Info Post: Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez
Birth: Ramirez was born on February 29th of 1960 in El Paso, Texas, to two Mexican immigrant parents named Mercedes Muñoz and Julián Tapia Ramirez. He was the youngest of his siblings.
Ramirez’ father Julián was a violent alcoholic, forcing his home into a tense state of abuse the moment Ramirez and his siblings were born.
His father was prone to fits of anger, and this often showed through bouts of physical abuse towards the others in his family.
Ramirez suffered head traumas at a young age, which many suspect contributed to his violent and deadly nature later in life. He also would develop symptoms such as epilepsy and hypersexuality due to these injuries.
His fathers abuse towards him was obvious when we consider a punishment towards Ramirez would be tying him to a crucifix overnight in a cemetary (He and his family were raised in a Catholic household.)
It was also around the time of these punishments (now 1971/1972 when Ramirez is 12) that Ramirez began hanging around another bad influence in his life, his older cousin Miguel Valles.
Miguel was a United States Army Veteran who served in Vietnam, and during that time became both a serial killer and rapist, targeting Vietnamese women in particular.
Miguel would show Ramirez photos with evidence of these crimes, primarily photos of women tied up or about to be murdered. These photos, despite their gruesome nature, apparently ‘fascinated’ Ramirez instead of making him feel repulsed.
Ramirez would also be taught tactics in both stealth and how to kill by his older cousin. By now he is only twelve years old.
Shortly after, Miguel and Ramirez would begin to bond over drug use, as Ramirez had started to take LSD at the age of 14 (now 1974).
It was also during this time Ramirez’ fascination with Satanism would begin.
This mesh of being surrounded by violent men and being shown women brutalized as a good thing started to change his mind, no doubt worsened by his head traumas and nonstop drug usage at a young age. He began to associate violence with pleasure and crime became normalized to him.
Around this age, Ramirez would begin a job at a Holiday Inn (a hotel business) and use the master key he got from it to break into patrons rooms and rob them.
One reported case came out later of him molesting two children in a hotel elevator during this time, but during the time he was never prosecuted or even reported at all for it.
This brief employment ended after Ramirez used his key to break in and attempt a molestation on a woman who he believed was alone, but her husband came back shortly after and beat him severely. No criminal charges were filed because the couple didn’t live in Texas and didn’t want to return to file one.
Shortly after (Ramirez is now 15 and it is 1975) Ramirez would bear witness to another traumatic event. On May fourth, 1975, his older cousin Miguel would shoot and kill his wife during a domestic dispute while Ramirez was present.
Later on, Ramirez would once again state seeing this wasn’t traumatizing or disturbing, but instead was fascinating for him. Miguel was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the murder.
It was also during this time Ramirez would drop out of school, only making it to ninth grade in Jefferson High School.
After the shooting, Ramirez did not return home, but instead moved in with one of his older siblings and her husband. This also proved a mistake, as her husband was known to be a peeping tom and would take Ramirez with him to spy on women. Miguel would occasionally join the two following his release for the murder of his wife.
Later on, as Ramirez turns 22 in the year 1982, he would move to California, where he also began using the drug Cocaine very frequently. He would also often commit thefts and burglarys for money in the areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Only a couple short years later, Ramirez would move up from just breaking into peoples homes to get money, he would begin breaking in to murder and rape, sending the entire state into a chaotic frenzy as they tried catching the now serial killer The Night Stalker.
Murders: Ramirez began his crimes around the mid 1980’s in California. The first known murder he committed was on 1984, known as the Leung killing. Ramirez would kill a little girl known as Mei Leung who was looking for a dollar bill she had lost in the basement of her apartment building, before he brutalized and raped her and hung her by a pipe. This murder wasn’t tied to him until 2009.
The first documented case of murder was on June 28th, 1984. Ramirez on this date would murder an elderly woman in Glassell Park, Los Angeles. He would murder and then sexually assault her, starting his trail of brutal murders by nearly decapitating her.
Many months later in early 1985, Ramirez would attack a young woman outside her home, shooting her with a .22 caliber handgun. She thankfully survived after the bullet deflected off her keys.
Her older roomate wasn’t as lucky, as she was shot by Ramirez after she left the counter she was hiding behind.
The exact same day, Ramirez stopped a woman driving by pulling her out of her car and shooting her with the same gun. The two murders and one attempted murder garnered mass media attention.
Ramirez was first described as curly-haired with bulging eyes and rotting teeth, likely due to his unhealthy diet and drug usage, and given the first nickname of The Walk-In-Killer and the Valley-Intruder.
A week later Ramirez would enter a home he had previously burglarized, where he would immediately murder an elderly man living in the home while he was sleeping.
The mans wife tried getting a gun to shoot him while he ransacked the house, but the gun didn’t go off, sending Ramirez into a blind rage making him murder her before gouging out her eyes and failing to molest the corpse, too shaken to properly perform.
In this murder he left a shoeprint of his Avia sneakers, which would later on be used to help identify and find him.
During the month of May (no longer labelling years, everything unless specified now takes place in the year 1985.) Ramirez would break into a home in Montery Park and immediately murder the man inside, before robbing and raping his disabled wife, though she wasn’t seemingly killed.
Two weeks later Ramirez would break into a home housing two elderly sisters in Monrovia, brutalizing and raping both of them and drawing a pentagram with lipstick on their wall. Both women wouldn’t die of their extensive injuries until much later.
This case notably reintroduced the themes of Satanism with Ramirez.
(Note: Satanism is not what Ramirez painted it as, please do not use this case as an excuse to be prejudiced towards the religion or its followers.)
The very next night he broke into another house, forcing a young boy to guide him to all the valuables of the home before raping the boys mother. Both victims were found handcuffed but alive.
In July Ramirez would break into a home in Arcadia belonging to a widowed elderly woman. He would bludgeon and stab her to death.
Three days later Ramirez broke into a home in Sierra Madre and bludgeoned and strangled a sixteen year old girl. He fleed before murdering her, believing her still living was a sign Jesus Christ was saving her. She needed over 400 stitches.
Also in July Ramirez broke into the home of an elderly woman in Montery Park, where she was asleep on the couch. He stomped on her face repeatedly and killed her. The same night he broke into a different home, robbing a woman and trying but failing to rape her.
Two weeks later Ramirez would buy a machete, using it alongside the .22 caliber handgun he normally used in the murder of an elderly couple in Glendale.
He then travelled to Sun Valley, killing a man and raping his wife before tying up their child and robbing the home.
In August Ramirez travelled to Northridge and attempted to murder a couple, but even after one was shot in the head and the other in the neck, they fought and made him flee. Both would survive the attack.
Two days later in Diamond Bar, Ramirez broke into a married couples home and immediately murdered the husband. He then beat the wife and raped her before robbing them of their jewelry. Only the wife and son survived, as the son was tied up before being freed by the wife.
Around this time Ramirez would relocate to San Francisco, the media growing too intense in Los Angeles on his crimes and the efforts to capture him.
In August Ramirez entered the home of an elderly couple, immediately killing the husband with his gun before raping and shooting the wife. He would write the phrase ‘Jack The Knife’ near a Pentagram with lipstick on the wall. Shoeprints were found at the scene that matched to a very uncommon shoe.
In late August while in Mission Viejo (located in Orange County, California) he was spotted and identified via car by a thirteen year old boy, who merely believed he had stopped a robber when he turned the information over to the police.
The same night following this failed attack he broke into the home of two Fiancé’s, shooting the male victim three times immediately. He then identified himself for the first time as the Night Stalker towards the female victim, before raping and robbing her. He told her to ‘Tell them the Night Stalker was here.’ Her Fiancé would survive his bullet wounds after surgery.
Stating here that there are a few cases associated with Ramirez that have not been entirely confirmed, such as a case in June where a woman was found Sodomized and murdered. Ramirez was charged with this kill originally, but it was later dropped due to a lack of evidence.
He is also suspected of a double murder of two sisters in February due to statements made to investigators and in prison.
Capture: The shoeprints I ocassionally mentioned were used in the investigation heavily, due to the rarity of the kind of shoe he wore. Though eventually this lead was leaked, causing Ramirez to throw these shoes off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Later on investigators used the car identification the young boy gave police to track down and find the vehicle he used during that night. Despite Ramirez trying to clean the car as best as he could, police found a print that identified him due to his past arrests for drug violations.
In late August officials would recieve a mugshot belonging to Richard, which was then published alongside the quote ‘We know who you are now, and soon everyone else will. There will be no place you can hide.’ made during a press conference.
This mugshot was now everywhere in California, even if Ramirez was unaware for a short while due to the fact he was away visiting his brother in Arizona.
Ramirez only noticed when elderly women saw him and began calling him ‘el matador’ (the killer in Spanish). After multiple failed carjackings, a crowd formed, many people who wanted revenge or to protect the people he tried carjacking, and they beat him severely. Police were eventually called, where the broke up the mass assault and arrested a now extremely injured Ramirez.
Ramirez would often contribute Satan to his actions, driving a mass panic around the idea of Satanism in the area, saying that he worshiped Satan and even showing up to court with a pentagram on his hand he showed off during the trial.
Richard Ramirez would die due to a disease known as B-cell Lymphoma at Marin General Hospital, Greenbrae California, on June 7th 2013 at 53 years old.
Overview: Ramirez’ entire life can be summed up as simply one long overdone tragedy, both for him and everybody around him.
Ramirez was described as a ‘made’ psychopath, meaning the circumstances of his life are what led to the crimes he committed and the coldness he felt while doing so. Despite that, I find little sympathy for him when he decided to take everybody down along with him.
I wonder if Ramirez would have turned out any differently if the people meant to raise him healthily hadn’t done such irreversible damage to him, or if he was such a brutal criminal he would have become a violent man either way.
In the end, all I can say is that I hope wherever Ramirez ended up, his mind is no longer forcing such intense suffering both upon itself and others. And I hope the victims of Ramirez are resting peacefully.
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