For more than a year starting in the spring of 1984, Los Angeles residents lived in fear of a serial killer called the Night Stalker. Richard Ramirez was a burglar and a car thief who went on to torture and kill more than a dozen people in sadistic and horrifying ways. Many of the victims were found in quiet, suburban neighborhoods and the manhunt went on for months, shaking Los Angeles in a way few crimes ever have.
“People who didn’t own guns bought guns and people started locking their windows that summer,” says retired LAPD sergeant Glynn Martin, author of Satan’s Summer in the City of Angels: The Social Impact of the Night Stalker. “People put gravel around the perimeter of their home so they could hear if someone was walking and they added new lighting,” Martin says. “One of my essayists talked about sleeping with a Louisville Slugger bat.”
Martin, now executive director of the Los Angeles Police Memorial Foundation, is presenting “An Evening Inside the Night Stalker Investigation” on August 8 at Steven’s Steakhouse in the city of Commerce alongside Gil Carillo, the retired LASD homicide detective who helped track down and capture the Night Stalker and Rosalinda Juarez, Ramirez’s niece who survived an attack of her own. The historic restaurant is serving a steak and lobster dinner during the talk.
Ramirez moved to Los Angeles at age 22 and immediately began a crime spree, stealing cars and goods he could store at the Downtown Greyhound station and fence near his seedy room at the notorious Hotel Cecil…