Expendable For A Cause.

Updated with new information on 10th September 2025.

None of the Night Stalker’s guns were recovered except one, a Jennings pistol. In the Netflix documentary Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, key claims about the gun and an informant, Jesse Perez were made, particularly by Sergeant Frank Salerno. Firstly, what Salerno says does not hold up against public records. Secondly, there are serious questions over Jesse Perez’s court testimony.

Frank Salerno’s Unverifiable Recollection

Sergeant Salerno made a claim in the documentary that seems to be at variance with documented evidence regarding a police informant named Jesse Perez and a .22 Jennings pistol he received from Ramirez. Perez was a man in his 60s who had previously been imprisoned for manslaughter following a bar fight in the 1940s and also for burglary. He drove Ramirez around and was connected to the ‘fence’ Felipe Solano.

Sergeant Frank Salerno claims Perez said Ramirez had offered him the pistol and bragged about using it to kill an East Asian couple in Monterey Park. The documentary then displays a photo of William and Lillie Doi. It was important, Salerno says, because the type of gun was not known to the public, therefore, Jesse Perez had to be telling the truth.

The problem with Salerno’s recollection is that there is no evidence that Jesse Perez ever said such a thing at trial and it is not mentioned or challenged in the Habeas Corpus petition. Nor was it reported by members of the press watching from the public gallery.

Jesse Perez’s original allegation was that Ramirez boasted of robbing “Orientals” because they did not retaliate. Even Philip Carlo’s book does not mention anything about Perez claiming Richard Ramirez confessed to murder (Carlo, pp. 330-331). Perez merely says Ramirez was a burglar, who once sold him a gun. Frank Salerno’s claim is currently unsupported by public records – although this could change if more documents are discovered.

Yellow Houses:

Perez testified that Ramirez confessed to choosing yellow houses for his attacks. The idea that the Night Stalker specifically targeted yellow or beige painted homes came from an interview with FBI profiler in the newspapers who was attempting to find a pattern. This was because the Night Stalker had no MO and left detectives and criminal profilers baffled. The myth is well known enough that it is commonly referred to by inhabitants of Los Angeles even today. Some people even painted their homes fearing the killer. Jesse Perez could easily have read these articles and then added it to his testimony to enhance his credibility. After all, he was angling for a slice of the informant’s reward (more on that later). There was no real evidence that the killer deliberately targeted houses based on their colour.

Unrealistic Confession:

Such a confession is unlikely from a logical standpoint. Richard Ramirez was mentally ill, but would he really flippantly confess to an acquaintance that he murdered two people with the very gun he was selling him? Why would Perez even take a weapon that had been used in a murder? A normal person would not touch this weapon for fear of being implicated. He would immediately go to the police, but instead, Perez sold it to a friend in Tijuana, then called the police after money was offered by the City of Los Angeles.

Not only this but the Doi attack was not a double murder, so Ramirez’s alleged confession was not even accurate. Both victims were alive when the killer left. Lillie was beaten and restrained with thumb cuffs. William was shot vertically upwards through the chin, but was still alive and mobile after the botched shooting – he even phoned the police twice and moved about the house. He died later that morning in the hospital, from cardiac arrest.

Jesse Perez evidently failed to check facts before making his claim. If Perez really had revealed inside information about the murder weapon, he should have become a suspect but he was instead given immunity from prosecution as a reward for information on Ramirez.

The Gun’s Chain of Custody

At trial, under cross-examination, the defence pushed Perez into admitting that he originally told police that he received the gun months before William Doi was killed, which he said he forgot, because he was ‘senile.’ (Carlo, pg. 330).

“On cross-examination, Perez did not recall that he had previously testified at the preliminary hearing about asking Petitioner to sell him a handgun six to nine months before Petitioner’s arrest.“

Federal Writ of Habeas Corpus, pg. 108.

Perez received the gun in March 1985 at the latest and December 1984 at the earliest. The Doi attack was 14th May. A motion by the defence revealed that Jesse Perez might have had the gun even longer. So Ramirez’s “confession” about murdering an Asian couple in Monterey Park with the gun cannot be true.

Perez’s friend Esperanza Contreras Gonzales, to whom the gun was given, was granted immunity from prosecution. During the preliminary hearing, Perez admitted to lying to the deputy sheriff about how she obtained the gun, but his words are not revealed. She did not know Ramirez.

“Esperanza Contreras testified that she had been living in Tijuana, Mexico for fifteen years and that she knew Jesse Perez. She first saw the handgun three years prior to trial. Perez brought it to her because she needed a gun for protection … She had the gun for about a month and then gave it to a police officer. She was granted immunity from prosecution at the preliminary hearing.”

Federal Writ of Habeas Corpus, pg. 109

The entire testimony of Jesse Perez should have been thrown out. It should not have made it past the preliminary hearing. But the prosecution’s firearms expert, Edward Robinson, concluded that the expended bullets at the crime scene came from the Jennings pistol and Perez’s words seemed enough to solidify the connection despite the date discrepancy.

However, there could be a reason for the irregularity being missed: during Esperanza Contreras Gonzales and Jesse Perez’s cross-examinations, Ramirez was attacked by bailiffs for allegedly looking round at the public gallery and witnesses. This possibly distracted the media and even the judge from scrutinising Perez’s testimony and the prosecution’s evidence. Instead, the media focused on Ramirez’s behaviour, and the argument that ensued between Ramirez’s attorneys and prosecutor Halpin. See this article about the incident.

The Wrong Gun

More false information is presented in the Netflix documentary: but it can be explained by an error at trial. A dramatic noise plays and up pops the exhibit – a .22 Jennings pistol – only, it isn’t…

A Jennings pistol (now called a Jimenez pistol) is semi-automatic. The photo below, shown in this part of the documentary, is a double-action revolver, more specifically, if you look at the logo and the serial number on the barrel, a Colt Police Positive.

This gun was actually the .32 found in Ramirez’s bag contained within his locker. The Netflix documentary contains a lot of small errors like this. The .32 was never connected to a crime. Ramirez was in the ‘business’ of stealing and selling guns and this does not implicate him in any murders. None of the cases involved a .32.

Below is a .22 Jennings/Jimenez pistol. They are tiny.

As you can see, these are totally different weapons. The Colt revolver has a cylinder, whereas the Jennings uses a magazine clip in the handle. The real weapon was shown on the Fox Nation documentary (2019) and as you can see, it is not a revolver.

Strangely, the above weapon disappeared during the trial, and the prosecutor, Philip Halpin, felt that this was not a problem – the jury and witnesses looked at dummy weapons anyway. But this loss is concerning given was supposedly the only weapon recovered from the Night Stalker attacks and it was mislaid?

Ramirez’s ‘friend’ Earl Gregg testified at the trial. Gregg claimed that Ramirez tried to sell him some guns in April 1985:

“Petitioner asked Gregg if he wanted to buy a gun. Petitioner showed him two guns: a .25-caliber automatic and a small-caliber, black revolver that resembled the Jennings handgun.”

Federal Writ of Habeas Corpus, pg. 112

How could a black revolver resemble the Jennings? The Jennings company have never produced revolvers. Neither gun Gregg saw was a .22 long rifle semi-automatic. The .25 automatic was probably even smaller than the Jennings.

Incidentally, both Jesse Perez and Earl Gregg – and their families – received rewards from the cites of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Perez was given the most, although he testified that he expected to receive $500,000. No wonder he was willing to embellish stories.

The Stereo Connection

It was also alleged by Frank Salerno, on the documentary, that police recovered Mabel Bell and Florence Lang’s stereo/cassette player from Tijuana too, but the petition and press reporters all say this was found with Felipe Solano.

The claims surrounding Jesse Perez, the alleged confession, and the supposed murder weapon demonstrate how shaky evidence can be amplified into accepted fact when repeated without scrutiny. Salerno’s statements in Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer are not supported by trial transcripts, court petitions, or contemporary press accounts. The gun’s chain of custody was dubious, the confession story was riddled with inconsistencies, and even the firearm shown in the documentary appears to be misrepresented. As viewers, we should approach future documentaries with a more critical eye.

-VenningB-

21st November 2022