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The true account of what happened next has never been made public before. The official story the police released was that the Cal-ID, a new twenty-five-million-dollar Japanese computer the California Department of Justice had just bought, broke the case. Actually, the fingerprint Orange County found on the mirror in the orange Toyota was flown up to Sacramento, and with the computer’s help, all the Ramirezes on file were searched. They found the name of a Richard Munoz Ramirez—a tall, gangly El Paso drifter, thief, and sometime drug dealer with a record for small crimes, petty thefts, and stealing a car—which apparently was the December 1984 arrest Perez had told them about and the LAPD had never been able to find.
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Philip Carlo (The Night Stalker: The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez)