Latest / True Crime California / TCC #29: The Night Stalker - Richard Ramirez, Part 1

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TCC #29: The Night Stalker - Richard Ramirez, Part 1 · True Crime California

0:04
Speaker 1: Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
0:07
indie podcasts. Hello. Hello, I'm Courtney and this is The
0:19
Book of the Dead, a true crime podcast based out
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of New Jersey. For those looking for a podcast that
0:26
focuses on the victims and who they were, or cases
0:30
where the family is directly involved in the telling of
0:32
their loved one stories. Each chapter of this podcast is
0:37
dedicated to the victim the feature. Here you can find
0:41
cases you may have never heard of, or interviews with
0:45
experts that have dedicated their lives to protect and serve,
0:49
and occasionally hear from the victim themselves. So get comfortable,
0:54
grab a drink, and settle in for another chapter of
0:58
the Book of the Dead.
1:09
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
1:15
and I'm glad you're here. Hey everybody, I'm back. It's
1:29
another episode and I'm excited to be here. I decided
1:33
to tackle a huge case. Bretty Breddy, Bretty Broderick. She's glutenous. Lady.
1:39
Betty Broderick is a big case, but not as big
1:44
as good old Richard Ramirez, which is what I'll be
1:48
doing this week. Before I get into that, I just
1:51
want to say, the world is on fire. Everything sucks,
1:54
and if you're a capitalist, you are poop. Don't listen
1:57
to my podcast, go away, you suck. That's all I
2:00
have to say about that. Power to the people. Anyway,
2:02
I hope you've all been having a great week. I've
2:05
been having a great week working my ass off. I
2:07
had just hit my mic.
2:08
Speaker 1: Sorry.
2:10
Speaker 2: Basically, I just do work and then take my kid
2:12
to various baseball games. But it's nice because a lot
2:15
of the teams he plays with are like very good friends,
2:17
not only of his but of our family. So it's
2:19
kind of nice. But man, is my social calendar pact.
2:22
It's crazy. So it's a Saturday, it's like, what time
2:28
is it? Six thirty pm. I'm gonna record for a
2:31
little while and then the Dodgers come on, and yes,
2:33
I do watch the Dodgers. Not a shame to admit
2:36
that I like true crime and baseball. And then when
2:40
that's over, maybe I'll finish up. Maybe I'll finish tomorrow.
2:42
But either way, I'm going to get this to you
2:44
on time following a bi weekly release. I might split that.
2:49
I not might. I will be splitting Richard Ramirez into
2:52
two parts and the first one, so I might do
2:57
them back to back weeks instead of making you wait
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two whole weeks. With the second part. We'll see how
3:01
everything nets out. But I make no promises, but I
3:05
am hopeful, and I believe you should be hopeful as well. Anyway,
3:08
so we're going to get into the case of Richard Ramirez,
3:11
otherwise known as the night Stalker and otherwise lesser known
3:17
as Ricardo Leva Munos Ramirez, which is the name that
3:21
he was born with. So this case is pretty close
3:24
to my heart because I was actually living in Orange County,
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which is very close to where he did most of
3:27
his killing when these murders were taking place. I was
3:31
only like a year or two old. No that's not true. Yeah, no,
3:34
it is true. I was like a year or two old.
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But like my family remembers it. You know, my friends
3:39
who are older than me, I'll remember it. I think
3:41
he only killed one person in Orange County, but like
3:43
that's enough to cause it panic when he's on the loose.
3:46
If you guys don't know this case, first of all,
3:49
what but he killed a lot of fucking people. So
3:52
if even one of them is somewhere near you, you
3:55
are not sure whether or not you're gonna be the
3:57
next one, you know what I'm saying. So anyway, one
4:01
of my older friends actually told me that when this
4:03
was going on, he was sleeping with a hunting knife
4:06
under his bed, like just to be safe, which is
4:09
weird because as we get into this case, you'll see
4:11
a lot of people had weapons and it didn't always
4:14
work out well for them, But I mean, still worth
4:17
a shot, I guess. And I also wanted to say
4:19
that same friend and my uncle and a bunch of
4:22
other people I know were in a band. They were
4:24
actually fairly popular in the nineties in Orange County. They
4:27
were called Vitamin L. And they released a song called
4:30
Richard Ramirez and one of them gave me permission to
4:33
play it at the end. It's not great, they were
4:36
like they were like the perfect example of nineties rap rock.
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So I want to apologize, but I also think it's
4:44
really interesting to hear. First of all, the nineties are
4:47
back right now, so maybe everybody will love it and
4:49
it'll reignite like this Vitamin L comeback. I don't know,
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but it's just funny because they're like a goofy band
4:55
and so the lyrics are kind of funny, but it
4:57
also really like you know, shows that people it was
5:00
a huge This is a huge thing. Richard Ramirez was
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a huge thing for people in southern California, including my
5:06
family and my friends. So I thought i'd just add
5:09
it at the end here, just you know, for funzies.
5:12
So anyway, let's get into the Tale of the night Stalker.
5:14
Otherwise known as Richard Ramirez. Ricardo Leva Munos Ramirez was
5:21
born on February twenty ninth, nineteen sixty, which is a leapyer,
5:25
so just keep that in mind, already already a bad sign.
5:30
He was born in El Paso, Texas, to one Mexican
5:32
and one Mexican American parent, both of whom lived in
5:35
Mexico but moved to Texas to work for a better
5:37
life for their children. His other siblings, so there before
5:42
I say, I believe that their different books will put
5:46
different names. I read some of his nieces memoir, but
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she didn't really she wasn't clear. Hers more like poetry
5:55
almost like her book. So all of the siblings and
5:59
like aunts and uncle was like it's difficult to tell
6:01
who's who. And then there was another book written and
6:03
they kind of changed the names of some of the siblings,
6:07
and I'm not exactly sure why, but I believe his
6:11
siblings were Reuben, Robert, Julian Junior, and Rosa other or Ruth.
6:17
I'm sorry, I think her name is actually Ruth.
6:19
Speaker 3: Now.
6:19
Speaker 2: Julian and Mercedes were married in Juarez, Mexico, and moved
6:23
back and forth over the border for a time until
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Julian was able to get his citizenship in America. So
6:30
Richard was the youngest of five and was born in
6:32
America after both of his parents were able to legally
6:35
live here. Now, Mercedes was an American citizen by birth,
6:39
having been born and raised in Colorado, but didn't actually
6:42
learn English for most of her life and was even
6:45
once deported along with her two young American citizen children
6:49
by El Paso police, who shockingly were not interested in
6:52
the actual law, but rather just wanted to deport brown
6:55
people at random, which sounds very, unfortunately, very familiar. So anyway,
7:00
something interesting about El Paso and its border sharing Mexican
7:03
Counterpartjuarez is that for a time they were both just
7:07
downwin from some very serious nuclear testing, specifically the nineteen
7:11
forty five Trinity test, and when the wind blew just right,
7:15
which it did pretty often. Both towns would end up
7:18
covered in the fallout from these nuclear tests. Now, our government,
7:23
ever a pillar of honesty and justice, did their best
7:26
to cover this up, but all throughout the late forties
7:29
and into the fifties, babies in this area were born
7:32
with severe deformities, including issues with their bones, brains, and lungs.
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Richard's older brother Joseph, who I actually don't think I
7:40
mentioned so it was Ignacio, no Reuben, Robert. I don't
7:45
know anyway, who Lean Junior might have been. Robert might
7:49
have been anybody anyway. One of his brothers had bones
7:53
that grew in crooked and had to have them shaved
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down by a doctor, which was horrifically painful and did
7:59
not cure the issue, but at least allowed him to
8:02
walk mostly unaided, which was sort of the best he
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could hope for given these deformities. One of his other brothers,
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I believe his first brother, was born with giant like
8:11
knots all over his head, like half golf balls sticking
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out all around his head. But those went away, and
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after that if the family just kind of figured he
8:21
was okay. Now the family was poor, but the parents
8:24
loved each other very much. That being said, they both
8:27
had to work really hard jobs, manual labor, and while
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pregnant with Richard, his mother, Mercedes, was working in a
8:34
boot making plant, using chemicals to treat and paint the boots.
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And beyond the possible fallout exposure the other children had
8:41
been exposed to, Richard's unborn body was being subjected to
8:44
chemical toxicity that was so bad his mother's doctor told
8:48
her she had to quit or she would lose the baby.
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And she did quit for a time. She did go back,
8:54
but she did quit. And however, whatever warning she was given.
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When Richard was born, he was healthy as far as
9:03
anybody could tell. There was nothing outwardly wrong with him,
9:07
no bone defects or breathing issues like all of his
9:09
other siblings. Now, that being said, as he got older
9:12
and even as like a baby and a toddler, he
9:14
was extremely hyperactive. He could never sit still. He always
9:18
wanted to run around and play and dance, and that
9:20
to me sounds like ADHD, which could have definitely been
9:23
from toxicity to something, you know, some sort of toxicity
9:26
in the womb. Now, Richard loved music from a young
9:29
age and would hyper fixate on listening to music, as
9:32
well as trying to figure out how to turn the
9:34
family's radio on by himself so he could dance. This started,
9:38
according to his mother, before he was even a full
9:41
year old. She would put on the radio and Richard
9:44
or Richie as they called him, and I will use
9:46
that interchangeably at least in his young life, would bob
9:49
his head and tap his feet in time with the music,
9:52
even before he could walk or talk. Now, this was
9:54
very cute but also a very particular thing about Richie,
9:58
and it was also unfortunately some that led to get
10:00
another setback for him. Beyond whatever the chemicals did to
10:04
his brain in utero, Richie also had a very scary
10:07
near death experience when he was only two years old.
10:11
His mother, actually, like I mentioned, went back to the
10:14
boot factory and his father was a railroad track layer,
10:18
so both would be away from the house for many
10:20
hours a day. The other kids were all quite a
10:23
bit older that not quite a bit, but at least
10:25
like five years older than him, so they were all
10:27
in school, but Richie, being only two years old, had
10:30
to have a babysitter, and this babysitter would watch him
10:33
in the mornings until his older siblings came home and
10:35
took over. Now, one day, two year old Ritchie asks
10:39
this babysitter over and over to turn on the radio
10:42
so he could dance to the music. She was watching
10:45
TV and told him no over and over and refused
10:47
to pay any attention to him. Now, the family radio
10:50
was on top of a very heavy shelf, so Richie
10:53
decided he would climb said shelf and turn the radio
10:56
on himself. Instead, he ended up tipping this very heavy
11:01
shelf over onto himself, mainly onto his head, which led
11:05
to him being knocked unconscious for fifteen minutes. Now fifteen
11:10
minutes is an insanely long time to be out from
11:13
a hit to the head, and especially when you're that young,
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so this was a very serious concussion type injury. He
11:22
was taken to the hospital where he received a few stitches,
11:24
and doctors said to keep a close eye on him
11:26
as he was very concussed, and that he should be
11:29
monitored while sleeping for the next few days. He eventually
11:33
seemed fine, but this was a very scary accident and
11:37
a head injury that he received as a child. A
11:42
few years later, Richie was at the park with his
11:44
older sister I believe her name is Ruth, and ran
11:47
towards her on the swing without thinking. She swung forward
11:51
directly into his forehead, knocking him unconscious and putting a
11:55
huge gash right in the middle of his forehead. His
11:58
older brother carried in a him home, and his mother
12:01
took him to the hospital, where they again stitched up
12:03
his head and told them he would be quote fine.
12:07
So here we have two major head traumas before he's
12:09
even ten years old, along with whatever poisoning he endured
12:12
in utero. So obviously not a great combo going on here.
12:17
Like I said, his other you know siblings had breathing issues,
12:20
physical deformities, but Richie, you know, seemed to come into
12:24
the world unscathed, which made these traumas, you know, even
12:27
worse because it's like, wow, maybe you wouldn't have been
12:30
so bad so so you know, so bad off. But
12:35
you know, the fates took care of that. But again,
12:39
I don't think he was fully unscathed. I think his
12:41
issues were like more than skin deep. But anyway, now,
12:45
when Richie was in the fifth grade, he had a
12:48
grand mall seizure in class, and then another one the
12:53
next day. Also, sorry if it sounds a little different,
12:57
my mic actually turned off and I did realize, So
13:00
I was just fucking going for fucking ten minutes with
13:03
my mic off. So anyway, okay, when he was in
13:09
the fifth grade, he had a seizure and then another
13:12
one the very next day. He then had multiple seizures
13:17
multiple times a week for about six or seven years,
13:20
until somehow he eventually mostly grew out of them. Even
13:24
before then, though, his sister said that when he was
13:27
really young, like like a year old, he would stare
13:30
off into space. He wouldn't respond to anybody, he wouldn't
13:35
like interact with the other kids. He would just kind
13:37
of like disappear for like fifteen minutes at a time,
13:41
And the family later realized that he was having petite
13:44
maral seizures. So even as a baby, he was having
13:48
seizures and they only later realized what was going on.
13:51
So I don't think that was from the head trauma,
13:53
because they were happening before that. So was it the
13:56
fallout exposure, was it the chemicals? Was it just how
13:59
he was born? You know, we'll never know now. Besides
14:05
these traumas, his home life also wasn't great, though it
14:08
was far better than I think a lot of people
14:10
are led to believe. His parents were deeply religious and
14:13
very strict, but they did love each other and all
14:16
of their children. Now, his father didn't drink for most
14:19
of Richard's young life that he did have anger issues,
14:22
which he mostly took out on himself, but often in
14:25
front of the family. So like if he was trying
14:26
to fix something and it wouldn't work, he'd like put
14:29
his fist through the wall, or like punch himself in
14:30
the head. He was irrational at times, and his children
14:34
were exposed to this like their entire lives, and even
14:37
seemed to kind of share in these violent outbursts here
14:41
and there, or they sort of manifested in different ways.
14:44
For instance, his sister, Ritchie's sister would lose her temper
14:49
and hit her brothers. And while his older brothers weren't
14:52
necessarily like violent, they did start getting into trouble in
14:55
their preteen and teen years, doing things like sniffing glue
14:59
and eventually breaking into people's homes and stealing things. They
15:03
also got into drugs like weed and LSD, which their
15:06
very Catholic parents were extremely unhappy about. After one of
15:11
Ritchie's older brothers got arrested for breaking and entering. Their
15:14
father beat him very badly, and he did this with
15:18
their mother's blessing, as both parents were horrified that their
15:22
children would ever behave in such a way. Unfortunately, this
15:26
did not keep their kids from continuing to behave poorly,
15:29
which could have come from you know, trauma before birth,
15:32
living in a poor area, having a father with anger issues,
15:35
or who knows why really, but whatever the reason, the
15:39
older siblings began acting out a lot, and Julian began
15:43
hitting them more and more in response. Their parents had
15:47
always wanted good lives for their children, so seeing them
15:50
behave in this way broke both their hearts. And again,
15:54
I don't think it's okay to hit your kids, and
15:55
I want to make that extremely fucking clear. However, back
15:58
in the forties and fifties, isn't even into the sixties,
16:01
it was a fairly you know, uh, it was fine.
16:06
It was you know, nobody was getting arrested for it.
16:09
It was a fairly common thing. It was pretty you know,
16:12
considered pretty pretty okay. I can't think of the fucking word.
16:15
It was accepted there we go, It's an acceptable way
16:18
to punish your children. So when you hear like, oh,
16:20
Richard's father would like hit them when they were bad,
16:23
it's like, yeah, a lot of parents did that. And
16:25
I'm not saying that his family life wasn't worse than
16:28
other people's, but I do believe that people are like, oh,
16:32
his dad was a violent alcoholic, and it's like, yeah,
16:34
as time went on, he definitely started drinking and things
16:37
definitely got worse. But for many years of Richard's young
16:41
life it was a fairly standard like Catholic family upbringing,
16:46
which I think is interesting and also important to not
16:48
because I feel like people are like, oh, he had
16:50
a bad home life and that's why he acted that way,
16:52
and it's like, not not necessarily right. Anyway, whatever reason
16:59
the siblings had, they began acting out a lot. Oh,
17:03
I said that, sorry, And as a result of that,
17:06
Julian began drinking more and more and became more and
17:09
more violent against the brothers. Even Richard's sister Ruth was
17:14
an immune and eventually moved out, marrying the first boy
17:17
she could write at age eighteen to get away from
17:20
the family home. Now, for her, it wasn't so much
17:23
about getting hit as it was just the extremely strict
17:25
home life that they all had, which again fairly commonplace
17:30
at that time. Now, Richie, though you know later a
17:37
crazy person, he was actually quite good in school in
17:39
his younger years and was well behaved when he was young,
17:43
at least at first. He definitely was not a target
17:46
for his dad, but unfortunately that didn't keep him from
17:49
being a target of other adults. Richie actually and two
17:54
of his older brothers were molested by a junior high
17:57
teacher who taught classes for kids with learning disability. Two
18:01
of his older brothers were in that class and later
18:04
said that their teacher, mister McMahon, would sexually abuse them,
18:07
even going as far as coming to the family's home
18:09
under the guise of helping them with homework and molesting
18:13
them right under their parents' noses. Both brothers said they
18:17
knew what was wrong, but they didn't care because it
18:19
quote felt good. When asked if mister McMahon also abused Richie,
18:23
both brothers said they weren't sure, but that Richie was
18:26
definitely over at his house a lot during this time.
18:29
Speaker 3: Now.
18:30
Speaker 2: Richard, for his part, later said that if it happened,
18:32
it was when he was seven or eight, so he
18:34
very well may have blocked it out. To me, that
18:38
means he was definitely abused as a child. I feel
18:40
like that's just an answer somebody would give if they
18:43
don't want to talk about it, you know. So again,
18:46
just another recap. We have a lot of things going
18:48
on here, potential poisoning and fallout in utero, had trauma
18:52
at a young age, more than once untreated epilepsy, and
18:56
sexual molestation. And on top of that, as rich got
19:00
older and his older siblings moved out, his father got meaner,
19:04
drank more, and would take his frustrations on what he
19:06
saw as a failure to parent his children out on
19:10
Richard to the point where he was beating him regularly.
19:14
Without his older brothers at home, Richard had nobody to
19:16
protect him and wasn't really able to defend himself as
19:19
he was still so young, only around ten or eleven
19:22
at this time. Because remember he's much younger than his
19:25
older siblings, so not a great home life. But it
19:29
certainly wasn't the worst of his problems sadly. Even still,
19:33
like I said, in his younger years, he was a
19:34
pretty good kid. He was athletic and he actually played
19:38
sports all through school and even in high school for
19:40
a very short while he played little league, he played football,
19:44
and in high school not only did he make the
19:46
football team, but he was actually the quarterback and he
19:50
played super well and showed a ton of promise. That
19:53
is until he had a grandma seizure after practice one
19:56
day and was immediately kicked off the team as his
19:59
coach didn't want that responsibility on his hands. While I
20:02
completely understand where his coach is coming from, I personally
20:06
believe this was one of the last straws that truly
20:08
pushed Richard over the edge into the life that we
20:11
all now know him for. I mean, he only had
20:16
he didn't have a lot of good things in his life, right,
20:18
but he had sports and he was good at them,
20:20
and then that was taken away from him for something
20:22
that is not his fault. That's just so so unfair.
20:28
Even before then, though, things did start going awry in
20:30
his life, and I've kind of touched on that, but
20:33
one of the main things that happened was his older
20:35
brothers had actually spent a good amount of time with
20:38
their older cousin, Miguel or Mike as everyone called him.
20:41
Their father had warned them to stay away from him,
20:43
saying he was a drug user and a bad person,
20:45
but that only made them want to be around him more.
20:49
When Richard was twelve, Mike came back from Vietnam and
20:52
the two began spending a lot of time together. His
20:55
brothers had already moved away, so at this point it
20:58
was just Mike and Richie. Mike, unlike most people, actually
21:02
really enjoyed being in the war and took pride in
21:05
how many women he had raped and in how many
21:07
Vietcong ears he had cut off of his enemies after
21:10
killing them. So there's a belief that you don't get
21:13
into heaven if your body's not intact. So it was
21:16
common for American soldiers to mutilate their enemy's dead bodies
21:19
to keep them from going to heaven. It was adding
21:21
insult to injury. And the way that they would count
21:24
these is by cutting off their ears. That's what they
21:26
would mutilate to make their body not whole, and then
21:29
they would string them on necklaces and fucking wear them. Like,
21:34
even knowing that I wrote these notes, I'm still shocked
21:38
and disgusted by that. Like I'm so luugh as terrible
21:43
as that sounds, as like a baseline for soldier behavior.
21:45
Mike was even worse and went farther than most of
21:48
his war buddies. When he came back home from the war,
21:51
he brought with him a suitcase full of polaroids, And
21:55
on these polaroids was some of the most depraved shit
21:57
you can imagine. And trigger warning because I'm gonna tell
22:00
about them. What was on these were Vietma name lu
22:04
my apologies, Vietnamese women being forced to perform oral sex
22:09
on Mike or being raped by Mike in one photo,
22:12
with the next photo showing Mike's standing with their severed
22:16
head in his hands. And he was showing these two
22:20
Richard when he was only twelve. And what's worse is
22:24
that Richard loved what he saw. He'd seen poorn before,
22:29
but this aroused him in a way like nothing ever had.
22:32
The violence, the domination of the women, He loved all
22:36
of it. Mike was like a god to Richard. And
22:39
though most of us would see Mike as a very
22:42
evil person, Richard Ramirez had his very first real hero. Now.
22:51
At some point, despite Richard's father really you know, wanting
22:55
to control Richard and all of the kids and using
22:57
violence to do this, eventually he gave up, and I
23:01
don't think that means that he stopped like hitting them
23:04
or tormenting them, but I think he was just kind
23:06
of like, fuck it, my kids are a mess. This
23:08
is my life. That's it. So between kind of yelling
23:12
at and beating Richard, he mostly just kind of ignored him,
23:16
and Richard ended up spending more and more time with Mike,
23:19
and eventually he did this with Julian's blessing, because Julian
23:23
was like, you know what, it's family. At least you're
23:26
not hanging out with like random, you know, hoodlums in
23:28
the street, right, not the best call, but you know,
23:32
I think he was just trying to rationalize it. He
23:34
was trying to rationalize what he couldn't control. Now, when
23:38
Julian did kind of still spin out, Richard would leave
23:41
with the sleeping bag and go sleep in the cemetery
23:43
across the street from their house. He was afraid of
23:46
monsters because remember he was only about twelve years old
23:48
when he started doing this, but he found the cemetery
23:50
quiet and peaceful and would come home after Zad left
23:53
for work in the morning. So this is the way
23:55
he would kind of get away. So he's either sleeping
23:59
in the cemetery or over at Mike's house. And Mike
24:04
had been married before going to the war and remained
24:06
married when he came back, but not exactly happily. So
24:10
his wife, Jesse, was a pretty woman with a strong personality,
24:14
and she was on Mike constantly telling him to get
24:17
a job and stop hanging out with kids, you know,
24:19
meeting Richard when Richard was just barely over thirteen years old.
24:24
On May fourth, nineteen seventy three, Mike and Jesse were
24:28
arguing in their kitchen in front of Richard and their
24:30
own two young sons, when Mike took a gun out
24:34
of the fridge and told Jesse that if she didn't
24:36
shut up, he would kill her. She dared him to
24:41
do it. Mike, who had never been treated for any
24:44
sort of PTSD, shot Jesse directly in the mouth at
24:48
point blank range, killing her immediately. He then sent Richard
24:53
home first, making a promise not to tell anyone that
24:55
he had been there, which I actually think is weird
24:58
because Mike was arrested almost to immediately, so I'm not
25:01
sure why he was so dead set on Richard lying
25:04
about being there, but I think he like called the
25:07
gobs and admitted it like right away, but either way,
25:10
Mike was arrested and charged and eventually found not guilty
25:13
by reason of insanity before being sent to a mental
25:16
hospital for a whopping four years. He murdered his wife
25:22
at point blank range with a gun for no reason,
25:25
in front of three miners and went to a mental
25:29
hospital for four years. As you can imagine, this changed
25:35
Richard forever, and I really think this was the final
25:40
you know, straw for him becoming like his brothers, like
25:45
his uncle, or even worse, and all of the good
25:48
parts of him kind of lost and disappeared and beyond
25:54
whatever this insane trauma did to his brain, it also
25:57
showed him that you can literally get away with murder
26:00
and do very little time if you play your cards right.
26:03
So lots and lots of bad things being shown to
26:07
and in front of Richard. Now from here, Richard mostly
26:10
dropped out of school, began smoking pot all day every day,
26:14
often with his older sister, and later that summer left
26:17
El Paso to go visit his brother Julian out in
26:20
La While there, he saw a ton of crazy shit
26:23
sex workers out in the open, drug users boldly using
26:26
in the middle of the day, and all of this
26:29
excited him. He was in love with this city. He
26:32
was in love with the chaos, and more than anything,
26:35
it made him want to get away from his parents
26:37
and live his own life. And because he had had
26:39
such a strict upbringing, the life he wanted to live
26:44
was this life like being on the streets doing drugs,
26:47
breaking the law. He came back home at it only
26:50
thirteen and a half years old, moved out of his
26:53
parents' house to live with his sister Ruth and her
26:55
new husband, Robert. And let me just say, this family
26:59
knows how to pick their partners. Okay. Robert was a
27:02
sex addict and a peeping tom who taught Richard how
27:05
to effectively spy on people without getting caught, which is,
27:09
you know, just fucking great. Another failure of a man,
27:12
giving Richard more tools to be like an elite murderer. Right,
27:15
It's just crazy. This guy's luck with the people that
27:18
he idolizes and that are like father figures to him. Anyway.
27:23
Even after Ruth left Robert for this behavior, which she did,
27:26
Richard continued to live with her and continued to go
27:29
out peeping with Robert, and then he decided to take
27:33
it up a notch. Before he was even fourteen years old,
27:37
Richard began routinely breaking into people's homes and watching them
27:40
sleep without them ever realizing it. And this is something
27:44
that we've heard before. I don't know if I've covered
27:47
any cases on my podcast, but there's definitely murderers who
27:50
this is their first step, and once they get away
27:53
with this for a long time, or even sometimes if
27:56
they get caught, they escalate from here. Now. He later said,
28:01
when he would break into people's homes, he would imagine
28:03
raping and murdering them, and we'd become aroused at these thoughts.
28:07
So he also ramped up his drug use and also
28:10
began to focus on religion, but in a way to
28:12
sort of rebel against his parents. So he wasn't thinking
28:16
about joining, you know, the church, like many Mexican families,
28:21
especially at that time. I think I've mentioned this, you know,
28:23
the Ramirez family were deeply religious, and they followed the
28:25
Catholic faith, which is pretty fantastical in its teachings, and
28:29
that's not great for someone who has mental health issues
28:32
and fantasizes about all sorts of stuff anyway, which Richard
28:36
absolutely did. Now, maybe because his brain was mush or
28:39
maybe as a fuck you to his dad, Richard became
28:42
obsessed with his version of Satanism and devil worship. And
28:46
I say his version because you know, obviously real you know,
28:50
Satanism is not about like doing evil deeds. It's not
28:53
about like, you know, killing people. It's totally different. But
28:58
in any case, he was like obsessed with Anton Leavey,
29:01
who founded the Church of Satan. I think he even
29:04
met him at some point, which is like super fucking weird.
29:08
He had a really interesting life, to be honest, but
29:10
in any case, you know, he was just he was
29:15
just getting really really into this, right, So a lot
29:18
going on, and it continues, of course, to get worse.
29:22
When Richard was sixteen, because remember all of this is
29:24
when he's still a miner, like very much a miner,
29:27
he got a job cleaning hotel rooms and somehow got
29:30
his hands on a master key for the entire hotel.
29:33
By this time, his rape fantasies were overtaking his own reality,
29:37
and he felt he had to live them out. One night,
29:41
he found a woman seemingly alone in her hotel room.
29:45
He opened to her hotel room door with the master Key,
29:48
then jumped on her and tied her up. He was
29:52
in the middle of attempting to rape her when her
29:54
husband walked in and beat Richard so badly he was
29:58
knocked unconscious yet again and had to go to the
30:01
hospital to get stitches for the inside of his mouth.
30:04
He was then arrested, but lied both to police and
30:07
to his mother and sister, saying that the woman had
30:10
come on to him and the husband had caught them
30:13
and beat him as a result, which is a really
30:15
good lie to come up with. The woman he attacked
30:17
lived out of state and refused to return to testify
30:20
against Richard, so the whole thing kind of just went away,
30:23
seen as a misunderstanding by his family, and he was
30:26
free to continue escalating his behavior, which, again, just like
30:31
he saw with his uncle Mike, proved to Richard that
30:34
you can do bad things to women and basically just
30:37
get away with it. Now, speaking of Mike, when Richard
30:41
was seventeen, Mike was released and the two began spending
30:44
even more time together. Around this time, Richard was nicknamed
30:49
Fingers by his friends because he would steal anything that
30:53
wasn't nailed down, including shit like from his friends. He
30:56
and Mike were doing a ton of drugs, including LSD
30:59
and broken houses nearly nightly. They would then sell everything.
31:04
Now this went on for a year or so until finally,
31:06
just weeks after turning eighteen, Richard, who was tired of
31:09
his family and looking for something new, took a bus
31:12
to Los Angeles and never looked back. He landed in
31:16
skid Row, which is like the gnarliest area of downtown,
31:20
and by mid nineteen seventy eight, Richard had a hardcore
31:23
cocaine addiction. While he sometimes stayed with his brother I
31:28
think Julian after they had a falling out, Richard mostly
31:31
slept on the streets or in stolen cars or in
31:35
cheap hotels when he was able to steal enough for
31:37
both his drugs and a place to stay, because the
31:39
drugs always came first. Mostly he stole cars to sleep
31:44
in and was actually quite good at it, which comes
31:46
into play later on now. To get money for his addiction,
31:50
he would burglarize homes at night, then fence the items
31:53
for money, then snort it or shoot it all up
31:55
and do it all again. And his cocaine use led
31:58
to him fantasying even more about the devil about rape,
32:03
about violence and murder, and he fell deeper into this
32:06
side of himself than he had ever allowed before. That
32:09
same summer of nineteen seventy eight is his second known attack.
32:14
Just after moving to La he met a woman who
32:16
took him back to her apartment to smoke some angel dust.
32:19
Afterward she made him leave. He actually tried to come
32:23
on to her and she was like, nom a lesbian,
32:25
Thanks so much, but get the hell out. And after
32:27
she made him leave, instead of fully leaving, he waited
32:31
on her roof for her to go to bed, which like,
32:34
how fucking creepy is that, then climbed back down off
32:37
of the roof, broke back into her house, tied her up,
32:41
and raped her several times. This was the first time
32:45
he was able to successfully attack a woman, and it
32:48
sent him down a path that now lives on in
32:51
infamy whenever California crime is brought up. For the next
32:55
few years, it's not totally clear exactly what he was
32:57
doing beyond more of the same shit. And as a note,
33:00
he was arrested several times for auto theft, even doing
33:03
like a stint in jail, but he was always released
33:08
and would kind of know show to court, so he
33:10
did a small stint in jail, but he mostly just
33:12
like God, arrested, was released and went on his way.
33:16
Stealing was his way of life, and in fact, later
33:18
it's found he always took something from his victims as
33:21
he just couldn't help himself but to steal. But really
33:25
he was just kind of bopping around and there wasn't
33:27
a lot known about him. In nineteen eighty three, when
33:30
he was twenty three, he did spend those five months
33:32
in jail on a stolen vehicle charge, and after this
33:35
his family became worried about him, and his sister came
33:38
to La and begged him to come home. She said,
33:41
come live with our parents, get your life together. We
33:44
miss you, we're afraid for you. We want you to
33:46
have a good life. Instead, Richard shot up cocaine in
33:51
front of her and refused to go anywhere. He told
33:55
her nothing bad would happen to him because he was
33:57
protected by Satan. Ruth ended up leaving without Richard, and
34:03
his fantasies completely took over. He never went back to
34:07
El Paso again. One thing about Richard that I haven't
34:11
really touched on yet is that apparently all throughout his childhood.
34:14
On top of everything else, he was a major junk
34:17
food and sugar addict. He always wanted sweet, cereal candy desserts.
34:22
It was basically all he ate. He grew up to
34:25
be tall and thin despite these eating habits, but that's
34:28
not to say the candy didn't affect him. Richard's teeth
34:31
were rotting out of his head by the time he
34:34
was in his early twenties. This was due to a
34:37
mix of bad hygiene and too much sugar, which made
34:40
for a very messy mouth, not to mention the smoking
34:44
of drugs, which of course didn't help the situation. Now
34:48
everybody talks about this, and I'm gonna mention it. Overall,
34:51
he was a handsome man. He had high cheekbones and
34:55
nice hair, but anybody who got near him would always
34:58
note his horrible caused not only by his rotting teeth,
35:03
but also because of halatosis, which is a really horrible
35:06
smell that radiates out of your mouth but actually originates
35:10
from your stomach, which in his case was caused by
35:13
bad eating habits and drug use. Halatosis is a much
35:18
deeper stench than just mouth smell, and Richard had both,
35:23
which is unfortunate. It's also funny enough part of how
35:27
he was caught, or maybe it made it more clear
35:30
he was the right man, because every survivor would be like,
35:35
he had the worst breath I've ever fucking smelled. So
35:38
I wanted to take a moment to discuss that because
35:40
I feel like I would have been remiss to ignore it,
35:43
because it's definitely a big part of Richard Ramirez right. Also,
35:49
I wanted to discuss his ties to the San Francisco
35:52
Bay Area because while most people think of him as
35:54
terrorizing only the La area, he also had a couple
35:57
of victims up in the Bay Area, as he had
35:59
friends who lived up there. One such friend, Earl greg
36:05
actually lived with Richard in the Bay Area for about
36:08
five months in nineteen eighty. He said Richard was quote
36:13
a nice guy, but he didn't trust him at all,
36:16
and said he had to hide his money so Richard
36:18
wouldn't steal it from him. It's so interesting how people
36:20
are like, oh, yeah, he's a really cool dude, but
36:22
don't turn your back. He'll steal the fucking shirt off
36:25
your back. He'll steal your wallet. But he's a really
36:28
nice guy. Such a weird like dichotomy of thoughts. Anyway,
36:32
Earl's mother in law, Donna Myers, met Richard while on
36:35
a family vacation in I'll Passo in the late seventies,
36:38
and for whatever reason, they all became friends. Even after
36:42
returning to LA Richard would come visit Donna every four
36:44
to six weeks, presumably to get his head on straight
36:47
after drug benders or to get out of dodge after
36:49
stealing cars or burglarizing homes in the LA area. Donna
36:53
said that while Richard was really into Satanism and loved
36:56
heavy metal bands like ACDC and Judas Priest, quote, wasn't
37:00
a weirdo, which makes me really question her judgment skills
37:05
to be frank. So, now we know that Richard has
37:07
ties to LA and the Bay and is back and
37:09
forth between the two very often. As I had mentioned previously,
37:13
he was also staying with his brother in East La
37:16
off and on during this time, so he's sort of
37:18
bouncing back and forth between the Bay Area and Los Angeles,
37:21
staying with friends, staying with his brother, staying in stolen cars,
37:24
or staying on the street. Now, he and his brother
37:27
had a falling out at some point, which I previously
37:30
mentioned but until then he was there quite a bit
37:35
and his brother had a young daughter named Rosie. Now,
37:40
Rosie and Richard were very close when she was young.
37:43
She actually wrote a book about her experience with Richard
37:46
as her uncle, and says one of her first memories
37:48
of him was when they all went to Disneyland. She
37:50
said she remembers him putting her on his shoulders and
37:53
walking her around the park, which is a very sweet memory,
37:57
but unfortunately, is not what the book is about. The
38:00
book is instead about the sexual abuse that she suffered
38:03
at Richard Ramirez's hands. This abuse began, I believe, when
38:07
Rosie was only five years old and Richard was sixteen. Now,
38:11
while the family moved to La when Rosie was pretty young,
38:15
they did originally live in al Paso. And as I've noted,
38:18
Richard was always trying to get away from his dad,
38:20
trying to get away from his house, so he would
38:22
stay with friends. He'd sleep in the graveyard, and he
38:25
would go to his brother's home. And he and his
38:29
niece were super close, and everybody loved him and they
38:32
got along super well, and blah blah blah blah blah. Right,
38:34
so the first time Rosie is ever molested by Richard
38:39
is when she's only five years old. He's sixteen, and
38:42
it wasn't much. It was just kind of the first
38:46
hint that she got that something's maybe going to happen.
38:49
So they're at her house watching TV. Her dad is
38:53
at work, and her mom decides to go take a
38:55
shower and she says, hey, Richie, can you keep an
38:57
eye on Rosie for me? And he says, yeah, no problem.
39:00
As soon as the shower turns on, Rosie said, he
39:03
flipped her over. She was like laying on her stomach
39:06
watching TV and started to pull her pants down. Now,
39:10
Rosie didn't really know what was happening, but she knew
39:12
to fight back, and she did, and luckily she was
39:15
able to fight him off long enough that her mother
39:17
finished her shower and as soon as Richard heard the
39:21
water go off, he stopped what he was doing and
39:24
acted like nothing happened. Now. On her book, Rosie talks
39:28
about how she learned to survive by not bringing up
39:30
her traumas, not telling her family what was happening, not
39:33
letting people in, not letting people know. So she didn't
39:37
say anything because that was kind of how their family behaved,
39:40
which is really sad, but you know, also I get it.
39:46
You know, there's a lot of families like that. Now,
39:49
this abuse continued even after her family moved to Los Angeles,
39:54
because then Richard also moved to Los Angeles, So it
39:57
was a little bit in between this first a tempted
40:00
to attack and when things started happening. But as soon
40:02
as Richard moved to LA he started staying with his
40:05
brother and the assaults really began in earnest So I
40:11
think she was like seven when the first one happened,
40:14
and after that it became a regular thing. Now what's
40:18
interesting is like most of the time when you hear
40:19
about Richard Ramirez, you don't hear about this, And I
40:22
think this is sort of a newer development and it's very,
40:25
very scary to think about this because Rosie pointed out
40:30
that the last time he ever tried to molest her
40:33
was in December of nineteen eighty three. Now at this point,
40:36
he's twenty three, she's twelve, and he was so bold
40:40
that he tried to actually touch her while her mother
40:42
was in bed with them watching TV. Rosie pretended to
40:46
be asleep and kicked him with her feet super hard,
40:48
as if she was having a nightmare, and this was
40:50
the last time he ever attempted to touch her, probably
40:53
because he and her dad then had a falling out,
40:55
because I don't think you would have stopped otherwise. But
40:58
what she noticed, and what I agree with, is that
41:01
he's no longer being able to touch her was in
41:04
part what set him on the path. I mean, obviously
41:08
molesting his niece, He's already on that path, but it's
41:11
what set him out molesting and hurting other people. Because
41:15
three months, in eighteen days after the last time he
41:18
molested Rosy, on April tenth, nineteen eighty four, he abducted, raped,
41:23
and murdered nine year old May Lung in the basement
41:26
of an apartment building in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco.
41:31
So it was only three months after he hurt Rosy
41:35
that he had to find another kid to victimize. Now,
41:40
May had been playing in the apartment building, just running
41:42
around being a kid, when she was grabbed by Richard,
41:45
taken to the basement of the building, raped, stabbed, and
41:50
then hung by her own blouse and left to die.
41:55
The worst part of this is that her toes were
41:58
just inches from being able to reach the floor, but
42:01
hopefully she wasn't conscious to struggle. This was an absolutely
42:06
fucking disgusting attack, and notably, it went twenty five years
42:11
without being solved. So when Richard Romeiroz was caught, he
42:14
was not charged for this crime, and in fact, he
42:17
was never charged for this crime since he was already
42:19
on death row when it was solved. So I think
42:22
I'm going to stop here for the first half. I
42:24
know we're just kind of getting into the meaty, needy part,
42:27
but I think the kind of creating of this monster
42:31
is a really interesting piece to the story, and I
42:34
think the information from his niece about their relationship and
42:38
his consistent molestation of her is a very interesting kind
42:42
of newer fact that plays in to kind of the timeline,
42:46
the escalation, and kind of understanding the criminality of this
42:51
absolute piece of shit. So I'm not going to wait
42:55
two weeks to post the next one. I've almost finished
42:57
the research, so I'm going to get this up in
42:59
about a week. It won't be a full two weeks
43:01
between episodes, because I hate when people make me wait
43:04
for the second part. I don't have it recorded, or
43:06
I would post them back to back, but I'm just
43:08
not not on top of my shit. But anyway, I
43:11
hope you guys enjoyed this first part of the story
43:15
of Richard Ramirez. I hope I shed some light on
43:17
some things you maybe hadn't heard before. I really tried
43:19
to get a lot of good research so that I
43:21
could add something to the conversation. And I am excited
43:25
to get back into his rampage and really discuss what happened,
43:31
including one of my favorite captures of a criminal of
43:34
all time. So I will see you all, see you all.
43:39
I'll talk at you all in about a week and
43:42
until then, thanks so much for listening. Please like, rate, review,
43:45
share with all your friends and family, help support small
43:48
independent podcasts. It's a lot of work for us, but
43:52
we do it out of love. And yeah, I guess
43:54
that's all I gotta say.
43:55
Speaker 3: So until next time, Stay safe.
44:13
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44:16
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