The child in this picture was the youngest of five siblings, born to a Mexican American family in El Paso, Texas, on February 29, 1960.
From the outside, his early life looked ordinary—Catholic upbringing, a father who worked for the railroad, and a modest home in the Southwest.
But behind closed doors, his reality was very different.
A Troubled Beginning
His father struggled with anger and heavy drinking, which led to frequent outbursts. By the time the boy was six, he had suffered multiple blows to the head and periods of unconsciousness, eventually developing temporal lobe epilepsy.
As punishment, his father would sometimes tie him to a cross-shaped structure in a cemetery and leave him alone overnight among the gravestones.
By age ten, the boy had already turned to alcohol and marijuana to cope with the chaos at home.
A Dark Influence
According to Biography.com, the defining shift came when he was 15. On May 4, 1975, he witnessed something horrifying: his older cousin Miguel shot his own wife during a heated argument, right in front of the boy.
Miguel was later found not responsible due to mental illness.
But the boy—already vulnerable—changed dramatically afterward. He withdrew, grew moody, and soon dropped out of Jefferson High School.
Shortly after, he moved in with his sister and her husband Roberto, a compulsive nighttime voyeur who took the boy with him on his unsettling outings.
When Miguel was released from the hospital in 1977, he sometimes joined them.
The Move to California
By 1982, at age 22, the young man had made California his permanent home. He began using cocaine frequently and funded his habits through break-ins and theft.
He drifted between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with no stable job or home.
His crimes escalated rapidly—but no one could have predicted what came next.
A String of Attacks Begins
His first known victim was a nine-year-old girl in San Francisco on April 10, 1984.
DNA would not link him to the case until 2009.
Two months later, on June 28, 1984, he attacked 79-year-old Jennie Vincow in her Los Angeles apartment, ending her life during a nighttime break-in.
After a nine-month pause, he began a widespread series of attacks across California that lasted from March to August 1985.
He entered homes at night—usually through unlocked windows or doors—and harmed whoever was inside. His targets were completely random: young women, elderly couples, and families.
A Disturbing Pattern
What made his offenses even more unsettling was his use of occult symbols.
He drew pentagrams on walls and on victims’ bodies, demanded that survivors “swear on the devil,” and shouted phrases during the attacks that made his intentions clear.
In one particularly shocking incident, he took a keepsake from a victim and stored it in his apartment.
In another case, he used electrical cords as weapons, leaving disturbing markings behind.
He even left a footprint from his Avia sneaker on the face of one of his victims—a detail that later helped investigators.
The Hunt Intensifies
News outlets dubbed him the “Valley Intruder,” “Night Stalker,” and “Walk-In Killer.”
Detectives Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno led one of the largest manhunts in California history.
Crimes from multiple counties were linked together through meticulous forensic work.
Then came a break.
A Teenager Helps Crack the Case
On August 24, 1985, 13-year-old James Romero III heard noises outside his Mission Viejo home.
He spotted a suspicious man leaving in an orange Toyota and memorized the partial plate number and car details.
This information became key.
On August 28, police located the abandoned Toyota in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. They recovered a single fingerprint from the rearview mirror—missed in an attempted wipe-down.
It matched a 25-year-old drifter with a long record of drug and traffic offenses.
The Suspect Finally Identified
His name: Richard Ramirez.
Unaware that his photo was everywhere, Ramirez took a bus to Tucson, Arizona, on August 30.
Returning to L.A. the next day, he walked past officers at the station without being recognized. But when he entered a convenience store in East Los Angeles, a group of women recognized him from the news and called him by name.
Panicked, Ramirez ran onto the freeway, trying to force drivers out of their cars.
Local residents chased him down, struck him with a fence post, and held him until police arrived.
The Trial and Sentencing
Ramirez’s trial began in July 1988.
He behaved erratically—shouting phrases, displaying hand symbols, and drawing attention from a small cult-like following.
On September 20, 1989, a jury found him guilty of:
- 13 counts of taking lives
- 5 attempted attacks
- 11 assaults
- 14 burglaries
He received 19 death-row sentences.
His chilling response:
“Big deal.”
Ramirez later married a supporter, Doreen Lioy, in 1996 while incarcerated at San Quentin.
His Final Years
Ramirez remained on death row for nearly 24 years. He often boasted to guards about harming “more than 20 people.”
On June 7, 2013, at age 53, he passed away in a hospital due to complications from B-cell lymphoma.
No family member claimed his remains.
The Final Contrast
It is almost impossible to reconcile the innocent face of the boy in the photo with the man he eventually became. His story remains one of the darkest transformations in American criminal history.
