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Includes:
Victims of the Night Stalkers continued
The Various Faces of the Night Stalkers
Criminal Associates
Drawing the Pentagram (FAQ, and Conclusions)
Part 1 can be found here.
Victims of the Night Stalkers continued:
July 20, 1985 — Lela Kneiding, age 66, Maxon Kneiding, age 68 [1][7]
Both Maxon and Lela are killed with a machete and gunshots inside their burglarized home. No fingerprints were recovered but hair samples were, and they did not belong to Ramirez. [3]
Blood was spattered from machete strikes all around the room in “multi-directional patterns and ran upward, slightly to the right”.[3]
The prosecution claimed Ramirez was guilty because bullet fragments matched the ones in the Dayle and Yu murders. But this was never proven, and Ramirez’s defense never bothered to challenge a single ballistics claim despite the disagreements between 3 ballistic experts and bullet deformation. [3][6]
July 20, 1985 — Chainarong Khovananth, age 32, Somkid Khovananth [1]
At around 12:30 am Somkid’s husband returned from work and went to sleep in their bedroom. Somkid stayed in the living room and saw a man entering through the sliding glass door. She ran to the bedroom and the intruder followed. He shoots her husband Chainarong, and rapes her. The intruder beats up their son and steals valuables.[3]
She described the gunman as “male Hispanic, 6’ tall, thin build, thirty to thirty-five years old, wavy brown hair with soft curls, wearing brown pants and a multi-colored shirt”. She had also previous said that he had “a brown face, like a Mexican, and loose, curly hair”. He also had bad teeth and an accent.[4]
This murder occurred either before or after the Kneiding murders. The addresses were a 20 minute drive apart. But the Kneiding attack was so bloody that surely the suspect would have blood on his clothes and body, and Somkid made no mention of it. [6]
There was no blood or sem*n at the scene despite the rape. Hairs found did not match Ramirez.[3]
The.22 bullets found at the Khovananth crime scene were said to match the ones Zazzara’s murders. But the Khovananth murder happened on the same day as the Kneiding murders, where the.22 bullets found were said to match the Dayle and Yu killings instead, and not the Zazzara’s.[3][6]
This was the first and only time that anyone gave the description of the Night Stalker as having bad teeth, which actually originated from the police in June, and not from any witnesses. [3][7]
Avia shoe prints were found on the front porch. Never heard of anyone leaving so many shoe prints. [3]
August 6, 1985 — Chris Peterson, Virginia Peterson [1]
Both were shot while in bed early morning. First, Virginia was shot in the face and then Chris was shot multiple times on the bed. But Chris was able to stand up and chase after the gunman, get his daughter and call 911. All victims survived.[3]
The gunman was described by Virginia as having “well-manicured hands”, “cleaner and lighter than the rest of his appearance”. She at first said he had his hair combed back from his face, but later changed it to “wild hair”.[3][8]
Interestingly, Chris who chased after the shooter did not testify in court nor identify anyone. [3][8]
Ballistics found were not from a.22 but a.25 caliber automatic. The bullets contained red primer, and so did the the bullets in the murder after this one. So the police just assumed they were all from the same guy. [3][8]
Firearms expert Paul Dougherty called the ballistics evidence against Ramirez “unreliable”, mainly because the 3 experts were in constant conflict with each other’s results. But Ramirez’s lawyers Dan and Art Hernandez, and Ray Clark did not contest any ballistics, or get their own experts. They also did not find the.25 gun or the.22, so they could not compare the microscopic markings a gun leaves on a bullet to match it to Ramirez’s guns. [3][8]
August 8, 1985 — Sakina Abowath, Elyas Abowath, age 35[1]
The suspect shot Elyas to death then raped Sakina. Suspect conveniently ordered Sakina to “swear to Satan that she would not scream”, he then ransacked the house. He left Sakina and her son tied up and left. [3]
Ramirez was not only accused but sued for $20 million.[10]
Sakina described a “a light-skinned Caucasian, 6’2” to 6’4”, with light to medium brown hair”. The man also wore “hard shoes, not tennis shoes”. A sketch was made but never released publicly. No surprise. [3][9]
Blood type did match Ramirez, but that only means that the suspect shared the same blood type. Testing from the fluid collected on the rape kit swab “could not have originated from either” Ramirez or Elyas, her husband. Hair tests did not match for Ramirez either.[3]
The suspect allegedly ate a melon while he was there, and left a pack of cigarettes next to it. There were no saliva tests done.[10]
Stadia shoe prints were ‘found’ at the scene. But Sakina said that the suspect was not wearing tennis but “hard shoes” or boots. The sizing was a 12. So far Ramirez’s shoes have gone from 11 to 11 ½ to 12. And keep in mind that according to police, they’re all of the same pair of shoes. [2][3]
While it sounds like it’s the same man who raped Carol Kyle, it was probably not him because Sakina said her attacker did not have an accent. [3][9]
Sakina later on changed her description of the man to align more with the media’s ‘Night Stalker’, likely thanks to Sergeant John Yarbrough ‘leading the witness’. The hair color even changed. [9]
The Habeas Corpus Petition, mentions various possible suspects, such as a nearby security guard by the home, and a Julio, that matched Sakina’s light-brown hair description. This Julio was part of the burglary ring Ramirez belonged to. [3]
Sakina and her husband were both Muslim.[9]
August 18, 1985 — Peter Pan, age 66, Barbara Pan [1][14]
Peter, an accountant, was shot death and the suspect raped and then shot Barbara as well. He uses lipstick to write “Jack the Knife”, and also draws a pentagram. [1][11]
Ballistics were used to blame Ramirez, but as mentioned before the ballistics evidence was unreliable. It wasn’t until two decades later when more respectable lawyers took over the case, that the evidence was challenged. [3]
Then San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein took interest in the case after the Pans murder, and spoke publicly about it. She mentioned that the police were looking for an individual wearing Avia shoes, that used a.22 caliber gun. However this was supposed to be secret police information that wasn’t supposed to be made public. Police claimed this could make the ‘Night Stalker’ change his MO and hide. But the police chief who gave her the info never told her to keep it secret. [11]
Rumors spread that Ramirez threw his Avias into the water from the Golden Gate Bridge. But there is no evidence for this. And the whole scenario sounds like a way to hide the fact that Ramirez did not have the specific Avia shoe to match the already dubious shoe prints. So when they finally arrested him, the Avias and weapons were nowhere to be found. [11]
Just have Feinstein name the items on TV, and then claim this made the Night Stalker lose them. This is called “plausible deniability”.
What’s worse is that police claimed they ‘figured out’ the Avias belong to Ramirez, by looking through manufacturer spreadsheets, and seeing that size 11.5s were distributed to Arizona and California. One was sold in Los Angeles, and five in Arizona. But that’s it. No further evidence that they were bought by Ramirez out of the millions of people in California and Arizona. This by the way, was their strongest evidence against him. [3][11]
August 25, 1985 — Bill Carns, Inez Erickson [1]
Bill is shot three times and then the suspect conveniently brags to his wife Inez, that he is “the Night Stalker” after raping her. The house was ransacked, while the suspect made her “swear to Satan”. Both survived. [1][2]
Inez admitted she never saw the intruder’s face, but claimed she recognized him at the lineup. [13]
Before the break in, 13 year old James Romero Jr claimed he saw the suspect’s car and license plate. After the murder, a stolen car is found with fingerprints later dubiously attributed to Ramirez. [1]
As mentioned in part 1, the fingerprint testing was done on a still unfinished computer system, and fingerprints were compared with just the naked eye:
“According to officers on the Netflix documentary, the police fed in the fingerprints and typed in the name “Richard” getting 8 results. But to ‘confirm’ it was Ramirez, they just compared the fingerprints with the naked eye. Remember that they compared hundreds of fine lines in 3–14 minutes as they were in “a hurry”.” [12]
The Various Face of the NightStalkers
There was no consistency in the description of the so-called ‘Night Stalker’. Most survivors reported different features from each other which points to a group terrorizing California — unless Ramirez somehow found a way to cut half a foot off his height and regrow it. Most of the suspects were likely part of the organized crime ring Ramirez was part of.
Official police description: “Ramirez is Latino, 6 feet, 1 inch tall, weighing 155 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes”. “His most notable physical characteristic, they added, is “extreme decay” of his upper and lower teeth”[30]
Mei Leung — Light skinned, round face, short brown hair with bangs
Jennie Vincow — Resembled Manny Vincow, son of victim.
Maria Hernandez — 5'9"-6'1", light skinned male, with mustache and medium brown short hair.
Tsai-Lian — Witness 1–5'8", slanted eyes, long wavy but light hair
Witness 2–5'8", Long wavy dark hair
Lillian Doi — 5'10", Short light brown hair,
Carole Kyle — 6'0", hair parted to the left, bangs, no facial hair, thin with prominent cheek bones, straight white teeth. Second sketch includes light colored hair.
Sophie Dickman — 5'8", thin, dark brown curly hair
Somkid Khovananth — 6'0", tall thin build, brown face, wavy brown hair with soft curls, bad teeth (only instance of bad teeth reported by victim)
Virginia Petersen — “well-manicured hands”, hair combed back from face. Her husband Chris who chased the intruder out did not give a description or testify.
Sakina Abowath — 6'2" to 6'4", light skinned Caucasian, light to medium brown hair. “Hard shoes, not tennis shoes”.
Set Up forFailure
The way the Richard Ramirez case was ‘investigated’ and handled, makes for very strong argument that the police were protecting the real Night Stalkers.
Unfortunately, Ramirez’s legal team was made up of lawyers who seem to be working for the other team. And as a result they didn’t even bother investigating the group. The third team composed of Daniel and Arturo Hernandez were doing so bad that Arturo ended up getting jailed for missing court. Daniel on his end was suffering from stress induced illness. They were also working the case for no pay. [16]
The court then appointed Ray Clark to defend Ramirez, for $100 an hour. Clark called his client “nuts”, and refused to counter most of the evidence presented against Ramirez. Where these Los Angeles lawyers helping the police’s case? [16]
Joseph Gallegos and Henry Hall, his first two San Francisco lawyers who were legitimate, questioned if Ramirez was mentally fit to stand trial. According to the LA times, loud “shrieks” could be heard from the holding cell where Ramirez was at. The police in charge refused to answer if the source was Ramirez for some reason. [17]
Dr. Lillian Imperi said that Ramirez was not fit to stand trial. And so did psychiatrists Dr. Vicary and Dr. Blumer, among others. [17][18]
Criminal Associates
People with criminal association to Ramirez were part of a ring that hijacked cars and burglarized homes. But the Night Stalker didn’t become a thing until the media began to highlight ultra-violent burglaries that included murder and rape. Similar crimes like those continued even after Ramirez was captured.[27]
Various members were caught with stolen items from the victim’s residences. And yet the group has never been officially identified. Most of Ramirez’s associates turned on him and even testified against him to be rewarded with immunity.
There was a bounty pool of $80,000 offered for the Night Stalker “by various jurisdictions and the governor’s office”, and the money was mostly “contributed by corporations and individuals”. Some of them jumped in to protect themselves through immunity and get a piece of the reward. Others didn’t even want to touch it.
Jesse Perez –
An ex-felon and unlicensed taxi driver, Perez met Richard Ramirez through his brother Julio Ramirez, and also knew the fence Felipe Solano. Years before he was convicted for burglary and also for manslaughter following a fight at a bar. Ironically his own daughter was a Deputy Marshal who convinced him to talk to police. The daughter received a reward of $3,250. [20][3]
Perez claims he sometimes drove Ramirez around to collect money from various locations, and also to visit Felipe Solano. Perez told police that he bought a.22 caliber and other firearms from Ramirez — but the weapon did not match the ballistics used at the crime scenes. One expert matched them, but the other two experts did not. So prosecutors only called in the one that agreed with them to testify at the trial.[3]
The.22 was given to Jesse’s girlfriend in Tijuana, Esperanza Contreras, just a month prior to him talking to police. According to Jesse, he bought the handgun 6–9 months before Ramirez’s arrest, which means the weapon could not have been used in any of the murders attributed to Ramirez that year. Despite this, he was taken seriously by the media and the jury, thus influencing the outcome. [3]
Donna Louise Myers -
Ramirez was staying in San Pablo with Donna Louise Myers. While watching TV a sketch of the “Night Stalker” came out and he asked her “do you think that’s me?”. “I told him he fit the description, but that he didn’t have the guts to kill anybody”, Myers said, “I never saw a gun and never saw a knife… he just never presented himself as that kind of person”. She was a friend of Ramirez for years. [3][14]
Donna and her son in law Earl Gregg eventually phoned the police about Ramirez, but admits that she and her son were influenced by the accusations attributed to the description they saw through the media. Descriptions that as you have seen in these two articles, were not originally and consistently given by the victims. Some described much shorter heights, different hair color, and only one mentioned bad teeth. [14]
Donna’s daughter told police that she was given jewelry by an Armando Rodriguez, who was a child hood friend of both her and Ramirez. In fact he introduced Ramirez to her in El Paso TX, before they all moved to California. The jewelry given to them was thought to be from the Pan’s household, but it was actually from a burglary in Marina county. [15][22]
Armando Rodriguez
Childhood friend of Ramirez. He resisted, but eventually gave out Ramirez’s legal name to the police after being beaten up and threatened with being an accomplice by San Francisco Detective Frank Falzon, who bragged: “not my best punch, but definitely not my worst” on the Netflix documentary.[24]
Felipe Solano -
Ramirez first met Solano in November of 1984 in Los Angeles. Ramirez offered to sell him a small stolen car, and later sold him a stolen TV, a radio, jewelry, etc. Solano sometimes sold some of these items to other individuals. He also gave Ramirez money “even though he did not buy anything from him. Twice, he wired money to [Ramirez] in San Francisco in the name of Ricardo Moreno”. This could point to Solano having a higher position within the group than Ramirez and others. [3]
Solano originally said that the items came solely from Ramirez, but eventually he admitted that he had items from other burglars and was trying to protect them. Some of the names and nicknames given were:
1) Rosa “Solis” Castillo
2) “Monje”, a thin built, 30 year old.
3) Manuel “Cuba” Hechevarria, a 23 year old heavy-set Cuban with an accent. [3]
There were more that he did not mention but later became known.
Some of the stolen items were given to his nephew Alejandro Solano, which he stashed at a table factory on East 23rd street in Los Angeles. His son was also given jewels he kept in 3 cloth rolls. More stolen property was later found at a second table factory. [3][15]
How can you lift stolen items belonging to murder victims from these people, and still choose not to investigate involvement?
Cuba, Monje, Rosa Solis, Charlie, and Julio.
All worked closely in burglaries with Ramirez, were active during the Night Stalker murders, and all gave stolen items to Solano which included murder victim property. [3]
Moreover they were never investigated or charged with anything, despite some not even testifying to receive immunity. Cuba claimed that he was done with burglary in ’84 after becoming a security guard, but was caught with stolen property and not prosecuted. [3]
Julio was described as a 21 year old, 6 feet tall 160lbs male, with blonde hair parted in the middle. Which concedes with the “description of the suspect given by eyewitnesses in the Okazaki/Hernandez and Abowath incidents.”[3]
Julio introduced Cuba to Rosa Solis, and participated in home burglaries as well. But unfortunately that’s as much as we know about Julio at this point. He was never investigated, which brings me to ask why? [3]
Unfortunately there’s fewer details about Charlie, except that him and Cuba burglarized their partner’s Rosa Solis’ own apartment at one point.[3]
Reyes “Arabe” Garcia and Cynthia Melendez
Cynthia was Reyes’s girlfriend. Both were childhood friends with Ramirez in El Paso TX, where they had a house together in “La Roca” and sold weed. They would have LSD parties that Ramirez attended. Arabe and Ramirez also did burglaries together which he did not mention to police, but Cynthia did. [24]
Cynthia also told police that she always trusted Ramirez with babysitting her kid Gretchen. [24]
Alejandro Espinoza
Espinoza told police on August 26th that his friend “Rick” sold stolen items to Felipe Solano. Due to this they were able to find who had the stolen items, and collect them for the surviving victims. He won $6,388.81 for his troubles but Espinoza later went missing. Chances are that whoever was in charge of the organized burglary ring whacked him in revenge for exposing them. This points to the burglary ring being handled by a more sophisticated organized crime group able to effectively disappear people. [19][20]
According to the police Espinoza and Ramirez occasionally drove to the “fence” Felipe Solano’s residence. He claims he did not know what he was doing but became suspicious of them. Police described Espinoza as being in “contact with people on the street”. [21]
Drawing the Pentagram
But if Ramirez was so innocent, why did he have a Pentagram on his hand and act creepy in court?
Strange behavior does not prove anyone’s guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. And neither does mental health. Crime scene evidence does, and it was weak at that.
The Declaration of Dr. Dietrich Blumer, one of the 11 doctors who looked at Ramirez, says that he suffered from “insomnia, headaches, paranoid fears, and may hallucinate”, and Ramirez also had an obsession with “the satanic aspect”. He says that his ‘psychosis’ came “as a result of a temporal lobe disorder that persisted after remission of the seizures he suffered as a young adolescent”. He also was deemed mentally incompetent to assist his counsel in his defense, but this was ignored by some of his lawyers. [3][23]
Was this really the mastermind that eluded police and his crime partners suspicions for more than a year after 13 murders, while also burglarizing homes and vehicles? If most sane people can’t pull that off, how did he do it?
Ramirez’s weirdness and mental issues only made him an easy target to make him the fall guy.
It’s also worth mentioning that during his trial he was kept in a tiny cell that his defense called the “phone booth”, and was experiencing withdrawals which only worsened his mental condition. [23]
What if he was also being drugged? In the Henry Lee Lucas case DA Vic Feazell, who exposed that literally hundreds of Lucas’ confessions were fake, says that Lucas was being given drugs that included Therozine which made him highly suggestible. So there is a precedent for that.
There were only 3 murders where a reference to Satan was made, or a pentagram was found.
The Abowath case, where the surviving victim said that she did not see her attacker’s face. [3]
Bell/Lang, were one victim was killed, and the other did not give a description — and to add insult to injury, hard evidence shows that the murder occurred at the same time as the Carol Kyle rape. [3]
Peter Pan murder, which we have been given very little information on.
So for a supposed maniac that was obsessed with satanic imagery, why would he so scarcely use it?
With Abowath, only the blood type matched Ramirez, but the hair and sem*n didn’t. And on the Bell/Lang no serological testing matched him either. [3]
The only pieces of crime scene evidence used against Ramirez
1) Avia shoe prints, which have been heavily contested, and include at least one fake shoe print.
2) The.22/.25 caliber ballistics, that experts were not able to come to an agreement with. And most importantly they never got a hold of Ramirez’s firearms. [3]
If you were on trial, would you say that’s enough evidence to get you a life sentence, or put you on death row?
But didn’t Ramirez confess?
No, he never described himself in any of the crimes. The police released a written transcript, but not the recording, so you can’t hear his tone of voice. He said “you guys got me, the Stalker. Of course I did it. You know that I am a killer” and then told the police to just shoot him while under their custody. Was the audio not released because he said it in an impotent sarcastic tone?[29]
Either way that is not a confession. Legally that would entail him confessing how he performed each crime, which he never did. And most importantly, no ‘confession’ was used in court against him. [3][29]
And for those who still choose to believe that he confessed. Just look at the case of Henry Lee Lucas who gave hundreds of fake confessions while under the custody of the Texas Rangers.
But didn’t the burglary/murders stop after Ramirez was caught?
No. The same crimes continued but the media downplayed them. A chunk of them even matched the descriptions and the ultra-violent mode of operation of ‘Night Stalker’ crimes. If you want to see some examples, look at citations. [27][28]
Some of those killers and rapists were later caught after making sloppy mistakes, but others never were. All while the circus-trial of Ramirez went on they continued their crimes freely, and trash like Detective Gil Carrillo claimed credit and fame.
Sources
[2] Mcgowan, David, Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder, iUniverse, 2004
[3] https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=17032616&z=656fd064
[4] https://expendableforacause.net/2023/01/05/the-murder-of-joyce-nelson/
[5] https://expendableforacause.net/2022/12/27/sophie-dickman-and-the-shortish-jewellery-expert/
[6] https://expendableforacause.net/2023/01/13/the-distance-between-the-kneiding-khovanath-incidents/
[7] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-09-28-mn-17351-story.html
[8] https://expendableforacause.net/2022/12/26/ginny-the-petersen-attack/
[9] https://expendableforacause.net/2022/11/09/the-light-haired-man-who-attacked-the-abowaths/
[10] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-14-mn-6791-story.html
[11] https://www.thewrap.com/night-stalker-dianne-feinstein-richard-ramirez/
[12] https://expendableforacause.net/2023/08/30/murderofmeileung/
[15] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-09-04-mn-23105-story.html
[16] https://expendableforacause.net/2022/12/23/three-duff-lawyers-one-dodgy-trial/
[17] https://expendableforacause.net/2023/05/08/first-touch-the-vicary-report-september-1985/
[19]https://expendableforacause.net/
[20] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-10-25-me-694-story.html
[21] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-11-24-me-224-story.html
[22] https://expendableforacause.net/2023/10/21/marina-burglary/
[23] https://expendableforacause.net/2023/05/26/picking-at-a-scab-the-blumer-report-1986/
[24]https://expendableforacause.net/2023/09/26/california-dreamin/
[25] https://www.laalmanac.com/crime/cr03_85.php
[26] https://homicide.latimes.com/
[27] https://expendableforacause.net/2022/12/16/the-crimes-didnt-stop/
[28] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-26-me-2331-story.html
[29] https://thetab.com/uk/2021/01/19/night-stalker-richard-ramirez-police-confession-190698
[30] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-31-mn-24127-story.html
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