23. The Macabre Women Who Loved the Night Stalker
Former juror Cindy Haden’s plan to get closer to Richard Ramirez worked. As a licensed private detective, she accompanied the convicted serial killer’s defense attorney on prison visits, and when the lawyer left the room to use the bathroom, Haden kissed and groped with the Night Stalker. When asked if she had been scared to have been left alone in a room with a serial killer whom she had personally voted to convict, Haden replied: “No, absolutely not. He’d never hurt me”. Haden might have fallen head over heels for Ramirez, the only serial killer she knew. But he was not as madly in love with her. However, she was not the only macabre admirer who lusted after him.
By the time his trial began in 1988, the Night Stalker had numerous fans who regularly wrote and visited him. One of them, Doreen Lioy, wrote him about 75 letters. He proposed to her, and they eventually got married in 1996 in San Quentin State Prison. She loudly proclaimed that she would commit suicide when Ramirez was executed, but she left him in 2009 after DNA proved that he had raped and murdered nine-year-old Mei Leung. Ramirez was not executed, as cancer got him in 2013 before California’s gas chamber did. By then, he was engaged to yet another fan, a twenty-three-year-old writer named Christine Lee.