American Horror Story 1984: The horrific true tale of The Night Stalker, who bound and raped victims in their homes and gouged out their eyes with a knife
AFTER fatally shooting her husband in the head as he slept, Richard Ramirez forced Sakina Abowath to "swear on Satan" that she wouldn't scream as he raped her in her bedroom.
Sakina's three-year-old son came to the room after hearing the terrible noise — Ramirez tied him up and went back to raping his mother.
This was just one of the many horrific crimes committed by Richard Ramirez, a serial killer and rapist who became known as The Night Stalker.
The devil-worshipping monster would draw satanic symbols before leaving crime scenes and collected trophies from his victims —in one case he cut out a woman's eyes who'd angered him and kept them in a jewellery box.
Ramirez tormented California between 1984 and 1985, breaking into family homes in the dead of night in random attacks to carry out sick sexual fantasies.
Now a version of his evil character features in the new FX series of American Horror Story: 1984.
But no horror story can ever be disturbing as what Ramirez really did, with crimes so appalling that he would eventually be sentenced to 19 death sentences.
Severed head of rape victim
Ramirez was born in Texas in 1960, the youngest son of a former Mexican policeman.
His dad was prone to fits of rage which would lead to him being physically abusive.
To escape his dad's violence, Ramirez would sometimes sleep in a local cemetery.
But it was his cousin, Miguel, who opened Ramirez's eyes to sadistic brutality.
Miguel was a decorated member of the US Army's special forces who'd served in the Vietnam War.
When he came home, Miguel would show Ramirez Polaroid pictures of Vietnamese people he'd killed, as well as women he'd raped during the war.
In one picture, he gleefully posed with the severed head of a woman he'd raped and then decapitated.
Ramirez was just 13 when he watched as Miguel, in the middle of an argument with his wife Jessie, pulled out a revolver and fatally shot her in the face.
Miguel was found not guilty of murdering Jessie by reason of insanity and he was put in a mental hospital for just four years before he was back out, still influencing Ramirez.
Drug-fuelled devil worship
In the same year as the shooting, Ramirez moved in with his sister Ruth and her husband Roberto — an obsessive peeping Tom who took Ramirez along with him during his sick nighttime stalking.
It was also during his teens that Ramirez started taking LSD and sniffing glue, while also developing an unsettling obsession with Satanism.
At 15 he moved to Los Angeles where one of his older brothers introduced him to burglary and cocaine, paying for the drug by selling stolen goods.
And while still in school, he began having violent sexual fantasies — which he decided to try and act out.
His first criminal acts involved stealing from sleeping guests in the Holiday Inn where he worked, but one day he went further.
A man came back to his hotel room to find Ramirez attempting to rape his wife.
The husband beat Ramirez senseless — but the teen escaped charges because the visiting couple didn't want to return to the state to testify.
Raped, stabbed and hanged little girl
Ramirez's first murder victim was a child.
While living in a hotel in his mid-20s, Ramirez raped and then fatally stabbed Mei Leung in the hotel's basement.
When she was dead, he hung the nine-year-old's body from a pipe in the basement — Mei's eight-year-old brother found her.
This first unimaginable horror was committed in 1984, but the crime wasn't attributed to Ramirez until 2009 when advances in DNA evidence tied him to the killing.
Bloodthirsty rampage
Two months after his first taste of murder, Ramirez began a catalogue of violence which terrified the nation for over a year.
His first adult victim was 79-year-old Jennie Vincow, who was asleep in her home in LA when Ramirez sneaked in through an open window during the night.
He stabbed her as she slept, with cops saying he slashed her throat so deeply that Jennie was nearly decapitated when they found her.
The butchering of Jennie unleashed Ramirez's insatiable blood-lust that would drive him to kill again and again.
Nine months later, in March 1985, he shot 22-year-old Maria Hernandez in the face with a handgun as she was pulling into her garage in Rosemead, California.
Her terrified housemate, Dayle Okazaki, hid behind a counter when she saw Ramirez coming into the kitchen after killing Maria.
Dayle raised her head to see where the murderer was, and Ramirez shot her in the forehead, killing her instantly.
Within an hour of his first double-murder, he pulled another victim Tsai-LIan Yu out of her car and shot her twice — she was pronounced dead in hospital.
The three killings, along with witness accounts of a shooter with curly hair, bulging eyes and rotting teeth, led to Ramirez being referred to as "The Walk-in Killer" in the press.
Cut out mother's eyes
For the next five months, Ramirez would hunt at night in stolen cars, looking for homes to invade.
When he went into one that he'd robbed a year earlier at around 2am one March evening, he immediately shot and killed the homeowner, Vincent Zazzara.
Vincent's petrified wife, Maxine, was beaten and bound while Ramirez ransacked the house for swag.
Incredibly, Maxine managed to get free of her bindings and scrambled to get hold of a shotgun Vincent kept under the bed — but when she pointed it at Ramirez and pulled the trigger, she found to her horror that it wasn't loaded.
The enraged Ramirez shot her three times and went to the kitchen to get a carving knife, which he then used to mutilate her body and cut out her eyes.
He even kept the eyes in a jewellery box and fled the scene with them.
When Vincent and Maxine's son, Peter, found the bodies and called the cops, evidence at the scene revealed the brutal slayings were the work of a serial killer.
Satanic symbols drawn on victim
Despite the investigation into him, Ramirez continued his rampage — killing husbands before attacking women and stealing valuables.
His next victims were Bill and Lillian Doi.
After mortally injuring Bill by beating him unconscious, he put Lillian in thumbcuffs — metal manacles that lock round your thumbs — and raped her.
Within days he killed again, this time by taking a hammer he found in the home of two sisters in their 80s, Mabel Bell and Florence Lang, who lived together.
He tied them both up then bloodily beat them before using an electric chord to shock Mabel.
Ramirez then raped Lang and drew a lipstick pentagram — a five-pointed star associated with devil-worship — on her thigh, as well as on the bedroom walls.
The very next day, he broke into the home of victim Carol Kyle, binding her and her 11-year-old son as he ransacked the house.
Ramirez then repeatedly raped the defenceless mum while threatening to cut her eyes out if she looked at him.
He left Kyle and her son bound together with handcuffs in the house — and went on to kill more.
'Tell them the Night Stalker was here'
His slayings and rapes continued, sometimes ordering his helpless victims to "swear on Satan" they weren't hiding any more valuables from him.
The media started referring to him as the "Night Stalker", which Ramirez loved and decided to adopt for himself.
On the night of August 24, 1985, Ramirez broke into the house of Bill Carns and shot Bill three times in the head.
He then turned his attention to Bill's 29-year-old fiancee Inez Erickson, telling her he was the Night Stalker and beating her, forcing her to say she loved Satan as he did so.
After raping her, he said: "Tell them the Night Stalker was here" before he fled.
Surgeons were able to save Bill's life, pulling two of the bullets out of his head, and Inez gave investigators a detailed physical description of her attacker.
With the description and evidence Ramirez left at the scene, police now knew the identity of their serial killer, and issued a mugshot of Ramirez to the press.
'Mommy, please don't die'
Just six days after his last sickening crime, a group of people caught Ramirez in the middle of an attempted carjacking in LA.
He ran and tried to steal two other cars, but his pursuers caught up with him and beat him until cops turned up and cuffed him.
During his trial, he famously shouted "Hail Satan!" while raising his hand in the air, with a pentagram - an ancient symbol that's become associated with the occult - drawn on his palm.
His court case went on for over a year, and at a cost of $1.8million is was the most expensive trial in the history of California - until OJ Simpson's case in 1994.
On September 20, 1989, Ramirez was found guilty of all charges: 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries.
He was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, but he said of his sentence: "Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland".
During his trial, several sick fans of Ramirez sent him letters, and he ultimately married one of them while he was imprisoned — but she eventually left him.
In 2013, after 23 years on death row, Ramirez died at the age of 53 from cancer, escaping the gas chamber.
But his victims never escaped the trauma of his crimes.
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Virginia Peterson, who was shot in the face by Ramirez before he shot her husband in the head, described the unending pain he inflicted.
During Ramirez's sentencing in 1989, Virginia told the court: "Nights are the worst.
"I scream in terror. I can still hear (my young daughter’s) screams of terror, 'Mommy, please don’t die'."
American Horror Story: 1984 is on FX and Now TV.
