The summer of 1985. The hottest in L.A. history. During those boiling hot nights, the darkness brought no relief. Only sleepless fear, bloody nightmares, and cold sweat. Doors and windows were double checked, and newly installed security bars imprisoned us within our own homes. The “Night Stalker” had become the living specter of our collective fears,.. and no one was safe.

Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, a young drifter and skilled burglar named Richard Munoz Ramirez stepped from a Greyhound bus at 6th and Los Angeles street and soon blended into the human cesspool of downtown’s skid row’s underworld.  From this home base, his touch of evil would reach into the sanctity of random and scattered south land homes, transforming nightmares into steel cold realities. He would leave his bloody mark on our city with an infamy to match the most brutal and violent episodes of our generation.

The Night Stalker’s path of murder and rape crossed very close to my very own East Los Angeles neighborhood. We felt his shadow lurking on our streets and at our back windows. A self professed predator for Satan’s favor, he prowled and savaged in the neighborhoods of Monterey Park and Whittier among others and no one could anticipate where he would strike next.

When the sun rose that day in Los Angeles, August 31st 1985, it was one of those mornings so brutally hot, that you got out of bed already sweating…..

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