When was the night stalker

The third and fourth murders took place at the Whittier home of Vincent and Maxine Zazzara. This is where police found their first clue to the identity of the Night Stalker — a shoe print from a men's Avia sneaker.

All of the children were sexually assaulted and then abandoned. One of those children was 6-year-old Anastasia Hronas. She and the other children provided police with a description of their kidnapper that raised alarms — and inspired a hunch — for one homicide detective. Detective Gil Carrillo spotted the similarities between the children's description and the one given by Maria Hernandez. As he recounted in Netflix's documentary " Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer ," he thought that, just maybe, all of these crimes were committed by one man.

Both Hernandez and the abducted children described their attacker as tall and light-skinned with brown-stained teeth, a pungent odor and a Member's Only-style jacket. Salerno said it was unheard of for a criminal to have such wide-ranging types of victims — men, women and children — and such varied methods of killing; Ramirez had used guns and knives, to this point.

In late spring , Carrillo learned of another shoe print that might link the murders to the child abductions. A child was taken from the Montebello area and assaulted at a nearby construction site.

The cement at the site was still wet, and the print was extremely similar to the one found at the Zazzara home. Soon after, Carrillo and Salerno became partners. By this time, there had been yet another attack. Bill was killed, and Lillian was robbed and sexually assaulted. As the summer wore on, more people reported similar nighttime break-ins and attacks in nearby cities of Monrovia, Burbank and Arcadia.

On July 5, Whitney Bennett, then 16, was attacked with a tire iron in her parents home in Sierra Madre. Though badly wounded, she survived. While examining the crime scene, police found another shoe print, just like the first two, on Bennett's comforter. After the police determined that the attacks around the city were likely all by one assailant, they started looking into other similar cases from the same period.

One case that raised alarms with Carrillo and Salerno was an attempted abduction near Eagle Rock, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles. A victim police would describe as a "young female" fought off a would-be abductor who drove away in a Toyota. Moments later, another officer spotted the Toyota committing a traffic violation.

But after he was pulled over, the suspect escaped on foot, leaving the car behind. They requested to print the car, but they couldn't access the vehicle for weeks. In the meantime, the killer was still on the loose, and the clock was ticking. July 7, , two days after the Bennett attack, year-old Joyce Nelson was murdered in her home in Monterey Park.

Police found Avia sneaker footprints on the side of Nelson's head and on the concrete outside of her home. The same night, less than a mile away, Sophie Dickman was sexually assaulted in her Monterey Park home.

By this time, the media was starting to suspect what the police already knew: There was a serial killer and rapist on the loose in Los Angeles. The media coverage had citizens scared that they — that just about anyone — could fall victim to this still-unknown prowler. The day after the Nelson murder, Carrillo and Salerno finally got their hands on the stolen Toyota. But they weren't able to recover any fingerprints.

Did you know Edit. Trivia Ramirez later married one of his groupies in Connections Featured in Jeremy Vine: Episode 4. User reviews Review. Top review. A refreshing examination of a serial killer that focuses on the investigators. As a true crime fan who grew up in Los Angeles during the 's, naturally I was looking forward to this documentary series. It did not. Far from it.

It is a celebration of the lead homicide detectives who worked tirelessly to capture an elusive, vicious killer. It also shines a great big light on the survivors, who reflect on the victims. I appreciated the fresh approach to showing the crime scene photos - avoiding the typical horror soundtrack and overly macabre display. There are countless documentaries on serial killers that do this, but this one took a more sober approach, perhaps out of respect to the victims and their families.

Richard Ramirez was an American serial killer who killed at least 14 people and raped and tortured at least two dozen more, mostly during the spring and summer of After developing epilepsy as a child, he became a heavy drug user and cultivated an interest in Satanism, which became a calling card for investigators at his crime scenes.

Apprehended in August , Ramirez was sentenced to death at the conclusion of his trial in He spent the remainder of his days at California's San Quentin Prison, before dying from cancer on June 7, , at age Known as Richard or Ricky, Ramirez reportedly sustained multiple head injuries at an early age; after he was knocked unconscious by a swing at age 5, he began experiencing epileptic fits. As an adolescent, Ramirez was heavily influenced by his older cousin, Miguel, who had recently returned from fighting in the Vietnam War.

The two smoked marijuana together as Miguel told Ramirez about the torture and mutilation he had inflicted on several Vietnamese women, corroborating these stories with photographic evidence. At age 13, Ramirez witnessed his cousin murder his wife.

Dropping out of school in the ninth grade, Ramirez was arrested for the first time in , for marijuana possession. He soon moved to California, progressing to cocaine addiction and burglary, and cultivating an interest in Satanism. He was arrested twice in the Los Angeles area for auto theft, in and again in , and noticeably began to neglect his personal hygiene.

Theft turned to violence with Ramirez's then first known murder on June 28, ; the victim was year-old Jennie Vincow, who was sexually assaulted, stabbed and killed during a burglary in her own home. What followed was a spree of brutal murders, rapes and robberies, leaving dozens of victims in its wake. Ramirez next struck nearly nine months later. In some cases, other members of the same households as the victims listed above were also attacked, but they survived. One person who survived an attack by Ramirez, Inez Erickson, gave a description of him to the police in the summer of and they were eventually able to identify him thanks to fingerprint evidence from a stolen car.

Following a trial that began in , he was convicted of 13 counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, 11 counts of sexual assault and 14 counts of burglary. After more than 23 years on death row awaiting execution, he died from complications of B-Cell lymphoma in The i on TV newsletter is a daily email full of suggestions of what to watch as well as the latest TV news, opinions and interviews.