The following article contains some graphic descriptions of Ramirez's crimes that some people may find disturbing. "No big deal. Death always comes with the territory. I'll see you in Disneyland." Richard Ramirez uttered these chilling words as he was led away after being given 19 separate death sentences. A devotee of fast food and heavy metal, Ramirez was a very modern incarnation of a fear as old as mankind - the Devil's disciple.

Untold horror ... The crimes he committed on the streets of California during a 14 month period in the mid-1980s were beyond the imagination of all but the most depraved creatures. Los Angeles journalists dubbed him 'The Night Stalker', a sinister nickname which added to the feeling of terror which gripped the city and its suburbs during the long hot summer of 1985. His dramatic capture, following a chase through the streets of LA, became one of the most memorable in the city's criminal history and was only eclipsed a decade later by the arrest of OJ Simpson. His callous and erratic behaviour during his trial added to his grisly glamour and he continued to mesmerise people for years afterwards. In 1996, while on Death Row, he married a woman who somehow remains convinced he is innocent. Criminal beginnings ... Ramirez was born in February 1960, the youngest of seven children of a Mexican-American railway worker, Julian Ramirez, who lived in El Paso, Texas. Ricky, as he liked to be known, was a sad and solitary child who would play truant and spend hours in the town's video arcades, glue sniffing or smoking marijuana. At a young age he began shoplifting, picking pockets and burgling homes to raise money for his drug habits and his school reports were woeful. He was sent to a home for juvenile delinquents in 1977, the same year that his criminal record began. Ramirez came to the police's attention several more times before finally being given probation in 1982 for possession of marijuana. Fed up with El Paso, he quit and moved to San Francisco and later to Los Angeles, where he developed an interest in guns and knives, got hooked on cocaine and took an unhealthy interest in Satanism.  At this time, Ricky Ramirez was not a pleasant sight. He slept rough, wore dirty black t-shirts and jeans, had bad teeth because he never cleaned them and bad skin because of a diet of junk food, cola and cakes. But despite having no job he always had money. He boasted to friends about possessing a master key to several cars, which he stole at whim, and burgled homes and warehouses for electrical appliances and jewellery, which he sold on to finance his cocaine habit. Eventually the LAPD caught up with him and he spent time in jail for car theft. Not long after his release in the spring of 1984 he embarked on the road to becoming a serial killer. Making the headlines ... June 28th 1984 was a balmy evening in the LA suburb of Eagle Rock, and 79-year-old Jennie Vincow left her window open to let some air into her stuffy ground floor apartment. Ramirez spotted the opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. He slipped his skinny frame through the gap, attacked the pensioner in her bed, sexually assualted and stabbed her. Her apartment had been ransacked and the killer had left his bloody fingerprints all over the place. Mrs Vincow's body was found in the morning by her son, who lived in the apartment above, but had heard nothing during the night. In a city as violent as LA the crime did not make major headlines, but nine months later the press did take notice of a bloody spree in the prosperous middle-class suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley. On 27 March 1985 retired investment adviser Vincent Zazzara, 64, and his lawyer wife Maxine, 44, were found murdered in their home. Mrs Zazzara's eyes had been gouged out and her upper torso had been stabbed repeatedly. Ten days earlier Hawaii-born Dayle Okazaki, 34, had been shot dead in his apartment in the suburb of Rosemead. His flatmate Maria Hernandez survived when a bullet deflected off her car keys as she arrived home. The killer fled, leaving behind a live witness and another clue - a baseball cap bearing the logo of the Australian heavy metal band AC/DC. Clearly dissatisfied with his night's work Ramirez struck again a few hours later in Monterey Park, shooting dead 30-year-old Taiwan-born Tsai Lian Yu, known to her American friends as Veronica. The press, unaware of the link to Mrs Vincow's death, dubbed the attacker the 'Valley Intruder', but they soon came up with a far more chilling moniker. The best description yet ... In May, Ramirez struck again, claiming the life of Bill Doi, 66, and attacking his wife Lillie aged 56. Mr Doi was shot dead and his wife was handcuffed, interrogated about her valuables, raped and then left for dead. A fortnight later he attacked 42-year-old Carol Kyle, robbing, raping and sexually assaulting her as her 11-year-old son cowered in a cupboard. Before Ramirez left his Burbank home he told her: "I don't know why I'm letting you live. I've killed people before. You don't believe me, but I have." Carol Kyle was able to give police their best description yet - a tall, thin, dark-haired Hispanic man with bad teeth.  The LAPD released a photofit of the suspect, which was published in newspapers all over California and shown repeatedly on television. But the violence continued unabated ... On June 1st 1985, 83-year-old Mabel Bell was beaten to death with a hammer in her home in Monrovia but her sister Florence Long, 80, survived. Later the same month Patty Higgins, 29, had her throat cut at her home in Arcadia. Five days later another pensioner, Mary Cannon, was found brutally murdered at her home; not far from where Miss Higgins had lived. Another girl, aged 16, survived a crowbar attack in Arcadia three days later. Panic gripped LA, as the spiral of violence accelerated and the gaps between attacks became shorter. On 7th July, grandmother Joyce Nelson was found dead at her home in Monterey Park. Another woman, a 63-year-old nurse, survived being robbed and raped by Ramirez the same night. The terror escalates ... Two weeks later the Night Stalker went on a violent spree unprecedented even by his standards. First he shot dead Maxson Kneiding, 66, and his wife Lela, and then he descended on a house in Sun Valley where the Khovananth family lived. Ramirez shot dead 32-year-old Chainarong as he slept and then dragged his wife, Somkid, out of the bed and assaulted her while forcing her to swear to Satan that she would not call for help. He then tied her up and sexually assaulted her eight-year-old son, before fleeing with $30,000 belonging to the family. On 8 August he shot dead Elyas Abowath and brutalised his wife.  The police came under intense pressure to catch the maniac who was spreading terror throughout the Greater Los Angeles area ... By early August, a special Night Stalker task force had been set up with 200 dedicated detectives working on the case day and night. Detective Sergeant Frank Salerno, who headed the taskforce, called in the FBI's offender profiling unit and he even consulted with experts in devil worship and the occult. The taskforce distributed leaflets and wanted posters bearing the composite sketch of the killer. Posters soon hung on every street and notice-boards all over Los Angeles. It was impossible to drive to work or take the kids to school without coming face to face with the Night Stalker's distinctive features. The populace became more prepared and Ramirez found easy targets harder to come by. Neighbourhood Watch schemes sprung up all over the city and vigilantes patrolled the streets at night. Patrol cars and unmarked cars were everywhere and residents took to buying guard dogs and burglar alarms or even making cardboard cut-outs which they would pose in lighted windows to frighten off the killer. A new hunting ground The heat was on and it forced Ramirez to flee LA and find a new hunting ground. He washed up in Lake Merced, near San Francisco and attacked an elderly Chinese couple, Peter and Barbara Pan on the night of 17 August 1985. Mr Pan, 66, was shot dead and Mrs Pan, 62, was sexually assaulted and left paralysed by a gunshot wound. Ramirez had enough time to daub Satanic symbols and slogans across the walls in lipstick. The Satanic element immediately rang alarm bells with San Francisco police, who realised the Night Stalker had arrived on their turf. A week later he struck again in Mission Viejo, halfway between San Francisco and San Diego. William Carns, 29 survived being shot three times and his girlfriend Renata Gunther, 27, was sexually assaulted but left alive. It was to be the Night Stalker's last attack and the net was tightening. The vital clue came from a sharp-eyed teenager in Mission Viejo, James Romero III, who had taken down the registration of a Toyota station wagon after becoming suspicious when it drove past his house three times. A few hours later Renata Gunther saw the Night Stalker drive away in the same car. The appliance of science Police put out an all points bulletin (APB) on the Toyota and two days later it was found in a car park in the Rampart suburb of LA. Revolutionary technology was used in an attempt to obtain the Night Stalker's fingerprints. A saucer of Superglue was placed inside the car, which was then locked up with the windows tightly shut. The theory was that the fumes from the Superglue would spread throughout the car and reacted with moisture to show up any latent prints, which would then be enhanced by a laser beam which was focused on the car. Forensic scientists held their breath as the glue did its work. They unlocked the car and found a single print. A copy was sent off to a new California state computer in Sacramento where it came up with an almost instant match - 25-year-old Richard 'Ricky' Ramirez, who had been convicted in 1983 of car theft. Detectives from the Night Stalker taskforce brought up his mugshot from police records and knew instantly that the tall, scruffy and skinny Hispanic in the picture was their man. The mugshot was splashed across the front of the Los Angeles newspapers. Caught!  When Ramirez stepped off a Greyhound bus in LA on Saturday 31st August after arriving from Phoenix - where he had been buying cocaine - he soon realised that his luck had run out. He glanced down at the newspaper rack as he walked into Tito's Liquor Store in the Hispanic heartland of East LA to buy his usual sugary breakfast - a can of Pepsi and a packet of doughnuts. He found himself staring at his own photo under the headline Police Identify Stalker Suspect. Ramirez knew the game was up. He turned on his heels and ran for two miles. Police cars descended on the area amid reports that the Night Stalker had been spotted. Ramirez tried to commandeer a car but the driver fought him off and a group of bystanders rushed to her aid. He fled, jumping over fences and into the back gardens of homes in this tough East LA neighbourhood. It was an area where many Hispanic fugitives from justice might expect to be hidden by locals simply because of their ethnic origins. But the Night Stalker's horrific and indiscriminate crimes granted him only hatred and contempt from the Mexican-American community. Carpenter Luis Munoz hit him with his barbecue tongs when he emerged over his garden fence. But Ramirez escaped and found 56-year-old Faustino Pinon working on his car. He got into the driver's seat and was about to turn the ignition key when Mr Pinon gripped him in a headlock. Eventually Ramirez broke free and ran towards a car that Angelina de la Torres was just about to drive off in. He ordered her out and shouted: "Te voy a matar! (I'm going to kill you!)" "El Matador! El Matador! (The Killer!),"she screamed and whacked him with the car door. Her husband, Manuel, came to her aid and soon Ramirez was surrounded by a mob of neighbours, many of whom were armed with steel bars and tools. He ran but was soon cornered, beaten to the ground and then pinned there until police arrived and took him into custody. A mob had to be held back as they surrounded the police station and shouted: "Hang him!" Ramirez is said to have told police: "I did it, you know. You guys got me, the Stalker." He also hummed the tune of AC-DC's song Night Prowler and told detectives: "You think I'm crazy, but you don't know Satan."  It seemed like an open and shut case but when it came to trial - after repeated delays caused by Ramirez firing his lawyers - he claimed he was innocent and a victim of mistaken identity. His attorney, Ray Clark, said repeated use of pictures of Ramirez on television had contaminated the identification evidence of key witnesses. Witness identification expert Elizabeth Loftus told the trial that research showed that people often have difficulty identifying people of a different race and often make mistakes when their attention is focused on his gun or knife. Julian Ramirez also claimed his son had been at home in El Paso on the night of Mabel Bell's murder. Guilty Eventually after numerous delays - one juror was murdered and had to be replaced and another was substituted after falling asleep - Ramirez was found guilty of 13 murders and 30 other offences. At a later hearing Mr Clark tried to claim Ramirez may have been possessed by the Devil. But the jury did not buy it and he was given 19 death sentences. He told the judge: "You don't understand me. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil." While on Death Row at San Quentin jail Ramirez received fan mail from dozens of girls, many of whom sent him revealing pictures of themselves. In October 1996 he married Doreen Lioy, a 41-year-old freelance magazine editor with an IQ of 152, in a simple ceremony at San Quentin. In an interview she said: "The facts of his case ultimately will confirm that Richard is a wrongly-convicted man, and I believe fervently that his innocence will be proven to the world." Ramirez remains on Death Row but continues to appeal against his conviction and sentence. California has not executed a prisoner since 1967 but many would say that Ramirez would be eminently suitable for the gas chamber. The Night Stalker's victims: Jun 1984 - Jennie Vincow Mar 1985 - Dayle Okazaki Mar 1985 - Tsai Lian Yu Mar 1985 - Vincent and Maxine Zazzara May 1985 - Bill Doi Jun 1985 - Mabel Bell Jun 1985 - Patty Higgins Jul 1985 - Mary Cannon Jul 1985 - Joyce Nelson Jul 1985 - Maxson and Lela Kneiding Jul 1985 - Chainarong Khovananth Aug 1985 - Elyas Abowath

Second Article..

Late in the 20th Century, Hell glutted on humanity. Its first bloodletting of that season of the Devil occurred on the warm evening of June 28, 1984, when an earth-bound Lucifer found his way into the small Glassel Park apartment of 79-year-old Jennie Vincow. Throughout the Los Angeles area a damp humidity had oppressed the air that day, and when the evening came and the temperature slightly cooled, Jennie left her window open to invite what little breeze there might be into her flat. Like a fallen leaf, decayed and tossed from its source, a fallen angel, dark, angry and also decaying, blew across the sill of that open window. When the demon departed through that same window, he left behind Jennie Vincow, raped, beaten and nearly decapitated.

"Her body was found by her son, who lived above her ground-floor apartment, just south of...Forest Lawn Park," reports the Los Angeles Times. "Her throat had been slashed and she had been stabbed repeatedly."

The police were baffled. But, in the months to come, they were to encounter a madman whose lust for killing and depravity equaled, if not surpassed, that of Jack the Ripper or, more contemporary, the Hillside Strangler. Soon to be named the "Night Stalker" by the press, this madman bore, according to true crime author Richard L. Linedecker, "the horror in his soul of a Stephen King or a Clive Barker fright novel - and more." A Freddy Kruger. For real.

Less than a year later, the monster reappeared. This time, he waited in the shadows of an upscale condominium outside LA. The date was March 17, 1985, time 11:30 p.m., when pretty-faced Maria Hernandez pulled her auto into the security garage, unaware the monster was watching her from behind a pillar. When she alighted from her car, the killer stepped from the darkness, gun upraised and, despite her pleadings, he pressed the trigger. She stumbled. And the killer, thinking she was dead, stepped over her to enter the side door of the condo. But, Maria had been lucky - very lucky - for the bullet had deflected off the car keys she held in her hand, causing a hand wound, but nothing more.

Inside the building, Maria's roommate was less fortunate. For, when Maria finally made her way to the safety of her place, breathless, she discovered that her friend, Dayle Okazaki, had also encountered the killer. And this time, his bullet had found its mark. Thirty-three-year-old Okazaki lay in a pool of her own blood, her skull smashed by a missile fired at extremely close range.

The demon vanished just as quickly as he had appeared. The police were stumped.

All they knew of him was what Hernandez was able to tell them: He was tall, gaunt, dark, maybe Hispanic.

This time, the killer didn't wait nearly a year to murder again. He struck within the hour. His next victim that same evening was petite Taiwanese-born Tsai-Lian Yu, who, driving her yellow Chevrolet down North Alhambra Avenue in nearby Monterey Park, withered when someone with the eyes of a madman forced his way into her car and shot her. He had thrown his own car into idle, simply entered hers, pushed her onto the pavement, called her bitch, then blew her into eternity at point-blank range.

Fast. Neat. Clean.

Then dematerialized into the darkness from whence he came.

Child's play.

The police were beginning to realize they might have a problem on their hands, but they remained stumped. Eyewitnesses who thought they had seen the killer described him as tall, gaunt, dark, maybe Hispanic.

Ten days later, this elusive phantom -- whose physical description could fit any one of thousands of males in the Greater Los Angeles area -- required more blood. This time, shooting his prey didn't quite satisfy the urge; the demon must have been hungry, he must have been frantic, for when he entered the home of the sleeping Zazzara couple, he produced a bloodbath.

The couple's bodies were discovered by their son the following morning. Vincent Zazzara had been shot in the head as he dozed on the sofa. He had died quickly -- unlike his wife who suffered the percussion of the killer's frenzy. On her face he had carved the embodiment of his hate, molding her physicality into something representative of how he viewed humankind - as something made to splice and cut and gouge, to bend, to twist, to reshape to suit his own wantonness.

Clifford L. Linedecker, in his well-researched Night Stalker, describes what the police found at the crime scene: "They (the police) would never forget the sight of Maxine Zazzara's mutilated face. Her eyes were gouged out, and the empty sockets were ringed with blackened gobs of blood and tissue...The killer had plunged a knife through her left breast, leaving a large, ragged T-shaped wound. There were other cruel injuries to her neck, face, abdomen, and around the pubic area. She had been butchered..."

Investigators found footprints - visible signs of a tennis shoe -- in the service area and in the flowerbed - indicating his means of entry into the Zazzara home. There were no witnesses this time around, but a modus operandi was becoming loosely apparent. Nevertheless stumped, the law determined to put an end to this savage that had crawled up from the mud up and within their midst. That they believed this latest crime to have been committed by the same creature that had slain Vincow, Okazaki and Yu was, at this point, not much more than a hunch. But, if they were correct, the madman was becoming bolder and more sanguine; an inner lust seemed to be growing and, now fed and apparently well fed, who knows what would come next! Scouring the neighborhoods where he had already struck, blue uniforms questioned strangers, stopped midnight strollers, clambered for witnesses. But, there proved little to go on.

Deep inside, the police feared, he -It! - would strike again.

Tension of the wait was short. Elderly Harold and Jean Wu did not hear the intruder slipping into their residence through a window at pre-dawn, May 14. The first intimation Mrs. Wu had of his presence was the loud bang that stirred her awake. She woke to find the figure, smoking gun in hand, standing over her. Beside her, husband Harold groaned, shot in the head. Then - the killer's huge fists unloosened on the woman. He pummeled her, slapped her, kicked her, and demanded that she turn over loose cash to him. Binding her hands together behind her with thumbscrews, he tossed her across her bed over her dying spouse, then rampaged through the home's drawers and cabinets for money. Terrified, lying on her mattress, Jean Wu could hear three things - Harold's furtive gasps for life, furniture being invaded, and the madman's curses as he found nothing of great value.

Having rampaged through their belongings, the tall, thin, dark man returned to the Wu's bedroom and, as she lay across her fading husband, violently raped the 63-year-old woman. Satisfied, he zippered up, grinning. Then left. Another trophy his.

Mrs. Wu, after recovering from shock, told police her attacker was tall, gaunt, dark, Hispanic.

The symphony of terror played on, its next discordant notes sounded in the dark hours before May 30, at the home of attractive 41-year-old Ruth Wilson. The woman awoke in her bed to the blinding beam of a flashlight and the distinct silhouette of a pistol barrel across her gaze; behind the illumination a gruff voice demanded, "Where's your money?" Before she could muster words, the intruder yanked her by the sleeve of her negligee off her bed and led her to her 12-year-old son's room down the hall. Using the frightened boy as bait, he insisted that she produce something of value. She told him where an expensive piece of jewelry was hidden. He seemed satisfied as he studied the diamond necklace in his hands, and Wilson figured he would abscond without harming her or her boy.

She was wrong.

Locking her son in a closet, he took his pent-up emotions out on the woman in the pink negligee who stood before him. Shoving her back to her own bedroom, he tore her gown off her and, despite her protestations, had his way with her. First he bound her hands behind her with a pair of pantyhose, then fell upon her. As he raped and sodomized her, his foul breath and body odor overcame and sickened her, adding to the humiliation.

Miraculously, he let her live. He was gone...all but in her night dreams that would haunt her over and over and over for months to come.

When the police later interviewed her, she gave her description of the devil: