Cold Open: Richard Ramirez killed at least 14 people and raped and tortured at least two dozen more, mostly during the spring and summer of 1985. He robbed to support his coke habit and to pay for a place to stay since this piece of shit was allergic to an honest days work. And he tortured, raped, and killed to sexually satisfy himself and to appease his god - the Devil. Ramirez was WAY into Satan. He’d actually pray to the Devil for protection before sneaking into some innocent family’s home to brutalize, rape, and kill. And today, if you have the stomach for it, you can learn all about the dirty deeds of this dark piece of shit. Extra big parental advisory on this one. We go dark, real dark, today on Timesuck. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I. Welcome! Hello Timesuckers! I’m Dan Cummins, and this IS Timesuck. Hail Nimrod! Praise Bojangles, and glory be to Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald! And Lucifina - she’s in full force this week. Wow. After Monday’s heaviness, one of my favorite Sucks by the way, we’re going pure macabre escapism this week. I know the serial killer episodes are many Timesucker’s favorites, and, well, if you like it dark, it does not get darker than Richard the Night Stalker Ramirez. Evil incarnate. Thanks again for all the recent iTunes ratings and reviews - they keep poring in and they keep pumping me up and spreading the Suck. There are a lot of podcasts out there and I’m so thankful you choose to listen to and promote this one. Every rating you give, every post you share, every time you post about the Suck somewhere - it helps so much. Nothing keeps this going like your word of mouth and I thank you! Bringing this year’s Flat Earth tour to a lot of new cities and tickets are selling well - everywhere but Alabama. C’mon Alabama! Step it up! I’ll be in Charlotte, North Carolina on April 8, Atlanta on the 9th, Birmingham, Alabama on the 10th, Huntsville, Alabama - gotta get those NASA employees to come hear some flat earth jokes. Nashville on the 12th, Houston on the 13th, Dallas on the 14th, and San Antonio, on the 15th. The next weekend I’ll be in Salt Lake City - and then San Fran after that. In May, I’m coming to Sacramento, and Phoenix and I’m doing another live Timesuck podcast in Spokane on May 6th. Live podcast! Only one I’ll be doing until Orlando late in the summer. So get there! More tour dates at www.dancummins.tv . And, I keep forgetting, I’ll be doing a cruise early next year, March 7-11, with those glorious bastards Tom and Dan. Yep! We’ll sail out of Port Canaveral on March 7th and head STRAIGHT FOR THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE!!!! Nope. Not sure where exactly we’re going, other than out to sea! And we’ll return on the 11th. And it’s gonna be a blast. They’ll be a bunch of hangouts, some live podcasting, drinks and merriment, and you can put a hold on a cabin for just $25 if you’re interested. The Tom and Dan cruises always sell out, and this one will be no different. I’m looking forward to it. Hope I remember to get a L Ron Hubbard Sea Org Captain’s hat for the journey. Hope some of you can make it. Go to http://www.tomanddancruise.com/ for more info. Quick word of condolence to loyal Sucker Aaron Mayo who just lost his pet & family member Stella the other day. Sorry for you loss! Lot of fantastic Updates on Monday’s gun suck at the end, Bonus Suck 19, Richard Ramirez, right now. PAUSE INTERLUDE II. Alright, so, the Night Stalker. Why suck him? Well, as far as serial killers go, he scares me the most. Some serial killers still seemed to possess a little humanity in them. Fucked up monsters - all of them, but most, to me, still seem a little human. Take Dahmer - I almost felt sorry for him. He just seemed almost mentally handicapped. He seemed aware that there was something really wrong with him. He was trying to create a sex zombie. He was sadistic to be sure, but also delusional. He seemed childish in a way, similar to Ed Gein. Or, BTK, huge monster but able to convince a family and kids he raised into thinking he was a good guy. When it came to his family, he actually was a good guy. He actually did care about them. It was the occasional stranger he really didn’t care about and he was capable of doing horrible things to them. There appeared to be no good left in Richard Ramirez by the time he was apprehended. He seemed to be pure, unadulterated evil. Like Ted Bundy, but somehow even worse. Bundy at least tried to hide the fact he was evil. Richard didn’t. So, as we do here on the Suck when it comes to biographical based episodes, let’s start at the beginning with week’s topic, with a Timesuck Timeline. PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO III. Timesuck Timeline A. February 29th, 1960: On February 29th, 1960, Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez was born in El Paso, Texas, the fifth child of Mexican immigrants Mercedes and Julian Ramirez. There was Ruth, Ruben, Richard, Robert and Joseph. His father was a Mexican national and former Juarez policeman who later became a laborer on the Santa Fe railroad. He was a hard- working man prone to fits of anger that often resulted in the physical abuse of his family. His mother Mercedes was a respected archaeologist from Mexico City who’d walked away from a promising career in Mayan temple excavation and interpretation before marrying Julian. That’s not true. Mercedes had a first grade education and worked at a boot factory, where she was exposed to chemical fumes when she was pregnant with him. She worked at the Tony Lama boot factory mixing pigments and chemicals used on the boots. She was mixing chemicals such as benzene, xylene and toluene and unfortunately in that era, the toxicity of these chemicals was unknown. All his siblings had birth defects, ranging from respiratory difficulty to bone deformities. Specifically, when pregnant with Richard, the fumes she was inhaling made her weak and nauseous and threatened the pregnancy. Doctors suspected her body was trying to reject the child she was carrying. If only she HAD rejected it, so many other lives would have been saved. So, basically, Richard was born with TONS of advantages. Poor? Check. Poor AND new to this country? Member of a then unpopular minority group? Check. Physical abuse? Check. Mom with first grade education constantly breathing toxic fumes while pregnant? Check, check, check! Both parents worked long hours pretty much every day and sometimes into the night. Absent parents? Check! B. 1962: In 1962, Richard suffers the first of two significant head wounds as a child at the age of two when a dresser falls on him and lacerates his forehead. Now - I also had a dresser fall on me at two and cut my head open enough to leave a scar I still have and I’m totally normal as all of you know. As I write this, I’m looking at a painting of my own face here in the Suck Dungeon with fire in my eyes and also a small glass skull half covered by my face replica. That’s normal, right? I never had to get stitches for my little head wound. Richard’s forehead laceration required 30 stitches to close and the blow knocked him unconscious. So, his was quite a bit worse than mine. C. 1965: In 1965, at the age of five, he was knocked unconscious from a swing and started experiencing epileptic seizures. His family takes him to the doctor and he then sees a series of specialists and spends the following year at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota continually studied and treated by the best pediatricians and epilepsy specialists in the nation. Yeah right. No mention as to what treatment, if any, he received. Probably none. Richard’s father, Julian was an abusive parent was was his father was before him. If Mercedes or any of the children did anything that Julian considered wrong they were physically beaten. Normally with a belt. He was a strict disciplinarian and a firm believer in corporal punishment. And mom found solace from the home violence in the Catholic church and she and the kids were heavily involved in the church. Gotta say, this doesn’t seem that atypical in the context of the era. Before the 80s, I feel like a lot of physical punishment was just the norm. Parents just beat the shit out of their kids. My dad and his brothers got beat all the time. My grandma chased them with a hot wheel track, swinging wildly and hitting them wherever she could land a good blow. My grandpa paddled their asses with a belt. Their teachers paddled them in class. Everybody got smacked back then, including, sadly, a lot of wives. So, while I think this is fucked up, it also wasn’t odd for living in an impoverished neighborhood in 1960s an 1970s America. And I’m guessing spankings came a little looser and faster in Texas than certain other states. What is interesting to note about his childhood is that throughout the 1950s the military was conducting nuclear bomb tests in nearby New Mexico, not far from Roswell - America’s butthole - and as it happened, the fallout from the bombs was carried by the wind to settle in El Paso, and affect the landscape, cattle and people.