CA CA - RICHARD RAMIREZ, Night Stalker, 1980's

[MajorHoople]

How rotting teeth and an AC/DC hat finally led Los Angeles police to Night Stalker Richard Ramirez | Daily Mail Online

"A new Netflix documentary chronicles the manhunt for the Night Stalker who killed 13 people in California in the 1980s and how he was finally caught by his poor dental hygiene.

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer focuses on the events that led to the eventual arrest of Richard Ramirez.

Between June 1984 and August 1985 the serial killer carried out a series of violent crimes which at first seemed random and left many believing they were the work of multiple people."

 

[Manwel]

How rotting teeth and an AC/DC hat finally led Los Angeles police to Night Stalker Richard Ramirez | Daily Mail Online

"A new Netflix documentary chronicles the manhunt for the Night Stalker who killed 13 people in California in the 1980s and how he was finally caught by his poor dental hygiene.

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer focuses on the events that led to the eventual arrest of Richard Ramirez.

Between June 1984 and August 1985 the serial killer carried out a series of violent crimes which at first seemed random and left many believing they were the work of multiple people."

The series was really informative. I didn't know the full extent of his crimes and they had a lot of footage from the era which really painted a portrait of the city at the time. He really defied logic in terms of typical serial killer behavior.

 

[mikt71]

What is the best Richard Ramirez biography?

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Metallica are sure to have had some – ahem – unique fans. Some, however, are more unique than others – namely, serial killer Richard Ramirez, who apparently was incensed that he couldn’t see the band perform live.

Those who don’t know Ramirez by his name might remember him as the serial killer the Night Stalker. In the 80s, Ramirez terrorised the Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas for over 14 months. In 1989, he was convicted of 13 counts of murder, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries.

So, where do Metallica come in? Ramirez, apparently, was a huge Metallica fan, and was apparently awaiting execution on death row when the band came to play in San Quentin Prison. It was a familiar location to them, since they’d already filmed the ‘St. Anger’ music video in the very same location.

“When we played San Quentin Prison [in 2003], he was on death row and could hear us. The guards who were responsible for watching him said Richard Ramirez was pissed off and pacing his cell because he wasn’t allowed to see us.” Kirk Hammett recalled in a recent interview with NME.

While Ramirez couldn’t see Metallica live, he did leave them an unusual souvenir.

“He gave the guards his subscription copy of a magazine with us on the cover and on the mail-tag it said: ‘Richard Ramirez, San Quentin Prison.’ So that’s my little token from Richard Ramirez.” Hammett said, before reflecting on the oddity of the possibility that him and Ramirez might have run into each other – however remotely – before their lives took very trajectories.

The serial killer who was pissed he couldn't see Metallica perform live

Metallica must have had some – ahem – unique fans over the course of their career, but a serial killer surely must take the cake.

tonedeaf.thebrag.com

 

[Betty P]

I finally got around to watching this last night. As a documentary, it was very well done. Very clear and detailed about the beginning and end of Ramirez murder spree, told through the words of the detectives, CSI folks and patrolmen who eventually identified him.

The detective Gil Carrillo, who led the investigation, began suspecting it was the same killer/attacker who was targeting a variety of victims. Most of the older, more experienced detectives didn't see any connection between the crimes - murders of elderly people, kidnapping and molesting of children, attacking, raping and killing young adult women. Carrillo did, though. As much as it was about Ramirez, it was also about the detectives who helped identify him and get him off the streets back in a time when the their investigative tools were much more primitive.

What Made A Young Detective Realize That A Range Of Seemingly Random Crimes Were The Work Of The 'Night Stalker'? | Oxygen Official Site

When a series of rapes, murders and other assaults began to sweep over Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, law enforcement treated them as what they appeared to be on the surface: random attacks that were in no way connected.

www.oxygen.com

Carrillo told Oxygen.com that he began thinking about what he learned at California State University, Los Angeles. He had a professor named Robert Morneau who taught an advanced class on sex crimes. It was this class that made him think there was a sexually motivated serial killer at work.

Carrillo said it was clear that, especially in the Okazaki and Yu crime scenes, the killer thoroughly enjoyed seeing his victims scared. Yu was pulled out of her car rather than being shot in it, thus Carrillo believed that the killer wanted a confrontation. He theorized that the killer also waited for Okazaki to see him before he killed her because he derived pleasure from that.

“It all came from two semesters of [this class],” he said. “Dr. Morneau gave me the insight on sex crimes. [...] Some of the things that he talked about in sex crimes came out and were recognizable to me. The fear factor, looking to people's fear, he was getting off on that. There was a sexual deviancy to it.”

Carrillo also noticed the physical description of the killer was pretty much the same in all these different crimes. Latino guy with fair complexion, tall, thin, bushy curly hair and very crazy looking eyes, bad teeth and bad body odor.

Everyone was following the hunt for the Night Stalker in the news that summer. As it had been with Son of Sam a few years earlier in NYC, these guys terrorized millions of people.