Serial Killers

"Night Stalker" Richard

Ramirez: From the Bowels of

Hell

by Joseph Geringer

Crescendo of Terror

Late in the 20th Century, Hell glutted on humanity. Its first

bloodletting of that season of the Devil occurred on the warm

evening of June 28, 1984, when an earth-bound Lucifer found his

way into the small Glassel Park apartment of 79-year-old Jennie

Vincow. Throughout the Los Angeles area a damp humidity had

oppressed the air that day, and when the evening came and the

temperature slightly cooled, Jennie left her window open to invite

what little breeze there might be into her flat. Like a fallen leaf,

decayed and tossed from its source, a fallen angel, dark, angry and

also decaying, blew across the sill of that open window. When the

demon departed through that same window, he left behind Jennie

Vincow, raped, beaten and nearly decapitated.

"Her body was found by her son, who lived above her ground-floor

apartment, just south of...Forest Lawn Park," reports the Los

Angeles Times. "Her throat had been slashed and she had been

stabbed repeatedly."

The police were baffled. But, in the months to come, they were to

encounter a madman whose lust for killing and depravity equaled, if

not surpassed, that of Jack the Ripper or, more contemporary, the

Hillside Strangler. Soon to be named the "Night Stalker" by the

press, this madman bore, according to true crime author Richard L.

Linedecker, "the horror in his soul of a Stephen King or a Clive

Barker fright novel Ð'- and more." A Freddy Kruger. For real.

Less than a year later, the monster reappeared. This time, he waited

in the shadows of an upscale condominium outside LA. The date

was March 17, 1985, time 11:30 p.m., when pretty-faced Maria

Hernandez pulled her auto into the security garage, unaware the

monster was watching her from behind a pillar. When she alighted

from her car, the killer stepped from the darkness, gun upraised and,

despite her pleadings, he pressed the trigger. She stumbled. And the

killer, thinking she was dead, stepped over her to enter the side door

of the condo. But, Maria had been lucky Ð'- very lucky Ð'- for the bullet

had deflected off the car keys she held in her hand, causing a hand

wound, but nothing more.

Inside the building, Maria's roommate was less fortunate. For, when

Maria finally made her way to the safety of her place, breathless, she

discovered that her friend, Dayle Okazaki, had also encountered the

killer. And this time, his bullet had found its mark.

Thirty-three-year-old Okazaki lay in a pool of her own blood, her

skull smashed by a missile fired at extremely close range.

The demon vanished just as quickly as he had appeared. The police

were stumped.

All they knew of him was what Hernandez was able to tell them: He

was tall, gaunt, dark, maybe Hispanic.

This time, the killer didn't wait nearly a year to murder again. He

struck within the hour. His next victim that same evening was petite

Taiwanese-born Tsai-Lian Yu, who, driving her yellow Chevrolet

down North Alhambra Avenue in nearby Monterey Park, withered

when someone with the eyes of a madman forced his way into her

car and shot her. He had thrown his own car into idle, simply entered

hers, pushed her onto the pavement, called her bitch, then blew her

into eternity at point-blank range.

Fast. Neat. Clean.

Then dematerialized into the darkness from whence he came.