How Was Night Stalker Richard Ramirez Caught? All About the Angry Mob That Captured the Serial Killer in 1985

For over a year, a serial killer terrorized Los Angeles — until its residents took him down.

Richard Muñoz Ramirez, dubbed by the media as the Night Stalker, killed at least 15 people and robbed, raped and beat many others between April 1984 and August 1985. His attacks were brutal and unpredictable. Ramirez rarely used the same weapon and picked his victims seemingly at random, even choosing to leave some of them alive.

The Peacock docuseries Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes, out Dec. 10, explores the life and crimes of the notorious killer. It even includes recorded interviews with Ramirez, who died in 2013.

After a year of harrowing killings, the Texas-born murderer left enough clues for police to identify him to the public. According to NBC Los Angeles, someone soon reported a suspicious man with the suspect’s liking on Aug. 31, 1985. Ramirez attempted to flee via car-jacking but was held down by an angry mob hell-bent on his capture. When police finally arrived, they had beaten him bloody with a steel rod.

“We were saying that if he got caught around here in East L.A. he’d probably get his butt beat up because all the guys around here all know about him,” neighbor Eloise Cabral told the Los Angeles Times in 1985. “They would just love to get their hands on him. And now we wake up the next morning and find him across the street.”

So how was the Night Stalker caught? Here’s everything to know about Richard Ramirez and the mob that captured him.

Who was the Night Stalker?

In the 1980s, a serial killer who local media named the Night Stalker, terrorized cities across L.A. County. Police eventually identified this violent criminal as Richard Ramirez, a drifter from El Paso, Texas, with a history of drug abuse and auto theft.

According to his obituary in The New York Times, Ramirez was exposed to extreme violence from a young age. When he was 12, his older cousin Miguel Ramirez showed him photos of women he raped and killed during the Vietnam War. A year later, he witnessed that same family member shoot and kill his wife — Miguel was later sentenced to seven years for the crime.

Ramirez moved to L.A. when he was 15 and learned burglary techniques from an older brother. He reportedly sold stolen goods to pay for his cocaine addiction and was jailed for several months for auto theft before the murders began. 

Who were the Night Stalker's victims?

Ramirez committed his first known murder on April 10, 1984 — though he wasn’t linked to the crime until years later.

Nine-year-old Mei “Linda” Leung was found dead in the basement of her apartment building after she went looking for a lost dollar bill. She had been beaten, raped and stabbed. Police revived the case in 2009 and matched DNA evidence from the scene with a sample from Ramirez.

He then killed 14 people between June 1984 and August 1985: Vincow, Dayle Okazaki, Veronica Yu, Vincent Zazzara, Macine Zazzara, Bill Doi, Mable "Ma Bell" Bell, Florence "Nettie" Lang, Mary Louise Cannon, Joyce Lucille Nelson, Max Kneiding, Lela Kneiding, Chainarong Khovananth and Elyas Abowath.

During his spree, he also robbed, beat, raped and attempted to murder others who managed to survive. One survivor told former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detective Frank Salerno that Ramirez made her invoke the name of Satan during the attack. In Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes, the convicted murderer said that he was introduced to Satanism when he was 21.

"Satan is a stabilizing force in my life," he said in recorded tapes featured in the docuseries. "It gives me a reason to be. It gives me an excuse to rationalize. I was in alliance with the evil that is inherent in human nature and that was who I was."

The Los Angeles Times reported in 1986 that Ramirez bragged about killing 20 people to a prison staffer. In addition to the later confirmed killing of Leung, he’s also suspected of murdering Peter Pan in San Francisco.

How was the Night Stalker caught?

Thanks to reports from witnesses and survivors, police were able to track down a stolen station wagon Ramirez had been driving and pull a fingerprint from the back of the rearview mirror. In 2017, Los Angeles Magazine reported that after excluding 100 similar prints from their database, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department made a conclusive match: Richard Ramirez.

“We went through an agonizing, soul-searching discussion as to whether to proceed on this identification,” L.A. County Sheriff Sherman Block told reporters after they decided to release his name and mug shot from a previous car theft arrest to the public.

Speaking directly to Ramirez, via TV cameras, Block added, "You cannot escape. Every law officer and every citizen now knows exactly what you look like and who you are."

It wasn’t long until someone reported a suspicious man in East L.A. who matched the Night Stalker’s description.  Once he realized the police were closing in, Ramirez attempted to flee by stealing a car. But the driver recognized him and alerted her neighbors.

Witnesses told the Los Angeles Times that at least four people grabbed him before he could flee and held him until police arrived. When Ramirez tried to escape the mob of residents, they chased after him and hit him repeatedly with a steel rod.

“Once he stopped, everyone just got him,” Jaime Burgoin, one of the residents who caught Ramirez, told the newspaper in 1985. “The guy was hitting him with the bar--he just kind of stopped and looked back. I guess he was tired.”

What was the Night Stalker charged with?

On Sept. 20, 1989, Ramirez was charged with 13 counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, 11 counts of sexual assault and 14 counts of burglaries. He was given a total of 13 death sentences.

“He never showed any remorse for what he had done,” Detective Salerno said in a 2015 episode of Murder Made Me Famous. “He was pure evil.”

While awaiting execution, Ramirez died of B-cell lymphoma in 2013 at the age of 53. 

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