Richard Ramirez, more infamously known as the nightstalker, was a serial killer who haunted the city and suburbs surrounding Los Angeles, CAlifornia, in the 1980's. Ramirez grew up in El Paso, Texas. He was the product of a hard working Mexican family. His father was a police officer, and his mother a home maker, who would knit scarves and sweaters to sell on the street for some extra income. He was the youngest child. He had one sister and one brother.
Ramirez's teachers described him as a quiet young man who kept to himself and turned his homework in on time. Classmates described Ramirez as a loner who seldom spoke or gave any input. It wasn't until Ramirez was a teenager that he began to get into trouble. When Ramirez was fifteen years old he began to be obsessed with nudity, pornagrapy, and sex, He once said, " there is notheing I wanted more than the body of a naked woman." Ramirez began sneaking around his small town late at night and spying on the neighbors as they made love. This was the first of many sterotypical signs carried by serial killers that Ramirez waould show. Later he began killing small animals, Squirrels, rabbits, and so on. However he would torture the animals by soiling them with gasoline and setting them on fire before he would but them out of their misery. This is a characteristic he would show later in the form of mutalation of the bodies of his victims. But his trouble rally started when he was seventeen years old and was a witness as hes twenty two year oll cousin, santos, killed his young bride. At that point Richard said he became fascinated with the power of murder. It was also around this time that Richard became addicted to cocaine, and began stealing from his family in order to afford his addiction. His mother kicked him out of the house, and he moved to Los Angeles. In Los Angeles he lived in dive hotels, or in his car or on the street.
