by: Maddie Rowley

A week from today on January 13th, the much-anticipated true crime documentary,  Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer will begin streaming on Netflix and you best believe I’ll be watching. 

I’ve read about the Night Stalker’s (aka Richard Ramirez’s) atrocities in the past but when I thought back to how the Golden State Killer was caught (familial genealogical DNA) I realized I didn’t remember reading about how Ramirez was finally apprehended—and it’s a pretty dramatic story. 

First off, some background.

Richard Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas in 1960 and by 1984 he had killed his first victim, 9-year-old Mei Leung—brutally stabbing her to death and then hanging her from a rope. Initially, Mei Leung’s murder wasn’t attributed to Ramirez’s home invasion and murdering spree that continued afterwards, but a fingerprint found at the scene was later traced back to him. 

Ramirez went on to break in to homes and viciously murder at least 14 people throughout the rest of 1984 and into 1985, to include his second victim, 79-year-old Jennie Vincow and later on 83-year-old Mabel Bell. He often forced people to pray to Satan and would either draw or carve pentagrams and other symbols into their skin. 

The break-ins, car thefts, and murders all took place in California, mainly in suburbs of Los Angeles. Towards the end of his killing spree, Ramirez stole a car and drove to San Francisco and then Mission Viejo, where he attempted to break into a home until 13-year-old James Romero woke up his parents and alerted them to the possible thief. Ramirez fled the scene but James was able to memorize the make and model of the car. 

Despite wiping down the stolen car after dumping it, Ramirez left a fingerprint behind and police were able to identify him based on previous drug-related crimes he had committed. 

Here’s how he was caught:

Unbeknownst to Ramirez, the police released his 1984 mugshot to the press, so his face was all over the place by the time he had boarded a bus to Tucson, Arizona to visit his brother. When he got to Tucson, his brother wasn’t at home, so Ramirez did an about-face and boarded the bus again to head back to Los Angeles. 

According to The Orange County Register, Ramirez got off the bus and walked to a liquor store, where he saw his photo on the front page of a newspaper. Before he could run, the store’s clerk recognized him, and shouted “the killer!” in Spanish. 

Ramierez took off across a busy intersection and tried to steal two different cars, but he wasn’t fast enough. A man named Manuel De La Torre grabbed a nearby pipe and hit the killer over the head, subduing him for a little while until Ramirez took off running down the street. A mob of people caught up with him and pinned him to the ground until the police arrived.

Once he was apprehended and taken to the station for questioning, Ramirez allegedly threw up in the parking lot, and drew pentagrams on the table inside the interrogation room. The arresting officers said he was one of the most evil-looking people they had ever seen. 

Richard Ramirez was convicted in 1989 by a California court and was sentenced to death by gas chamber. He remained on Death Row for 23 years before dying of lymphoma in 2013.