Calif. serial killer Richard Ramirez dies
 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Ramirez, the demonic serial killer known as the Night Stalker who left satanic signs at murder scenes and mutilated victims' bodies during a reign of terror in the 1980s, died early Friday in a hospital, a prison official said.

Ramirez, 53, had been taken from San Quentin's death row to a hospital where authorities said he died of liver failure. Prison officials said they could not release further details on the cause of death, citing federal patient privacy laws.

Ramirez had been housed on death row for decades and was awaiting execution, even though it has been years since anyone has been put to death in California.

At his first court appearance, Ramirez raised a hand with a pentagram drawn on it and yelled, "Hail, Satan."

His marathon trial, which ended in 1989, was a horror show in which jurors heard about one dead victim's eyes being gouged out and another's head being nearly severed. Courtroom observers wept when survivors of some of the attacks testified.

Ramirez was convicted of 13 murders that terrorized Southern California in 1984 and 1985 as well as charges of rape, sodomy, oral copulation, burglary and attempted murder.

The killing spree reached its peak in the hot summer of 1985, as the nocturnal killer entered homes through unlocked windows and doors and killed men and women with gunshot blasts to the head or knives to the throat, sexually assaulted female victims, and burglarized the residences.

He was dubbed the "Night Stalker" by the press while residents were warned to lock their doors and windows at night.

Some of the crimes were grisly beyond imagining: A man was murdered in his bed and his wife was raped beside the dead body. The killer beat a small child and attempted to sodomize him.

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Calif. serial killer Richard Ramirez dies

He ditched a car down the road from us in Dana Point. We were all armed and ready for that bastard to come messing around our neighborhood. Good riddance. What a piece of crap.

Maybe we are finally getting smart and loading their food with chemicals that destroy the liver. We don't seem to be able to off the trash overtly.

Yeah!

That was what I occurred to me too.

Maybe this guy didn't care but I can't think of a worse penalty than sitting in jail, hopefully being beat daily, until dying an old man behind bars. I say he got off easy. Only 30 years in jail wasn't enough.

I had designed a high end piece of furniture to house radio broadcast electronics and accomodate guests in an air studio of a prominent NYC radio station. I saw to it that the bid was won by a superb shipwright/cabinetmaker nearby in Del Mar, CA.

On one of my regular visits to his cabinet shop to check on progress, I found my friend Mike to be in an uncharacteristically distraught mood.

Although our friendship was only as new as the contract between my company and his, I felt compelled to ask him what the matter was. He told me that his fiancé was that animal's last victim.

May that animal eternally burn in the hell of the devil he worshiped.

What? No liver transplant for the poor guy? I gotta tell ya, Kalifornia is gone to hell.