StMU Research Scholars

Featuring Scholarly Research, Writing, and Media at St. Mary’s University

November 2, 2017

America in the 1980s: Obsession and Romanticism over The Night Stalker

Winner of the Fall 2017 StMU History Media Award for

Best Article in the Category of “Crime”

Think back to the first horror movie you ever watched. Was it Halloween? Nightmare on Elm Street? Friday the 13th? Think about what all these movies have in common. If you guessed death, then you’re right. Most people will say they love a good horror film because of the rush of adrenaline; others will say they love the absurdity. Regardless of the reason, there is still a love for all things horror.

Handwritten letter from Ramirez to one of his many female admirers | Photo courtesy of Pinterest

But, where does this culture come from? While there are some people that love fictional horror, there are those that love real-life horror. These men and women idolize and fantasize about serial killers and murderers. They study all the crime reports, watch every documentary, and read every biography or narration of a killer’s life. Why is it that men and women like Richard Ramirez, self proclaimed satanist and vicious murderer, become celebrities through their killing? Serial killers sometimes gain groupies and copy-cat killers. Ramirez is one of many examples of distorted stardom but, his story gives us an image of America’s culture of death and our obsession with serial killers.

There are countless examples of killers being studied and filmed for the purpose of entertainment. Serial killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer have had numerous documentaries appear, studying and depicting their lives. Books like The Stranger Beside Me and Zodiac have made millions in simple narration of the investigations or the killings themselves. Even Ramirez has had his name in Hollywood several times. He was depicted in one episode of the 2015 season of American Horror Story, and in 2016, Lou Diamond Phillips portrayed Ramirez in a dramatization of his life in A&E’s The Night Stalker.1 A Google search of his name will turn up thousands of articles and blogs detailing his life and killings. On YouTube, there are hundreds of videos from Ramirez’s trial along with subsequent interviews. Scrolling through the comment section, there are varying opinions on Ramirez. Some call him charming and philosophical, others say he is cocky and Charles Mansonesque.

Then, you will find men and women who find Ramirez attractive. This psychological phenomenon is known as hybristophilia, a type of paraphilia where a person is sexually attracted to and aroused by a person who has committed a vicious or gruesome crime.2 While Ramirez was still alive and in prison, hundreds of women would line up to try and visit him. At one point there were so many women in line, that more than half had to be turned away. Ramirez himself ended up marrying one of his “fans” while in prison. This woman was Doreen Lioy, a forty-one year old freelance editor. They were married on October 3, 1996 and remained husband and wife for twelve years before Ramirez died of B-cell lymphoma at the age of fifty-three.3

Richard Ramirez and his wife Doreen Lioy | Photo courtesy of Flickr

While she was the only woman to have married Ramirez, she was not the only woman “in love” with him. From the time of his arrest to his death, there were hundreds of “women in black” who wrote him letters in jail and went to every court hearing of his. Below is a news segment featuring two of Ramirez’s deluded fans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rlm-n3vfVM

To the average person, a serial killer is not a person, but a monster incapable of giving or receiving love. Very few would look into the eyes of a murderer and feel overcome with affection. But, in the 1980s and 1990s when Ramirez’s trial was all over the news, Americans couldn’t get enough of him. And so, the rise of serial killer notoriety comes to a peak, with an all-time high of serial killer reporting taking place and law enforcement spending more time and funding trying to understand serial killer psychology and motivation. Thus the culture of death was born.4

That is not to say that serial killers or murderers have not existed in history previously. They have, but there was not nearly as much attention given to them. The mid-twentieth century saw a worldwide increase in serial killers and mass murderers. This phenomenon has been documented all the way through the twentieth century, with a high concentration of killers and murders in the United States. Interestingly enough, there has been no evidence to show a slowing point to this killer influx. The rate of murder and killing has exponentially grown through the twentieth- and into twenty-first century. Because of this, there is an increase of study and focus being put onto these killers and atrocities. Many scholars and public health practitioners have devoted their time to researching and interviewing these killers in hope of understanding their motives for committing such heinous crimes.5

Though, with all this research, the primary focus is always put on the killer and their survivors, if any are left. In situations of a serial killer being found and arrested, public health officials will spend time talking about the crimes committed and their political and social ramifications. And, while they investigate and interview those who knew the killer, sometimes a motive is never found, leaving the community to deal with the loss of life in a shroud of mystery and anguish.6

Richard Ramirez as a child |Photo courtesy of The Post-Mortem Post

So, with all the time and resources devoted to understanding and predicting psychotic behavior, there has been no major breakthrough. Most of this difficulty comes from how “normal” these killers and murderers look. They could be friends, co-workers, or even family members—they blend in.7 Take for example The Stranger Beside Me, written by Anne Rule. She wrote about her experiences with Ted Bundy and described how she was completely shocked by the atrocious crimes he committed. But, before his arrest, he was a master of disguise and incredibly charming; there’s no way a man like that could be a cold-blooded killer. Right?

When speaking about Richard Ramirez, there was no surprise that he was troubled. As a child, he was diagnosed with epilepsy and grew up under the influence of his older cousin Mike. His older cousin was a Vietnam veteran who taught Ramirez to kill and smoke weed. As Ramirez grew older he began stealing to pay for a growing drug addiction; during this time, he also began to see himself as a child of Satan. As he grew, he became more troubled, working at a hotel and then being fired for trying to rape a woman in her room. He was sixteen at that time, though Ramirez was not found guilty because the Judge felt he had been lured into sex rather than the one to force it.8

After dropping out of high school, Ramirez, at the age of eighteen, moved to California and became a full time criminal. As his addiction to drugs grew, so did the violence of his crimes, resulting in a deadly cocktail of rage and addiction. All of this came to a climax in June of 1984, and after brutally murdering his first victim, seventy-nine year old Jennie Vincow, he went on a year-long killing spree.9 The wake of destruction he left after every break-in and murder left the nation in shock and terror. After every rape and murder he committed, a pentagram could be found either on the body of his victim, or somewhere in the crime scene, and this became Ramirez’s signature.10

He was finally apprehended on August 31, 1985 after his last victim was able to look out the window, and see the stolen car he was driving and a portion of the license plate. When Ramirez was found, he was in an East L.A. neighborhood, and police officers had to stop residents from beating him to death.11 But, during his trial there was no clear motive found. The disturbing conclusion was that Ramirez killed people and raped women because he liked it. And so, there comes a battle between sympathizing with Ramirez because of his traumatic and turbulent childhood, and condemning him as a “Satan-obsessed serial killer who enjoyed every murder and rape he committed.”12

The media had a large influence on this tug of war. From the first murder he committed to his very last day in court there was no shortage of stories. The more stories printed about “The Night Stalker,” the more the public wanted. News outlets focused on his surviving victims and the gruesome details of his crimes. News had begun to focus on the spectacle of things. Newspapers depicted his crimes as atrocities and disasters to the L.A. and San Francisco area, and every story of his made the front page. As Mary Ann Doane, a commentator on mass media, said “Catastrophe is at some level always about the body, about the encounter with death.”13

So, as a society we became obsessed with death. Even now, thirty-two years after Ramirez’s arrest and four years after his death, we still watch his documentaries, we still read the biographies, we still find him disturbingly fascinating. Richard Ramirez still has our attention.

  1. “Richard Ramirez Biography,” biography.com, last modified October 13, 2017, https://www.biography.com/people/richard-ramirez-12385163.
  2. James Alan Fox, “Lovesick over Charles Manson. Really?,” USA Today, (2014): 08a, 6 October 2017.
  3. “Richard Ramirez Biography,” biography.com, last modified October 13, 2017, https://www.biography.com/people/richard-ramirez-12385163.
  4. Judith S. Baughman, Victor Bondi, Richard Layman, Tandy McConnell, Vincent Tompkins, eds., “Serial Killers and Mass Murderers,” in American Decades Vol. 9, 1980-1989, (Detroit: Gale, 2001).
  5. D. L. Peck and R. B. Jenkot, “Serial and Mass Murderers,” in International Encyclopedia of Public Health Vol. 5, 690-691 (Oxford: Academic Press, 2008).
  6. D. L. Peck and R. B. Jenkot, “Serial and Mass Murderers,” in International Encyclopedia of Public Health Vol. 5, 690-691 (Oxford: Academic Press, 2008).
  7. Jarlath Killeen, “The Monster Club: Monstrosity, Catholicism and Revising the (1641) Rising,” in The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction: History, Origins, Theories 2014, ( Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 5.
  8. J. Gordon Melton, “Ramirez, Richard (1960-),” in Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, (Detroit: Gale, 2001), 1279.
  9. “Richard Ramirez Biography,” biography.com, last modified October 13, 2017, https://www.biography.com/people/richard-ramirez-12385163.
  10. J. Gordon Melton, “Ramirez, Richard (1960-),” in Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, (Detroit: Gale, 2001), 1279.
  11. “Richard Ramirez Biography,” biography.com, last modified October 13, 2017, https://www.biography.com/people/richard-ramirez-12385163.
  12. Jarlath Killeen, “The Monster Club: Monstrosity, Catholicism and Revising the (1641) Rising,” in The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction: History, Origins, Theories 2014 ( Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 5.
  13. Mark Seltzer, “Serial Killers (11): The Pathological Public Sphere,” Critical Inquiry 22, no. 1 (1995): 131.

Tags from the story

Richard Ramirez

Serial Killers

The Night Stalker

Recent Comments

Jasmine Martinez

This was such a good article, I really enjoyed reading it. The part about “hybristophilia” is really interesting because I see things like that all over social media sites, and it’s interesting to find out there is really a thing as being attracted to a murder, which I find very odd. I also found it interesting to find more information about Richard Ramirez, because I had heard of him but never knew much more than he was a serial killer, and was found attractive by some of his fans. This was written very well, and I enjoyed it very much!

reply

02/11/2017

2:09 pm

Mariah Cavanaugh

Your title immediately captured my attention. I understand the obsession with the people who commit these crimes. What makes a human capable of strangling the life out of another human? There are more times than I care to admit when I caught myself watching YouTube videos of these killers. I like that your article wasn’t just about Richard Ramirez but also about the psychology and obsession regarding his crimes. Bravo on the article!

reply

02/11/2017

2:09 pm

Paul Carvalho

Very insightful article. I often ponder humanity’s obsession with the macabre. Great piece! Look forward to more from the author.

reply

02/11/2017

2:09 pm

Alise Balderas

This was a very interesting and entertaining article! As someone who is a huge fan of horror movies, I learned a lot from this article. I too am guilty of the fascination with fictional and nonfictional horror stories, TV-shows, movies, and documentaries. Hearing about Richard Ramirez was saddening and frightening considering his childhood and what and who he was surrounded by growing up into his teenage years, his criminal nature could have been avoided. I feel like this article made me think about the way I think in regards to society’s and my own interests in horror. I was intrigued throughout!

reply

03/11/2017

2:09 pm

Alexis Renteria

Great article. I agree that people have a love for all things horror because of the rush people get. Something I didn’t know before reading this article was “hybristophilia”. I wasn’t aware that people had a thing for people who were killers. I could understand finding them attractive because of their looks but even then that a little weird. Overall, this was a very well written article and it does a great job explaining where our love for horror came from.

reply

03/11/2017

2:09 pm

Veronica Spryszynski

Ramirez was very well known in my third year of HS, in my law class we had a presentation about him. Unbelievable that women thought that he was attractive from his crimes and killings, I would be so terrified of this man. I wonder if Ramirez married Doreen for love or for some other reason, since serial killers don’t feel love or affection.

reply

03/11/2017

2:09 pm

Ashley Tumlinson

Great article! I had no idea what “hybristophilia” was before this article. it’s definitely interesting that some people are fascinated so deeply by the rush of someone else’s hurt. it’s quite frightening in fact. Reading about Richard Ramirez’s childhood and youth, and the idea that his actions could have been prevented if he hadn’t been overly exposed to hardship is saddening.

reply

03/11/2017

2:09 pm

Tara Sellers

I never knew about Ramirez and how he was a famous serial killer. I agree with the article on how it said that one of the main reasons serial killers are famous is because of the media. The media will give them nicknames and write articles about them. They feed off our fear and need for information. This article was well written and interesting.

reply

03/11/2017

2:09 pm

Cherice Leach

This is a very disturbing story. I had never heard of this mass murderer before reading this. It’s very strange how famous this guy was with the ladies even though he was a dangerous killer. It’s even stranger that he married one of these ladies. Killers are very hard to understand and we could say that Ramirez was the way he was because of his childhood. However, it’s not certain and we can never really know why a person becomes so twisted.

reply

03/11/2017

2:09 pm

1 4 5 6

Leave a Reply