Richard Ramirez was a serial killer in the United States, terrorizing the Los Angeles metropolitan area. His victims were found dead, raped, and/or had all their valuables taken from their homes. He was nicknamed "The Night Stalker" during his killing spree from June 1984 to August 1985. He was an avowed "Satanist". Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas on February 29, 1960. Ramirez's father was a Mexican nationalist. and a former police officer in Juarez, Mexico. He often had "attacks" in which he would become very angry and hit Ramirez. Ramirez would leave the house, hiding from his father, and sleep in the local cemetery. Ramirez had been smoking pot since he was 10 years old. When he was 12 he became very fond of his cousin Miguel. Miguel was a decorated Green Beret combat veteran. He often talked about his gruesome murders and showed Ramirez photos of him raping Vietnamese women and posing with the women's corpses with severed heads. Ramirez saw Miguel shoot his wife in the face after a fight, after which he withdrew from the family. She later went to live with her older sister, Ruth, and her husband who was an obsessive "voyeur" and took Ramirez on his nightly trips. Ramirez began experimenting with LSD and also became interested in Satanism. He attended Jefferson High School but dropped out in the sixth grade. He began to experiment with his sexual fantasies and mixed them with violence, often with forced slavery and rape. Miguel was found not guilty of the murder of his wife after 4 years of imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital, on grounds of insanity and once again began to be a role model for Ramirez. Ramirez settled permanently in California when he was twenty-two. Two years after he settled in... middle of paper... an elderly couple called him "the killer" in Spanish. When he went to pay for his things he saw her photo on the cover of a magazine and fled the shop. A group of residents chased him and held him until the police arrived. He was found guilty of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. He was sentenced to death by gas chamber. After he was convicted, some women began to form a fan club for him. One of the members of that fan club, Doreen Lioy, wrote him 75 letters, so Ramirez proposed to her and they married on October 3, 1988. Lioy stated that she would kill herself when Ramirez was killed. They soon divorced and Ramirez became engaged to someone else. Ramirez died early from complications secondary to B-cell lymphoma on June 7, 2013. He was 53 years old at the time of death and had been awaiting execution for 23 years..