Richard Ramirez aka The Night Stalker was the real-life monster who worshipped Satan and mercilessly slaughtered people in their beds

IF there ever was a living nightmare, then it is this man — a devil-worshipping boogeyman dressed in black who breaks into your home to murder you in your bed. (WARNING: graphic content)

HE WAS the devil-worshipping boogeyman who murdered the weak and vulnerable as they slept in their beds.

Under the cover of darkness and dressed completely in black, he broke into homes, raped, brutalised and killed.

As Los Angeles sweated through its hottest ever summer, terrified residents dared not open their windows for fear they would be the next victim.

The Night Stalker showed no mercy to those he chose to attack and didn’t care how he killed them.

Some were shot, others stabbed, strangled and one even stomped to death.

One woman, who tried to fight back, had her eyes taken out.

“Some serial killers will let you live if you talk to them, if you get to know them, if they get to know you,” The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, ranted in an interview played in a A & E channel documentary.

“Some serial killers will take pity, while others won’t.”

It is now 30 years that Ramirez slaughtered his first helpless victim on June 28, 1984.

But as the summer of 1985 heated up, The Night Stalker’s reign of terror seemed as if it would never stop.

Los Angeles residents locked their doors and windows and armed themselves, but for some this was not enough.

The Night Stalker still found a way in.

Ramirez, a former altar boy who was raised in a strict Catholic family, had seemed a bit unusual to some of his friends growing up, but none suspected the boy they shared the schoolyard with would become a killer.

His family too noticed Ramirez was unusual.

Legions of the night, nightbreed, repeat not the errors of my father and show no mercy. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.

- Richard Ramirez

He would sometimes sleep in a cemetery near his home and began to worship the devil.

It was his older cousin Mike, a green Beret, who had recently returned from Vietnam, whose stories inspired Ramirez.

Mike described how he brutalised and tortured women during the war and backed up his claims with Polaroid pictures.

Later, Ramirez was present when Mike murdered his wife.

It would soon be Ramirez doing the killing.

On 28 June 1984, Ramirez broke into an elderly woman’s apartment and sexually assaulted her, before killing her.

Jack Vincow arrived at his mother’s apartment to find a window screen missing and a room in disarray.

He soon found his mother Jennie Vincow, whose throat was slashed, almost from ear to ear and whose body was battered with multiple stab wounds.

Fingerprints that were later identified as Ramirez’s were found on the screen that was lying on the living room floor.

I love to kill people. I love watching them die.

- Richard Ramirez

Nine months later in the spring of 1985 Ramirez struck again.

It was about 11pm on St Patricks Day 1985 and the garage door at Maria Hernandez’s condominium was closing.

As she started opening the door to her home a man appeared and held a gun to her face.

Ms Hernandez raised her hand to shield her face and Ramirez fired his gun from close range.

Ms Hernandez was struck in the hand and fell to the floor.

She did not lose conciosuness and lay still.

The Night Stalker brushed past her and entered the home.

Inside the home Ramirez shot her roommate Dale Okazaki dead on the kitchen floor.

Outside the apartment police found a crucial clue — a blue AC/DC baseball cap.

An associate of Ramirez would later testify the cap looked like one he wore.

About an hour later Tsai-Lian Yu was driving in suburban Los Angeles when Ramirez forced her car off the road.

As Ms Yu struggled and screamed “help me”, a witnesses saw Ramirez push Yu away and then speed off.

She crawled a short distance and then lay still.

Yu had been shot twice in the chest at close range.

When paramedics arrived they found Yu breathing, but unconscious, she soon faded and was pronounced dead in hospital.

Ramirez next struck 11 days later horrifically murdering Maxine Zazzara.

Ms Zazzara’s body was found in the bedroom lying on her bed, she had been shot in the head and neck at close range, stabbed in her neck, cheek, chest, abdomen, and pubic area, and her eyes had been cut out.

They were never found.

It also appeared she had been sexually assaulted.

Two .22-caliber bullets found in her head and neck were later matched with those of another Ramirez victim

There would be many more victims.

These include:

MAY 14, 1985: William Doi, 66, is shot dead. His wife is found wearing thumbscrews.

MAY 30, 1985: A woman, 41, and her son are disturbed by an intruder, who

handcuffs the boy and sexually assaults the mother.

JUNE 1, 1985: Mabel Bell, 83, is found lying on the floor of her bedroom naked and beaten so badly she later dies. Her sister Florence Lang, 79, is strapped to her bed and bludgeoned.

JULY 2, 1985: Mary Cannon, 75, is found with her neck slashed at home.

JULY 5, 1985: A girl, 16, is attacked with a tyre lever in her bedroom but survives.

JULY 7, 1985: Joyce Nelson, 60, is found beaten and strangled.

JULY 7, 1985: A woman, 63, is handcuffed, sexually assaulted and robbed.

JULY 20, 1985: Maxon Kneilding, 68, and his wife Lela, 66, are shot and stabbed in their home.

JULY 20, 1985: Minutes later, a man, 32, is shot dead in his bedroom, His wife is forced to sexually gratify the attacker on the bed next to her husband’s body.

AUGUST 6, 1985: A husband and wife are shot in the head each survives.

AUGUST 8, 1985: A man, 35, is shot dead and his wife sexually assaulted, bound and beaten.

It was the very people who Ramirez terrorised that would eventually arrest him.

On August 31, 1985, as investigators began closing in on Ramirez, he caught a Greyhound Bus to Tucson, Arizona to visit his brother.

On his return he calmy walked past police waiting for him at the bus terminal and headed for a convenience store.

Inside, a woman who had seen his face on the front page of the newspaper that morning, cried “el matador” which is Spanish for the killer.

Ramirez ran.

On the street he tried to carjack with a woman inside.

She ran out of the car and called for help.

Hearing her cries people began chasing Ramirez, some also shouting “el matador”.

As a large crowd gathered around Ramirez one man struck him to the head with a steel bar causing him to fall.

Some of the crowd held newspapers with Ramirez’s picture on it.

The police soon arrived and checked his gapped, discoloured front teeth to ensure it was him.

As they drove Ramirez to the station he told an officer to “just shoot me,” saying he wanted to die.

Ramirez said all the killings would be blamed on him.

He confessed saying: “I want the electric chair. They should have shot me on the street. I did it, you know. You guys got me, the Stalker. Hey, I want a gun to play Russian roulette. I’d rather die than spend the rest of my life in prison. Can you imagine the people caught me, not the police.”

Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Ellis would later tell Ramirez’s trial that the killer told him: “I love to kill people. I love watching them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and squirm all over the place and then just stop, or cut them with a knife and watch their face turn real white. I love all that blood.”

He also told Deputy Ellis that: “One time I told this lady to give me all her money. She said no. So I cut her and pulled her eyes out.”

LA Mayor Tom Bradley summed up the feelings of a frightened state.

“California can breathe a sigh of relief tonight,” he was quoted in the LA Times as saying.

“I can’t begin to tell you how proud we are of our citizens. It is one of those beautiful stories.”

Ramirez would later try and recant on his confession.

In an interview with reporter Mike Watkiss, Ramirez delivered a crazed ramble.

“The world has been fed many lies about me. I have read very few truths,” he said.

“Serial killers do on a small scale what governments do on a large one, they are a product of the times and these are bloodthirsty times. Even psychopaths have emotions if you dig deep enough, but then again maybe they don’t.”

During his arraignment Ramirez held up a pentagram symbol to reporters.

During his trial he would dress completely in black and wear sunglasses to court.

In September 1989 Ramirez was found guilty of 13 counts of murder and other charges including rape.

Ramirez was unrepentant, ranting about the devil.

“You maggots make me sick, hypocrites one and all,” he said.

“You don’t understand me, you are not expected to, you are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience.

“I am beyond good and evil.”

“Legions of the night, nightbreed, repeat not the errors of my father and show no mercy. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.”

Two months later he was sentenced to death.

But not everyone hated Ramirez.

A small legion of women visited him in prison and tried to win his affection.

In 1996 one of those fans 41-year-old Doreen Lioy married Ramirez in prison.

But the marriage was never consummated — inmates on death row do not get conjugal visits.

“It’s pretty sick,” said Ms Lioy’s cousin Adam Yates, one of several relatives upset by the wedding told AP.

“Somebody marrying a mass murderer? I think everybody is pretty disgusted.”

Ramirez’s death sentence would never be carried out.

In June last year Ramirez, 53, died as a result of complications from Lymphoma.