Original subtitles

[waves crashing in distance]

[interviewer on tape]

[Ramirez on tape] Yeah.

[jarring instrumentals play]

[dramatic musical sting]

[siren wailing in distance]

[jarring musical sting]

We have a compulsive psychotic out there.

He's killed before, and he's likely to kill again.

He strikes in the night. People are wondering when and where he will strike next.

He wreaked havoc on the city of Los Angeles in the summer of 1985.

[reporter] In some cases, he's left a signature, a pentagram,

the sign of Satan.

My grandmother had been killed in her own home.

That was the moment that my childhood ended.

[reporter 1] Thirteen murders. Many counts of robbery and rape and more.

[reporter 2] The Texas drifter seemed to attract

a collection of courtroom groupies.

[man] As soon as he got captured,

he went from being this lonely, isolated young man

to suddenly in the spotlight.

He became a kind of perverse star.

[crowd shouting]

[man] His brutal good looks made him into a sex symbol.

I wanted to see what he looked like. I think he's cute.

Reminds me of Mick Jagger.

[woman] I started getting obsessed.

I wrote about 31 letters.

He wrote me 31 letters back.

[woman] Doreen ended up being chosen.

She wasn't quite like the other "girls."

I can't help the way the world looks at him.

They don't know him the way I do.

He's everything I ever wanted.

[man] I tried to tell them, "He would have cut your throat.

He would have taken your eyes out.

Do not romanticize Richard Ramirez."

[Ramirez on tape]

[shrill, piercing beat]

[ominous music playing]

[grim music playing]

[moody guitar melody playing]

[siren wailing in distance]

[music fades]

[man] I remember that night. St. Patrick's Day.

10:40 in the evening. I got a phone call.

Said to respond to a location on Village Lane

in the City of Rosemead.

[ominous music playing]

[woman] A woman, Maria Hernandez, is driving home.

The garage door goes up.

She parks, and she's getting out of her car.

Richard manages to slip underneath the garage door

before it closes.

[Carrillo] It takes eight seconds for that door to close.

[jarring musical sting]

Once the door closes, he makes a deliberate sound,

she turns around, and it's point shoulder.

She puts her hands in front of her face. He pulls the trigger.

[woman] She is injured, but the bullet deflects

from her car keys for the most part.

She falls down, and she pretends like she's dead.

Richard thinks he's killed her.

He makes his way up to their apartment.

Maria Hernandez shared a condominium

with another woman, Dayle Okazaki.

Upon hearing the gunshot, Dayle Okazaki took cover.

[tense music playing]

[Johnston] She is terrified.

And so she ducks down behind the island in the kitchen.

Richard Ramirez could walk around right then and just shoot her,

and yet, he doesn't. He waits.

[Martin] She stayed for a period of time,

thinking that Ramirez had left,

and then she lifted her head up above the countertop,

and waiting for that was Richard Ramirez

who shot and killed her.

[uneasy music playing]

[Carrillo] Maria Hernandez was in the hospital. We went there the next day.

At that time, a staff artist would come and sit next to you,

and say, "Tell me what he looked like."

High cheekbones, narrow jaw.

His hair was disheveled.

Stained gapped teeth.

As the case went on,

there were several artist renditions.

This is kind of the beginning,

the shooting of Okazaki and Hernandez.

This is kinda where it all starts.

[music fades]

My formal name is Rosalinda Rodriguez Juarez.

Everybody calls me Rosie.

I am Richard Ramirez's eldest niece.

My Uncle Richard was born in 1960 in El Paso.

There's exactly 11 years apart between my Uncle Richard

and myself.

What he did was heinous.

It was wrong,

but he was my family, and I have to still love.

But it doesn't mean to condone.

[gentle dramatic music playing]

[Juarez] My very first memory of my Uncle Richard,

we're watching the parade at Disneyland.

And he lifted me up to his shoulders

because I couldn't see.

And I remember wrapping my hands around

his-his face and his chin, and his fluffy hair...

My chin was touching on his fluffy hair. I remember that.

[Johnston] There were a lot of qualities in little Richie

that we see get warped

the older he gets.

[dramatic music playing]

I'm looking for how did this person start from an innocent baby

and wind up in the position that they were in?

The more that we can understand that,

the better off we're gonna be as a society.

When people describe little Richie,

they really describe him as a relatively shy little boy

who's happy. He loves music.

He's not causing any problems in early school.

He had three older brothers,

and then he had Rosa, his sister.

He always said he was closer to Rosa

than anybody else in his family.

[train bell clanging]

[whistle blows]

[man] His father is a former police officer from Mexico

who, in the United States, works for the railroad.

Ramirez's mother, by the time she's pregnant the fifth time with Richard,

she's working in a boot factory,

where it's thought that she's exposed to glue

and other toxins that may have had an effect on him in utero.

We have this toxic exposure,

and then there's traumatic brain injuries,

and there are a slew of those.

At five years of age, he was knocked unconscious on a playground.

He had a gash in his head which required several stitches.

He had a concussion on a football field.

[Brucato] He was hurled from a horse when he was older.

He jumped from a train and became unconscious.

[train bell clanging]

He is diagnosed in preadolescence

with temporal lobe epilepsy.

[eerie music playing]

[Carlo on tape] Mm-hmm.

[Rosa on tape]

[Carlo on tape]

[Rosa on tape]

[Brucato] What you have here is a variety of factors

that are grossly affecting the brain

and ultimately shutting down that capacity to stop an impulse

and to make choices that are moral.

[Johnston] In conjunction with that,

you have a very difficult upbringing.

A father with an explosive temper.

Richard witnessing his father, for example,

beating his oldest son severely

to the point where the other siblings are hiding.

[grim music playing]

[Carlo on tape] Hmm.

[Brucato] By the time Richard was a little bit older,

he likes to sleep in the cemetery

rather than be in the house.

The dead are a lot more predictable than the living.

The dead are predictably not going to fly off the handle and hurt you.

[Johnston] We all know people who've had horrendous childhoods

who grew up not only to not be perpetrators

but to be advocates for victims,

and I think it's very, very important to highlight that.

The potential pitfall is

making childhood trauma, abuse, neglect

become an excuse for somebody's later actions.

[somber music playing]

[man] The loss of my dad was,

well, it ruined our entire family, honestly.

I was about 25.

We had a very close family

and within... within a couple months,

it was basically just dissolved.

My dad and my stepmother Maxine were living in the house at that time.

They'd been married about five years.

Maxine grew up in a poor area in Arkansas

and became a certified public accountant.

She also became an attorney,

so she was a very accomplished woman, you know.

My dad was like a walking party.

You came over to the house, he had a big meal ready usually.

He'd say, "Get over here. You look like you're starving,"

and give you like a giant piece of lasagna like that big.

My dad was a World War II veteran.

Served in the Army with General Patton.

So he was pretty tough.

We were very close, so...

that's why this was very difficult for me.

[unsettling music playing]

[Johnston] In late March of 1985,

Richard Ramirez breaks into the home

of Vincent and Maxine Zazzara.

Vincent was falling asleep on the couch watching TV.

Richard manages to pry open this window.

He goes in, and he shoots Vincent.

This wakes up Maxine.

Maxine is a force to be reckoned with.

This is a strong woman, physically as well as mentally.

Her husband keeps a shotgun underneath the bed.

While Richard is ransacking and looking for jewelry

and other things of value to take,

she pulls out the shotgun, and she pulls the trigger.

And it just clicks.

[ominous clicking]

[Johnston] He is enraged.

His victim has gotten the jump on him.

He shoots her three times, almost decapitates her,

and as a souvenir, he decides to take out her eyes.

And so he removes her eyes and puts them

in one of her boxes that he takes with him.

The ultimate sign of humiliation, disrespect.

"How dare you challenge me

and how dare you interfere with my fantasy...

of what I need to do?"

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[Zazzara] The police wouldn't let me in because...

I guess they couldn't, but...

it was a pretty bad scene.

It really was like a big ripple effect on the whole...

the whole family, and we were all victimized by it.

It was very traumatic, so I don't wanna think about it anymore.

[somber music playing]

[Brucato] In the development of Ramirez into a serial killer,

one of the most critical and consequential figures

is his cousin Mike that enters about preadolescence.

-[helicopter blades thumping] -[rumbling]

[Brucato] Mike had served in Vietnam.

-[explosion] -[Brucato] And during his time there,

he had photographed and kept trophies

from violent acts that he began committing

against Vietnamese women.

Mike starts spending time with Richard

and teaching him things like the stealth maneuvers

that one uses to take a life,

showing him violent images, telling him dark stories.

[dramatic music playing]

[Carlo on tape]

[Ramirez on tape]

[Carlo on tape]

[Ramirez on tape]

[Carlo]

[Nacho Ramirez]

-[Carlo] -[Nacho Ramirez]

[Ramirez laughs]

[dramatic music playing]

[music fades]

-[wind blowing] -[leaves rustling]

[tense music playing]

[Brucato] When Richard was 15 years old,

he is in the company of his Cousin Mike,

and Mike's wife comes home,

and a kind of verbal dispute erupts.

[grim music playing]

[music fades]

Richard's criminal career is kind of ramping up.

His drug use is increasing.

He is getting involved in burglaries and robberies.

[Carlo] Yeah.

[Ramirez on tape]

[Ramirez on tape]

[Carlo on tape]

[both laugh]

By 1976, he's been involved with the criminal justice system at least seven times,

and nobody knows what to do with him.

At 18, he finally decides to relocate to L.A.

[gentle music playing]

[music fades]

[Juarez] My Uncle Richard lived with us in Los Angeles

on and off for a greater part of six years.

When he moved to Los Angeles, I was seven.

We were like siblings, arguing over the TV,

arguing over space.

He used to like to read.

He was an avid reader. He read a lot.

I remember him looking at the newspaper and saying,

"One day I'm gonna be here." Famous, I guess.

Famous. I never asked him how or what or anything.

I don't know what his thinking was at the time.

But, yeah, City of Dreams.

[gentle dramatic music playing]

[man] I think when he came to Los Angeles,

it was with the intention of being a career criminal.

He was a thief, a professional pickpocket,

a burglar, a drug dealer.

The drugs were crucially important.

[music intensifies rapidly]

[Ramirez laughs]

[Carlo] Right.

[Ramirez on tape]

[Carlo on tape] Mm-hmm.

[Ramirez on tape]

[music fades]

[grim, ominous music playing]

[Brucato] In May of 1985, Ramirez breaks into the home

of a pair of octogenarians, a pair of sisters.

Ma Bell, who is the caretaker for her sister Florence Lang,

who is an invalid.

What we see about this particular murder,

beyond the advanced ages of the victims,

we have, for the first time, the use of Satanic imagery.

In red lipstick, there is a pentagram

drawn on Ma Bell

and one drawn on the wall in Florence's room.

There was even sexual assault.

[Martin] To exact those kinds of crimes

on 80-plus-year-old women was just...

unbelievable.

That one really showed how, um...

indescribably horrible

that Richard Ramirez was, um,

as a murderer, as a human being.

[dramatic music playing]

[Carlo on tape] Yeah.

[Carlo on tape]

[music fades]

[birds chirping]

[grim music playing]

[reporter 1] California could be in for another day of record temperatures.

The mercury has broken 100 degrees every day this week.

[reporter 2] Another hot sizzler.

Now here's what's happening in your neighborhood.

In this period of time around July,

Richard Ramirez begins acting like a spree killer,

and he's moving very rapidly

with no cooling off period at all.

[reporter] The killings began in March

when four people were murdered.

Two more died in May.

In June, a woman died with her throat slashed.

Five more died in the Arcadia/Sun Valley area.

[man] Rumors were rampant,

and people were very much on edge.

[reporter] It would be tough to find an open door,

window, gate, or garage here tonight.

My name is Colleen Nelson.

My grandmother, Joyce Nelson,

was murdered on July 7th, 1985

by Richard Ramirez.

[fireworks exploding]

[ominous music playing]

[Nelson] The last time I had seen my grandmother

was on July 4th,

and she'd come over with a big box of fireworks.

My dad was giving her a warning

to be careful, to keep her windows closed,

and she told my dad that she wouldn't want to be a prisoner in her own home.

July 7th was a Sunday.

When we got home from church, my dad had come out of the house, and he was crying.

And he said that his mom, my grandma, had died.

It was a couple hours before he told me how she died.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[Martin] Joyce Nelson was beaten horribly. Her face was stomped on.

It was a brutal beating murder

and a departure from shootings

which had been one of the attributes of the other murders

that were being investigated.

[somber music playing]

[Nelson] My Grandma Joyce was just amazing.

She was 60 years old,

and she had seven grandchildren.

She raised two sons, and she was a single mom.

Whatever we wanted to do, she was right there with us.

Her house was just a place filled with so much joy,

so much happiness.

I can remember thinking at that time

that everything was gonna be different.

Monterey Park Police.

[man] For a while there was a school of thought

that it was different people committing these crimes.

But I know that Gil Carrillo, early on, uh, saw

that there was a pattern developing.

That maybe there was a serial killer

randomly attacking people.

I kept everything about those cases in my head

because I thought they were related.

Vincent and Maxine Zazzara were murdered

with a small caliber gun

a few days after Dayle Okazaki was killed.

We knew they were the same caliber

but couldn't say they were the same bullets.

Then the most interesting clue was the presence

of a very unique shoe print

that turned out to be Avia,

which was a company that had just come on the market.

At the Zazzara house,

that was the first place we saw the Avia footprint

on top of a five-gallon plastic paint can

that was right outside the bathroom window

which is where he made entrance.

Then later on, Joyce Nelson, she'd been stomped to death,

and there was an Avia footprint right on the side of her head.

So we now had, at least minimally, two

with Avia footprints at 'em.

I had a staff artist rendition,

the physical description given by Maria Hernandez

after Dayle Okazaki

and Maria Hernandez had been shot.

I called my lieutenant. "Hey, I found a link

for the murders that are going on."

In the beginning, not many people thought that was right.

Serial killers are known for killing in the same style,

same fashion. Their victims are similar.

In our case, we had different methods,

different styles, different type of victims.

That's what made this case so difficult.

His only consistency was his inconsistency.

[Martin] Gil Carrillo is certainly driving the belief

that it's one person that's responsible

for this whole series of murders in very different areas

of the County of Los Angeles.

[reporter] Two sheriff's detectives...

[Carrillo] Finally, my partner, Frank Salerno calls the captain,

said, "We've got a serial killer. It's definitive."

And the news media started connecting the dots,

and that's when the news media started going wild.

[reporter] Investigators have distributed this composite

all over Southern California.

Police say the publicity about that killer

-has their phones ringing. -[phone rings]

Sheriff's department. Martinez. Can I help you?

[reporter] Investigators say the attacker is on a crime spree,

attacking single women, elderly couples, children,

anyone, anyplace where windows are left unlocked, the homes poorly lit.

He's accelerated his killing. It's going faster.

Back-to-back murders. Back-to-back attacks.

Rape and murder.

[Brucato] It's very clear that he's really on a mission

to feed some appetite for violence and ego

that just keeps growing and growing.

I keep my doors locked and my guns loaded.

Everybody's buying guns, locking their windows, and it's hot.

Even though it was hot, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I mean, it's frightening.

[reporter 1] The same man is suspected in 6 to 8 murders

and 25 to 30 attacks. Now dubbed the Night Stalker.

[reporter 2] The man Californians are calling the Night Stalker.

[reporter 3] People are wondering when and where he will strike next.

[Ramirez on tape]

-[Carlo] -[Ramirez]

[Carlo on tape]

[Ramirez on tape]

[uneasy music playing]

[Schreck] Richard said, "I was high out of my fucking mind,

during the whole time of the murder sprees."

He was taking any street drug he could get from anywhere

from anyone with no discrimination whatsoever.

To the point where he wasn't sleeping for days and days.

Drugs certainly played a huge role in what he became.

[music fades]

[Carlo on tape]

[Ramirez on tape]

[Carlo on tape] Yeah. Yeah.

[both chuckling]

[ominous music playing]

[music fades]

[somber, unsettling music playing]

[woman] My grandparents lived in Glendale.

It was beautiful.

A very safe, just all-American neighborhood to grow up in.

My grandfather was quite beloved,

just a very gentle, churchgoing man.

And my grandmother knew how to do everything.

She would work in his gas stations.

He owned service stations.

I told my grandma, "You've got to lock your doors.

There's a weirdo running around San Gabriel Valley,

and he's murdering people."

She says, "I'm not locking my doors.

I've never locked my doors in my life,

and I'm not about to do it now."

And so... she didn't.

[somber music playing]

This was probably a week before they were...

killed.

[Martin] On July 20th, 1985,

Lela and Max Kneiding were found dead in their home,

uh, by their very own daughter.

Another very brutal attack.

They were struck with machetes.

My grandparents were the glue for our family,

and the family very quickly started to fall apart a little bit.

Nobody really knew what to do.

It was so omnipresent in our lives.

[Martin] The Kneiding residence was just a couple miles

from the house that I grew up in.

It seemed like we'd arrived at a point

where anybody was a potential victim.

What it meant for me was, you know,

when I'm at home, I'm gonna protect myself as well.

Started sleeping with my duty weapon under my pillow,

added a shotgun that I stuffed between the mattress

and the box spring in my bed.

When it reaches the level of law enforcement

taking additional measures to protect themselves,

there's something just... indescribably bad going on.

And that was the case in the summer of '85.

[tense, unsettling music playing]

[eerie music playing with unsettling choral vocalizations]

[music fades]

[dramatic music playing]

[Ramirez on tape] Right.

[Carlo on tape]

[Carlo] Right.

[Ramirez]

[waves lapping loudly]

[ominous music playing]

[Martin] Richard Ramirez paid attention

to the news coverage in print and on television.

He feared detection in Los Angeles,

so he fled to San Francisco

where he continued his murderous ways.

California's newest serial killer has reportedly struck in San Francisco.

[reporter] A 66-year-old man and his wife are both shot in the head

following the break-in of their home.

[Carrillo] We got in touch with San Francisco Homicide.

We went out there, and there was a pentagram

on the wall there as well.

The killer was killing in same style, same fashion.

There was no doubt it was related.

[reporter] Chief, can you tell us...

We're sure the homicide that occurred in San Francisco last Saturday

is connected to the homicides in Los Angeles.

[tense music playing]

[Martin] After the press conference in San Francisco,

things were getting too hot for him,

so Richard Ramirez left and came back to Los Angeles.

In short order, he figures out it's still not a good place to be,

so he steals a car and heads down to Orange County.

[reporter] Last week, the killer struck in San Francisco

and yesterday morning in Mission Viejo.

[reporter 2] A predawn break-in, a male victim shot,

the female occupant sexually attacked.

But unlike so many of his other crimes,

he doesn't go undetected.

As it turns out, on the night of the attack,

a 13-year-old boy sees this unusual orange Toyota station wagon

kind of circling in the neighborhood.

He manages to get a partial license plate off that car.

He tells authorities, and this is a game changer.

[reporter] Word is out about the car he may be driving.

[Carrillo] We recovered the car and were able

to lift a fingerprint where Richard adjusted the mirror.

At that time, only convicted felons

were in the automated systems,

and Richard Ramirez had never been convicted of a felony.

He'd been convicted of misdemeanors.

After we had put out a reward,

we had a first name from an informant,

a person that used to burglarize with Richard.

And he's the one that gave us the name Richard.

But we did not have a last name.

Finally, from a friend of Richard's,

the San Francisco Police Department

obtained a first name and a last name.

Richard Ramirez.

[grim music playing]

[Carrillo] The Department of Justice in Sacramento

came up with eight Richard Ramirezes,

and they were able to match one of them to the print.

[Martin] They identify a person named Richard Ramirez

who had been arrested for auto theft in Los Angeles

in December of 1984.

They don't just have a name.

They have a booking photograph.

And this pulls all the pieces together.

[dramatic music playing]

An alert is going out to all law enforcement agencies in the State of California

to be on the lookout for this individual,

man by the name of Richard Ramirez.

-[reporter 1] Can you just hold it up again? -[reporter 2] Hold it there.

[ominous music playing]

-[Carlo] The bulletin. -[Rosa] Uh-huh.

[somber music playing]

[Juarez] We were laying in bed, me and my cousin,

and then all of a sudden, my aunt came in,

and she was crying, and I'm like, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"

And she said, "It's him. It's him.

It's him."

I said, "Who? Him? Who?"

And then she was like,

"I-i-it's your Tio Richie. It's him."

[Carlo] Yeah.

[Juarez] No one expected that

in the family.

We knew that he was struggling with drug addiction,

but we didn't expect it to have gone that far.

[music fades]

Yeah, I remember seeing Richard Ramirez's mug shot,

and it was, uh, pretty-- pretty traumatic.

[somber music playing]

[Sandoval] I just saw somebody who was devoid of emotion.

I just felt that the person was evil,

just complete evil.

[somber music continues]

[Carlo on tape] All right?

[Carlo on tape]

We now have the identity...

[Lioy on tape]

[dramatic musical sting]

[grim music playing]

[Lioy on tape]

[Carlo on tape] Mm-hmm.

[Murphy] Ramirez is still at large, yes.

-Where do you think he is now? -We don't know where he's at.

We're assuming that he's still in the Los Angeles area.

We have information that he might be coming this way,

but that information has not been substantiated at this time.

[man] How do you know it's him?

[Yochelson] Next morning, after his picture was all over the place,

Richard exited a Greyhound bus station in Los Angeles,

apparently not knowing that he had been identified.

Then he saw his face on one of the newspapers

on one of the newsstands.

And by now, people were recognizing him.

[dramatic music playing]

[Yochelson] He started running.

And he's running to get away.

He ran through some neighborhoods in East Los Angeles,

tried to steal a couple of cars.

[Carrillo] He tries to carjack a lady. She screams.

"Gimme the keys," and she said no.

Her husband runs outside, hits Richard in the head.

[Zazzara] There was a bunch of civilians there who tried to tackle him

and they beat him over the head with some sticks or something.

[Carrillo] He's exhausted and just sits down, "Okay, you got me."

[crowd cheering]

[Ramirez]

[Juarez] He was heading to our house

where my mom and my dad would have been.

That's where he was traveling to.

They caught him a mile away from our house.

Exactly one mile.

[tense, ominous music playing]

[reporter] Residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood

captured a 25-year-old man by the name of Richard Ramirez,

the so-called Night Stalker who had terrorized the state in a gruesome killing spree.

[reporter 2] Police now say they have solid evidence

to link Ramirez to at least 16 murders in California.

[Nelson] There just was such an overwhelming sense of relief,

and not just for my family who had been so impacted by it.

Everyone was so elated

that this serial killer had been captured.

But that was just the beginning of...

dealing with everything going forward.

[overlapping shouting]

[cheering and whooping]

[Brucato] When he goes to court and when he was later jailed,

the public is fascinated by Ramirez.

He has admirers.

He's sort of like a vampiric figure who is hypnotizing them.

People are writing to him and sending him photographs.

[Johnston] Then you have people who, I think,

are wanting to save him in some respects.

People who just absolutely refuse

to believe that he's guilty.

And then you have the Satanists who are showing up.

[somber music playing]

[Schreck] In 1984,

I was a practicing devil worshiper.

I saw Satanism as my religion.

I turned against it in the '90s,

but in 1988, I noticed that more and more Angelenos

were talking about their fear of this Satanic serial killer.

So I wrote to Richard Ramirez in jail

and asked him if he would be willing to do an interview.

I visited Richard shortly thereafter

and saw many women lurking around,

some very attractive young women dressed in black usually

and trying to attract Richard's attention,

and he was very aware of that.

[woman] I was a journalist, and I started digging around

and of Richard's legions of female "fans,"

Doreen Lioy certainly rose to the top.

Eva O was a big player.

She reminded me of one of those creatures of the night.

She was beautiful in a creepy, kind of pale,

you know, all-the-blood- drawn-out-of-her way.

I knew Eva O because we both come

from the same death rock, gothic rock music world.

-[rock music playing] -[Schreck] We both discovered

that we were in communication with Richard

and that they were really empathetic soul mates

to a certain degree.

I don't know what she feels about it now,

but I'm hoping that she will speak to you.

Hello. [giggles]

[Eva O] Obviously, every criminal has friends

that they don't murder or torture or kill.

[dark, dramatic music playing]

He was my friend. He cared about me.

I lean towards more the macabre type of music,

gothic or whatever, and death rock.

In those days, in the '80s,

I started getting that label, the Queen of Darkness,

and it kind of makes me blush. [laughing]

It makes me feel royale. [laughing]

Richard was in the public eye.

That's the only reason why I found him.

I saw him in a "People" magazine.

When I read this article about him,

I felt a little familiarity with him

because of his certain kind of darkness that he had.

I had a really messed up head, you know, in those days.

I got real obsessed with certain men

that I was just really like...

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I wrote about 31 letters,

and I thought, "Okay, he'll notice me now.

I'll send all these at once, bombard him,

and then he'll have to respond," you know.

And he did. He wrote me 31 letters back. [laughs]

[playing guitar]

[Eva O] And so I wrote a song about him,

thinking that one day he'll hear the song.

It's called "The Night Stalker,"

and I wrote it

literally the year he got arrested,

and it's just about my interest in him.

* Night Stalker *

* He's the Night Stalker *

I played it on the phone.

Oh, he liked it. He liked it.

We did have a connection. We were into the same kind of things.

Like, we both liked true crime,

we were both kind of loners and stuff,

and both had kind of a crazy childhood.

[laughing] You know? Wild.

I don't condone what he did,

and me even getting involved in this was--

was a young mind that was exploring the world.

[chord reverberates, ends]

I ended up being the first visitor outside of his relatives

that got to visit him.

I think after a while he realized that people like him

or they wanna know who he is.

I'm sure he liked that attention, being written about and stuff.

He had a lot of women writing him.

Doreen. I don't think I met Doreen.

I know who she is. Doreen was obsessed.

I was obviously obsessed too, but not that deeply obsessed.

She had something to offer him that he needed.

[man] Number two, step to the red square in the center of the line.

[Carlo] Mm-hmm.

[Lioy]

[Carlo] Yeah.

[dramatic music playing]

[music fades]

[eerie music playing with unsettling choral vocalizations]

[Carlo]

[Lioy on tape]

[Carlo on tape]

[Lioy on tape]

[Carlo on tape]

[Lioy on tape]

[Carlo on tape] Yeah. Yeah.

[Lioy on tape]

[Carlo] Mm-hmm.

[Lioy]

[music fades]

[woman] When I first met Doreen Lioy,

we were both editors at the Laufer Publishing Company.

Doreen was the editor of "Tiger Beat Star,"

which it was the sister publication

to "Tiger Beat."

We didn't have social media back then.

We had magazines.

And the editors, we were the gatekeepers.

We were the go-between

between the public and a lot of these celebrities.

[reporter] The fan magazines, "Fave" and "Star" and "Sixteen" and "Tiger Beat,"

they tell the kids what their hero wears to bed

and how to get a pillowcase with his picture on it.

[Horner] These celebrities were safe boyfriends for everybody,

for the fans that were buying the magazines

but the editors too,

because this was really our life.

[upbeat electronic music playing]

[Horner] Doreen Lioy's office was not far from mine at all.

I remember her being very maternal,

like a mom figure to all of these celebrities.

And she rode hard. If she liked somebody, she really, really liked him.

For instance, Doreen was the go-to person for John Stamos.

If John Stamos was going to be in the magazine,

she was the one to facilitate it,

and Doreen definitely had a very huge part in his success.

When Doreen Lioy first got interested in Richie Ramirez,

I think that she saw him

the same way she would've seen John Stamos

and all these other celebrities

that she was helping and nurturing.

Richie Ramirez was somebody that was in the public eye.

He was handsome. He had that look.

And she thought that she was able to help him out.

[Carlo] Mm-hmm.

[Carlo] Mm-hmm.

[Lioy]

[Lioy on tape]

[Carlo on tape]

[Lioy on tape]

Doreen Lioy's letter to the "LA Daily News."

"Heroes indeed.

If the man they chased and beat brutally

had been an ordinary human intruder,

and not the Night Stalker suspect,

the so-called heroes might just as easily

have been hauled away for assault and battery."

[dramatic music playing]

Wow.

Well...

this is what a teen editor does.

She was just protecting him

the way she would have protected

the John Stamoses of the world.

This is what we did.

It just shouldn't have happened with him.

[music fades]

[Carlo] Yeah.

[Lioy on tape]

When I found out that Doreen was in contact with Richard Ramirez,

I wasn't happy about that at all.

It was so awful, I didn't even wanna discuss it with people.

And I didn't think it would have a good ending.

[grim music playing]

[Lioy laughs]

[music fades]

[dark, ominous music playing]

-[interviewer] Tomorrow morning, you will become Doreen Ramirez? -[Lioy] Yes.

-[interviewer] Mrs. Richard Ramirez. -[Lioy] Yes.

[interviewer] Is this a name that you will carry with pride?

Absolutely. I'm very proud to take his name and be his wife.

Proud to have him for my husband.

[eerie music playing with unsettling choral vocalizations]

[music fades]