Richard Ramirez, known as the “Night Stalker” was an American serial killer. Ramirez spent over two years of his life raping and torturing over 25 victims and killing more than a dozen people. Most of these crimes were committed in the victims California homes. Richard, the son of Mercedes and Julian Ramirez, was born in El Paso, Texas on February 28, 1960. Growing up Richard was a troubled kid. A lot of this was due to his older cousin, Mike, who had just returned from fighting in Vietnam. Ramirez’s cousin would tell him gruesome stories and show pictures of the torture he would inflict upon Vietnamese women. Mike introduced drugs to Ramirez, which consequently resulted in Ramirez committing petty crimes. He also became a Satan worshiper. Because of this rebellion, Ramirez became alienated from his parents.
The first series crime that Ramirez was involved in was the murder of his cousin’s wife. Although Mike was the one whom murdered his own wife, Ramirez was at the scene of the crime and didn’t do anything to stop it. In 1977, Ramirez was sent to a juvenile detention center for a series of petty crimes. In addition, he was put on probation for marijuana possession in 1982. Soon after these two crimes, Ramirez moved to California and continued to commit crimes such as burglary and possession of cocaine, as well as a car theft charge, which resulted in a jail sentence. On June 28th 1984, Ramirez’s committed his first murder. The 79-year-old victim was sexually assaulted, stabbed and murdered in her own home. In just one year Ramirez had murdered over a dozen people and tortured of 25 people. After many delays, in 1989, Richard Ramirez, age 29, was sentenced to the conviction of 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. Ramirez was sentenced to die in California’s gas chamber. His remarks to this were “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.” Twenty-four years after this sentence, while Ramirez had been on death row for more than 23 years, Ramirez died from B-cell lymphoma at age 53 on June 7, 2013.
