 The Night Stalker
The life and crimes of Richard Ramirez
by Philip Carlo -- 16 pages of pictures
First half: Five Stars.
Second half: Three Stars.
Oddity: There are two Chapter 49s.
 Philip spent six months with Richard Ramirez in prison.
His literary agent told me, "The phone would ring in my office, and it would be Richard calling for Philip. At first I'd be confused. "Richard? Richard. O-kay just a minute..."
Serial killers usually select victims from a narrow category: female, transient, child. Not Richard Ramirez, who murdered men and women and molested young and old alike. The meat of this book is a dispassionate description of his 1984-85 crimes in progress, and the police investigations surrounding them. The realization that a serial killer was at work spread slowly through the jurisdictions, became public knowledge, and gripped the of the Los Angeles basin with months of terror.
Richard would randomly drive to a house with a cover of shadow and easy freeway access. He blended into the shadows and silently frisked the house. He tried the front door. He looked for an open window. He located the weakest point and jimmied his way past the flimsy security of a normal California house. He bludgeoned his victims, shot them, looted the house, bound and raped women. The more compliant women were left alive to testify chillingly about their ordeals.
The author describes these eerie and brutal prowlings with enough distance to make it readable, and enough details to make it real. The first half of the book and its sensational denouement are fascinating.
With little physical evidence, the Night Stalker was not easily identified. But police finally fingered him based on his Satanic bent, tips from citizens, and a few fingerprints and footprints. They publicized his picture in the newspaper, and Chapter 26 describes the subsequent spectacular chase and capture of Richard Ramirez by the irate citizens of Los Angeles.
The second half of the book covers the trial in numbing detail, and should be skimmed quickly. The lawyers who appended themselves to Richard then drifted away, his bizarre laughing fits during the trial, and the judge's struggle to maintain order are entertainingly described.
During the trial, the Night Stalker developed a cadre of women admirers who lined up at the prison gates, appeared in court in miniskirts, and posed for him with thrusting breasts and pouty lips. Their antics are almost as appalling as his crimes. One groupie slept in a coffin, and professed a desire to have sex with Richard atop a gravestone drenched with the blood of his victims. I question the sanity of such danger-drugged women.
Richard's childhood and family are disturbingly presented. Birth defects from the polluted El Paso air gave hisis brothers severe birth defects. Was Richard perhaps conceived without a soul? You'll find yourself assessing and tightening your home defenses after reading this book. I recommend it.
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