Hunting The Night Stalker _ The New Detectives

A detective sleeps with a gun under his pillow. A city of millions locks its windows in August. A killer who worships Satan and carves pentagrams on his victims roams free. This is the hunt for the Night Stalker.From April 1984 to August 1985, Richard Ramirez terrorized Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area [citation:3]. He broke into homes after midnight, shot husbands, raped wives, and mutilated bodies with knives, hammers, and tire irons [citation:1]. At one scene, he cut out a victim's eyes and took them in a jewelry box. At another, he drew a pentagram on a wall with lipstick [citation:1][citation:4]. The attacks were random. The killer had no pattern. Anyone could be next.Los Angeles County Sheriff's detectives Frank Salerno and Gil Carrillo led the largest manhunt in California history [citation:1]. They matched shoe prints, ballistics, and a single fingerprint lifted from a stolen car. On August 31, 1985, the public recognized Ramirez from a newspaper photo. Citizens in East Los Angeles chased him, beat him with a metal pole, and held him until police arrived [citation:2][citation:8]. The Night Stalker was finally in custody.The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, covered this case as one of the most terrifying manhunts ever documented. Turn down the lights, put on your headphones, and press play because the monster was among us, and we didn't even know it.