Hello there!
The Night Stalker
The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez
By Philip Carlo
I wasn't going to do a post about this book. But… I have to complain. So, here it is. A post where I am not telling y'all how great something is.
Also, I apparently read this book before. Gave it four stars on GoodReads. Loaned it to a friend. I don't know what happened... And I apologize to my friend that I loaned this to.
The first part of the book sort of reads like a serial killer novel (which is what the writer originally wanted to write. He should have written that instead…). I wouldn't say the first part was bad. Just… not my thing. Lot of gritty descriptions. And stuff from the killer's point of view. Which, considering the crimes Richard Ramirez committed, I was not enjoying that.
Then there is a part about Richard Ramirez's family. Dude went back in the family tree and went into a lot of detail about the Ramirez family. Which I thought was a bit unnecessary. I can understand discussing his parents and siblings. And what his childhood was like, but this book detailed how abusive his grandfather was to his father. Which, okay, whatever. Maybe that was necessary information.
Then, the cops figure out Ramirez is the Night Stalker. A group of civilians catch him and he is arrested.
And then… like, 300 pages of the trial. I don't even think Helter Skelter had that many pages dedicated to the trial. And that book was written by a lawyer. Sprinkled in among all the pages about the trial were various bits about all the women that became obsessed with Ramirez. Including his future wife and one of the jurors. And it was at this point I went from "eh, mediocre true crime book" to "what the fuck is this shit?" And while the writer did make a comment in the updated new chapter that these women should seek a therapist, he attended Ramirez's wedding! To one of the women who was obsessed with him! In the book it refers to him as "an author" during the chapter about the wedding, but it was him. His author's photo is of him and Ramirez at the wedding. Which, ya know, I probably should have checked that out before I read the book. Might have clued me into the fact that I was not going to enjoy the book.
This book is not a good true crime book. It focused too much on the women who were obsessed with Ramirez. Also, there were "24 pages of shocking photos!" What was shocking was the fact that there were no pictures of the victims. I don't mean I feel there should have been crime scene photos of the victims. But every other true crime book I have read had pictures of the victims. Of the lawyers from the trial. Cops that worked the case. Not this book. There is one photo of the two main detectives that worked the case. But it was mostly pictures of Ramirez, a couple of his family, and the women. Which was weird.
The True Crime genre is a slippery slope. And this book fell off the slope. The book made me angry. Angry in a different way than true crime books usually make me. Usually, when I read a true crime book I'm angry at the killer for doing such things. Or the incompetence of the police. But I am interested in how the crimes are solved. How the cops connect the crimes to each other. How the lawyers frame things to get the jury to agree. And while this book did tell a bit about how the cops connected the crimes, it didn't really do enough.
I do not recommend this book. At all. To anyone. But if you must, only read the first half. Stop reading after Ramirez is arrested. Just know that he was convicted. And he died on death row. He got the death penalty but it was overturned in California before they could death penalty his ass. And I am very angry that he lived a moderately comfortable life and was allowed to get married.
Oh, and the book was poorly written. It had a gritty serial killer novel feel for part of the book, which is fine, I guess but… fucking weird in my opinion. Descriptions of people were reused unnecessarily. There was one paragraph that used the names Mike and Michael and it took me a few minutes to realize it was the same person. The writer kept talking about how big Ramirez's hands were which started getting creepy. And some of the other descriptions were just weird.
I would like to read another book about Ramirez. One that didn't read like a gritty real-person fan-fiction thriller. So I might look into that at some point. I did watch the Netflix thing (Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer) and it was... I don't want to say it was good because of the subject matter, but it was informative and a lot better than this book. So if you wanna know about what horrible shit he did, watch that. It covers more crimes he "supposedly" committed but wasn't charged for.
Oh, also, I watched some random YouTube video about serial killer wives and it said that Ramirez's wife separated from him when DNA evidence came back linking him to the rape and murder of a young girl. So, I looked it up, and it seems that might be true. Does not make her any less of an idiot in my mind. Yeah, we all do stupid stuff in our younger days, but most of us aren't marrying a murderer that is on death row...
