Aug 31, 1985, Richard Ramirez, the notorious “Night Stalker,” was captured and nearly killed by a mob in East Los Angeles, California, after being recognized from a photograph shown both on television and in newspapers. Recently identified as the terrifying serial killer, Ramirez was saved from the enraged mob by police officers.
After leaving an East LA bus stop he noticed a group of elderly Mexican women fearfully identifying him as "El Matador" (or "The Killer"), Ramirez saw his face on the front pages on the newspaper rack and fled in a panic.
After running across the Santa Ana Freeway, he attempted to carjack a woman but was chased away by bystanders, who pursued him. After hopping over several fences and attempting two more carjackings, he was eventually subdued by a group of residents, one of whom had struck him over the head with a metal bar in the pursuit. The group held Ramirez down, relentlessly beating him until the police arrived and took him into custody.
During the summer of 1985, the city of Los Angeles was panic-stricken by a killer who crept into his victims’ homes at night. The Night Stalker, as the press dubbed the murderer, first turned his attention on the men in the house, usually shot any men in the house with a .22 caliber handgun before raping, stabbing, and mutilating his female victims. He cut out one of his victim’s eyes and sometimes carved satanic pentagrams on the bodies before he left. Read More History
By August, the Night Stalker has murdered at least a dozen people, and law enforcement officials were desperate to stop him. One witness, who managed to note the license plate of the car in which Ramirez fled, led police to a single, partial fingerprint left in the vehicle.
Ramirez died on death row of complications secondary to B-cell lymphoma at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, California on June 7, 2013. He had also been affected by "chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis C viral infection". At 53 years old, he had been on death row for more than 23 years.
