The infamous Night Stalker

Dani Hendrix
8 min readJan 26, 2021

Case of Satan-worshipping Richard Ramirez.

  • WARNING: This blog contains adult dialogue that may not be suited for all audiences.
Image of Richard Ramirez in his 1985 trial. Image from Los Angeles Times.

The early life of the Night Stalker

Richard Ramirez was born on February 29th, 1960. He grew up in El Paso Texas with his four other siblings and both of his parents. While his dad was a hard-working man who did his best to support his family, he was prone to aggressive outbursts and would abuse his wife and children.

Richard was hit twice in the head when he was very little. Once was allegedly by a falling piece of furniture and another time by a swing. After being hit in the head by a swing at school, Richard supposedly began having seizures. If you’ve been a lover of true crime for some time like myself, then you know that there is a weird correlation between serial killers and kids with head injuries.

When Richard was around 10–12 years old (depending on the source), he was hanging out with an older cousin who was a Vietnam War veteran. This cousin showed Richard pictures that he had from the war of the women that he had tortured, raped, and eventually killed. Being a young kid at the time and lacking a deeper understanding of what he was seeing, Richard thought these images were ‘cool’.

Richards first brush with murder

On May 4th, 1973, Richard was at this cousin’s house when the cousin shot his wife in the face during an argument. The cousin got arrested but was found not guilty due to insanity and only spent 4 years incarcerated in the state's mental facility.

It wasn’t long after when Richard moved in with his sister and her husband. Unfortunately for Richard, he was moving from one unhealthy environment to another. The husband would take Richard out at night with him to look into homes and spy on women. They would watch women get dressed, go to the bathroom, etc.

His first victim

As a teenager, Richard began having violent sexual fantasies which soon became a problem. He worked at a hotel and used his hotel pass key to break into hotel rooms and steal things. One day, he broke into a room with a lady still inside. He began to rape the woman but thankfully the…

Dani Hendrix

I love writing true crime and fascinating stories about humans. You can find me on Instragram at @restless_dani if you would like to connect.