Further Reading For Richard Ramirez
Night Stalker by Clifford Linedecker
The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez by Philip Carlo
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Richard Ramirez, one of the men to carry the press name, The Night Stalker, is one of America’s last superstar serial killers. We’ve had serial killers in our midst forever. It’s a sad fact of life that some people are just going to come out wrong. Or they’re subjected to a truly terrible upbringing that wires them with a pathological contempt for their fellow man and an urge to hunt and kill them. Through the 1970’s, they seemed to carry the same status as rock stars. We’re fascinated by them, aren’t we? But by the 1980’s, their pop cultural allure had worn thin and the FBI began advising local police investigators to stop giving them cute names and reporting their crimes to the media, which was giving them a higher profile than any of them deserved. And I mean, they’re not wrong.
Ramirez was a mad dog on the level of Carl Panzram. A night prowlin’ rapist and murderer with great hair and bad breath. He operated by night around the greater Los Angeles area between 1984 and 1985 and by the time of his arrest had raped and murdered 15 women with any number of weapons ranging from guns and tire irons to his bare hands. A large part of the sensationalism that surrounded him following his arrest was a fascination with heavy metal and satanism which landed squarely in the crosshairs of Christian America and its legendary satanic panic scare that ruined lives and turned up no actual evidence of organized satanic cults operating under the covers of bedroom Americana.
Episodes: 110 & 111
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