Expendable For A Cause.

This post was originally going to be called ‘the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth’, but tooth is in place of truth and what is the truth? The Ramirez case is a mess on so many levels; all we can do is pick it apart and try to rebuild it in a way that makes sense.

Richard was found to have attended the dentist at least five times in 1985. These visits were proven with comparisons to post-arrest dental x-rays. This meant that an alibi given by his father – that Richard had been in El Paso at the time of the crimes – was ‘false’ and it was dismissed in court.

The alibi, if proven, would have cleared him of the Bell and Lang incident and also the Kyle attack. Bell and Lang were bludgeoned and left for dead between 29^th May – 1^st June and Kyle was raped and burgled on 30^th May.

Julian Ramirez Sr said his son had arrived between 22^nd – 24^th May (dates vary) and departed by bus on 31^st.

The dental records showed that Richard had received treatment on 23^rd and 30^th May, directly either side of his time in El Paso.

Here’s a table; they always make things easier…

It is likely Richard was in El Paso for his niece Jennifer’s First Communion on 25^th May 1985 and a photo of Richard with his parents and Jennifer was provided.

Other witnesses:

A friend of Richard’s father, Raymundo Pantoya, brought a tool round to fix the sink and saw Richard at the house on the day of the Communion – Saturday 25^th May.

Maria Torres, a sister-in-law of Ignacio Ramirez (Richard’s brother), saw this photo being taken on Saturday 25^th May and testified that she had seen Richard again, at Ignacio’s house on Wednesday 29^th May.

As far as these dates are concerned, this allows for Richard to return to Los Angeles in time for his crown on 30^th, and – if you believe it – the attacks on Bell and Lang and then Kyle. We don’t know exactly when Bell and Lang were attacked, because they were not discovered for days. The date is generally thought to be the night of 29^th May/early hours of 30th, because of dated evidence at the scene.

However, the picture became murkier when Richard’s father testified. Julian Ramirez Sr said Richard left on Friday, by bus, making this 31^st of May. It is possible Julian was lying to save his son, but it is equally possible he mixed the dates up because four years had elapsed. In general, he seems confused about dates and reasons for visits and even dates police visited – it must be emphasised here that Julian also suffered from mental health problems and was under immense pressure in this situation.

Julian Sr had also not helped the situation when he had spoken to a local newspaper, lying that he had not seen his son for two or three years, possibly to wash his hands of responsibility for what his son had supposedly done. It is unhelpful but understandable; he must have been in a distressed state, hearing that his son was a serial killer. Naturally, the prosecution brought this evidence forward and the defence made no effort to extract Richard’s father out of the hole he had dug himself into.

This was the point where the defence should have said, ‘Yes, Richard was in El Paso, but he left two days earlier than his father claims and arrived a day later than his father claims. Julian Ramirez made a simple mistake, because too much time has passed for him to accurately remember and he was in a state of distress.’ Instead, they tried to simultaneously argue for both the alibi and dental x-rays, which damaged the credibility of their argument and showed them up to be the bumbling incompetents they were. If the defendant’s alibi has fallen to pieces, you don’t try glue it together with pieces of the prosecution’s argument, especially when it is incontrovertible and you’ve acknowledged that! You should explain how an innocent mistake was made, then move swiftly onto other important evidence, otherwise the jury will wonder what else you’ve got wrong.

So, do you think they moved on to more important evidence? NO! Of course they didn’t.

They should have still argued that Richard was seen in El Paso on 29^th May; because that would still realistically allow him to be able to attend the dentist’s the next day, but not the murders that took place during the early hours of 30th.

They should have argued that the timing of the murders was implausible given that Richard had travelled approximately 800 miles between El Paso and LA taking between 12-17 hours making it unlikely that the first thing he would do upon returning is commit two very different crimes. Not only that, but the crime locations themselves were 20 miles apart, with Kyle in Burbank, and Bell and Lang in Monrovia. All on that day he had a dental appointment in downtown LA. Is it plausible that he had the energy? Haters will no doubt scream, “YES, BECAUSE COCAINE!”

The distance between the dentist’s surgery and the crime scenes should have been pointed out too, because every angle must be argued. We don’t know the time of Richard’s dental appointment, but if he was the perpetrator, he was travelling across a wide geographical area. It is almost 12 miles between Kyle’s house on North Avon Street, Burbank to the dentist at 732 North Broadway in Chinatown. Then, it is 21 miles between Bell/Lang in the hills above North Alta Vista Avenue and Chinatown. While the journeys themselves don’t take long, it is very random and it is all too easy to say “His MO was having no MO.” I am looking at you, Gil Carrillo.

Picture him: ‘Richard’ was driving all over the place; brutally attacking old ladies up quiet winding lanes in the foothills of the mountains, then driving through residential areas to get to the freeway, past Griffith Park and the Hollywood Sign, then through the canyons to rape and burgle another, arriving with nothing but a stain on his shoulder (as per Kyle’s composite sketch) with not a speck of blood on him, before returning 12 miles downtown for his dental crown; if this was him, he never stopped to rest. Cocaine really is a wonder drug…

Oh no, they didn’t, did they?

The alibi had failed for the Bell and Lang incident, so bizarrely, and totally ‘on brand’, the defence attempted to reintroduce it for the Kyle case, and horrifyingly, it was the only evidence they brought forward; the rest was left with only the most basic refuting arguments. The full defence failures of the Carol Kyle case are covered here.

So, how did the dentist enter the picture?

Evidence points to Richard having been stopped by police for a traffic violation sometime in June 1985. He was pulled over and when the officer went to retrieve his notebook, he drew a pentagram on the car(!) and legged it.

The Netflix documentary will tell you that he was on the run from a child molestation incident that had just come over the officer’s radio, but it is a bit of a reach to assume a man jumping a red light is a nonce and he was never charged with those crimes anyway. He most likely ran away because the car was stolen; that Richard Ramirez was a thieving git is not up for debate! Not only that, he had been briefly imprisoned for car theft in late 1984 so a second arrest didn’t really appeal to him. The spurious link between the murders and the child molestations is covered in this mega post.

Anyway, weeks later, police incompetence led to them leaving said vehicle out in a sunny impound lot, which melted away any fingerprint evidence. However, there was a dental appointment card inside, written out for Richard Mena, whose date of birth was close to Richard’s and whose address was a fake residence near Richard’s brother’s real one (1259 South Brannick Avenue). Associates of Richard would later testify that Mena was one of Richard’s criminal aliases.

The next appointment was for 3^rd July… the dentist told the police Richard would be back soon because he needed further urgent treatment. They still didn’t catch him. They couldn’t catch a cold, let alone the people who were doing these murders.

-VenningB-