Richard Ramirez Research Paper

In June of 1984, Richard Ramirez began his famous killing spree. His strategies on how he would kill his victims seem to be unorthodox and unorganized, take his first victim for example. Seventy-nine year old Jennie Vincow was asleep on her bed inside her apartment on Chapman Street in Los Angeles, California, when Richard Ramirez who unintentionally broke into the wrong apartment, was high off coke and angry because of the poverty based apartment he broke into, plowed his six-inch hunting knife into Jennie’s chest. After waking up screaming, she tried defending herself but due to his raging strength it was nearly impossible to do that, Ramirez then covered her mouth as he cut her throat and stabbed her three more times in the chest and once in vaginal area. (Phillip Carlo, The Night Stalker, 1996)

Like Jennie, Richard Ramirez murdered fourteen other victims in the most gruesome and obscene way. He is credited to have said “For a true killer, a good murder is like a good meal: you want it to last and get the most out of it” (Carlo, 25 1996). He would murder his victims by either shooting or stabbing them, then he would try to gouge their eyes out with his hunting knife and before leaving the scene, he would draw a satanic

symbol either on the wall of the victim’s house or on the body of the victim. As the murder count pile up, citizens of East L.A. were scared and afraid of Richard Ramirez whom they have nick named the “Night-Stalker” because of the way he would attain his victims and kill them.
On August 30, 1985 Richard Ramirez decided to grab a Greyhound bus towards Arizona to visit his brother Robert, his wife Samantha and their two-year old daughter Betty. Ignorant to the fact that he was known as the “Night-Stalker”, he traveled to Arizona and when he arrived, Ramirez claimed to have seen undercover policemen patrolling the station. Still not knowing they were searching for him, Ramirez felt uncomfortable anyway and left the station. After an hour of trying to contact his brother and waiting around the bus station, Richard became too nervous and bought another ticket back to L.A.
As he arrived in Los Angeles on August 31, 1985 at the bus station, SIS officers were also on the search for Ramirez. After seeing them he quickly left the station and went to Mike’s Liquor store on South Town Ave. where he was spotted by two older women shouting and accusing him of being the “Night-Stalker”. According to Phillip Carlo he says the following:
As he waited for his change, he noticed a few elderly Mexican women in the back of the store pointing at him, looking at him with obvious fear on their faces. Richard heard one of them say, “El Matador”, which strictly translated means “the Killer” (246).
Ramirez after that ran out of the store to find somewhere to hide but it was too late, the store owner called the cops and not a moment later, the police was on Ramirez’s trial. After being chased by both residents and policemen for an hour, Ramirez tried to car-jack Manuela Villanueva, who was waiting for her boyfriend, Carmelo Robles, who went into a store to buy to groceries. In an attempt to pull her out of the car, Villanueva screams for help and tries to fight off Ramirez from taking the car. Carmelo Robles heard his girlfriend’s cry for help and chased off Ramirez into an alley that will later lead him into several neighborhood backyards, where he was attacked by the owners. One owner being Manuel De La Torre, who was a key part to Ramirez’s capture, chased after Ramirez after he attacked his wife, Angela, and tried to steal her car which was parked in the driveway of the De La Torres’ home. According to the book, Phillip Carlo (1996) explains the following:
Ramirez leaped from the De La Torres’ car and began running up the middle of Hubbard Street, toward Indiana Avenue. Hot on Richard’s heel, Manuel and Jose and his sons gave chase as cries of ‘El Matador!’ began to echo up and down the block. As Richard ran he turned around and began sticking his tongue out, hissing, serpentlike, at his pursuers. (p.251)
The author continues with the following details of the chase by saying:
Manuel swung the metal again and now it hissed in the air. He missed. They went a few more steps and Manuel swung again, hitting Richard on the top of the head. He went down. (p.252)
By that time, both LAPD officers and LSPD officers were on the scene to apprehend the suspect. Dept. Ramirez of the sheriff’s department was one of the first officers to arrive on the call, which he receive on his radio that reported “a man with a gun”. According to the book, Dept. Ramirez asked the suspect, who was now sitting on the street curb with blood coming from his head, to confirm if he was Richard Ramirez and after he confirmed that he was, Dept. Ramirez then handcuffed the suspect, frisked him, and then called for an ambulance to assist Richard’s head injury. Moments later, more officers arrived at the scene to frisk and apprehend Ramirez. After the arresting process was complete, Ramirez was then taken to LAPD’s Hollenbeck Station where he would be processed and wait for trial.
During the trial of Richard Ramirez, there were both good and bad actions that were taken by the criminal justice system that resulted in the final decision for Richard Ramirez’s life. The correct actions taken by the criminal justice system during the Ramirez trial were gathering information, using unique strategies to make sure that the defense could not get a chance to propose an appeal, and persuading the jury into convicting Ramirez of the crimes that was charge towards him.

The evidence that was gathered by the LAPD and presented to the jury played a key part in the conviction of Ramirez, prosecutors on the case contained many of Ramirez “signatures”, such as slash and stab wounds to the throat and body, the use of ligatures and restraints including thumb cuffs and handcuffs, and footprints of an Avia shoe was left at some of the crime scenes as well. Another claimed signature that belonged to Ramirez was the symbol of a pentagram which was first discovered at a murder scene in Monrovia, and another one that was found drawn on the wall of the victim’s bedroom and also on the thigh of the victim as well. Other pentagrams symbols such as the same symbols that were discovered at the other murder scenes were also found on the dashboard of Richard’s car and on his body as well. (L.A. Times, 1996,)
According L.A. Times there were four handguns used by Ramirez, but only one was recovered, but test results shows that the unused bullets that were found in a bag that belonged to Ramirez had been loaded into the gun that was used in the first two incidents. Also the article says that about 375 pieces of jewelry and other personal belongings taken from six of the murder scenes were recovered and linked to Richard Ramirez. (L.A. Times, 1996) Evidence was found on each of the crime scenes that Ramirez committed, whether if it was fingerprints, satanic symbols, Avia shoe prints, bullets from the gun used, or DNA, there was some form of evidence that would link Ramirez to the murders.
Another correct action that the criminal justice system took were the statements and actions that persuade the jury to convict Ramirez of his crimes. For example, during the trial Phyllis Singletary, a new juror on the trial, was found dead in her home the day she was to report to the court house for a deliberation. This caused the other jurors to think that Ramirez had something to do with the crime, which led to the defense thinking that the jurors would charge Ramirez with being guilty out of fear for their lives. The appointed defense attorney, Daniel Hernandez, saw this as an opportunity to claim this trial a mistrial, but that eventually came to an end when jurors claim to have not been affected by the murder of Phyllis Singletary and that they could still go on with a fair trial. The result of that action led the judge to deny any request regarding a mistrial for Richard Ramirez. (Phillip Carlo, The Night Stalker)
Moreover on the correct actions taken by the criminal justice system, Sheriff’s Dept. Jim Ellis was called to testify, but Haplin, who was the prosecutor during the Ramirez trial, asked the appointed Judge Nelson to let Dept. Ellis testify in the judge’s chamber. If this action was not executed correctly and Judge Nelson allowed Ellis statements open in court, it would have given a chance for Ramirez to receive an appeal. (Phillip Carlo, The Night Stalker, 1996, p.372)
Although these were good actions, there were many bad actions taken as well during the Richard Ramirez case and trial.

The incorrect actions that were taken by the justice system were some errors in the evidence presented by the prosecution, and legal delays during the trial. One specific error that the criminal justice system made was the shoe print analysis, according to one of the detectives working on the case, the LAPD ran a test on the shoe print and the results show that the brand name was a white pair of “Avias” and that only one pair of that type of shoe was sold in the Los Angeles County area but was paid for in cash not credit, so that piece of information was quickly disintegrated. (Phillip Carlo, The Night Stalker, 1996,

p.295.)
To elaborate more on the shoe print analysis, the LAPD also connected a Reebok shoe print size 11 at a cult hall used for satanic rituals and ceremonies similar to prints found at the murder scene, apparently after questioning the followers of the cult didn’t lead to any helpful information on Richard Ramirez. Come to find out that neither of the information the LAPD collected was correct, because the kind of shoe Ramirez wore was a black pair of Avia shoes, not Reebok, and the size of them were a size 14 and not and 11. (Phillip Carlo, The Night Stalker, 1996, p.295. Danny Ramirez, RoadKillzrekordz.nl,article.)
Another incorrect action that was taken by the criminal justice system were the legal delays that took place before and during the trial. According to Carlo, by the time the trial began the state of California spent $1,301,836 on the case, which included two jury selections one in which the jurors kept falling asleep during the hearings and another incident in which a juror was killed, a change of venue, moving the evidence to court, which could’ve jeopardize and damage the evidence and result in postponing the trial even further, and witnesses holding back information on the case that resulted in pushing back the set the date for the sentencing of Richard Ramirez. The delay of the Ramirez case caused the state of California to spend a vast amount of money and caused a late trial that started almost three years after he committed his famous killing spree. (Carlo, 1996.)
The criminal justice system used different types of technology to collect evidence that would later on convict Ramirez, the police used technology such as DNA samples of Ramirez that was collected at the scenes of the crimes. The police also used profiling as a tactic to capture the suspect with such things like wanted posters and news articles with pictures of his face to place around the city to alert citizens, they also used fingerprint analysis to collect the prints from his victims and the weapons he used to commit the murders. One last technology they indicated to have use, was the shoe print analysis, which kind of back-fired due to lack of information and proof.