These murders happened right before I was born and in the neighborhoods my family grew up in.
Richard Ramirez is kind of fascinating. He was raised by his delusional cousin who was a serial killer in Vietnam and would regale him with tales of raping and murdering little girls. He witnessed his cousin shoot his wife in the face and kill her.
Ramirez started his career as a serial rapist and slowly escalated into more and more violence. It was pretty hard to figure out there was a link because before computers were huge, police departments didn't communicate with one another. They finally figured out they had a serial offender right about when he upped his MO to include torture and murder. He was big on raping the women after incapacitating the husband so he was forced to watch, and then killing hubbies.
A huge issue was that his crime spree was during one of the hottest summers in L.A history, and he was targeting neighborhoods where people didn't have air conditioning, so they were forced to sleep with the windows open so they didn't suffocate. Neighborhood watch groups went into hyper overdrive and one day he was spotted breaking into a home. A mob attacked him and beat him almost to death before the police stepped in.
There was considerably outrage when tax payers' money went to paying for his new teeth after the beating. Meanwhile, his death sentence in 1989 is yet to be put into effect. He became somewhat of a 'rock star' for his demeaner in court, where he professed he wanted to go to disneyland, satan was his master, and he was Jim Morrison. Basically, he loved the attention and flourished in it, without showing remorse. Meanwhile, he got married in prison to a woman who swears he is not guilty, although he has never really protested his guilt and in fact seems to relish the crimes.
When I toured the museum of death, the woman who worked there had a series of letters she collected from serial killers. One was a personality profile she had everyone fill out. Most of them are filled with christian-tinged guilt, love for freedom, etc. The only crazy one was Ramirez, which is actually pretty funny in a sick way. He basically lists his fun hobbies as killing people, talks about satan and how much he fucking hates everyone, and makes a bunch of really fucked up jokes, despite knowing psychologists see all of this. He just doesn't give a fuck. True sociopath.
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