Night Stalker Victims

Case background and investigation

Between the spring of 1984 and the summer of 1985, a string of nighttime home-invasion attacks spread terror across Greater Los Angeles and, later, the San Francisco Bay Area. An intruder entered homes through unlocked windows and doors, shooting or beating sleeping residents, sexually assaulting victims, and ransacking the properties. Because there was no consistent victim profile and no single method, investigators were slow to connect the crimes; the press eventually dubbed the unknown assailant the "Night Stalker." The attacks left at least thirteen people dead and many more wounded or assaulted, and the seemingly random nature of the violence fueled widespread public fear during the summer of 1985.

The attacker's earliest confirmed killing was the April 10, 1984 rape and murder of nine-year-old Mei Leung in the basement of a San Francisco apartment building, though this link was not established until years later. The principal spree ran through 1984 and into 1985, striking victims in communities across Southern California before extending to the Bay Area. Survivors' accounts and physical evidence gradually convinced detectives that a single offender was responsible, and a multi-agency task force was assembled as the death toll rose through the summer of 1985.

The investigation broke open in late August 1985. After an attack on August 24, 1985 in Mission Viejo, a witness recorded a license plate, and police recovered a stolen Toyota that had been abandoned. A fingerprint lifted from the vehicle was run through California's newly installed computerized fingerprint database, which returned a match to Richard Ramirez, a drifter originally from El Paso, Texas. Authorities publicly released his name and photograph. On August 31, 1985, Ramirez was recognized by residents in East Los Angeles after his picture appeared in newspapers; a group of citizens chased and subdued him on the street until police arrived and took him into custody.

Ramirez was charged with a series of crimes committed during the spree. After a lengthy trial, on September 20, 1989 a Los Angeles jury convicted him of thirteen counts of murder, along with five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries. On November 7, 1989 he was sentenced to death. Ramirez remained on California's death row for more than two decades. He died in custody on June 7, 2013, at age 53, from complications of B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution.

In 2009, DNA testing linked Ramirez to the 1984 murder of Mei Leung, the case now regarded as his first known killing, though he was never charged in that death because he had already been convicted and sentenced. In 2016, San Francisco authorities disclosed that a second DNA profile had been recovered from the Leung crime scene, indicating another person may have been present, a thread that remains unresolved. Ramirez stands convicted of the Night Stalker murders, and his case is closed by his conviction and death, while the full scope of the Leung investigation continues to be examined.