Richard Ramirez By: Johnathan Fairchild Period 5 Who he was Richard Ramirez was a male serial killer who killed up to 14 people and was known as “the night stalker” in the San Francisco and Los Angeles area during the early 1980s Early Life He was born on January 29th 1960 in El Paso Texas, as a young boy he was constantly being beaten by his abusive father. He later became fascinated with his cousin mike who was a green beret who’d recently returned from the Vietnam war, they would get high together and Mike would tell him the atrocities he’d committed to vietnamese women. Later on Mike would go on to shoot his wife in the face right in front of Richard. First crimes By the time he was 17, he’d gone and committed some petty crimes which landed him in juvenile detention. He later moved to Los Angeles and picked up an interest for satanism, cocaine addiction and convictions for burglary. Murders His first murder took place on June 18th 1984 when he violently sexually assaulted, stabbed and killed 79 year old Jennie Vincow. After this he moved to San Francisco to avoid capture. He wore all black when breaking into victims homes and was brutal and remorseless while murdering his victims often forcing victims to swear allegiance to satan then carve pentagrams into their skin. In 2 years he left 13 people dead and the people of L.A and San Francisco terrified Capture His final attack on August 24th 1985, led to the identification of his stolen car by the victim who miraculously survived, his car was found with his finger prints and the police finally I.D-ed Ramirez, and his prison mug shots were released to the public and was caught a week later after being badly beaten by an angry mob of east L.A residents after recognising him from his mug shots. Convictions and sentencing Jury selection for his first court appearance started 3 years later in the summer of 1988 where he would have random outbursts of rage exclaiming “this case is a joke!”He also held out one of his hands with a pentagram carved into it and yelled “hail satan!”. It took another year for the jury and prosecutors to make up their minds. On September 20th 1989 he was found guilty and was convicted of: 13 counts of murder, 5 counts of attempted murder, 11 counts of sexual assault, and 14 counts of burglary. 2 months later he was given 19 death penalties and was sentenced to die in California's gas chamber Appeals and death On august 7th 2006 the california state supreme court upheld his convictions and death sentence and since the appealing process takes so long, they lasted until his death. Richard Ramirez died on June 7th 2013 due to complications of B-cell Lymphoma (a type of blood cancer) he was 53 years old and was on death row for more than 23 years. Important questions and answers ● Q: who was his first victim? ● A: 79 year old Jennie Vincow, who was brutally murdered ● Q: Did his beliefs drive him to commit crimes? ● A: not entirely, his inspirations came from his cousin mike and the hatred of his abusive father ● Q: How long was his sentence once he was caught? ● A: he was given 19 death sentences sources Hellyeahrichardramirez.tumblr.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ramirez https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Richard_Ramirez_2007.jpg http://crimefeed.com/2016/08/richard-ramirez-the-night-stalker/ http://www.biography.com/people/richard-ramirez-12385163 http://murderpedia.org/male.R/r/ramirez-richard-photos-3.htm.