Richard Ramirez

What the record shows

Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, carried out a series of night-time home invasions in the Los Angeles area between June 1984 and August 1985, with related attacks in San Francisco and Orange County. On September 20, 1989, a Los Angeles County jury convicted him of 12 counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder, 11 sexual assault counts and 14 counts of first-degree burglary, according to the California Supreme Court's 2006 opinion in People v. Ramirez. He was sentenced to death on November 7, 1989, and died of natural causes on June 7, 2013, while on death row at San Quentin.

The first killing in the Los Angeles case was that of Jennie Vincow, 79, found dead in her Glassell Park apartment on June 28, 1984; a fingerprint was recovered from a window screen, the court opinion says. The attacks resumed on March 17, 1985, when Dayle Okazaki was shot dead in Rosemead and her roommate Maria Hernandez survived; within the hour Tsai-Lian Yu was shot dead in Monterey Park. Over the following months Vincent and Maxine Zazzara were killed in Whittier, William Doi in Monterey Park, Mabel Bell in Monrovia, Mary Cannon in Arcadia, Joyce Nelson in Monterey Park, Maxon and Lela Kneiding in Glendale, Chainarong Khovananth in Sun Valley and Elyas Abowath in Diamond Bar on August 8, 1985. Several surviving women were raped, and pentagrams were drawn at some scenes.

Investigators tied the crimes together through ballistics from a .22-caliber pistol, prints from Avia athletic shoes and eyewitness descriptions, according to the opinion. On August 18, 1985, Peter Pan was shot dead in San Francisco and his wife Barbara survived, an attack San Francisco authorities linked to the series. After an August 24 attack in Mission Viejo in which Bill Carns was shot and survived, a witness noted the suspect's car. The stolen Toyota was found abandoned in Los Angeles on August 28, and a fingerprint from its rear-view mirror was matched to Ramirez's record from a 1984 auto-theft arrest, according to Wikipedia's account. Police released his photograph.

On August 31, 1985, Ramirez tried to steal cars in East Los Angeles; residents who recognized him from news reports chased, struck and held him until police arrived, the court opinion records. At the station he made spontaneous statements admitting the killings.

Ramirez was charged with 43 offenses in Los Angeles County; the Los Angeles Times reported in November 1987 that one murder count was dismissed, leaving 13. Jury selection began on July 22, 1988. The jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts on September 20, 1989, found special circumstances of multiple murder, burglary, rape, sodomy and oral copulation true, and returned a death verdict. The judge imposed the death sentence on November 7, 1989.

On August 7, 2006, the California Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and death sentence, rejecting challenges to venue, severance, counsel substitution, competency and the admission of crime-scene photographs. He never went to trial on the San Francisco charges arising from the Pan shooting. In October 2009, San Francisco police said DNA matched Ramirez to the April 10, 1984, killing of nine-year-old Mei Leung in an apartment building basement; CBS News reported the match, and no charges followed. Ramirez married Doreen Lioy at San Quentin on October 3, 1996.

Ramirez died at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae on June 7, 2013, at age 53. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation lists the death as natural causes, and the Marin County coroner later attributed it to complications of B-cell lymphoma, according to reporting cited by Wikipedia. He had been on death row for more than 23 years.

Ramirez was born Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez in El Paso, Texas, on February 29, 1960, the youngest of five children of Mexican immigrant parents. Accounts cited by Wikipedia describe childhood head injuries, epilepsy and early drug use. He dropped out of high school, moved to California in 1982 and funded a cocaine habit through burglaries before the murders began.