This picture shows a tiny boy who grew up to be one of the most well-known people in contemporary American history.
He was the youngest of five children in a hardworking Mexican-American family. He was born on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas. His dad worked on the railroad, and the family was Catholic. It looked like a normal life in the American Southwest from the outside, but things were completely unique behind closed doors.
His father’s bad temper and strict discipline had a big impact on his boyhood. The youngster went through a lot of hardship when he was young, which caused major head injuries and neurological abnormalities that will last for the rest of his life. By the time he was ten, he was already using drugs and alcohol to get away from the craziness at home.
His life took another adverse turn when he was fifteen. He saw a horrific tragedy happen to a close family member, which left profound psychological wounds and started his downhill spiral. He dropped out of school not long after that and started hanging out with people who had a detrimental effect on him.
As he got older, he moved around a lot, living in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. He got more and more into crime as he became more dependent on narcotics. At first, he only stole small things and broke into people’s homes, but gradually his acts got worse.
By the middle of the 1980s, people in California were scared. A strange person was breaking into homes all around the state and attacking individuals for no clear reason. The press gave him a lot of names, but one stood out: “The Night Stalker.” His crimes stunned the whole country because they were so random and nasty.
The police initiated one of the largest manhunts in California history. Detectives from several areas started putting together clues that connected a string of break-ins and attacks using fingerprints, shoe prints, and eyewitness testimony.
The matter ultimately came to light when a teenage lad saw a shady man hanging about his family’s house in Mission Viejo and was able to photograph part of the suspect’s license plate. That little bit of awareness would eventually help catch the killer.
Richard Ramirez, a 25-year-old vagabond with a long history of drug abuse and petty crime, later had a fingerprint that matched one that the police uncovered. His mugshot was on every California TV and newspaper within hours of the police’s release.
The next day, Ramirez tried to depart the city, not knowing that people already knew who he was. People on the street knew him right away when he got back to Los Angeles. A group chased him through East L.A., and people in the area were able to hold him until the police came. The lengthy reign of fear was finally over.
His trial started in 1988 and got a lot of attention across the world. Ramirez acted strangely and disturbingly in court, sometimes seeming defiant and unrepentant. In 1989, he was found guilty of many murders and other heinous acts and was given the death penalty.
He was on death row at San Quentin State Prison for more than twenty years, until he died there in 2013 at the age of 53 from natural causes.
It’s difficult to believe that a life like that could go so wrong when you look at that childhood picture of a sweet youngster with dark eyes and a bashful grin. His story is a disturbing reminder of how pain, neglect, and unrestrained darkness can change a person in ways we can’t even imagine.