to twelve-year-old Ramírez about torturing, mutilating and raping Vietnamese women . He showed him gruesome Polaroid photos of his victims and explained how to kill with a knife. Ramírez was also present when his cousin murdered his own wife. The cousin was declared insane after his arrest and was admitted to a psychiatric clinic.

Ramírez's mother was deeply religious, which shaped his upbringing. His father was violent towards the children and himself . Before that, Ramírez often fled and spent nights in cemeteries to which he was drawn. During this time he developed a kind of Satanism for himself , in contrast to his religious upbringing. In 1976 he moved to Los Angeles .

Criminal career

Ramírez 1984

Before he left home, he tried to rape a woman . The wife's husband came into the hotel room a short time later and beat him up. However, the couple did not want to testify to the police because they no longer wanted to have anything to do with the incident.

In Los Angeles, Ramírez then committed several drug offenses and car thefts. His first known murder victim was 9-year-old Mei Leung, who was found dead in the basement of a hotel on April 10, 1984. However, Ramírez could not be linked to this murder until 2009 through a DNA comparison . The first murder victim assigned to the so-called Night Stalker was a 79-year-old woman. She sexually abused and stabbed her on June 29, 1984 after breaking into her apartment. He committed his second known murder on March 17, 1985, in which he also attempted to kill the victim's roommate. However, she escaped and gave the police a description of the perpetrator. Later that day, he dragged a 30-year-old woman out of her car and shot her. These two acts, both on the same day, drew the media's attention and caused panic among the population. The media named the attacker, who was described as someone with long curly hair, bulging eyes, and very poor teeth, The Walk-in Killer , Come-In-Killer, and The Valley Intruder . Three days later, Ramírez kidnapped and abused a girl from Eagle Rock . On March 27, 1985, he killed 64-year-old Vincent Zazzara and his 44-year-old wife Maxine in Whittier , who cut out Ramírez's eyes. According to the autopsy of the body found in the apartment, this injury was inflicted on her after death. The eyeballs were never found.

From then on, a cross- county police investigation began , which remained unsuccessful throughout April, especially since Ramírez committed no further crimes during this time. Ramírez then broke into the home of a 65-year-old man and his wife in Monterey Park and shot the man in the head. While Ramírez was about to kill the woman, the dying husband was able to run the perpetrator by dialing the emergency number. When the police arrived, the man was already dead.

A little over a week later, Ramírez injured two women over 80 in her apartment so badly that one of them later succumbed to her injuries. Before he left the apartment, he drew upside-down pentagrams on the walls with lipstick .

Three other women were murdered in their homes in June and July; one of them was killed and the other two had their throats cut. On July 20, 1985, in Sun Valley , he killed a 32-year-old man, beat and raped the victim's wife, and molested the couple's eight-year-old son in the presence of the mother. That same day, Ramírez shot an elderly couple in Glendale , California. About two weeks later, in Northridge , he shot a couple in their apartment and seriously injured them both. Her description of the perpetrator matched that of the walk-in killer .

Ramírez then left the Los Angeles area and shot and killed a 66-year-old man in San Francisco on August 17, 1985 . He also shot the victim's wife, who survived and was later able to identify the attacker to the police as the walk-in killer . After the name The Walk-in Killer no longer corresponded to the attacker's modus operandi , the media renamed him Night Stalker .

The police made their big breakthrough in the Night Stalker case after Ramírez shot a 29-year-old man in the head and raped his fiancée on August 24, 1985. The man survived seriously injured and his fiancée was able to provide a description of the perpetrator. A youth who lived a few blocks away spotted a man on his property about an hour earlier who was apparently looking for a way to break into the family home. The burglar saw the boy and fled. The youth saw the car the man was driving away in and was able to write down part of the license plate number. The car had been stolen and was found on August 28, 1985. The police found a fingerprint on the rearview mirror inside . The print could be attributed to a 25-year-old Texan named Ricardo Muñoz Ramírez, whose fingerprints were known from a previous arrest for car theft. Two days later, his police photo aired on national television and appeared on the front pages of every major California newspaper. The next day, Ramírez was recognized and beaten up by a group from a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles when he tried to steal a car. The police had to break up the mob to prevent Ramírez from being lynched .

Trial and conviction

Jury selection began on July 22, 1988 , and on September 20, 1989, Ramírez was convicted of thirteen murders, five attempted murders, rape eleven times, and fourteen burglaries. On November 7, 1989, he was sentenced to 19 deaths in the gas chamber . The criminal case was one of the most complicated and longest in American legal history. Almost 1,600 prospective jury members were heard and 165 witnesses questioned. Some witnesses had amnesia due to the time that had passed since the acts; others were able to identify Ramírez with great certainty.

On August 3, 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported that some prison guards claimed that Ramírez was planning to smuggle a gun into the courtroom to shoot the prosecutor. Metal detectors were then placed in front of the courtroom and every visitor was intensively searched. On August 14, the trial was suspended after jury member Phyllis Singletary failed to appear in the courtroom. She was later found dead in her apartment. The other jury members were shocked and feared that Ramírez had instructed this act from his cell and could thus reach other members of the jury. Ramírez was proven not to be responsible for Singletary's death. She had been shot by her boyfriend, who later took his own life in a hotel.

During the trial, Ramírez had many fans , mostly female, who wrote to him and visited him. As of 1985, Freelance Magazine freelance editor Doreen Lioy wrote 75 letters to the detainee. In 1988 he proposed marriage to her. They were married on October 3, 1996 in San Quentin State Prison .

On June 7, 2013, Ramírez died of liver failure in Marin General Hospital not far from San Quentin .

Movies

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ruben Vives: San Francisco police link 'Night Stalker' Richard Ramirez to girl's 1984 slaying. Los Angeles Times , October 23, 2009, accessed February 12, 2014 .
  2. ↑ KEITH SHARON: After 3 bullets in the head, he still can't escape the 'Night Stalker' . In: The Orange County Register . ( ocregister.com [accessed March 26, 2017]).
  3. ↑ ArchiveNewsFootage: Man Who Helped Catch Night Stalker Talks 25 Years Later. September 24, 2015, accessed March 26, 2017 .
  4. ↑ bos / AP / dpa: "Night Stalker" Ramirez dies: Satan's self-appointed executor. Spiegel Online , June 7, 2013, accessed June 7, 2013 .
  5. ^ California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Condemned Inmate Richard Ramirez Dies. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation , June 7, 2013, archived from the original March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved June 7, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Ramírez, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Night stalker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH El Paso
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 2013
Place of death Greenbrae, California