Hey everybody welcome to today's cold case murder mini. I'm your host

Ryan Kraus covering the capture of Richard Ramirez, better known as the

Nightstalker, who terrorized the streets of Los Angeles in the mid 1980s and later

became a rock star in court when his female group he showed up to offer their staunch support.

By the end of his streak of terror, culminating in his arrest in the summer of 1985,

Ramirez was ultimately convicted of 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 counts of

sexual assault, and 14 burglaries. While he achieved the equivalent infamy of Ted Bundy or the Zodiac, the

Knightstalker was neither of these men. He wasn't just a murderer. He was the quintessential representation of the seedy underbelly of society, of crime, anarchy,

and a total disregard for anything falling outside of his own desires.

He was the antithesis of civilization,

the embodiment of wanting to just say fuck it and rain fire upon the world for his pain. He was a master thief, one who could

slip in your locked window in perfect silence, and creep beneath the buzz of the air conditioner as he approached your bed armed with a crowbar and a 22 caliber pistol,

ready to maim, torture, rape, steal, and kill.

He was a reason to lock your doors at night, and then check them again.

He was a reason to sleep with one eye open, waiting for the shadow to loom over your bed.

Yet he was magnetic and possessed a mysticism that left a few of the women he attacked admitting that they still found him attractive.

Despite the fact he accosted them sexually,

blasting them with hot stale breath emanating from rotting teeth deteriorated by Matthews.

But his victims were not specific in this manner, nor were his methods, ranging from beating

an elderly woman to death with an alarm clock, to shooting a sleeping man,

to smashing a teen girl's head with a crowbar.

But no matter what the impetus for this madness, whether it was the violent temper of his father, the

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