Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker: the true story of the 1985 manhunt

• BornRicardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez, 29 February 1960, El Paso, Texas
• Known asThe Night Stalker; earlier the “Walk-In Killer” and the “Valley Intruder”
• AttacksJune 1984 to August 1985, Los Angeles County
• Captured31 August 1985, Hubbard Street, East Los Angeles
• Convicted20 September 1989: 13 murders and 30 other felonies
• SentenceDeath, 7 November 1989; upheld by the California Supreme Court in 2006
• Died7 June 2013, Marin General Hospital, aged 53, never executed

Richard Ramirez is one of the best-known names in American crime. Most people know him as the Night Stalker. He is the man who broke into homes across Los Angeles County in the spring and summer of 1985, the man whose face in the newspapers led residents of East Los Angeles to catch him, and the man who raised his hand in court and said “Hail Satan”. The 2021 Netflix series Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer brought the case to a new generation.

This page follows the record. Its backbone is the California Supreme Court’s 2006 opinion upholding his convictions, checked against news reports from 1985 to 2013. Where sources disagree on a date, a count or a cost, the page says so. The people he attacked who survived are not named here, and neither are the people he killed: many of their families are alive, and the case is about what he did, not about them. The attacks themselves are described plainly and without detail.

El Paso

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez was born on 29 February 1960 in El Paso, Texas, the youngest of five children of Mexican immigrant parents. Biographers report that he suffered head injuries as a small child and was later diagnosed with epilepsy. Nothing in the record ties those injuries to what he did as an adult, and this page does not try to.

The part of his childhood most often retold involves an older cousin, a Vietnam veteran, who told the boy about atrocities in the war and showed him photographs. When Ramirez was in his early teens, he was present when this cousin shot and killed his own wife. The cousin was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Sources disagree on the year: one gives about 1973, when Ramirez was 13, another May 1975, when he was 15.

He left school early and drifted into drug use and theft. By the mid-1980s he had a record of drug and car-theft arrests, and he had settled in Los Angeles. When he moved there is not agreed: an El Paso television station gives 1978, other accounts 1982. TIME magazine, writing after his arrest, described him as a drifter; a 1989 report called him a petty thief from El Paso.

The attacks, 1984–1985

The first murder in the case came in late June 1984. A 79-year-old woman was killed in her apartment in Los Angeles and found on 28 June; one passage of the court record dates the killing to 27 June. For months nothing else was connected to it. In March 1985 the attacks began again, and through the spring and summer they came every few weeks, then several times a week.

The pattern, as police and the court later described it, was this. He came at night, usually in the early hours, and got into houses through unlocked doors and open windows. Many of the homes were in suburbs such as Monterey Park, Rosemead, Arcadia and Burbank. The people inside were of all ages, many of them elderly. Some were killed; others were tied up, robbed or sexually assaulted, and survived. Children were present at several of the attacks, and they survived. A UPI report at the verdict summed the case as 15 attacks involving 25 victims between June 1984 and August 1985.

He left marks that tied the scenes together. Prints from one brand of athletic shoe, Avia, turned up at house after house. At one scene a pentagram was drawn on a wall, and at least one survivor was made to swear to Satan. Those details would shape how the press and the public saw him.

The Night Stalker

By the summer of 1985 the attacks had been linked to one man, and television and newspapers tried several names for the unknown attacker. KNBC used the “Walk-In Killer”; the “Valley Intruder” was also in use. The name that stuck came from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, where, according to veterans of the paper, “Night Stalker” was suggested at an editors’ brainstorming session, first rejected, and then used in a headline.

The investigation was led by detectives of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide bureau, with Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno at its centre. Their account, told decades later, is the spine of the Netflix series.

A plate number and a fingerprint

In late August 1985 the attacks moved south, outside Los Angeles County. On the night of 24–25 August a couple were attacked in their home in Mission Viejo, in Orange County. Both survived. A 13-year-old boy in the neighbourhood had noticed the car, an orange Toyota, and noted part of its licence plate.

The car, which turned out to be stolen, was later found abandoned, and investigators lifted a fingerprint from it. California had just installed a computerised fingerprint identification system. Its database held prints of offenders born on or after 1 January 1960; Ramirez, born in February 1960, had only just made the cut. The search matched the print to Richard Ramirez, who had been arrested before.

On 30 August 1985 police released his name and an old booking photograph. It was on television that evening and on the front pages the next morning.

Hubbard Street, 31 August 1985

Ramirez had been out of town. He came back to Los Angeles by bus from Tucson, Arizona, where he had visited his brother, on Saturday 31 August. At a store he saw his own face on the newspapers.

He ran. In East Los Angeles he tried to steal cars, and people on Hubbard Street recognised him from the papers. A group of residents chased him; one of them struck him with a metal bar. They held him on the street until police arrived. After months of police work, the arrest itself was made by people who had read the morning paper.

• Late June 1984First murder in the case: a 79-year-old woman in her Los Angeles apartment, found on 28 June.
• March 1985The attacks resume in the San Gabriel Valley and continue through the summer.
• Summer 1985Press names include the “Walk-In Killer” and the “Valley Intruder”; the <em>Herald Examiner</em>’s “Night Stalker” sticks.
• 24–25 August 1985A couple are attacked in Mission Viejo, Orange County, and survive. A teenager notes part of a licence plate.
• 30 August 1985Police release Ramirez’s name and photograph after a fingerprint match.
• 31 August 1985Residents of East Los Angeles recognise him and hold him on Hubbard Street until police arrive.
• 24 October 1985At his arraignment he raises a hand marked with a pentagram and says “Hail Satan”.
• July 1988Jury selection begins in Los Angeles.
• 20 September 1989Convicted on all 43 counts, including 13 murders.
• 7 November 1989Sentenced to death.
• 7 August 2006The California Supreme Court upholds the convictions and the sentence.
• 7 June 2013Dies at Marin General Hospital, aged 53, still on death row.

“Hail Satan”: court, 1985–1989

Ramirez made no secret of the image he wanted. At his arraignment in October 1985 he raised a hand with a pentagram drawn on the palm and said “Hail Satan”. He professed Satanism and used its symbols throughout the case. The record shows the symbols and the statements; it does not show any group or belief system behind the crimes, and this page does not suggest one.

The case took nearly three years to reach a jury. Jury selection began in July 1988; the court record dates it to 21 July, other sources to 22 July. How long the trial lasted depends on what is counted. Reports at the verdict called it a 15- or 16-month trial. Later Associated Press reports describe the whole case as lasting about four years.

During deliberations, in August 1989, one juror failed to appear. She had been shot dead by her boyfriend, who then killed himself. The judge told the jury her death had nothing to do with the case and replaced her with an alternate. Another juror was dismissed for sleeping.

On 20 September 1989 the jury convicted Ramirez on all 43 counts: 13 murders (12 of first-degree murder and one of second-degree murder), five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. The trial had cost the county about $1.6 million by that point, according to a report at the time; a figure of $1.8 million is also often given.

The sentence

In early October the same jury voted for death. Reporters heard Ramirez dismiss it on his way back to jail: “Big deal. Death always went with the territory.” On 7 November 1989 Judge Michael Tynan formally sentenced him to death in the gas chamber. Reference works count 19 death sentences across the counts; reports at the time simply say he was sentenced to die for the 13 murders.

He was sent to death row at San Quentin, where he would spend the remaining 24 years of his life. In 1996 he married a woman who had written to him, in a ceremony at the prison. In August 2006 the California Supreme Court upheld the convictions and the sentence in full, and in 2007 the US Supreme Court declined to review the case.

The cases that never came to trial

Ramirez was convicted only of crimes in Los Angeles County. Some news reports, including Associated Press copy in 2009 and 2013, wrongly place two of the 13 murders in the San Francisco area. The court record lists all 13 in Los Angeles County.

He was charged in 1985 over an August 1985 shooting in San Francisco, near Lake Merced, in which a 66-year-old man was killed. That case was never tried. Sources disagree on whether the man’s wife, who was also shot, survived.

In October 2009 San Francisco police said that DNA from a 1984 case, the killing of a 9-year-old girl in the Tenderloin, had produced a database match to Ramirez’s profile. Police said at the time that no charges had been filed. None ever were, and he died without being tried for it. Early press reports in 1985 attributed 15 or 16 deaths to the Night Stalker; those were police attributions, not convictions.

Death in 2013

Ramirez was never executed; by 2013 California had not carried out an execution for years. In early June 2013 he was moved from San Quentin to Marin General Hospital, where he died on 7 June, aged 53. First reports gave natural causes or liver failure. The Marin County coroner later gave the cause as complications of B-cell lymphoma, with chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis C infection as contributing factors.

Not the Original Night Stalker

One name causes confusion. In the late 1970s and 1980s another offender, who attacked people in their homes across California, was known in Southern California as the Original Night Stalker and in the north as the East Area Rapist. The writer Michelle McNamara named him the Golden State Killer in 2013. He was identified in 2018 as Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole in 2020. He has nothing to do with Richard Ramirez.

The Netflix series

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer was released on Netflix on 13 January 2021 in four episodes. Directed by Tiller Russell and James Carroll, it tells the story largely through detectives Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno, from the first attacks to the capture, the trial and his death. It is a documentary built on the investigators’ account, not a dramatisation.

Why he is remembered

Part of the answer is the fear he caused that summer. Part is the image he chose for himself in court. But the parts of the story that hold up best are the ordinary ones. A teenager wrote down a licence plate. A brand-new computer system matched a single fingerprint. And a street full of neighbours, holding the morning paper, recognised a face and refused to let him go.

If you are using this page for research, the 2006 California Supreme Court opinion, People v. Ramirez, is the most complete public account of the evidence. It names surviving victims, including children, and should be read with that in mind.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. People v. Ramirez, 39 Cal.4th 398 (2006)Supreme Court of California, 7 August 2006 (SCOCAL, Stanford Law School)
2. Richard RamirezBiography.com, updated May 2023
3. Richard RamirezWikipedia
4. Night Stalker convicted of 13 murdersUPI, 20 September 1989
5. Night Stalker sentenced to die in gas chamberDeseret News, 8 November 1989
6. Computers: Taking a Byte Out of CrimeTIME, 14 October 1985
7. Six neighbors who captured the suspected Night StalkerUPI, 3 September 1985
8. Los Angeles mob attacks “Night Stalker” serial killerHistory.com, This Day in History
9. Thirty years ago, the Night Stalker was captured by an angry mobGizmodo, 31 August 2015
10. How a 13-year-old boy helped capture the “Night Stalker”CBS News, 19 May 2017
11. Early use of fingerprint technology: capture of the Night StalkerCrime Museum, 31 August 2011
12. When the Herald Examiner named the “Night Stalker”LA Observed, June 2013
13. What makes serial killer monikers like “Night Stalker” stickOxygen, 13 January 2021
14. Who was Frank Salerno, the detective who helped catch Richard Ramirez?TheWrap, 15 January 2021
15. New Netflix documentary details “Night Stalker”FOX 11 Los Angeles, 18 January 2021
16. Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial KillerWikipedia
17. “Night Stalker” named a suspect in ’84 killingNBC News / AP, 23 October 2009
18. Bay Area cold case linked to “Night Stalker”NBC Bay Area, 22 October 2009
19. San Francisco police look at “Night Stalker” for 25-year-old caseCNN, 22 October 2009
20. SF cops downplay boy’s link to “Night Stalker” slayingSan Francisco Chronicle, 18 March 2016
21. Night Stalker, a serial killer, dies but not in the electric chairChristian Science Monitor (AP), 7 June 2013
22. “Night Stalker,” serial killer in 1980s, dies in prisonNBC News, 7 June 2013
23. Richard Ramirez dies in San QuentinKQED, 7 June 2013
24. Serial killer “Night Stalker”, El Paso native Richard Ramirez, has diedKVIA El Paso (AP), June 2013
25. Richard Ramirez, 53; serial killer was known as the “Night Stalker”Boston Globe (AP), 13 June 2013
26. Night Stalker Richard Ramirez died of cancerNBC Bay Area, 17 June 2013
27. Murder trial mayhemFox News, 4 August 2009
28. Michelle McNamara and the Golden State KillerBiography.com
29. Golden State Killer sentenced to life without paroleNBC News, August 2020

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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