Richard Ramirez, nicknamed “the night stalker” was an American serial killer who raped and tortured more than 25 victims and killed at least 13 of them over a two year rampage. To understand why he committed such awful crimes, one has to look back into his life, where something must have gone wrong. Richard was born in El Paso, Texas in 1960 being the youngest of five children. He was a quite child who had a father with a bad temper that would often beat him and his siblings. Since Richard was afraid of his father, he would often spend his nights in a nearby cemetery, because he found peace among the dead. Since Ramirez suffered from epileptic seizures, he had to give up football in school, thus transforming him into a loner. Aside from his family and social problems, he wanted to become famous, and to make a difference.
Since a father is supposed to be a teen’s role model, and Ramirez’s left much to be desired, he looked elsewhere, finding a substitute in his cousin, a man named Mike. Mike was a war hero, who survived Vietnam, and loved to fight. He was a tough man, who Richard watched day after day, learning how to behave from watching his cousins behavior. Mike used to tell Richard of secrets he had from an exotic place, he would then show photographs to Richard of the butchered dead. He explained to Richard that killing made him feel superior, like a god. At first, Richard might have been shocked but he then got accustomed to hearing about his cousin’s stories and had to show him that he was tough enough to handle it. It is safe to say that as time passed and Richard developed, Mike became his role model, and whatever Mike did, Richard did as well.
Richards’s turning point as some psychologists would call it, was when he had found Mike had shot his wife in their house. This incident was not as traumatic for Richard as it would have been for any other young man, because Richard was already numb inside. The worst part about Richard is the fact that he knew how to divide his life, he could be the nicest person in certain areas, and the most aggressive in others, this made it difficult for people in his everyday life to recognize his violent side.
Richard eventually discovered the Church of Satan which helped him erase the feelings of weakness which was the way his father made him