Citizens of Los Angeles helped apprehend Ramirez, who was eventually found guilty of 13 murders, on August 31, 1985.
Serial killer Richard Ramirez was shocked when he stopped into an East Los Angeles liquor store on the morning hours of August 31, 1985 and saw his face on the front page of the newspapers. This was the man—the newspapers claimed—that had been terrorizing California homes from Los Angeles to San Francisco for well over a year.
A woman at the store recognized Ramirez, according to The Los Angeles Daily News, and yelled out, “El maton!”
The killer.
And so Ramirez fled on foot, down I-5, before attempting to carjack an unlocked Ford Mustang. After he crashed the car, a mob of angry residents beat Ramirez bloody, hitting him with a crowbar and holding him until police arrived upon the scene. Thus marked the end of the investigation into an astonishingly cold-blooded brutal spate of violence that included at least 14 murders, and many more cases of rape, sodomy and burglary.
But it started with a single cop’s hunch.
Who Figured Out that Richard Ramirez Was a Serial Killer?
Gil Carrillo had been an investigator at the homicide bureau at Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for a little over four years when he began looking into what would become the Nightstalker case in March 1985.
At the time, Carrillo suspected that several disparate instances of home invasions, sexual assaults and murders were tied together, including the abduction and sexual assault of several young children. Carrillo noticed that the description of the attacker provided by a child matched the one provided by 21-year-old Maria Hernandez, who survived Ramirez’s home invasion and shooting of her at point blank range from inside her house.
“Tall. Thin. Stained gaped brown teeth. All black ‘Members Only’ type jacket, black athletic shoes. When I saw that information coming in from kids and matching information from surviving adults, it made me think it could be the same guy,” Carrillo tells A&E Crime and Investigation.
At first, Carrillo says the other homicide detectives all doubted him. But he doesn’t blame them for their skepticism.
“Nobody in criminal history had ever done what he was doing,” Carrillo says, noting the wide age range of his victims (6 to 80-something), and the tremendous breadth of violent behavior. “Richard had guns on him every time he went into a house—sometimes he used them, and sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he used his foot. Sometimes it was manual strangulation. Sometimes there were stab wounds. Sometimes there were slicing wounds. Some of his victims lived. Some didn’t. Some weren’t even hurt.”
What Physical Evidence Helped Catch Richard Ramirez?
One reason it proved so hard to catch Ramirez, Carillo says, is because the killer showed remarkable “stealth” in executing his crime spree.
“If what he did were to be classified as a job, then he was good at his job,” Carrillo says. “He wore all dark clothing, which helped him at night. He was quiet. He knew that the element of surprise was on his side. He wore gloves or socks on his hands, to not leave fingerprints. He thought this stuff out.”
One connecting piece of evidence was his sneakers, a pair of Avia aerobic shoes, worn in size 11.5. According to CBS News, Ramirez left this distinctive shoe print at various crime scenes: imprinted in the wet cement at the construction site where he assaulted one young girl, then again on the side of the head of 60-year-old Joyce Nelson.
One of the biggest breaks in the case would come after Ramirez traveled north to San Francisco, where he continued his murder spree.
A Bracelet Closes the Loop
San Francisco Police Department homicide investigator Frank Falzon had never seen a crime scene as twisted as the one he walked into at the home of Peter and Barbara Pan on August 18, 1985. Peter, 66, had been shot and killed while sleeping. His wife, 62, had also been shot and raped. She would ultimately survive the attack. In the kitchen, after the assault, the killer fixed himself a snack, vomited it up , wrote the words “Jack the Knife” into the bedroom wall along with a Devil’s pentagram, ejaculated underneath it and ransacked the home for valuables, according to Falzon’s book San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5-Henry-7.
“It all just added up to being the ugliest case I’d ever worked,” Falzon tells A&E Crime and Investigation.
Eventually, Falzon was able to connect some crucial dots that helped locate Ramirez. An affluent dentist’s home had been burglarized two nights prior to the Pan attack in a highly professional manner—and Falzon suspected that the cases might be linked.
The San Francisco Police Department took inventory of what had been stolen. When a police informant tipped them off that one of the stolen pieces of jewelry—a bracelet—was being worn by a woman in the East Bay, Falzon went to interview her. That led Falzon further up the sales chain to Armando Rodriguez, the man who had bought the bracelet directly from the thief—a friend of his name “Rick.”
Falzon and Rodriguez chatted in the police car. Falzon, certain that he was closing in on the truth and hopped up on adrenaline, demanded Rick’s full name. Rodriguez refused to provide it.
“I flew a tough punch, right in the eye,” Falzon says. “And he fell over. I said, ‘I’m not a tough guy, but if you don’t give me that name, I’m going to throw you the biggest punch I can throw and split you from the top of your head down to your ass.’ He put his arms up in a cross, protecting himself, and says, ‘Richard Ramirez.’”
According to CBS, there were eight people with that name in police records, and one of them had fingerprints that were a perfect match to the murder scenes.
Ramirez’s name and face were in the papers soon thereafter. In 1989, he was found guilty of 43 crimes, including 13 murders, and sentenced to death. In 2013, he died of B-cell lymphoma while on death row, at the age of 53.
Related Features:
How Richard Ramirez’s Decaying, Gross Teeth Helped Catch and Convict the Serial Killer
Richard Ramirez’s Death: What Were the Final Days of the ‘Night Stalker’ Like?
Was a Bad Childhood to Blame for ‘Night Stalker’ Richard Ramirez Becoming a Serial Killer?
