First Blood (2022–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Richard Ramirez: The Nightstalker - full transcript
One of the most well-known serial killers, Richard Ramirez terrorized Southern California in the mid-1980s, where anyone could be a target of the sadistic murderer.
- Ramirez, otherwise known
as the Night Stalker.
- He's the sadistic killer
wanted for a series
of murders and rapes.
- Her throat was horribly
slashed, almost to the bone.
- This was a very, very
personal attack on this woman.
- Intrusions, murders, rapes.
This was one of the most
dangerous people I've ever seen.
- We felt they
wouldn't catch him
before he killed
a lot more people.
- Who wants to be next? I don't.
- He encounters the
sleeping victim,
bristling with hostility.
- It was very, very hot.
It was that summer
of unbelievable heat
in Los Angeles County.
Most people at
that time were not
hesitant to leave windows open.
- That day, Jack Vincow walks
up to his mother's apartment,
the window is open and the
front door is unlocked.
Jack proceeds through
the front door
and saw that the living room
had been completely ransacked.
- It looked like somebody
had gone through
and taken property, or at
least looking for property.
- Jack continues
through the apartment
to his mother's bedroom,
in here he finds his mother
partially covered by a sheet.
- Her throat was horribly
slashed, almost to the bone.
Blood all over the place.
It's just a horrible,
horrible scene.
- He phones LAPD's 911 line
and tells them, "Someone
has murdered my mother,
please come quick."
- The police learned that
Jennie Vincow was 79 years old.
She had immigrated from
the USSR to New York City.
She raised two sons and
managed a rental property,
and later moved
out to Los Angeles
to be near her son, Jack.
- Jack was
undoubtedly horrified,
who would do this
kind of horrific thing
to an elderly woman?
After the responding officers
had secured the crime scene,
the detectives proceed
to the bedroom.
- What stood out to me most
was the amount of blood.
There were both slashes
and stab wounds.
- And there were
indications that the victim
had also been
sexually assaulted.
This was a very, very
personal attack on this woman.
- It appeared that
whoever did this came in
through a living room window,
had removed a window screen.
- The fingerprint was
successfully lifted
around the metal
rim of the screen.
Duty and shock, and the emotions
compete with one another.
And at least for me,
duty always won out.
We gotta make sure somebody's
brought to justice for this.
- Richard Ramirez was the
youngest of five children
to a couple living
in El Paso, Texas.
I would take care of him when
my mom was doing something else
- It's unclear whether that
might have had an effect
on the development of
Richard's brain areas
associated with impulse
control, morality,
judgment, executive functioning.
- His father was often working
and when he was around,
he was reportedly
quite aggressive
and explosive, judgemental.
- My dad,
- He felt that being physically
tough or actually brutal
was the thing you have to do
in order to keep
the kids in line.
- I think Richard felt very
detached from his father
and probably had a longing
for a structuring relationship
with a male figure.
- Jennie Vincow was not
your typical homicide victim
here in Los Angeles.
So much of the crime were
related to gang issues,
narcotic issues, drug issues.
And this just didn't
appear to be the case
with Jennie Vincow.
The detectives continue
their investigation,
canvasing neighborhoods,
re-interviewing people.
- But none of those
techniques worked.
So that case went unsolved.
I don't think anybody
could have predicted
what would happen next.
- Dads were like legends, right?
My dad was like that.
World War II vet.
He was in the Battle of the
Bulge with General Patton.
I joined the military too.
And that's how we became,
you know, really close.
And Maxine, my stepmother
was a great role model too.
She was a CPA and an
attorney at the time.
- They were successful
business owners.
They owned a couple
of pizza restaurants.
- Upon their arrival
at the front,
the men saw the door to be ajar,
peeked around the door.
- Mr. Zazzara was in
a living room area,
dead from a bullet
wound to the head.
- God only knows why
it happened like that,
but this is the
ultimate in evil.
- When the police
arrive on the scene,
they contacted the two
callers who tell them,
that the home was owned by
Vincent and Maxine Zazzara.
The police officers find
Vincent Zazzara dead on a sofa.
He had a single gunshot
wound to the head
that appears to have been
fired at a close range.
And then the officers find
Maxine Zazzara, partially nude.
And she appears essentially
to have been butchered
in the bedroom.
- They thought she may have
been sexually assaulted as well.
So it's just a horrendous,
horrendous crime scene.
- I went to the house right
away and it was cops everywhere.
And they told me
I couldn't go in
because you know, it was a
crime scene and all that.
My dad, he was the glue that
held our family together.
For holidays, he would like,
make huge plates of lasagna.
And if he came over to
the house, he goes,
"What are you, you look like
you're starving to death.
Get over here."
After this happened, every
time there's a holiday,
it's a bad day.
- I noticed that there was a
bucket right under the window.
- On that bucket
was a shoe print,
in the adjacent flower bed
a similar shoe print
was discovered.
It was huge.
It could turn out to be
compelling evidence and a lead
that helps identify the killer.
- Miguel, oh man, that guy,
when he came back from Vietnam.
- He bragged about
killing women, Vietnamese
and Vietcong women as
well, molesting them,
decapitating some of
them with a machete.
- He's got puberty overlapping
with exposure to violence.
And I think he
started to realize
that he was sexually aroused
by images of violence.
- So there was a tragic incident
where Ramirez was spending
time with his cousin.
- For a healthy,
average individual,
that would've been a horrendous
and traumatic experience.
I think for somebody
like Ramirez,
all of the gore and
violence of the moment
was probably
profoundly exciting.
- Unfortunately Miguel
became something
of a surrogate father
figure to Ramirez.
And I think really inspired him.
- The particularly brutal
nature of the murders
of Vincent and Maxine
Zazzara drove an urgency.
- But there was no
suspect, and at the time,
there was no connection between
the Zazzara murder scene
and the Vincow murder scene.
- There's a whole
grouping of murders.
They seem to dominate
in the suburban areas,
but there's no real
commonality to it.
Some are by gunshot,
some by stabbing weapons.
- Victims of different
ages, different races,
certainly different communities.
On one of the locations,
there was a pentagram
drawn up on the wall.
- So many of the
descriptions pointed
to this being the same man.
He was described as a
rather tall, thin, Mexican
or white male,
stringy dark hair.
- By July, things were
heating up literally
and figuratively.
It almost seemed
like every weekend,
there was another
attack, another murder,
people were really scared.
- [Man] Lock your doors,
lock your windows.
- Who wants to be next? I don't.
- In July of 1985,
nobody felt safe.
This was the summer
of horrible murders
that left the people,
uneasy, afraid,
and unsecure in
their very own homes.
- I was concerned,
very concerned.
They were suspecting
that it was somebody
breaking into
houses at nighttime.
I was 19 at the time.
I said, "Grandma, you
need to lock your doors.
Please just lock
the doors at night."
"I'm not going to
lock the doors."
They were mid-westerners who
left their back door open
because their neighbor
might need something.
- My parents were just
the most wonderful parents
anybody can have.
My father was a mechanic
and he owned several
service stations all over
from Hollywood to East LA.
My mother worked as
a security guard.
- What I really remember
was more than anything else,
their family meant
everything to them.
- I remember that we pulled up
in front of my parents' home,
I went to the back door, and
I noticed that it was open.
Then I walked down the hall
and to the left of the hall
was their bedroom.
And that's where they were.
The room was covered with blood.
My father was laying
back on the bed.
- He was struck with a machete
and he was shot with a 22.
Lela was shot three
times in the face.
- I went to the front.
I was screaming.
My five-year-old was
standing on the curb.
To this day, I'll never
forget her face. She was just.
- One day changed
everybody's life forever.
The trust and innocence,
and it's all gone,
and it never comes
back the same way ever.
- It does seem
that about age 14,
that here were glimmers
of anti-social behavior
being very drawn to
romantic, gothic imagery
from horror movies, like
vampires that break in the night
and prey upon individual.
And I think it really started
to gel into his personality.
- Hunting women,
dismembering people,
for Ramirez these were fantasies
that were being played
out on the screen
and then he would
take them home.
And his fantasy life
would take over.
Ramirez began working at a
local hotel, doing various jobs.
He was learning how
to peep on people,
which I think must have had
a kind of godlike feeling
for him.
There's an incident that
I think he starts to show
the progression into
growing violence
where Ramirez, using his
master key goes into a room
where there is a woman who
comes out of the bathroom.
He ultimately begins
to assault her sexually.
The woman's husband
comes into the room,
and winds up severely beating
Ramirez, leading to him,
winding up in a hospital.
Reportedly, no
charges were pressed.
And ultimately, Ramirez
got away with this.
- By then, the police
at a task force.
As these murders occurred,
the investigators
noticed similarities
in the crimes.
There was a plethora of
clues, including a pentagram
that started appearing at
some of the crime scenes.
And at the Kneiding scene,
there was a bullet recovered
that matched one of
the other crime scenes.
- The same day the
Kneidings were murdered,
there was another murder, just
11 miles away in Sun Valley.
In this case they
spoke of a killer
who demanded them to hail Satan.
- The survivors described
the tall, thin individual,
long black, greasy
hair, kind of bad skin
and really bad teeth.
The word was out, the news
media even gave it a nickname.
- Officials in Los Angeles
are offering a $10,000 reward
for information
leading to the capture
of the so-called Night Stalker.
He is the sadistic killer
wanted for a series of murders
and rapes.
- And when he got a
name, the Night Stalker,
he had to live up to it.
- It's been more than a year
since the Jennie Vincow murder
and the entire region
is living in fear.
- We felt that they
wouldn't catch him
before he killed
a lot more people.
The fear just consumes you.
- They ask us to look
at 30 or 40 cases
that might be put together.
Child abductions,
intrusions, murders, rapes,
different types of weaponry.
There seem to be no
similarities in victims.
- But there were similarities
in the method of operation
of going into the residence,
killing the male, sexually
assaulting the woman.
- Found in several of the
murders was a shoe print.
- Then of course there
is the pentagrams.
There's the discussion of Satan.
There's a lot of linkages there.
There's no doubt about it.
- And the only question
left was, who was it?
And people were telling me
that he was going through
the garbage cans and eating,
I go, "No way, no way,
he wouldn't do that."
- I think at this time, Ramirez
is also transient, homeless.
And drug use was really just
ramping up more and more.
- Cocaine is extremely
destabilizing,
causing a diminished
sense of self control
over one's more improper urges.
- He's basically supporting
himself and a serious drug habit
with repeat burglary.
And then ultimately I think
falls in love with Satanism.
- Ramirez's clearly was
searching for a structured
sense of self to give
him personal identity.
And first I think he
latched onto Miguel,
and then, Satan becomes
something of a father figure.
- On August 24th, the Night
Stalker strikes again.
He commits crimes
in Orange County,
but both the victims survive.
- Right before the attack,
a young boy saw the suspect
in an orange Toyota.
- Law enforcement was able
to identify the specific car
and it was found,
dumped about three miles
from where it was
originally stolen.
- There was a fingerprint
found on the rear view mirror.
It was a huge break in the case.
- Utilizing relatively new
fingerprint technology,
the fingerprint was linked to
a prior arrest in Los Angeles
for auto theft and his
photograph was on file.
- It was a pretty good likeness
of the sketch developed
by some of the survivors.
- The suspect was
Richard Ramirez.
- An alert is going out to
all law enforcement agencies
and the state of California
and surrounding regions
to be on the lookout
for this individual
who is to be considered armed
and extremely dangerous.
- And I called my mom and I
hadn't told her, you know,
"Turn on the TV,
Richie is on TV."
Richie was the Night Stalker.
They couldn't believe it.
- It was a bombshell.
Everybody was
looking out for him.
- And the community at large
was hunting for a serial killer.
- Ramirez's photo was
all over the media,
both locally and nationally
because of the number of
crimes that he had committed.
- We became aware that Richard
Ramirez was known to frequent
the terminal of the
Greyhound Bus Line
in downtown Los Angeles.
- They set up an
undercover operation there
where they staked it out.
- He went into a little
store to buy something,
and the people in
there said it was him,
and it started as a whisper
and then ended up a yell.
And then of course
they called the police.
He got on the bus and people
were reading the newspaper
and he was sitting right there.
"Oh, that's him right there."
- And he went out and
ran two or three miles
through 12 lanes of traffic,
climbed over fences.
- And then Ramirez was
in East Los Angeles,
when he attempted to steal
a car from a pregnant woman.
- There was a mob of
citizens in East LA,
and they went after him.
- They risked their own
selves to go after him.
They did not know
whether he had a weapon.
They were heroes.
- So it was a hot night,
Ramirez is really,
very high on cocaine.
He doesn't have
a place to sleep.
He's just kind of driving
around in a stolen car.
- He's trying to put
together enough money
through his various
illegal activities
to possibly pick
up a sex worker.
He winds up in Glassel Park.
- There is the trope
that a vampire requires
your invitation to enter.
And in the case of Ramirez,
there was the quality
of interpreting things
like open windows as almost
being inviting to him.
And one particular home,
there's a open window.
- Ramirez enters the home
and begins to rifle through
the things that are in the home.
- But there appeared
not to be very much that
he could steal.
It may have angered him.
- And in that moment,
you have somebody
who was looking for an
outlet, for aggression
and sexual excitement
earlier in that evening.
And didn't have it.
And he encounters
the sleeping victim
kind of opportunistically.
- At this point, you know,
he's in a soup of different
things that have been present
since he was young.
This attraction towards gore
and violence, the use of drugs.
- From the father's
maltreatment, the witnessing of
his own cousin killing
his wife for a trivial reason.
The tendency to psychopathy
is multiplying.
- He's now broken
in to get money,
here he finds this
sleeping victim,
Jennie Vincow.
Imagine somebody
bristling with hostility
who would really
think of you only
in terms of how they could
take advantage of you,
make use of you.
And he finds a knife
there in the apartment,
and then winds up exploding
into a kind of a
frenzy of violence.
- Jennie Vincow,
even at 79 years old,
tried to fend off her attacker.
She was doing everything she
could to save her own life.
- Ramirez winds up
butchering Jennie Vincow.
She was really ultimately
mutilated by him.
He probably had a kind of
orgasmic sexualized thrill
from the entire frenzy.
And I think would've been left
with a feeling of control,
power, domination, feeling
on top of the world.
- It was a really long trial.
Yeah. It just seemed
like a circus.
- He made faces, he
made hand gestures,
but when I testified, I looked
him straight in the eyes
and he just put his head down.
He's nothing more than a coward.
That was what we wanted.
We wanted him put to death.
Justice will never,
ever really be done,
but justice was done to the
extent that it could be.
- He didn't care who,
he didn't care when,
he just played God,
rather than Satan,
and decided who
lived and who died.
- He's a psychopath,
partly because of
inherited tendencies,
coupled with the brutalization,
by the father, coupled
with the drug abuse.
And he'd witnessed his cousin,
you know, killing his wife.
- His cousin pillaged
and killed in Vietnam
in small villages probably
and got away with it.
For Richard, his villages
were the bedrooms
on the ground floors of
houses that left their doors
and windows open.
He probably thought Miguel
would be proud of him.
- I have a tremendous
amount of anger
with regard to how society
glorifies serial killers,
how I guarantee you there
won't be too many people
that know the name of victims,
but they'll know the
name of the killer.
- It's hard to have faith
when you've lost so much.
I just try to live.
Remember the good things.
- Do I forgive him? I
will never forgive him.
He took my parents.
- They were the light, they
were the glue, they were..
Thank God I had them for the
nineteen years I had 'em.
That was a gift.
as the Night Stalker.
- He's the sadistic killer
wanted for a series
of murders and rapes.
- Her throat was horribly
slashed, almost to the bone.
- This was a very, very
personal attack on this woman.
- Intrusions, murders, rapes.
This was one of the most
dangerous people I've ever seen.
- We felt they
wouldn't catch him
before he killed
a lot more people.
- Who wants to be next? I don't.
- He encounters the
sleeping victim,
bristling with hostility.
- It was very, very hot.
It was that summer
of unbelievable heat
in Los Angeles County.
Most people at
that time were not
hesitant to leave windows open.
- That day, Jack Vincow walks
up to his mother's apartment,
the window is open and the
front door is unlocked.
Jack proceeds through
the front door
and saw that the living room
had been completely ransacked.
- It looked like somebody
had gone through
and taken property, or at
least looking for property.
- Jack continues
through the apartment
to his mother's bedroom,
in here he finds his mother
partially covered by a sheet.
- Her throat was horribly
slashed, almost to the bone.
Blood all over the place.
It's just a horrible,
horrible scene.
- He phones LAPD's 911 line
and tells them, "Someone
has murdered my mother,
please come quick."
- The police learned that
Jennie Vincow was 79 years old.
She had immigrated from
the USSR to New York City.
She raised two sons and
managed a rental property,
and later moved
out to Los Angeles
to be near her son, Jack.
- Jack was
undoubtedly horrified,
who would do this
kind of horrific thing
to an elderly woman?
After the responding officers
had secured the crime scene,
the detectives proceed
to the bedroom.
- What stood out to me most
was the amount of blood.
There were both slashes
and stab wounds.
- And there were
indications that the victim
had also been
sexually assaulted.
This was a very, very
personal attack on this woman.
- It appeared that
whoever did this came in
through a living room window,
had removed a window screen.
- The fingerprint was
successfully lifted
around the metal
rim of the screen.
Duty and shock, and the emotions
compete with one another.
And at least for me,
duty always won out.
We gotta make sure somebody's
brought to justice for this.
- Richard Ramirez was the
youngest of five children
to a couple living
in El Paso, Texas.
I would take care of him when
my mom was doing something else
- It's unclear whether that
might have had an effect
on the development of
Richard's brain areas
associated with impulse
control, morality,
judgment, executive functioning.
- His father was often working
and when he was around,
he was reportedly
quite aggressive
and explosive, judgemental.
- My dad,
- He felt that being physically
tough or actually brutal
was the thing you have to do
in order to keep
the kids in line.
- I think Richard felt very
detached from his father
and probably had a longing
for a structuring relationship
with a male figure.
- Jennie Vincow was not
your typical homicide victim
here in Los Angeles.
So much of the crime were
related to gang issues,
narcotic issues, drug issues.
And this just didn't
appear to be the case
with Jennie Vincow.
The detectives continue
their investigation,
canvasing neighborhoods,
re-interviewing people.
- But none of those
techniques worked.
So that case went unsolved.
I don't think anybody
could have predicted
what would happen next.
- Dads were like legends, right?
My dad was like that.
World War II vet.
He was in the Battle of the
Bulge with General Patton.
I joined the military too.
And that's how we became,
you know, really close.
And Maxine, my stepmother
was a great role model too.
She was a CPA and an
attorney at the time.
- They were successful
business owners.
They owned a couple
of pizza restaurants.
- Upon their arrival
at the front,
the men saw the door to be ajar,
peeked around the door.
- Mr. Zazzara was in
a living room area,
dead from a bullet
wound to the head.
- God only knows why
it happened like that,
but this is the
ultimate in evil.
- When the police
arrive on the scene,
they contacted the two
callers who tell them,
that the home was owned by
Vincent and Maxine Zazzara.
The police officers find
Vincent Zazzara dead on a sofa.
He had a single gunshot
wound to the head
that appears to have been
fired at a close range.
And then the officers find
Maxine Zazzara, partially nude.
And she appears essentially
to have been butchered
in the bedroom.
- They thought she may have
been sexually assaulted as well.
So it's just a horrendous,
horrendous crime scene.
- I went to the house right
away and it was cops everywhere.
And they told me
I couldn't go in
because you know, it was a
crime scene and all that.
My dad, he was the glue that
held our family together.
For holidays, he would like,
make huge plates of lasagna.
And if he came over to
the house, he goes,
"What are you, you look like
you're starving to death.
Get over here."
After this happened, every
time there's a holiday,
it's a bad day.
- I noticed that there was a
bucket right under the window.
- On that bucket
was a shoe print,
in the adjacent flower bed
a similar shoe print
was discovered.
It was huge.
It could turn out to be
compelling evidence and a lead
that helps identify the killer.
- Miguel, oh man, that guy,
when he came back from Vietnam.
- He bragged about
killing women, Vietnamese
and Vietcong women as
well, molesting them,
decapitating some of
them with a machete.
- He's got puberty overlapping
with exposure to violence.
And I think he
started to realize
that he was sexually aroused
by images of violence.
- So there was a tragic incident
where Ramirez was spending
time with his cousin.
- For a healthy,
average individual,
that would've been a horrendous
and traumatic experience.
I think for somebody
like Ramirez,
all of the gore and
violence of the moment
was probably
profoundly exciting.
- Unfortunately Miguel
became something
of a surrogate father
figure to Ramirez.
And I think really inspired him.
- The particularly brutal
nature of the murders
of Vincent and Maxine
Zazzara drove an urgency.
- But there was no
suspect, and at the time,
there was no connection between
the Zazzara murder scene
and the Vincow murder scene.
- There's a whole
grouping of murders.
They seem to dominate
in the suburban areas,
but there's no real
commonality to it.
Some are by gunshot,
some by stabbing weapons.
- Victims of different
ages, different races,
certainly different communities.
On one of the locations,
there was a pentagram
drawn up on the wall.
- So many of the
descriptions pointed
to this being the same man.
He was described as a
rather tall, thin, Mexican
or white male,
stringy dark hair.
- By July, things were
heating up literally
and figuratively.
It almost seemed
like every weekend,
there was another
attack, another murder,
people were really scared.
- [Man] Lock your doors,
lock your windows.
- Who wants to be next? I don't.
- In July of 1985,
nobody felt safe.
This was the summer
of horrible murders
that left the people,
uneasy, afraid,
and unsecure in
their very own homes.
- I was concerned,
very concerned.
They were suspecting
that it was somebody
breaking into
houses at nighttime.
I was 19 at the time.
I said, "Grandma, you
need to lock your doors.
Please just lock
the doors at night."
"I'm not going to
lock the doors."
They were mid-westerners who
left their back door open
because their neighbor
might need something.
- My parents were just
the most wonderful parents
anybody can have.
My father was a mechanic
and he owned several
service stations all over
from Hollywood to East LA.
My mother worked as
a security guard.
- What I really remember
was more than anything else,
their family meant
everything to them.
- I remember that we pulled up
in front of my parents' home,
I went to the back door, and
I noticed that it was open.
Then I walked down the hall
and to the left of the hall
was their bedroom.
And that's where they were.
The room was covered with blood.
My father was laying
back on the bed.
- He was struck with a machete
and he was shot with a 22.
Lela was shot three
times in the face.
- I went to the front.
I was screaming.
My five-year-old was
standing on the curb.
To this day, I'll never
forget her face. She was just.
- One day changed
everybody's life forever.
The trust and innocence,
and it's all gone,
and it never comes
back the same way ever.
- It does seem
that about age 14,
that here were glimmers
of anti-social behavior
being very drawn to
romantic, gothic imagery
from horror movies, like
vampires that break in the night
and prey upon individual.
And I think it really started
to gel into his personality.
- Hunting women,
dismembering people,
for Ramirez these were fantasies
that were being played
out on the screen
and then he would
take them home.
And his fantasy life
would take over.
Ramirez began working at a
local hotel, doing various jobs.
He was learning how
to peep on people,
which I think must have had
a kind of godlike feeling
for him.
There's an incident that
I think he starts to show
the progression into
growing violence
where Ramirez, using his
master key goes into a room
where there is a woman who
comes out of the bathroom.
He ultimately begins
to assault her sexually.
The woman's husband
comes into the room,
and winds up severely beating
Ramirez, leading to him,
winding up in a hospital.
Reportedly, no
charges were pressed.
And ultimately, Ramirez
got away with this.
- By then, the police
at a task force.
As these murders occurred,
the investigators
noticed similarities
in the crimes.
There was a plethora of
clues, including a pentagram
that started appearing at
some of the crime scenes.
And at the Kneiding scene,
there was a bullet recovered
that matched one of
the other crime scenes.
- The same day the
Kneidings were murdered,
there was another murder, just
11 miles away in Sun Valley.
In this case they
spoke of a killer
who demanded them to hail Satan.
- The survivors described
the tall, thin individual,
long black, greasy
hair, kind of bad skin
and really bad teeth.
The word was out, the news
media even gave it a nickname.
- Officials in Los Angeles
are offering a $10,000 reward
for information
leading to the capture
of the so-called Night Stalker.
He is the sadistic killer
wanted for a series of murders
and rapes.
- And when he got a
name, the Night Stalker,
he had to live up to it.
- It's been more than a year
since the Jennie Vincow murder
and the entire region
is living in fear.
- We felt that they
wouldn't catch him
before he killed
a lot more people.
The fear just consumes you.
- They ask us to look
at 30 or 40 cases
that might be put together.
Child abductions,
intrusions, murders, rapes,
different types of weaponry.
There seem to be no
similarities in victims.
- But there were similarities
in the method of operation
of going into the residence,
killing the male, sexually
assaulting the woman.
- Found in several of the
murders was a shoe print.
- Then of course there
is the pentagrams.
There's the discussion of Satan.
There's a lot of linkages there.
There's no doubt about it.
- And the only question
left was, who was it?
And people were telling me
that he was going through
the garbage cans and eating,
I go, "No way, no way,
he wouldn't do that."
- I think at this time, Ramirez
is also transient, homeless.
And drug use was really just
ramping up more and more.
- Cocaine is extremely
destabilizing,
causing a diminished
sense of self control
over one's more improper urges.
- He's basically supporting
himself and a serious drug habit
with repeat burglary.
And then ultimately I think
falls in love with Satanism.
- Ramirez's clearly was
searching for a structured
sense of self to give
him personal identity.
And first I think he
latched onto Miguel,
and then, Satan becomes
something of a father figure.
- On August 24th, the Night
Stalker strikes again.
He commits crimes
in Orange County,
but both the victims survive.
- Right before the attack,
a young boy saw the suspect
in an orange Toyota.
- Law enforcement was able
to identify the specific car
and it was found,
dumped about three miles
from where it was
originally stolen.
- There was a fingerprint
found on the rear view mirror.
It was a huge break in the case.
- Utilizing relatively new
fingerprint technology,
the fingerprint was linked to
a prior arrest in Los Angeles
for auto theft and his
photograph was on file.
- It was a pretty good likeness
of the sketch developed
by some of the survivors.
- The suspect was
Richard Ramirez.
- An alert is going out to
all law enforcement agencies
and the state of California
and surrounding regions
to be on the lookout
for this individual
who is to be considered armed
and extremely dangerous.
- And I called my mom and I
hadn't told her, you know,
"Turn on the TV,
Richie is on TV."
Richie was the Night Stalker.
They couldn't believe it.
- It was a bombshell.
Everybody was
looking out for him.
- And the community at large
was hunting for a serial killer.
- Ramirez's photo was
all over the media,
both locally and nationally
because of the number of
crimes that he had committed.
- We became aware that Richard
Ramirez was known to frequent
the terminal of the
Greyhound Bus Line
in downtown Los Angeles.
- They set up an
undercover operation there
where they staked it out.
- He went into a little
store to buy something,
and the people in
there said it was him,
and it started as a whisper
and then ended up a yell.
And then of course
they called the police.
He got on the bus and people
were reading the newspaper
and he was sitting right there.
"Oh, that's him right there."
- And he went out and
ran two or three miles
through 12 lanes of traffic,
climbed over fences.
- And then Ramirez was
in East Los Angeles,
when he attempted to steal
a car from a pregnant woman.
- There was a mob of
citizens in East LA,
and they went after him.
- They risked their own
selves to go after him.
They did not know
whether he had a weapon.
They were heroes.
- So it was a hot night,
Ramirez is really,
very high on cocaine.
He doesn't have
a place to sleep.
He's just kind of driving
around in a stolen car.
- He's trying to put
together enough money
through his various
illegal activities
to possibly pick
up a sex worker.
He winds up in Glassel Park.
- There is the trope
that a vampire requires
your invitation to enter.
And in the case of Ramirez,
there was the quality
of interpreting things
like open windows as almost
being inviting to him.
And one particular home,
there's a open window.
- Ramirez enters the home
and begins to rifle through
the things that are in the home.
- But there appeared
not to be very much that
he could steal.
It may have angered him.
- And in that moment,
you have somebody
who was looking for an
outlet, for aggression
and sexual excitement
earlier in that evening.
And didn't have it.
And he encounters
the sleeping victim
kind of opportunistically.
- At this point, you know,
he's in a soup of different
things that have been present
since he was young.
This attraction towards gore
and violence, the use of drugs.
- From the father's
maltreatment, the witnessing of
his own cousin killing
his wife for a trivial reason.
The tendency to psychopathy
is multiplying.
- He's now broken
in to get money,
here he finds this
sleeping victim,
Jennie Vincow.
Imagine somebody
bristling with hostility
who would really
think of you only
in terms of how they could
take advantage of you,
make use of you.
And he finds a knife
there in the apartment,
and then winds up exploding
into a kind of a
frenzy of violence.
- Jennie Vincow,
even at 79 years old,
tried to fend off her attacker.
She was doing everything she
could to save her own life.
- Ramirez winds up
butchering Jennie Vincow.
She was really ultimately
mutilated by him.
He probably had a kind of
orgasmic sexualized thrill
from the entire frenzy.
And I think would've been left
with a feeling of control,
power, domination, feeling
on top of the world.
- It was a really long trial.
Yeah. It just seemed
like a circus.
- He made faces, he
made hand gestures,
but when I testified, I looked
him straight in the eyes
and he just put his head down.
He's nothing more than a coward.
That was what we wanted.
We wanted him put to death.
Justice will never,
ever really be done,
but justice was done to the
extent that it could be.
- He didn't care who,
he didn't care when,
he just played God,
rather than Satan,
and decided who
lived and who died.
- He's a psychopath,
partly because of
inherited tendencies,
coupled with the brutalization,
by the father, coupled
with the drug abuse.
And he'd witnessed his cousin,
you know, killing his wife.
- His cousin pillaged
and killed in Vietnam
in small villages probably
and got away with it.
For Richard, his villages
were the bedrooms
on the ground floors of
houses that left their doors
and windows open.
He probably thought Miguel
would be proud of him.
- I have a tremendous
amount of anger
with regard to how society
glorifies serial killers,
how I guarantee you there
won't be too many people
that know the name of victims,
but they'll know the
name of the killer.
- It's hard to have faith
when you've lost so much.
I just try to live.
Remember the good things.
- Do I forgive him? I
will never forgive him.
He took my parents.
- They were the light, they
were the glue, they were..
Thank God I had them for the
nineteen years I had 'em.
That was a gift.