SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — One of the deputy district attorneys who prosecuted “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez described the serial killer’s death Friday as an “abrupt end to a tragic period in the history of Los Angeles County.”
“This person hurt many people, and our thoughts should be with the next of kin and survivors of these senseless attacks,” said Deputy District Attorney Alan Yochelson, who prosecuted the case with the late Phil Halpin.
A Los Angeles jury convicted Ramirez in 1989 of 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries.
Ramirez died of liver failure at Marin General Hospital near San Quentin State Prison, which houses California’s death row, state corrections officials said.
“Some measure of justice has been achieved,” Yochelson said. “I would like to think that with the advances in technology that if a serial killer is operating, they would be identified and apprehended quickly.”
At the time of the verdict, Ramirez, who was 29, asked for permission to leave the packed courtroom, which included several relatives of his murder victims. He heard the verdicts through a speaker in a holding cell, according to the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the verdict.
The wave of random slayings generated widespread fear throughout Southern California.
His marathon trial, which ended in 1989 amid four years of pretrial motions and appeals, was a horror show in which jurors heard about one victim’s eyes being gouged out and another’s head being nearly severed. Courtroom observers wept when survivors of some of the attacks testified.
Among Ramirez’s victims were a traffic supervisor, an accountant, a lawyer, a student, a pizzeria owner, a parking lot attendant and an auto mechanic. Some were grandparents. One was a church deacon.
Ramirez left behind pentagram signs, drawing one on the leg of a female victim and in another repeatedly ordered a woman to “swear upon Satan” as he looted her home and raped and sodomized her after killing her husband.
Ramirez was finally run down and beaten in 1985 by residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood while attempting a carjacking. They recognized him because his picture had appeared that day in the news media.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
