This photo portrays a small boy who grew up to be one of the most well-known figures in contemporary American history.
He was the youngest of five children in a hardworking Mexican-American household. He was born on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas. His dad worked on the railroad, and the family was Catholic. It appeared like a normal life in the American Southwest from the outside, but things were radically unusual behind closed doors.
His father’s harsh temper and strict discipline had a huge impact on his boyhood. The boy went experienced a lot of suffering when he was young, which produced serious head traumas and neurological anomalies that will persist for the rest of his life. By the time he was ten, he was already using drugs and alcohol to get away from the turmoil at home.
When he was fifteen, things got worse for him again. He witnessed a tragic event involving a close family member, which inflicted significant psychological trauma and initiated his decline. He quit school not long after that and started spending time with people that were bad for him.
He lived in both San Francisco and Los Angeles as he got older and moved about a lot. As he became increasingly addicted to drugs, he got more and more involved in crime. At first, he merely stole minor stuff and broke into people’s homes. But over time, his crimes got greater.
By the middle of the 1980s, people in California were afraid. People all around the state were being broken into by a strange person who attacked them for no evident cause. He was called many things by the news, but one moniker stood out: “The Night Stalker.” His crimes shocked the whole country because they were so random and horrible.
The cops started one of the biggest manhunts in California history. Detectives from several places started putting together clues that linked a series of break-ins and attacks using fingerprints, shoe prints, and eyewitness accounts.
In the end, the case came to light when a teenage boy observed a shady man lingering about his family’s house in Mission Viejo and was able to take a picture of part of the suspect’s license plate. That small amount of knowledge would eventually lead to the killer’s capture.
Richard Ramirez, a 25-year-old drifter with a long history of drug use and petty criminality, later had a fingerprint that matched one that the police found. Within hours of the police releasing his mugshot, it was on every California TV and newspaper.
The next day, Ramirez tried to leave the city, not knowing that people already knew who he was. When he arrived back to Los Angeles, people on the street recognized him right away. A group chased him through East L.A., and others in the area were able to keep him there until the police arrived. The long reign of fear was finally over.
His trial began in 1988 and attracted a lot of media coverage across the world. Ramirez acted in a bizarre and unpleasant way in court, and at times he seemed stubborn and unrepentant. He was convicted guilty of several murders and other terrible crimes in 1989 and sentenced to death.
He spent more than twenty years on death row in San Quentin State Prison. He died there in 2013 at the age of 53 from natural causes.
You can’t imagine that a life like that could go so wrong when you see that childhood image of a nice little kid with dark eyes and a shy smile. His narrative is a terrible reminder of how suffering, neglect, and unbridled darkness can transform a person in ways we can’t even conceive.
