A Terrible Employee
Richard Ramirez got a job at a Holiday Inn when he was a teenager. It did not take long before he began to put the lessons on stealth taught him by his former Green Beret cousin Mike to practical use in burglaries. He used his hotel passkey to sneak into guests’ rooms as they slept, went through their possessions, and stole their valuables. He also began to molest underage guests. On at least one occasion, he fondled two children in an elevator, but was not charged and prosecuted. He finally got fired from the Holiday Inn when he tried to rape a woman in her hotel room.
She was saved by her husband’s timely return. The husband beat the daylights out of Ramirez until the would-be rapist was knocked out senseless, before the police arrived and took him into custody. Prosecutors hit him with a variety of felonies that could have put away the future Night Stalker away for a long time – and thus probably spared many victims in years to come. Unfortunately, the charges were eventually dropped because the couple, who were from out of state, did not want to go back to Texas to testify against Ramirez.