The War Criminal Who Coached the Night Stalker
Twelve-year-old Richard Ramirez bonded with his older cousin Mike over weed and beer. The former Green Beret and war criminal regaled his younger relative with gruesome war stories of mayhem, murder, and mutilation. He also gave him tips and lessons on how to murder stealthily. He told Richard: “Having power over life and death was a high, an incredible rush. It was Godlike. You controlled who’d live and who died“. The macabre mentorship was interrupted in 1973, when Mike got into an argument with his wife, and fatally shot her in the face in front of the then thirteen-year-old Richard.
Mike Ramirez was tried for the murder of his wife, but he got away with it. He was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity, caused in large part by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from his Vietnam War years. Mike Ramirez spent four years in the Texas State Mental Hospital, and was released in 1977. He promptly resumed his mentorship of Richard, who by then had fallen under the influence of yet another horrible older relative, this one a peeping Tom.