Richard Ramirez Quotes

Killing is killing, whether done for duty, profit or fun

I gave up love and happiness a long time ago.

Serial killers do, on a small scale, what governments do on a large one. They are products of our times and these are bloodthirsty times.

We've all got the power to kill in our hands, but most of us are afraid to use it. Those who aren't, control life itself.

With books he could leave his cell and go wherever the story went.

That night she again slept in the back of her brother’s car, hidden under her raincoat, afraid of the rats, of the police, and of men who got their kicks from hurting women. Ruth knew it was a cruel world filled with people who were capable of terrible things.

That first year in L.A., Richard became addicted to cocaine. It was 1978, and coke was the “in” drug, selling for $100 per gram. This was prior to the Colombian cartels applying modern corporate techniques to the importation and distribution of cocaine in the States, which brought the price of a gram down to thirty-five dollars by the mid-eighties.

Mercedes took Richard to the hospital. He was examined perfunctorily and Mercedes was told he was an epileptic and was experiencing grand mal seizures. There was nothing to worry about—he’d “grow out of it.” He was not given any medication, nor was Mercedes asked to bring him back. At home, Ruth began noticing that her baby brother was having long staring spells in which he would just sit still and look at something—a wall, a table, the floor—for five, ten, fifteen minutes without speaking or moving. He was having petite mal seizures, but no one realized it then, and Richard wasn’t diagnosed or treated. Richard had one to two dozen of these petite mal attacks every month until he entered his early teens, when they, as well as the less frequent grand mal seizures, lessened and eventually stopped altogether. According to Dr. Ronald Geshwind, a certain number of people who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy have altered sexuality and hyper-religious feelings, are hypergraphic (have a compulsion to write), and are excessively aggressive. Van Gogh, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Dostoevsky, and Lewis Carroll all suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. Years later, after all the trouble, Richard would be diagnosed as having temporal lobe epilepsy.

James Edward Garcia spent 3 nights in the hotel after Elisa’s death, bringing with him an EVP recorder. He believes the spirit of Elisa came through to him, while in his hotel bedroom. He asks, “Who killed you?” A voice replies, on the EVP recording, “They did.” In the elevator, the same one Elisa was last seen in, he captures a voice saying; “You better keep out! Keep out!” He says, “The creepy whispering voices sound p…d. They are either warning me – or threatening me.” Down in the lobby, a whispered female voice says, “James” several times. Back in his room, his recording equipment picks up what seems to be many voices; a cacophony of them. A female voice comes through, “Save me, please save me!” A man’s voice says, “She died.” A male voice says, “Yeah, blood.” “Killing” the voice says. The female voice returns, “Please save me,” to which James shouts, “Who are you?” A very deep voice replies, “They killed her,” followed by a higher pitch voice saying, “A demon seed.” One night he also slept in the room serial killer Richard Ramirez called his home while on his killing spree. ‘I returned to the room only to find the TV Remote on the floor with the battery cover off and a Tylenol bottle on its side on the table between the beds. I thought that Hotel Security must have been rummaging through my room. I setup a static camera to film my night. I was not aware that my Night Shot Infrared camera picked up a skull face that had bled through the paint on the wall behind me. You can clearly see it and it is pretty scary. At one point my face seems to have morphed into some type of demon possessed creature while I was asleep. It sounds outrageous but watch the footage and you will see what I’m talking about.” Is the Cecil Hotel imbued with demons who play with those who stay there; who get inside their heads? Newsblaze reporter John Kays asks, ‘Isn’t it logical to postulate that whoever killed Elisa Lam (if that’s what happened) was in the throes of the same evil spirit that Jack Unterweger was possessed with?’ Or the spirit of serial killer Richard Ramirez? He is referring to the two serial killers who called this hotel their home. Perhaps Elisa’s death had been part of a serial killer’s quest; but it could just as easily have been a crime of opportunism, by a random, solitary and as yet uncaptured killer; indeed, an un-sought-after-killer too at this

I have an objection. I think that is fucked up!

Cindy Haden continued visiting Richard every chance she got. She’d come mostly on weekends, when Doreen was visiting, too. The two women began seeing each other at the jail. Doreen felt Cindy was a “low-down, hypocritical bitch” who could have hung the jury. Whenever Doreen saw Cindy at the jail, she would narrow her eyes and regard her with utter disdain. When Doreen asked Richard why the hell he would allow that Benedict Arnold to visit, he said she was a juror and might be of help if he chose to appeal his conviction. After a few months of Cindy driving all the way to San Francisco every weekend, she began thinking she would move north permanently so she could be close to Richard. She was in love with him and had pictures of him in frames on her night table and on the wall opposite her bed. Cindy had told her parents about her relationship with Richard and had actually brought her mom and dad to the jail so they could meet him. When Richard first sat across from them in the visiting booth, Cindy said, “Mom, Dad, this is Richard,” as Richard smiled shyly. “I know you’ve heard some bad things about him, but he’s got a lot of good points, too.” Richard sheepishly said hello, waved, and began talking to Cindy’s father, who, like his father, had worked for a railroad. They had “something in common,” as Cindy later put it. Cindy agreed to do several national talk shows—“Donahue” once and “Geraldo” twice—and told the world, in a very passionate voice, that Richard Ramirez had had improper counsel and his convictions should be overturned.

Some of the groupies who had been visiting Richard in Los Angeles now began to go to San Francisco to see him. Doreen was unhappy with all the competition she had. She’d complain to him that they were taking visiting time away from her, but Richard enjoyed all the female attention. Never before had he had so much female admiration—and he reveled in it, thrived upon it. Cindy, unlike Doreen, didn’t mind Richard’s other visitors, as long as none of them bothered her. But there was one woman Cindy and Doreen came to refer to as “the bimbo,” who did, in fact, start getting aggressive with both Cindy and Doreen. The Bimbo, a heavy-set, well-built belligerent blonde with frizzy hair, and a big nose, began to challenge Cindy and Doreen when she ran into them at the jail. “He’s mine. Stay away from him or I’ll break your face,” she’d say regularly. Cindy stood up to her, telling her to fuck off, but Doreen did not have Cindy’s combative nature and would take the Bimbo’s threats, taunts, and admonitions. The Bimbo began regularly to step on Doreen’s toes and call her “Dogreen.” It got to the point that Doreen began asking the jail guards to walk her to her car, she was so afraid of the Bimbo. Doreen again complained to Richard, but he didn’t stop the Bimbo from coming to the jail. Several of the Ramirez women would bring phallic-shaped vegetables with them on their visits and would sexually excite themselves with the vegetables while Ramirez watched. For many of these women Richard Ramirez was a turn-on.

Cindy Haden wanted to be able to touch Richard, hold him, and be close to him, and she constantly thought of ways she could make that happen. When her employer had a mass layoff and she was fired, she decided she would become a private detective. If she had a detective’s license, she’d be able to work with Richard’s new San Francisco attorneys and have a visit with Richard in a private room. She applied for a job with a San Francisco security firm, was hired, and moved to San Francisco. She took a quiet apartment in Richmond. The security firm sponsored her for a license, and she passed the required examination. She went to one of the San Francisco public defenders representing Richard and talked him into taking her inside the county jail with him when he went to visit Richard. She and the attorney were shown into one of seven rooms allocated for lawyers who come to see inmates. It was ten by ten and had a wooden table and a few chairs. There were panels of glass in a wall so guards could look in. As Cindy waited for Richard to be brought down, her heart raced. She paced back and forth, her hands trembling. When Richard got there, the guard uncuffed him and he sat at the table. They were like two school kids, laughing and giggling. Under the desk she raised her foot and put it on Richard’s thigh; his eyes bulged. He couldn’t believe he was actually sitting with one of the jurors who had handed him a ticket to the death room. After a few minutes, Cindy later related, the attorney went to look for a bathroom. When he left and Cindy was sure there were no guards about, she stood and quickly gave Richard a deep kiss as he groped her with his huge hands. She nearly passed out, she was so excited. When later asked if she was afraid to be alone with Richard, she said, “No, absolutely not. He’d never hurt me.” When the lawyer returned, Cindy sat down, breathless, her heart pounding. On subsequent visits to the jail, as she helped with Richard’s legal problems, she says, she was able to have more contact visits and was actually alone with Richard.

When recently asked if she believes Richard is innocent, Doreen said, “I’ve always fervently believed in his innocence! I can’t even conceive of his being guilty of the terrible things they say he did. He received an unfair trial with very inadequate legal representation. Someday the truth will be known.

Julian was diagnosed with bone cancer in the spring of 1991. The cancer spread quickly and he died of it on August 16 of that year.

Robert still lives in Morenci, Arizona, working in its mines. He is divorced now and sees his two daughters on weekends. When he can, he drives to El Paso to see his mother and his siblings. He has stopped using drugs and avoids trouble at all costs.

Cousin Mike, the person most people believe put Richard on the path he traveled, died of a massive heart attack in April of 1995. He was overweight and still haunted by the ghosts of things he’d done in Vietnam, regularly using heroin. The Army gave Mike a hero’s burial with a twenty-one-gun salute.

Gere Russell, out of San Diego, is Richard’s appeals lawyer.

In early 1995, when Richard was coming back to San Quentin from court appearances on the Pan matter in San Francisco, the prison’s metal detector went off. The guards searched him thoroughly and couldn’t find any contraband, yet the metal detector still sounded when they passed him through it again. Officials put him in front of an X-ray machine and discovered he had a handcuff key and a hypodermic needle in a little vial hidden in his anal cavity, a very common practice in jails around the world known as “keister-ing.

When Richard was asked recently how to avoid becoming the victim of a serial murderer, he said, “You can’t. Once they are focused on you, have you where you are vulnerable, you’re all theirs. Dahmer used to invite you home for a drink, and the next thing you knew, he’s eating you. Same thing with John Gacy: he’d put on his clown face, do a couple of tricks, and suddenly he had you handcuffed and in his control. What people can do is not trust someone you don’t know and to always be aware of what’s going on around you. When you drop your guard—that’s when a serial killer moves.

Thursday, June 27th of 1996, Richard Ramirez was moved out of the adjustment center to San Quentin’s East block, “Death Row,” where he would be allowed regular “contact visits” with his family and friends—the first since he’d been arrested.

Richard had taken the Bimbo off his visiting list and had told Doreen that if he was moved to East block he would marry her. Since the first time she’d seen Richard on TV being taken away from the angry mob on Hubbard Street, she had wanted to marry him, to fight his battles, to be known as Mrs. Richard Ramirez.

Marriages on death row occur every four months, and Richard promised her he would tell the prison to put him down for it. The next time they’d be able to wed, he said, was October 3rd.

According to the California Penal Code, prisoners have the legal right to marry. The prison approved Richard’s marriage, and his and Doreen’s names were added to the list of ten inmates marrying that day, three from death row. It was quickly pointed out to a curious journalist by San Quentin’s public relations department that prisoners on death row do not have the right to conjugal visits.

She drove to San Francisco for them and picked out two simple wedding bands, hers gold and Richard’s platinum. When later asked why Richard told Doreen not to buy a gold ring for him, he said, “Because Satanists don’t wear gold.

The ceremony took place at 11 A.M. Mr. L. Weister, a civil servant would perform the ceremony. He was a tall robust man with a big, healthy red face and thick gray hair. Doreen was very nervous. Richard wanted to get the whole thing over with and get back to his cell. An author and one of Richard’s attorneys joined the wedding party. In front of an Alpine mural one of the inmates had painted, the ceremony took place. It was short and sweet—they did not say “until death do us part.” They exchanged vows, wedding rings, and it was over in two minutes. Richard gave Doreen a peck on the lips.

Carlo: Yeah. You were seen in court once with a Pentagram inside your hand and you held it up and showed it to the press and the audience. Why did you do that? Did you feel that it would protect you, or were you just making a statement that you were in alliance with the Devil? Ramirez: Yes, it was a statement that I was in alliance with ... the evil that is inherent in human nature. And ... that was who I was.

Carlo: The phenomenon of serial killers—is it a sexual thing, too, Richard? Is sex part of the crimes? Ramirez: Sex? For some serial killers, sure. For some it is the very act of killing another human being that is ... that ... uh ... that is sexual to them. It’s a bloodlust, I guess you can say.

Ramirez: Yes. Serial killers and most killers in general have a dead conscience. Carlo: When you say a dead conscience that means they don’t respond— Ramirez: No morals, no scruples, no conscience. They are ... uh ... they sometimes ... some of them don’t even care if they live or die themselves and they are just the walking dead.

Ramirez: There is no protection against a mass murderer, if you will. A mass murderer will come onto the scene—whether it be a post office, supermarket, restaurant—and open fire. Unless the bullets miss you, you will become a statistic. A serial killer, if he’s looking for certain type of women, certain type of victims, and you happen to match his preference ... it is possible that you could get away. You could even help in apprehending him, but it is said serial killers are very intelligent, otherwise they would not— Carlo: They would not be able to commit crimes over a long period of time. Ramirez: Exactly. What constitutes a serial killer right now is four murders or more, according to the FBI. Four murders is not that many but that’s what categorizes a serial killer. I suppose to avoid being a victim is— Carlo:—Being aware of the environment, being aware what’s around you? Ramirez:—Taking precautions, locking your doors, having your keys ready when you open doors ... being on guard. Carlo: Your keys ready when? Ramirez: When you open doors. Carlo: Look over your shoulder? Ramirez: Yes. Of course, one cannot live one’s life like that in today’s society, always aware. Especially if you haven’t already been the victim of a crime. When you are the victim of a crime, a violent crime such as an assault or mugging, then throughout your life that will be at the back of your mind. Those types of people are more aware than those who have never been a victim of any type of crime. But, sure, a serial killer takes opportunities, in the victims being in the right place at the right time. He takes advantage of that.

Carlo: Do you feel that evil can be reincarnated? Ramirez: I hope so. [laughs]

Carlo: Give you a sense of well-being. Do you think young children, young teenagers, actually, should be kept away from music like that? Ramirez: No, because I believe that a person that ... a person that is destined or inclined to be evil will be evil with or without music. Music I don’t believe has a part in anything. Carlo: Even young, impressionable minds? Ramirez: Yes, yes ... because I believe that it is the environment that will determine who a child will grow up to be.

Publisher's Note Richard Ramirez died on June 7, 2013 from complications related to lymphoma. He was 53 years old and had been on death row for 23 years.

The judge then read the verdict sheets, announced they were in order, and gave them to Clerk Josephine Williams to be read out loud. Beginning with the Vincow charge, the jury voted guilty on every one of the forty-six counts.

No one in the audience was surprised. Doreen stood and, crying, hurried from the courtroom. Judge Tynan, at the defense’s request, polled the jury, and each one said he’d heard the verdicts read out loud and agreed with them. It was over. The judge thanked them and said they would now be moving to the penalty phase. He asked them to step into the jury room. Judge Tynan asked the defense how long they would need to prepare for the penalty phase. Clark said three days. Daniel asked for at least two weeks, saying they were bringing people in from out of town. Tynan told Daniel he should have already lined up any witnesses and gave the defense one week to prepare. The jury was now brought out and told the penalty phase would take place on the twenty-ninth. The judge reminded them not to talk with anyone in the media. He offered them the use of the back elevator to avoid the waiting reporters and cameras.

As Cynthia Haden was leaving, Phil Halpin asked to speak with her up in his office for a minute. She followed him and Alan Yochelson up to the district attorney’s floor. Halpin thanked her for the verdict and asked her not to talk with the defense if they approached her. She said she wouldn’t and left, a bit bewildered about why they had apparently spoken only to her. When she got home, she called a few of the other jurors and they said they’d not been approached by the prosecutors.

In El Paso, Mercedes, Julian, and the rest of the Ramirez clan went to church and prayed Richard wouldn’t be given the death sentence. In her prayers to Mary, Mercedes explained it was a big, Satan-inspired mistake, that her son could not have done the things they said he’d done, that Satan’s hand was at work here. She implored Mary to speak to her son and tell him the truth.

He told his attorneys he didn’t want to put on any kind of defense for the penalty phase. Clark warned him that would be foolish, a mistake. If he wanted the jury not to give him the death sentence, they needed mitigating circumstances, something they could hang their hats on not to vote for death. He suggested Richard’s father, saying he was a good, hardworking man and he could very well stir up some sympathy among the jurors. Clark insisted if the defense didn’t present something for the jury on Richard’s behalf, they would surely sentence him to die: “You are as good as dead, Richard.” Richard said he didn’t want to put his father through that—beg for his life, grovel in front of Tynan, Halpin, Salerno, Carrillo, and the rest of the detectives. He wouldn’t stand for that. He insisted he didn’t want anyone in his family put on the stand. “They’ll kill you,” Clark repeated. “Richie, they’ll execute you, for sure,” Daniel put in. “Well, then let them. Fuck them. Dying doesn’t scare me. I’ll be in hell. With Satan. That’s gotta be a better place than this. I’d rather die than live in a cage. Fuck that shit, man,” he said, and laughed, then sat back, suddenly serious-faced. “Please, Richard—” Clark began, but was cut off. “We aren’t begging. Period,” Richard said, and that was that.

On the day of sentencing, the defense announced they would not be putting any witnesses on the stand on the defendant’s behalf, calling it “a tactical decision.” Richard would not be taking the stand, either.

On the day of sentencing, the defense announced they would not be putting any witnesses on the stand on the defendant’s behalf, calling it “a tactical decision.” Richard would not be taking the stand, either. Tynan asked Richard if he was waiving his right to put on a defense and to speak on his behalf. Ramirez said yes.

As they entered, Richard glowered at them. Cynthia Haden couldn’t look him in the eyes. She felt guilty about having convicted him. She thought the Hernandezes were so woefully inadequate that Richard hadn’t gotten a fair shake. “He was sold down the river,” she would later say, and would make correcting that “injustice” her life’s work.

Richard said he wouldn’t talk about anything but the convictions. Carrillo asked if it would be all right if they taped what he said. He said no. They then began asking him about the crimes and how he did them. Richard gave them, the detectives later said—which Richard vehemently denies—the details of how he worked, lived, and avoided capture for so long. The detectives say he told them he capered in stolen cars, which he sometimes left in the parking lot of the Greyhound Bus Terminal. He always stashed any weapon he had in the terminal lockers until he realized the car might be staked out. At that point he began driving the cars around the block a few times before he retrieved his weapons. According to the detectives, they began talking about the actual murders, beginning with Vincow. Richard told them what he knew. They weren’t sure if he was bragging and making things up, but he seemed sincere, they thought. For the next week, as Richard ate sweets, he told the two detectives the details of what he said had taken place. Both detectives enjoyed talking to him. “He had a likable side to him that was easy to warm to,” Carrillo later said. Their meetings were brought to a halt on November 16, when Richard was taken to San Quentin. The last time Salerno and Carrillo saw him, he asked them if they were going to come to his execution. Carrillo said he wasn’t sure... didn’t think so. “You bet I’m coming,” Salerno said, dead serious, looking Richard right in the eye.

Richard was taken to San Quentin ten days after he’d been sentenced. The authorities viewed him as a security risk: they knew he had many female admirers, and they knew about the Satanists who had regularly visited the trial, and there were always rumors that someone was going to try and break him out. For security reasons it was decided it would be better if he was flown to Quentin rather than driven.

Richard was handed over to heavily armed, grim-faced San Quentin officials. He was put in the A/C block, known as Reception. His prison number was E37101. All prisoners—except death row inmates—were kept in Reception while they were evaluated and it was decided where they would do their actual time. Richard still had the Pan assault and murder charges against him, and until that case had been adjudicated, he would not be moved to E block after his obligatory three-month stay in Reception. He would, after evaluation, be transferred to the San Francisco County Jail, to be closer to court for hearings and motions on the Pan matter. Lawyers from the San Francisco public defender’s office would be representing Richard in the Pan incident. Richard was put in another six-by-eight-foot cell with an aluminum toilet, a sink, and a bunk bed. Prisoners in reception did not have access to phones, and their visits were for only two hours a week. In E block, the inmates were allowed twenty-four hours a week for visits, and Reception inmates were kept in the cell nearly twenty-four hours a day. Richard was assigned cell number 3AC8.

Cindy Haden was having a hard time keeping Richard Ramirez off her mind. He was all she could think of—his intense black eyes, his wavy black hair, his absolute and undeniable arrogance and danger. She dreamt of him nearly every night, often wondering if he had put some kind of spell on her. She would later say, “The truth of the matter is, I think I fell in love with him the first time I saw him. I know it’s nuts and everything, but I couldn’t help it; it was just one of those things.

In February 1990, Ramirez was moved to the San Francisco County Jail, where he had access to a phone and a television and interacted with other inmates. Almost immediately, he got into a fight over the phones and beat up some guy who’d called him a punk. Richard knew he couldn’t let anyone abuse him in any way, for the abuse would surely get worse and more than likely end up as an assault against him. He was quick to let everyone in the jail know if you bothered him, you’d better be ready to fight to the end. This resulted in his being left alone and he could do his time without being bothered.

When Cindy left Richard that day, she felt truly alive for the first time. As she flew back to Los Angeles, she thought about moving to San Francisco so she could be closer to Richard; for the first time she realized why she had left her husband and Portland, Oregon: she felt that being with Richard, as near to him as possible, “was my destiny.

At this time actor Sean Penn had been sentenced to thirty-two days in the Los Angeles County Jail for punching out a photographer. Because of his celebrity status he had to be kept in protective custody and was lodged in the cell next to Ramirez. At the time he was still married to Madonna and when she came to visit Sean, she saw Ramirez as she stepped off the elevator. When Sean was brought to the visiting booth, the first thing she said to Sean was, “Who’s that good-looking guy?” Sitting down, smiling mischievously, Sean said, “That good-looking guy is the Night Stalker, ... wanna meet him?” “Gives me the goose bumps,” Madonna said—“but yeah, I’d like to meet him,” she joked. “I don’t think so,” he said, laughing

Richard wrote back: Dear Sean: Stay in touch and hit ’em again. Richard Ramirez, 666. Penn said Ramirez masturbated excessively. “He was like an animal in heat. He had pictures of his victims on his cell walls. He kept them up with toothpaste.

During the course of Sean’s stay in the jail, Ramirez asked Penn for his autograph. Sean wrote: Dear Richard: It’s impossible to be incarcerated and not feel a kinship with your fellow inmates. Well, Richard, I’ve done the impossible. I feel absolutely no kinship with you. Sean Penn

Halpin finished his summation on July 21. The people had presented 139 witnesses and 537 pieces of evidence.

On August 14, juror Phyllis Singletary didn’t show up. Judge Tynan brought the jury into court and told the jury they couldn’t continue without Ms. Singletary and court was recessed to the following day. In fact the judge had learned that Ms. Singletary had been found murdered.

Cynthia Haden learned about the murder from juror Choclate Harris, who called her at her home that evening. Quickly, word of Singletary’s death traveled to all the jurors and alternates; and that night few of them slept well. They were all haunted by the prospect of Richard Ramirez being responsible in some way. They had seen his groupies and the Satanists parading in and out of the courtroom daily for the last fourteen months. Charles Manson had, they all knew, sent people to kill Sharon Tate and her friends and Mr. and Mrs. LaBianca. After all, this was Southern California. Anything was possible.

Later that day it was revealed that James C. Melton, age fifty-one, had murdered Ms. Singletary. He was her live-in boyfriend, an abusive man with an explosive temper. Sheriffs detectives who learned about his whereabouts through a phone call he’d made raided a hotel where Melton was holed up. Melton saw them coming, and before the deputies could do anything, he put the gun he’d killed Phyllis with to his head and pulled the trigger, killing himself instantly. The deputies found a note in the hotel room in Melton’s handwriting. In it, he admitted to killing Phyllis—saying he had shot her twice in the chest over “domestic disagreements.

The detectives later learned that Phyllis had told Melton that she felt sorry for Richard Ramirez because he hadn’t gotten proper representation with the Hernandezes. Melton thought Ramirez was a mad dog that needed killing. An argument ensued, which grew into a senseless murderous rage.

When Clark and Daniel visited Richard in the county jail that day, he said he didn’t want to go forward with the trial and his lawyers should demand a mistrial. There was no way, he insisted, the jurors could not be influenced by the murder of a fellow juror. He pointed out that the case was not about forgery, or a stock swindle; it was about murder, and he was being tried for murder. “There’s no fucking way they won’t be affected against me!” Clark, Daniel, and Salinas agreed wholeheartedly, and they promised Richard they’d prepare a motion for mistrial. Amid a packed courtroom, Clark told the judge that the defense wanted the jury to have a period of at least a week to recuperate. If the judge wasn’t inclined to give them a week, Clark asked that the jurors be polled to see if they could still be impartial. He had been in contact with two psychiatrists, Dr. Jo ’Ellan Dimitrius and Dr. Carlo Webber, and they had both unequivocally advised him it would be wrong and improper to let this jury sit in judgment of a murder defendant without their being polled. He reminded the judge that the jurors had become “as close as siblings, husbands and wives.” Halpin didn’t agree. He didn’t want any delay and polling the jurors would just serve “to stir up their emotions.” Tynan decided to bring out the jury foreman and get his opinion about the capability of the jury to go on with an impartial deliberation. Foreman Rodriguez was summoned and Tynan queried him about the jury’s ability to move forward. Rodriguez, a mustachioed man with very black hair, said, “I feel it is somewhat tranquil, but it is—I feel that we can probably continue today.” “They all seem to be able to carry out their duties, then, as jurors?” asked the judge. “Right. Everyone appears to have it behind them.” “I am delighted to hear that,” Tynan proclaimed, an audible sigh of relief coming from him, and called for the jury to be brought out. He announced he was going to allow the trial to go forward. He looked at the defense table and said, “If there’s any objection from the defense, I’ll hear it now.” Richard leaned forward and said: “I have an objection. I think that is fucked up!” The bailiff closed in. The press, not knowing what Richard would do next, leaned forward. Daniel calmed Richard and told Tynan the defense objected strenuously to the deliberations going on with this jury.

Tynan ruled they would continue with this jury, Richard scowled at the judge and moved about in his chair anxiously, chains rattling. The judge told the jury he was allowing their deliberations go on and read a prepared statement to them, imploring them to put Ms. Singletary’s murder behind them. He reiterated her death had nothing to do with the trial and told them about James Melton, his suicide and the note. At 10:45, the jury recommenced its deliberations.

On the thirty-first, Richard listened, over a loudspeaker in the court holding cell he despised so much, as the hearing to poll the jury took place. Clark reiterated the defense’s position. Yochelson stood for the people, saying Ms. Singletary’s murder had happened two weeks earlier. It made no sense to rehash the tragedy and stir things up—after they apparently had been able to put it behind them. Tynan said he thought letting the defense question the jury about Singletary’s death would be a fatal mistake, and he denied the motion. In his cell, pacing back and forth, Richard cursed the judge and told his jailers the trial was a joke; he spit and he cursed and kicked the bars. Daniel told the court, Richard refused also to attend a second motion to be heard on September 5. The judge said it would be all right, but he would have to sign another waiver. Deputy Warden asked to speak to the judge at a sidebar and told Tynan that Richard was cursing and yelling and had stated he’d fight before he allowed deputies to bring him into court. Tynan announced that for security reasons, the defendant would sign the waiver on September 5. The jury’s deliberations moved on. On September 5, when Ramirez was led into court, he was subdued. Doreen was in her usual place, her eyes riveted to him. There was not an empty seat in the house. Ramirez signed the waiver form and was taken to the holding pen. The defense had decided to seek a mistrial based on several points: one, the death of Singletary, the other, that the juror who had replaced her, Mary Herrera, had two brothers in law enforcement who’d been shot to death, which she had failed to mention on her initial questionnaire. The judge refused to grant a new trial, court was recessed, and the jury continued its deliberations. On September 14, court was convened because of Arturo Hernandez. He had been ordered to call the court daily but had failed to do so on the sixth through the fourteenth. Judge Tynan found him in contempt and issued a body attachment with $5000 bail. On the eighteenth, Arturo showed up in court. Tynan bawled him out for not calling in as he had agreed to. He didn’t want to hear any excuses, he just wanted to know how Arturo pled. The lawyer said he was guilty. Tynan fined him $2400 or twenty-four days in jail. He gave him until September 24 to come up with the money. The judge then had Arturo remanded to do a day in jail for a September 1 contempt charge.

At 10:50 on September 20, the jury announced they had reached a verdict—a unanimous decision. Daniel Hernandez and Ray Clark were summoned. Richard was brought from the jail. He refused to change into a suit and wore jail blues. The press packed the courtroom. All the networks interrupted broadcasts to announce that a verdict had been reached. At 2:12, everyone was gathered in the packed courtroom. Carrillo and Salerno sat in their usual places. Clark told Judge Tynan that Richard did not want to be present for the verdict. Halpin said he wanted him there. Tynan refused to have Richard chained up to hear the verdict. It wouldn’t be good for the jury to see him that way before the penalty stage. He ruled Richard could hear the verdict from the court holding cell, citing “the Ninth Circuit of California v. Spainer. ”He queried Richard on the record, asking him four times if he relinquished his right to be present during the verdicts, and each time Richard said yes. He signed a waiver and was taken back to the holding cell.

He read each juror’s name: Cynthia Haden, Martha Salcido, Verbe Sutton, Alfredo Carrillo, Arthur Johnson, Lillian Sagron, Felipe Rodriguez, Mary Herrera, Choclate Harris, Arlena Wallace, Don McGee, and Shirley Zelaya.

Death, as such, held no fear for Richard. More than ever he believed in his heart that he would go to Hell and sit at the right hand of Satan. He believed all the hardest criminals throughout history would be there and he’d get to know them. Jack the Ripper, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Ted Bundy, Adolf Hitler, and all the others sent to Hell for their deeds. Heaven and Hell were as real to Richard as the helicopter now taking him to San Quentin.

When she got home, Cindy wrote Richard a long letter, saying how sorry she was about the death sentence, and tried to explain that she, and the jury as a whole, had had no legal alternative but to vote for death. She mailed the letter and anxiously waited for a response, which took only four days. Richard wrote her back and said he understood, that she shouldn’t feel bad about anything, not to beat herself up, and asked her to write him some more and maybe even come and visit. Cindy was thrilled when she got his letter and immediately wrote him back.

In August of 1993, Frank Salerno, the famous bulldog of Sheriffs Homicide, retired from police work for good.

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.

Other than the epilepsy, Richard had few problems during his first years of school. He liked to make people laugh, and that caused him to be disciplined sometimes, but he was a good student who paid attention in class and tried to do well, work hard, and get along with others. He did not, like Ruben and Robert, fight with the other children.

Joseph had graduated from high school, but did not want to go to school anymore. He had met Sofia, and he wanted to work and save so he could settle down with her. He, like his brothers, had had enough of living under Julian’s tyrannical rule. Joseph lived with Robert until Robert secured a job in Morinze, Arizona, a four-hour drive from El Paso. Joseph then began living with Sofia, his childhood sweetheart.

Ruth suggests Richard first changed when he was thrown off the football team at the Lincoln School for his epilepsy. He was the quarterback, and Julian attended the Saturday games whenever he wasn’t away laying track. Richard was an excellent athlete and was very proud about being the quarterback. He was a fast runner and could think quickly on his feet. However, when Richard had had a grand mal seizure at the end of one game, the coach had unceremoniously and without apology thrown him off the team. There was medication Richard could have been given, but no one ever suggested it. Richard was very disappointed; it wasn’t his fault he had blackouts, and it was unfair for him to be thrown off the team. He protested to the coach, but the coach said, “If something happens to you while you’re playing, it’ll be all my fault. No, thank you.

Cousin Miguel or, “Mike” as he was often called, returned from Vietnam a war hero with two tours of duty under his belt and four medals on his thickly muscled chest. His Green Beret platoon of twenty men had been surrounded by the Vietcong at one point, and Mike and another soldier had been the only ones who’d made it out alive. Mike took to guerilla fighting like a champion boxer to the ring. It was a situation in which he could vent his anger and aggression—kill and not get into any kind of trouble. According to Richard, Mike had twenty-nine known kills.

When Mike returned from Vietnam, Richard began hanging out with him. He was twelve. To Richard, Mike was special—a bona fide, real live hero, a man who’d gone into battle and come back victorious, with medals and Polaroid photos to prove he had been there and done it. In these pictures—which Mike showed Richard many times—there were Vietnamese women on their knees being forced to perform fellatio on Mike. In each he looked grimly at the camera and held a cocked .45 to the woman’s head, genuine fear in the woman’s eyes. Mike kept these black-and-white pictures, all bent by handling, in a shoebox at the top of a closet. He also kept eight shrunken heads he’d brought back from ’Nam in a battered suitcase under his bed. He told Richard he’d used the heads as pillows in Vietnam. Mike was married to a shapely Mexican-American redhead named Jessie with a full figure and strong personality.

To Richard, in a sense, Mike was a god. He listened to his older cousin’s war stories of rape and killing wide-eyed, fascinated beyond normal curiosity. The photos had a profound effect on Richard. They aroused him sexually in a way far more intense than the girlie magazines his brothers had.

In some of the pictures Mike was holding the decapitated head of a woman. It was the same woman who had been forced to fellate him in another photograph. Richard didn’t know why these pictures excited him so much; he knew it was wrong for him to be aroused by such brutality, but he would often masturbate thinking about those pictures.

Satan, he began to vehemently believe, would have approved of the thoughts and feelings he was having, and he started to think maybe Satan would be a more appropriate god, a power, for him to follow and worship.

Richard had been smoking pot steadily from the time he was ten. His siblings were always lighting up joints in the house, and Richard was quick to pick up the habit. It made him feel grown up. Pot was cheap in El Paso and easy to come by.

He told Jessie to shut up—that he was sick and tired of her complaining, whining bullshit. She continued to nag him. He walked calmly, to the refrigerator, took out the .38, and faced Jessie. She wasn’t frightened. She demanded to know what he was going to do with the gun. He told her he’d kill her if she didn’t put a lid on it. She didn’t believe him and she dared him to shoot her, spreading her legs defiantly, sticking her chin out. In one quick move, Mike raised the pistol and shot Jessie right in the face at point-blank range. The bullet entered just above her lip and exited the back of her head. Dead, she hit the ground hard, a finger of blood squirting from her wound as her body shook, trembled, and quaked in death’s final embrace.

Now, for maybe the first time, Richard realized there was something very different about him. He recently said: “That day I went back to that apartment, it was like some kind of mystical experience. It was all quiet and still and hot in there. You could smell the dried blood. Particles of dust just seemed to hover in the air. I looked at the place where Jessie had fallen and died, and I got this kind of tingly feeling. It was the strangest thing. Then my father told me to look in her pocketbook for this jewelry my cousin wanted, and I dumped Jessie’s pocketbook on the bed and looked through her things. It gave me the weirdest feeling—I mean, I knew her, and these were her things, and she was dead. Murdered. Gone. And I was touching her things. It made me feel . . . in contact with her.

After Jessie’s murder, Richard’s life began to change radically. He had less and less interest in school and more and more interest in getting high, stealing, and getting high some more. He clashed with his father frequently, but there was nothing Julian could do to force his youngest back on the straight and narrow line he had walked up until Jessie’s murder.

Ruben had started using heroin in El Paso, and he took his habit with him to Los Angeles. To support his addiction, he worked odd jobs, stole cars, and burglarized homes. Ruben was tall, thin, and lanky, and he had the fluid grace of the natural athlete. With stealth, rarely seen or heard, he got in and out of peoples’ homes. When Ruben was twenty, he and his wife, an El Paso woman named Suzanna, jumped on a Greyhound Bus and took the sixteen-hour ride to the Los Angeles Greyhound Bus Terminal. In 1972, as now, there was much crime and the selling of drugs and sex around the terminal. Julian and Suzanna wanted to get away from the downtown area, and they took an apartment in Watts, where it was even cheaper to live than downtown L.A.

Ruben teamed up with other Mexican-American burglars who hung out at the bus terminal. They were the black sheep who’d come to L.A. looking to rip off the system and get high. Every day, dozens of houses all over Los Angeles were robbed by them and the loot quickly sold to fences who lined the front of the terminal seven days a week, including Christmas and New Year’s. To a professional burglar, L.A. was like a beacon in the night, summoning those who would steal from far and wide. The thieves knew L.A. was made up of ninety-six different communities, many of which had their own police forces, and if they moved around, they were a lot less likely to come to the attention of any given police department and thus elude capture.

He had begun breaking into people’s houses shortly before Mike had been arrested for killing Jessie. He loved the feeling of being in a stranger’s house when they weren’t there, alone, looking through their personal things, taking what he wanted, fantasizing about sexual scenarios involving bondage. It gave him a feeling of power. He had given his cousin much of what he stole of value. Mike had in turn sold it, then given the money to Richard, minus his share for acting as the middleman. Richard quickly warmed to the idea of getting money so easily. It certainly beat working.

Richard began going to Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings on Sapian Street with his friend Eddie. At the meetings, he heard about the treacherous, terrible power of Satan—how if a man wasn’t careful, he’d be in the grip of Satan before he knew it, destined to all kinds of pains in hell. Richard often had thoughts of violence fused with sex that were far from Christian. He knew they were diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Church.

Richard began to experiment with hallucinogens. LSD was still popular with America’s youth, and he tripped many times on acid. He also took magic mushrooms and peyote, which were both plentiful and readily accessible in El Paso. High, he’d go out to the desert at night and hunt by the light of the moon, imagining he was in touch with Satan, that Satan was communicating with him.

The closer he drew toward Satan, the more estranged he became from society, as well as his parents. Richard began to conceive of Satan as a friend, an ally he could be himself with, share his inner thoughts with, and not be judged by.

Back in San Francisco, the Stalker task force made a very clever decisive move: they published pictures and descriptions of the jewelry stolen from the Pan residence. They figured someone somewhere was buying it, and with the high rewards being offered for the killer’s identification, this might be the way to nail the Stalker.

Richard found a job at the Holiday Inn, keeping the place clean, carrying luggage, and doing light maintenance work. The money wasn’t bad and there were lots of women for him to look at. He had become acutely aware of women and sex; he would masturbate frequently as he imagined different scenarios—most involving bondage—with the attractive women he saw around the hotel. His first problems at the Holiday Inn occurred when he was in the hotel elevator with two girls in their teens. He smiled at one of them and told her he thought she was pretty. She said thank you and promptly told her parents Richard had made a pass. Her parents complained to the assistant manager, who told the manager, who promptly summoned Richard to the office. Richard was told he was not to flirt with the guests’ daughters and was warned that if another such incident happened he’d be fired. He promised it wouldn’t. The manager made him apologize to the girls’ parents and the incident was forgotten. After being employed at the Holiday Inn for three months, Richard was given a master key to the hotel’s rooms. He says he got it from his friend, who had worked at the hotel but had been fired for being late and not showing up. By now Richard was 5′10″ with taut, sinewy muscles. He was very well coordinated, the fastest runner in his class. He was still enrolled in Jefferson High, but for the most part he didn’t attend classes. From the very first, Richard had gone back to the hotel at night to look in the windows. The hotel had curtains of stiff fabric, and there was frequently an inch or two where someone could look in. The unsuspecting guests had no idea he was there, spying on them, fantasizing about them. He began testing himself, becoming bolder and entering the rooms with his pass key while the guests were sleeping. That’s when the most valuables were there, he realized.

He’d first make sure the guests were asleep by listening at the window. When he was satisfied, he’d open the door, enter quickly, get down to the ground, and wait, making certain the guests weren’t disturbed. Then he’d crawl across the floor, as Mike had taught him, and find the wallets, cash, and watches using a penlight to see.

Richard didn’t know why he had these uncontrollable desires involving bondage and rape, but they were there, and he had no say over their comings and goings (as with his epileptic attacks). He knew they were wrong—were against the Church—but they, to him, were bigger than the Church, bigger than life itself, and not about to go away.

The couple at the hotel lived out of state. They wanted nothing more to do with the incident and wanted to forget the whole ugly affair. They refused to return to El Paso and testify against Richard, and the charges were dropped. Richard received no probation, no therapy, no dialogue with anyone about the demons dancing in his head. Julian, like Mercedes, believed Richard’s story and had arranged for a lawyer to represent him.

Mike was released from the Texas State Mental Hospital in late 1977, four and a half years after killing Jessie. The doctors felt he had stabilized and was fit to be returned to society. The doctors reasoned that his not having gotten extensive therapy after the horrors of Vietnam was to blame. He deserved another chance.

Mike explained the concepts of guerilla warfare to Richard and told him more about his sexual conquests in ’Nam. These stories hung inside Richard’s head like obscene, perverse paintings. Mike still had the pictures of his conquests, which he showed Richard, and these photographs gave dimension, life, and sustenance to Mike’s tales of sexual dominance and sadism and Richard’s subsequent fantasies.

Richard, aside from hanging out with Mike, became a loner. He didn’t trust people or like them particularly. He perceived society as unfair, vicious, and hostile.

In the early-morning hours, when all of El Paso slept, Richard Ramirez dressed in black and burglarized people’s homes. He used what Mike had told him—“Watch out for gravel, clotheslines, garbage cans, and dogs”—and became a very proficient thief. By the time he was sixteen, his nickname had become “Dedos,” or “Fingers.” If it wasn’t nailed down, he’d take it. He often sold what he’d stolen: a radio, a leather jacket, a television, stamps, coins. Julian knew nothing of Richard’s nightly forays.

Richard often thought of Los Angeles, of all the wealth there—his just for the taking. Through his burglaries in El Paso, Richard was growing more and more confident. Soon he would be ready for the big city. If he ever expected to score big, he knew it wouldn’t be in El Paso. Los Angeles, the City of Angels, was what he saw in his future. He used El Paso as a training ground. If he went to L.A. before he was ready, he’d only end up in jail for a long time. It was like a war and you had to be in fighting condition if you wanted to win.

It’s an easy thing to steal, any jerk could do it, but to steal and not get caught, ever, that’s something else. That’s something you have to train for. And to learn it properly takes years,” Richard later said.

Richard returned to the desert to hunt, practicing what Mike had taught him: how to approach game with stealth, and when to pull the trigger. He’d see just the tips of a rabbit’s ears as it hid among rocks, and he’d crawl up to it without being seen. It was a game he enjoyed, but he knew it was a game which could become real at any time. “You never know,” Mike had taught him, “when you’ll have to provide for yourself, kill or be killed. You have to always be prepared. After all, life is like living in a jungle. It’s a fuckin’ dog-eat-dog world, and if you don’t eat first, you get eaten. Period. It’s that simple.

Richard would now often stay out in the desert after it had gotten dark. Mike had taught him how to read the stars, and he never got lost.

Richard had a plan to make some quick money: he could buy pot in El Paso for next to nothing and sell it in Los Angeles for considerably more. Without telling anyone, Richard left El Paso for good on a dirty, battered Greyhound bus. He’d just turned eighteen. Richard listened to heavy metal music over earphones and slept when possible.

But then, who’s to say what is evil? “A man’s beliefs are his own business. Neither the Church nor anybody else has any right to tell you how to think and how to act; that’s what real freedom is about: to be able to be who you really are, not what you are expected or supposed to be,” he later said.

Richard became obsessed with the rush and the feeling of power cocaine gave him. When he was on it, he felt strong, cunning, and invincible. Richard had seen Ruben using a needle since he was twelve, and it was an easy transformation from snorting cocaine to injecting it intravenously.

Mainlining cocaine is far different from snorting it. The drug goes right into the bloodstream all at once, causing an immediate, thunderous rush with the intensity of a speeding train. Cocaine stimulates the right side of the brain, where much that is dark and abstract about human nature resides, and with the drug saturating Richard’s brain, he was drawn further and further toward Satan and sadism. The drug became a key that unlocked a door behind which lurked nightmares in living color.

To support his cocaine habit, Richard committed scores of burglaries. Without difficulty, he was earning the money he needed for the cocaine—which was now between $1,200 and $1,500 a week. The fences at the bus terminal gladly bought whatever he had of worth, though they preferred televisions, stereos, jewelry, stamp collections, watches, any kind of gold, and diamonds.