Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez also known as Richard Ramirez was an American serial killer, rapist and burglar, born February 29, 1960 and died June 7, 2013. He was known in the media as the “Night Stalker”, he terrorized the residents of the Los Angeles area and later in San Francisco area from June 1984 until August 1985. He murdered 14 people total and tortured dozens more before being captured. He used a variety of weapons including handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron and even a hammer at one point. Ramirez actually claimed to be a satanist, and never expressed any remorse for his crimes. Which I’m not going to lie, is pretty scary. He eventually died of complications from B-cell lymphoma, which is “blood cancers” attacking the lymph nodes.

Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas on February 29, 1960, the youngest of Julian and Mercedes Ramirez’s five children. His father Julian, a Mexican national and former policeman who later became a laborer on the Santa Fe railroad was prone to fits of anger that often resulted in physical abuse. 

As a 12-year-old, Richard – or “Richie”, as he was known to his family – was strongly influenced by his older cousin, Miguel  Ramirez, also known as Mike who was a decorated U.S Army Green Beret combat veteran who often bragged of his gruesome exploits during the Vietnam War. He shared polaroid photos of his victims, including Vietnamese women he had raped and in some of the photos, Mike posed with the severed head of a woman he had abused. Ramirez, who had begun smoking marijuana at the age of 10, bonded with Mike over joints and gory war stories. Mike taught his young cousin some of his military skills, such as killing with stealth. Around this time, Ramirez began to seek escape from his father’s violent temper by sleeping in a local cemetery.

Ramirez was present on May 4, 1973 when his cousin Mike fatally shot his wife, Jessie, in the face during a domestic argument and after the shooting, Ramirez became withdrawn from his family and peers. Later that year, he moved in with his older sister, Ruth, and her husband, Roberto, an obsessive “peeping Tom” who took Richie along on his nighttime outings peeping into women’s homes. Ramirez also began using LSD and started to take an interest in Satanism. Mike was found not guilty of Jessie’s murder by reason of insanity and was released in 1977, after four years of incarceration at the Texas State Mental Hospital. His influence over Ramirez continued. 

Adolescent Ramirez began to mend his burgeoning sexual fantasies with violence, including forced bondage and rape. While still in school, he took a job at a local Holiday Inn where he used his master key to rob sleeping guests. His employment ended abruptly after a hotel guest returned to his room to find Ramirez attempting to rape his wife.Although the husband beat Ramirez senseless at the scene, criminal charges were dropped when the couple, who lived out of state, declined to return to testify against him. Ramirez dropped out of Jefferson in the ninth grade. At the age of 22, he moved to California where he settled permanently.

Before getting into the neurological side of Ramirez something I thought was interesting was he actually had a woman send him nearly 75 letters during his incarceration. Her name was Doreen Lioy, and they actually got married in California’s San Quentin State Prison. Lioy also said that she was going to commit suicide once Ramirez’s execution went through, but eventually she left him because it was rumored she had found a direct link of his connection to a murder and rape of a 9 year-old girl (which happened to be his first murder). Fact: there is a name for the condition that women have when they’re attracted to convicted murderers or rapists — hybristophilia.

With every serial killer I’ve presented thus far in this blog, there seems to be a pattern present. They either got abused (whether it be physically, emotionally or sexually), faced a childhood trauma, suffered some sort of brain injury or a combination of all the above. In Ramirez’s case it was a combination of all the above, but he suffered multiple brain injuries. At age 2, a dresser fell on his head causing him to get 30 stitches, almost killing him. At age 6, he was hit by a swing, knocked unconscious and this caused deep gashes. And finally at age 11, he was diagnosed with epilepsy, which is a neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Epilepsy can be caused by brain conditions that cause damage to the brain. There are many arguments that those brain injuries sustained plus the abuse he suffered as a child played into why he became a killer. But to play devil’s advocate here, there are people who suffer brain injuries and traumatic childhoods and don’t end up killers. If things had gone differently for Ramirez could his life have had a different ending? Could the head trauma he suffered as a child have done lasting damage? While it is very true that we ultimately have a choice as to which direction we take in our life, it’s hard to ignore that our past experiences can have influence over us.

Is there a chance that all these experiences at a young age led Richard Ramirez to become The Night Stalker? Or is there a possibility he was born with this monster and no matter what the circumstances of his childhood were, this monster would come out?

Let me know what you think. Thank you for reading!