← America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
Richard Ramirez: The Neighborhood That Took Him Down Pt. 3
00:25:18
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- [00:02]
Katie Ring
Hi, listeners. Before we dive into today's episode of America's Most Infamous Crimes, I wanted to take a brief moment to tell you about a show from Crime House's sister studio, Rewind, that I think you'll love. It's called Government that Doesn't Suck, hosted by professors Lindsay Cormack and Greg Jackson from History that Doesn't Suck. Ever wonder how the weather forecast on your phone is so accurate? Or how your mail still gets across the country for less than a dollar? Or who actually built the highway you drove on this morning? Each episode tells the surprising story of an American institution that you'll never look at the same way again. Listen to and follow Government that Doesn't Suck every other Monday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or watch video episodes on YouTube. This is Crime House. For more than a year, the Night Stalker had been a nightmare hanging over all of California. Then, in the space of a single morning, the police finally put a name and face to the serial killer who had been terrorizing the state. But it was the citizens of LA who were about to do something. The police hadn't been able to catch him themselves. Today, we are diving into the final chapter. The fingerprint that finally exposed him, the neighborhood that brought him down with their bare hands, and the trial that turned Richard Ramirez into the monster America couldn't stop. Watching. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring, and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'll take you deep into the cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. Crime House exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House plus and get all three parts of each week's America's Most Infamous Crime stories dropped at once every Monday and ad free. You'll also get the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early and exclusive bonus episodes. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the America's Most Infamous Crime show page. And to help keep growing our community, be sure to rate, review and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of murder, sexual assault and violence, and briefly references the death of a child. So please listen with care this is the third and final episode on Richard Ramirez, one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Today I'll tell you how he was finally brought to justice. The capture, the trial, and the reckoning that followed.
- [03:01]
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- [03:35]
Katie Ring
After Richard Ramirez ditched his stolen orange Toyota In August of 1985, he probably thought he had gotten away clean from his latest crime. But he had no idea that the technology was changing quickly, and a fingerprint he left behind would finally put a name to the terrifying face that had been haunting la. When the police ran the print through their new computerized database, it came back as a match to a man who'd been arrested the previous December for driving a stolen Richard Ramirez. He'd been booked, photographed, and fingerprinted by a sheriff's deputy, then released on a promise to appear in court. But he never showed up. At the time, it looked like a minor brush with the law, one that wasn't worth following up on. But the prints and the mugshot stayed in the system, and now they were a match for the Night Stalker. After more than a year, he had a name, he had a face, and he had a history that had been sitting in a drawer the whole time, waiting for someone to connect it. On August 30, 1985, the authorities held a press conference and released Richard's mugshot to the media. The message was blunt. They knew who he was now, and there would be nowhere left for him to hide. Within hours, his photograph was on the front page of newspapers across the state and at the top of every TV broadcast. After 14 months of sketches and shadows, the public finally had something concrete to look the real face of the man who'd made an entire region afraid to fall asleep. For investigators who chased a phantom for over a year, putting that face in front of the public was a gamble and a relief at the same time. They didn't have to rely on a vague sketch that could match countless people anymore. And it would take less than a day for Richard Ramirez to be tracked down. But one of the only people who didn't know he had been ID'd was Richard himself. While his picture was being plastered across California. Richard wasn't even in the state. He'd taken a bus out to Tucson, Arizona to visit his brother. And he had no idea the manhunt had finally ended. So on the morning of August 31, 1985, he rode a bus back into LA, stepping off around 7:25 in the morning, and walked into a store near the terminal to buy something to drink. That's when he saw it. His own face looking back at him from the newspaper rack in the Spanish language paper La Opinion. His mugshot ran under the headline Imbasor Nocturno the Night Invader. And he wasn't the only one looking at it. The people around him in that store were beginning to do a double take. Glancing at a paper, then at him, then back to the paper. Some of them started to react. One woman recognized him and cried out, el Maton. Spanish for the killer. In that moment, Richard understood that the game was over. And he ran. What unfolded over the next few minutes happened in the streets of East Los Angeles. A close, working class, largely Mexican American neighborhood. The kind of place where people knew their neighbors and kept an eye on the block. Richard sprinted across six lanes of the Santa Ana Freeway on foot, dodging traffic into the residential streets of Boyle Heights, looking for a way out. With a crowd already aware of him, he did the only thing he could think of. Try to take a car by force. At first he was simply running with everything he had. He begged for water at one house and dumped his knapsack at another. As he passed one yard, a woman named Frances Romero was out watering her lawn. He said nothing and kept moving. She had her son call the police and within minutes a helicopter was circling overhead and patrol cars were converging on the neighborhood. Rounding the street, Richard came across a woman sitting in a parked copper colored Oldsmobile. He pulled a knife and demanded the car. She screamed for help and a barber named Arturo Benavidez, who'd been watching from his shop, ran out with another man and chased Richard down a graffiti lined alley. As Richard kept running, more people joined the chase. He tried to hijack a Ford Mustang belonging to a man named Faustino Pinon, but Pinon fought back and wouldn't let go. Richard broke away and lunged for the keys of a woman named Angelina de la Torre, who was getting into her car in a nearby driveway. Her husband came running out of the house and struck Richard in the head with a fence post as he tried to crawl away. A crowd of more than 10 neighbors closed in, beating Richard with their fists and a metal bar until he sank to the ground, bloodied. And at last a sheriff's patrol car came around the corner. By most accounts, when the deputies finally arrived, Richard was relieved to see them. The officers were the only thing standing between him and a crowd that had every reason to want him dead. Neighbors would later describe the strange mix of disbelief and grim satisfaction of the morning. People in that area had talked for weeks about what they would do if the Night Stalker ever turned up on their street. And then, on an ordinary morning, there he was, pinned to the pavement a few doors down. The man whose face had filled their newspapers and their nightmares had been stopped not by a tactical squad but by a group of regular people. After getting captured, Richard was taken back to the Hollenbeck police station, bloodied from the beating he'd gotten. And as detectives across Los Angeles county pulled their files together and laid out the charges, the true scale of what one man had done came into sharp focus. A year of murders, attempted murders, sexual assaults and burglaries scattered across community after community, from Glassell park to Whittier to Monrovia to Mission Viejo. But catching him was only the first act. Now Richard had to answer for everything he had done, and rather than shrink from the reckoning, he was about to try and turn it into a performance.
- [09:38]
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- [10:38]
Vanessa Richardson
Hi listeners, it's Vanessa Richardson on a special four episode conspiracy theories, cults and crime series. I'm taking you to four kinds of dream getaways that went from paradise to deadly. A woman vanishes while snorkeling off Aruba. Two backpackers murdered on a moonlit beach in Thailand, An NBA champion who disappears off his own catamaran in the South Pacific. These were supposed to be the trips of a lifetime. Listen to our special Deadly Destinations series every Sunday on conspiracy theories, cults and and crimes. Or if you don't want to wait, all four episodes are available right now ad free on Crime House Plus. To join Crime House plus, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or@crimehouseplus.com.
- [11:29]
Katie Ring
From his very first appearances in court, Richard Ramirez made one thing very clear. He was not going to play the role of a remorseful defendant. At an early hearing, he lifted his hand to show the courtroom a pentagram he'd drawn on his palm and shouted two hail Satan. He'd spent his whole life building an identity around the devil, and now, with the world watching, he committed to it completely. The long dark hair, the sunglasses, the cold stare. He wasn't running from the image the press had given him. He was feeding it. And it landed in a country already primed to believe the worst. The mid-1980s were the height of what's now called the Satanic Panic, a wave of national anxiety about devil worship, occult ritual, and hidden cults supposedly preying on the innocent. It was an era of sensational claims about ritual abuse and televised warnings about hidden messages in rock music. Richard Ramirez walked into all of that, flashing a pentagram and praising Satan in open court. To a frightened public, he wasn't just a killer.
- [12:33]
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- [12:33]
Katie Ring
He looked like living proof that every dark rumor was true. Now, a lot of the fear around the Satanic Panic would eventually be exposed as nothing more than hysteria. But when Richard Ramirez was on trial, the fear was real, and Richard was more than happy to pour fuel onto that fire. What happened next is one of the most unsettling aspects in the entire story, and that's saying a lot. Because rather than being met with pure revulsion, Richard attracted a following. Women started showing up at his court dates to watch him. He received stacks of fan mail and love letters. In jail, cameras tracked his every gesture, every smirk, every outburst. The man who'd made an entire state afraid to sleep with the windows open had somehow become a celebrity. It was a disturbing inversion of everything you might expect. The same crimes that had made people barricade their doors also turned Richard into a figure of dark fascination. And he played into it. Mugging for the cameras, flashing that pentagram, turning each hearing into a performance. For the families in the gallery who'd come to watch the man who murdered the people they loved, the spectacle must have been heartbreaking. The killer treated like a star, the victims fading into the background. It's an uncomfortable truth that runs through almost every infamous case, and this one put it on full, ugly display. But just because people were fascinated by Richard, that didn't mean he was getting off easy. The legal case against him was massive, and the trial that followed became one of the longest and most expensive in California history. Up to that point, jury selection alone stretched on for roughly six months. Then came more months of testimony as prosecutors laid out the physical evidence that tied the crimes together. The fingerprint from the Toyota, the distinct Avia shoe prints, the ballistics, and most powerfully of all, the survivors themselves. Among them was Maria Hernandez, the young woman who, back on St. Patrick's Day of 1985, had thrown her hands up, watched a bullet glance off of her keys, and played dead until he stepped over her and left. And one by one, the other survivors sat a few feet from the man who'd attacked them and told a jury the truth about what he'd done. It's hard to overstate the courage that takes. The defense tried to pull those threads apart, questioning how firmly any single piece of evidence tied Richard to any of the crimes. It was slow and methodical, the kind of process that tests a jury's stamina as much as its judgment. And then, just as the case neared its end, it was nearly derailed entirely. In the summer of 1989, with the jury deep in deliberations, one of the jurors, a woman named Phyllis Singletary, didn't arrive at court one morning. She was found in her apartment, dead of multiple gunshot wounds. The remaining jurors were shaken and understandably terrified. After everything they had heard about Richard Ramirez and the devil, some of them feared he'd somehow orchestrated her death from his jail cell. But the truth was more ordinary, although just as devastating. Phyllis had been killed by her own live in boyfriend during a domestic dispute, and then he committed suicide in a motel room as investigators moved in to arrest him. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Richard Ramirez, and the judge told the grieving rattle jurors that her death was a tragedy, but it was irrelevant to the case. They had to set their grief aside and finish the job. In front of them, he seated an alternate and ordered deliberations to resume. It was the second time in barely a week that the panel had been told to start over after another juror had been dismissed days earlier. By any measure, it was one of the most turbulent endings to a major trial anyone could remember. But the jury did their job and on September 20, 1989, they delivered their verdict. Richard Ramirez was found guilty of of 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. It was one of the most sweeping guilty verdicts in the state's history. And through the entire process, Richard showed no fear and no remorse. He'd spent the trial behind dark glasses, sitting still and unreadable, treating the proceedings with something close to contempt. The verdict didn't appear to move him in the slightest. But the trial wasn't over yet. The jury still had to decide whether he would live or die. And Richard already had his answer waiting.
- [17:14]
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- [17:46]
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- [17:52]
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- [17:55]
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- [17:55]
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- [17:59]
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- [18:00]
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- [18:12]
Katie Ring
See our seven day return policy@carvana.com the trial moved into its penalty phase, where the jury would decide if Richard Ramirez should be executed for his crimes. And on November 7, 1989, the court handed down its sentence. Death. If anyone in the courtroom expected the weight of it to finally humble him, they were disappointed. There was no apology, no flicker of regret for a single life Richard had taken or a single family he'd destroyed. Given the chance to speak, he was defiant to the very end. He called the people gathered there hypocrites, told them they weren't capable of understanding him, and claimed to stand somewhere beyond their judgment. Entirely beyond good and evil. It was the same philosophy he'd absorbed as a boy, listening to his cousin Miguel dress up now in the language of a man determined to convince the world he was something more than a common killer. And as he was let out, Richard delivered the line that would follow him for the rest of his days. When asked about the death sentence he had just received, he brushed it aside. Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland. Richard Ramirez was sent to death row at San Quentin State Prison. His case moved slowly through the appeals courts year after year. In 2006, the California Supreme Court reviewed it and upheld both his convictions and his death sentence. The following year, in 2007, the United States Supreme Court declined to take it up. For all practical purposes, the legal fight was over. And yet the sentence itself was never carried out. By the 1990s and 2000s, California's death penalty had become something close to symbolic. The state had executed only a handful of people since reinstating capital punishment, and appeals routinely stretched on for decades. Ramirez would spend more than 20 years in a cell, growing older while the death sentence handed down to him in 1989 hung over him, Permanently suspended and never enforced. But the strange pull he exerted over a certain corner of the public never entirely faded. In 1996, while sitting on death row, Ramirez married a woman named Doreen Leoy, a magazine editor who had written him hundreds of letters over the years and became convinced he was innocent. They were married inside the prison. It was a vivid example of a phenomenon that has shadowed infamous killers for as long as the media has covered them. How people become fixated on, even devoted to, the world's most dangerous killers. But even though Richard's fate was decided, there was still more to come. In 2009, thanks to DNA evidence, Richard was connected to a murder that predated every crime he was famous for. In April of 1980, four, months before he murdered Jenny Vinkow, before any of the killings that earned him the name Night Stalker, a nine year old girl named May Lung had been murdered in the basement of a residential hotel in San Francisco. Her case had gone unsolved for 25 years. Now, at last, the evidence pointed to Richard Ramirez. Since he was already on death row, he was never officially charged with her death. But her name belongs in this story. She may have been his very first victim. And for a quarter of a century, no one even knew to look his way. In the end, Richard Ramirez never kept his appointment with the executioner. By the time his appeals ran out, California hadn't carried out an execution in years. And it never came for him. On June 7, 2013, after more than two decades on death row, Richard died in a hospital in Greenbrae, California, of complications from B cell lymphoma. He was 53 years old. By every account, he died the Way he had lived, without remorse or apology. One of the prosecutors who helped put him away said that Richard's death closed a tragic chapter in the history of Los Angeles county and that the right place for everyone's thoughts was with the survivors and the families whose lives had been changed forever. That may be the truest thing anyone said that day. It's worth remembering the people on the other side of this case, too. The ones who refused to let it go. Gil Carillo and Frank Salerno had staked their credibility on a theory their own colleagues dismissed. And they turned out to be right. The kind of computerized fingerprint search that finally produced his name would soon become a standard tool of policing everywhere. And in a grim way, the case reshaped how Southern California's many police agencies shared information, because everyone had seen in the worst possible terms, what it costs when they didn't. His victims weren't symbols and they weren't set pieces in a horror story. They were an accountant, an attorney, a man who ran a neighborhood pizza restaurant, a church deacon, grandmothers and grandfathers asleep in their own beds, and a nine year old girl. They were people with names and birthdays and ordinary mornings still ahead of them. Until a stranger decided to climb through a window. And the survivors, Maria Hernandez, Barbara Pan, Inez Erickson, Bill Karnes, Lily Doyle and so many more, carried what he did to them for the rest of their lives and still found the strength to walk into a courtroom, look him in the face, and tell the truth. In the decades since, the Night Stalker case has been told and retold in books and documentaries and series that trade on the chill of his name. That's understandable. The case is terrifying. And people have always been drawn to stories about the dark. But there's a responsibility that comes with retelling it. And it's a simple one. To remember that these were real people, not characters. And that the fear he manufactured was felt by the actual families in actual homes. The moment a story like this becomes only entertainment, it begins to do exactly what he wanted and makes him the main character. And he should never be the center of his victims lives. Richard Ramirez wanted to be remembered as something more than a man. Something beyond good and evil, something demonic. He was none of those things. He was a man who preyed on unlocked windows and blind spots of a system that wasn't yet talking to itself. And he was brought down by a 13 year old boy who memorized a license plate. By two detectives who trusted a pattern no one else would believe. And by a neighborhood full of people who ran into the street and refused to be afraid. In the end, that's a part worth remembering. Not the monster he pretended to be, but the ordinary courage that stopped him. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts, so make sure to comment below.
- [24:56]
Listener/Questioner
Richard Ramirez spent more than 20 years on death row and died of cancer. Is that justice?
- [25:02]
Katie Ring
I think the fact that he was locked up for the rest of his life was justice. I'm actually against the death penalty, but not really for the reasons most people think. The reality is that death penalty cases cost the state much more than life and prison sentences because of all the appeals they are granted. I'd rather have my taxpaying dollars go towards better causes than granting a man like Richard Ramirez appeals. However, I have never been in a position where a loved one was murdered. There may be a different feeling when the person who murdered your loved one gets the death sentence rather than a life sentence. Some of the survivors and victims families have said his death brought them relief. Others have said it didn't change much at all because the loss was always going to be permanent. Justice and closure aren't the same thing, and neither one fully undoes what happened. I'm just glad that the man was locked up until the day he died and was never able to hurt anyone again.
- [25:55]
Listener/Questioner
Why do people fall for men like this? Doreen Leo married him on death row.
- [26:00]
Katie Ring
To be honest, it makes me sick to my stomach and I can't fully grasp it. Despite it actually having its own name. Hybristophilia is the sexual or romantic attraction to people who commit violent crimes, including serial killers. In some cases, people are drawn to the perceived power, danger, manipulation or notoriety surrounding these figures rather than the actual person themselves. Media portrayals of killers like Ted Bundy or Richard Ramirez often glamorize intelligence, charisma or rebellion, which can blur fascination into attraction. For others, the appeal comes from fantasy and emotional distance. A person in prison can feel safe because the relationship is controlled and largely imaginary. Psychologists also connect this attraction to deeper emotional dynamics in some individuals, including trauma, attachment issues, codependency, or a desire to save or reform dangerous people. Sometimes the attraction is less about violence itself and more about intensity, obsession, or feeling uniquely important to someone feared by the world. It's also important to separate true hybristophilia from ordinary true crime interest. Most people who consume documentaries, podcasts or forensic psychology content are motivated by curiosity and a desire to understand abnormal behavior, not genuine romantic attraction to killers like Jeffrey Dahmer or Richard Ramirez.
- [27:23]
Listener/Questioner
You always close with the self defense angle. So what's your final takeaway from this case?
- [27:28]
Katie Ring
People always ask me if what I do makes me paranoid. And my answer is that it doesn't make me paranoid, it makes me prepared. I actually feel less paranoid knowing that I've done the most I can do to be prepared for any situation. Being vigilant doesn't mean always being paranoid, but taking simple steps like locking your doors and windows at night can make a huge difference. Some people don't lock up because they think something like this would never happen to them. But so many stories I tell on here start with it was a town where crime never happened. So lock up. Make it a habit. There are a lot of steps you can take to protect yourself, but locking up your doors, windows, car doors is one very simple one that can save you in a lot of situations. The bigger lesson of this case isn't about fear, it's the opposite. The Night Stalker was undone by people paying attention. A 13 year old who rode down a plate, neighbors who came out of their houses, detectives who trusted a pattern awareness beat him, not paranoia. So if you take anything from these three episodes, let it be that stay aware, look out for your neighbors and don't let anyone convince you that the people who do terrible things are something more than human. They're not. And that's exactly why they can be stopped. Thanks so much for joining me for this series on the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. Come back next week for another deep dive into a true crime that changed America. And to enhance your listening experience, join Crime House plus and get all three parts of each week's America's Most Infamous Crime stories dropped at once every Monday and ad free. You also get the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early an exclusive bonus episode. To join go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of America's Most Infamous Crime show page.