Community Corner

'Night Stalker' Richard Ramirez Dies in Prison

Ramirez murdered 13 people in a 14-month period, including a victim in Sierra Madre, and also in Monrovia and Arcadia.

Written by Gina Tenorio

Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez -- who spent more than 23 years on death row for murdering 13 people during a 14-month crime spree that terrorized the Southland in the mid-1980s -- died early Friday, state prison officials said.

Ramirez, 53, died of natural causes at Marin General Hospital, according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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Ramirez was sent to death row at San Quentin State Prison in November 1989 after a high-profile trial involving murders in Glassell Park, Rosemead, Whittier, Monterey Park, Monrovia, Arcadia, Glendale, Sun Valley and neighboring Diamond Bar.

His crime spree extended to San Francisco and Orange County, where an engineer was shot but survived an attack in which his fiancée was raped.

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The impact of his crimes where so deep much of Southern was gripped with fear before his capture.

 

Along with the murders, he was convicted of 30 other counts -- including attempted murder, rape and first-degree burglary -- for the nighttime killings between June 1984 and August 1985 that made the self-proclaimed devil worshipper one of California's most notorious criminals.

The focus of an intense manhunt, Ramirez had been identified as the suspected Night Stalker when he was recognized on an East Los Angeles street by a group of angry residents and badly beaten before police arrived to arrest him.

About a year after his arrest, the former drifter from El Paso, Texas, called a guard over to his jail cell and showed photographs of two of the murder victims.

At his sentencing hearing, Ramirez rocked back and forth and turned to grin at the audience, vowing that he would be "avenged."

"You maggots made me sick, hypocrites one and all. We are all expendable for a cause, and no one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world which kill in the name of God and country and for whatever else they deem appropriate," Ramirez said.

"You don't understand me," he said just before being sentenced to death. "You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil."


In 2006, the California Supreme Court upheld his death sentence and rejected the defense's contention that numerous errors were made in his trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. The U.S. Supreme Court refused the following year to review the case against him.

Below is a list of his crime spree as listed by Wikipedia.
  • On April 10, 1984, Mei Leung, 9, was found dead in a San Francisco hotel basement where Ramirez was living at the time.
  • On June 28, 1984, Jennie Vincow, 79, was found dead in her Eagle Rock apartment. She had been stabbed repeatedly, and her throat was slashed with such force she was almost decapitated.
  • On February 21, 1985, sisters Christina and Mary Caldwell, 58 and 71, were found dead in their Telegraph Hill apartment. They each were stabbed dozens of times.
  • On March 17, 1985, Ramirez attacked Angela Barrios, 22 outside her condominium in Rosemead. He shot her as she entered her house, then fatally shot her roommate Dayle Okazaki, 34. Barrios survived.
  • On March 17, 1985, Ramirez pulled Tsai-Lian Yu, 30, out of her car onto the road in Monterey Park. He shot her several times and fled. She died shortly after police found her.
  • On March 27, 1985 Ramirez shot Vincent Zazzara, 64, and his wife Maxine Zazzara, 44 in their Whittier home. Maxine’s body was mutilated with several stab wounds and a T-carving on her left breast, and her eyes were gouged out.
  • In April 1985, Harold Wu, 66, was shot in the head and his wife, Jean Wu, 63, was punched, bound, and then violently raped in their Monterey Park home. They survived.
  • On May 30, 1985, Ramirez attacked Malvial Keller, 83, and her disabled sister, Blanche Wolfe, 80, beating each with a hammer in their Monrovia home. Wolfe survived the attack.
  • On May 31, Ruth Wilson, 41, of Burbank, was bound, raped, and sodomized by Ramirez, while her 12-year-old son was locked in a closet. Ramirez slashed Wilson once, and then bound her and her son together and left.
  • On June 2, 1985, Edward Wildgans, 29, was shot and killed by Ramirez in the Cow Hollow neighborhood in San Francisco. His girlfriend was raped several times but survived.
  • On July 5, 1985, Whitney Bennett, 16, survived after being beaten with a tire iron by Ramirez in her Sierra Madre home.
  • On July 7, 1985, Linda Fortuna, 63, was attacked in Monterey Park. Ramirez tried to rape her but failed.
  • On July 20, 1985. He struck twice. In Sun Valley he shot and killed a 32-year-old Chitat Assawahem. His wife Sakima, 29, was beaten and forced to perform oral sex. Ramirez then collected valuables left.
  • Later in the day on July 20 a Glendale couple, Maxson Kneiding, 66, and his wife Lela Kneiding, also 66, were shot and their corpses mutilated.
  • On August 6, Ramirez shot  Christopher Petersen, 38, and his wife, Virginia Petersen, 27, in the head in their Northridge home. Both survived.
  • On August 8, Ramirez fatally shot Ahmed Zia, 35, in his Diamond Bar home. He  then raped, sodomized, and forced Zia's wife, Suu Kyi, 28, to perform oral sex on him.
  • On August 17, he shot and killed a 66-year-old man in San Francisco, also shooting and beating his wife. The wife survived.
  • On August 24, 1985. Ramirez traveled to Mission Viejo in Orange County where he broke into the Mediterranean Village apartment home of Bill Carns, 29, and his fiancée, Inez Erickson, 27. Ramirez shot Carns in the head and raped Erickson. “He demanded she swear her love for Satan,” Wikipedia writers report. But Erickson was able to give a description of both Ramirez and his orange Toyota station wagon, they wrote.
Finally on Aug. 30, Ramirez was arrested in East Los Angeles after a crowd recognized him. He was chased and beaten by an angry mob while trying to carjack a woman. Police had to stop the mob from killing him.


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