He looks like any other child — dark eyes, a shy smile, a face filled with innocence.
But this little boy, born in El Paso, Texas, in 1960, would grow up to become one of the most feared men in American history.
A childhood of violence and fear
The little boy on this picture was the youngest of five in a working-class Mexican American family. His mother worked at a shoe factory, and his father was an army veteran. Childhood friends described him as a bit of a loner during his early years.
After his father retired from the army, he worked long hours for the railroad and ruled the home with explosive anger. Behind closed doors, life was pure terror.
By the time this boy was six, he had already suffered several head injuries from his father’s beatings — blows so severe that he developed temporal lobe epilepsy.
At times, his father tied him to a cemetery cross overnight as punishment, leaving him alone among the graves.
By age ten, he was numbing himself with alcohol and marijuana, trying to escape the horror of his home. As a teenager, he often ventured into the El Paso desert at night with his father’s .22 rifle, hunting coyotes, rabbits, and birds. Afterward, he would sometimes disembowel his catch and feed the entrails to his dog.
The moment that changed everything
When he was 15, the boy witnessed something that would scar him forever.
His cousin Miguel ”Mike” Valles, a Vietnam veteran who regularly showed him gruesome Polaroids of women he’d tortured during the war, shot his own wife in the face during a domestic argument.
The boy watched it happen.
After that, he withdrew completely. He dropped out of Jefferson High School in ninth grade and fell deeper into darkness.
The young man then began spending time with his sister’s husband, a man obsessed with spying on women. Together, they prowled neighborhoods at night, peeping through windows.
By 22, he had moved to California, bouncing between San Francisco and Los Angeles. He was now heavily addicted to cocaine, surviving on burglaries and thefts, a drifter with no home and no future.
But very few could have predicted what was coming next. Psychologists would later describe him as a “made” psychopath rather than a “born” one.
Night Walker is born
In April 1984, he committed his first known killing.
Nine-year-old Mei Leung was found dead in the basement of her San Francisco apartment building. She was beaten, strangled, and hanged from a pipe.
DNA would link later link him him to the horrific crime.
Two months later, he struck again, stabbing 79-year-old Jennie Vincow to death in her sleep. Her throat was slit so deeply she was nearly decapitated.
The “Night Stalker” had arrived.
Between March 1985 and August 1985, he unleashed a reign of terror across California. He broke into homes at random, killing men, women, and children alike.
His attacks were brutal – some shot, others bludgeoned or stabbed — and he often assaulted his female victims.
Selected his targets at random
But what truly horrified the public was his obsession with Satanism.
He forced victims to swear allegiance to the devil, scrawled pentagrams on walls, and carved symbols into flesh.
In one case, he gouged out a woman’s eyes and kept them as a trophy. In another, he left the imprint of his sneaker on a victim’s face.
The press gave him a name that still chills people to this day: The Night Stalker.
Most of the Night Stalker’s attacks occurred in middle-class suburban neighborhoods around Los Angeles.
He seemed to select his targets at random, quietly entering through unlocked windows or doors and striking his victims as they slept.
A break in the case
As fear consumed California, police worked around the clock to connect the crimes. The big break came when a 13-year-old boy, James Romero III, spotted a suspicious man outside his Mission Viejo home late one night.
He jotted down the make, model, and partial plate of the car, an orange Toyota.
That tip led to the discovery of a fingerprint on the car’s mirror.
The print matched a 25-year-old drifter with a record of petty crimes: Richard Ramirez. On August 29, 1985, authorities released his photo to the public.
The next morning, the streets of Los Angeles turned into a manhunt.
The capture
Ramirez tried to flee after seeing his own face on the front page of La Opinión newspaper. But locals recognized him.
A group of furious residents chased him down, beat him, and held him until police arrived. After months of horror, the Night Stalker was finally caught, by the very people he had terrorized. Ramirez had then killed at least fifteen people during his series of nighttime break-ins.
”See you in Disneyland”
His trial in 1988 was as disturbing as his crimes. He smirked, flashed pentagrams drawn on his hands, and shouted, “Hail Satan!” in the courtroom.
In 1989, he was convicted of 13 murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries.
When sentenced to death, Ramirez sneered:
“Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”
Richard Ramirez spent 24 years on death row in San Quentin, where he married a fan who had written him letters. He died in 2013 from complications of lymphoma, still unrepentant to the end.
Looking back on his childhood photos, the innocent boy who would one day become the Night Stalker, it’s almost impossible to comprehend how such evil took root.
But perhaps the most haunting thought of all is that no one saw it coming.
