Expendable For A Cause.

By Venning

If you have seen the Netflix documentary, it is difficult to think about Joyce Nelson without recalling her family’s devastation when they discuss her personality, the way she dressed and her fears. The family display a justified hatred and disgust towards her killer. They believe wholeheartedly that Richard Ramirez was convicted with conclusive evidence.

However, examining the details of Nelson case, it is plain to see that no scientific evidence tied Richard Ramirez to this crime. One might feel a sinking feeling: if Ramirez was not the killer, Joyce Nelson never had justice and the killer might still be free and probably went on to kill others in another location. For anyone in this situation, it would be difficult to process and even more difficult to believe. Yet, police make errors, falsify evidence, or even lie, and as a result, miscarriages of justice happen all the time.

With California’s lengthy appeals system, many appeals are never read, the truth is never exposed, and the public continue in their ignorance that justice has been served and the killer is caught ‘bang to rights.’ This appears to be the case with Richard Ramirez, who, due to brain damage, was completely unable to defend himself against the charges. There was no concrete evidence that Richard Ramirez was the Night Stalker and that there were probably multiple killers.

The Attack

On 7^th July, 1985, Joyce Nelson’s neighbour, Robert Blanco, noticed her back gate was open at 6am. Blanco entered her yard, heard her TV on and called out. There was no response. He checked on her again at 9am, with the same result. At this point, Blanco noticed the window screen from the front window lying in her flowerbed. The window itself was open. Her front door was also open. The back door screen had also been cut. Blanco alerted another neighbour who called the police.

Joyce Nelson had been beaten over the head, (which was not the immediate cause of death) and then manually strangled. She had fought her attacker and sustained a broken nail and severe bruising and cuts to the face.

Physical Evidence at the Scene:

• Partial shoe prints in the planter under the window and on the porch.
• A shoe print on Joyce Nelson’s face and robe.
• Palm prints on the bedroom door and windowsill.
• Glove marks on a file box in the other bedroom.
• Human hairs.

Is It Possible That Ramirez Did Not Murder Joyce Nelson?

Hair:

Hairs at the scene were medium brown, which did not match Ramirez’s near-black hair. While the tests used for hair in the 80s are discredited now – modern forensics uses mtDNA – a marked colour difference is visible to the naked eye. Interestingly, at the preliminary hearing, a serologist, Melvin Kong, testified that hairs of a similar colour were found at other crime scenes, namely Bell and Lang and Cannon – however, the press reported that he said the hairs were blonde. He did not compare the hair across crime scenes. Is it because he was falsely told that all victims saw a man with dark curly hair?

“On Tuesday, Sheriff’s criminalist, Melvin Kong testified that a pubic hair found at one crime scene was similar to Ramirez’s. Under cross-examination, Kong said that blond hairs found at three or four crime scenes were not tested for similarities.

_{– Monrovia News Post, May 7, 1986.}

Gloves:

Gloved handprints were found at multiple Night Stalker crime scenes except Vincow. These cannot be used as evidence, because material does not leave identifiable prints. It is unclear whether the palm prints at the Nelson scene were gloved – if they were, the prosecution did not use them as evidence, so it is safe to assume they did not come from Ramirez.

Without any serological evidence to tie Ramirez to the Nelson murder, the prosecution fell back on the Avia shoeprints.

The Most Conspicuous Avia Location

By this time, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau – driven by Carrillo – was in the grip of Avia fever, having found them two days earlier at the Bennett scene, where Sergeant Frank Salerno had finally come on board Carrillo’s serial killer train. A detective even brought a pair of the Basketball models to the Nelson home to compare the prints and Carrillo also bought a pair of the Aerobics model. Here, in addition to the porch, the infamous shoe prints appeared on the victim’s face. However, according to Philip Carlo’s book, Salerno admitted in court that the Avia pattern was not really visible on her face.

The shoe evidence was taken to LASD criminalist Gerald Burke’s laboratory, where Salerno also brought a pair of Avias. Burke, who was not sufficiently qualified to examine shoe prints at that time, confirmed that these were indeed the ‘murder shoes.’

Below are some images of the shoe impressions at the Nelson scene.

The shoe evidence was not defended in court. Ramirez’s attorneys lacked the funds to pay for their own expert witness. The court would not fund them because they were not sufficently qualified under California law. In 2004, Ramirez’s appeals team contacted forensic specialist Lisa DiMeo who examined four partial shoe prints. Here is her assessment below from Habeas Corpus supporting document 7.19:

“Nelson:
Two partial overlapping shoeprints exhibiting herringbone elements and a flex joint were found in dry soil outside the scene. They were consistent with any model and style of Avia athletic shoes [inconclusive].

Of four shoeprints on the concrete floor, the following fingingers were made:
a) Left Avia. Cannot exclude any Aerobics, Basketball or All Court Sport model which exhibited similar class characteristics as the questioned print. Hell area was not captured [inconclusive].
b) Right Avia. Heel area was not captured.
c) Right Avia. Cannot exclude Aerobics, Basketball of All Court Sport Model. Heel – three graduating length parallel bars … consistent with modesl 252, 255, 255W, 552R, 560, 565W and 565.
d) Left Avia. Heel not captured [inconclusive].

With Avia evidence, the heel print must be present to determine which model made the impression. DiMeo’s opinion of shoeprint C means that it could be a different model to the shoe print at the Zazzara scene. Here is a video that might help to understand the shoe forensics in the Night Stalker cases.

As for physical evidence, shoeprints was all the prosecution had – and they could not prove Ramirez ever owned Avias – they were not found in his possession.

Circumstantial Evidence: Felipe Solano and the Stolen Property

Items stolen from Joyce Nelson’s home ended up in the possession of the notorious L.A. ‘fence’, Felipe Solano. Solano was given immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony that Ramirez sold him the stolen items.

There is more to this story than meets the eye. In court, Felipe Solano’s testimony unravelled, when it was revealed he was protecting multiple criminals – one of these could have committed some of the Night Stalker crimes, but the police and prosecution did not investigate this, while having the temerity to mock the defence for not bringing the other suspects to the trial. There are so many questions that need answering in regard to Felipe Solano and this network of burglars.

According to Philip Carlo’s biography, a burglar associate of Ramirez, Sandra Hotchkiss, claimed that Solano was beaten up by police before being questioned about his connection to Ramirez. She tried to tell the District Attorney and claimed this beating was recorded on tape but the tape was never presented as evidence and the police denied the beating.

Ultimately, the chain of custody of the stolen items was never established, none was recovered from Richard Ramirez and his fingerprints were not found on any of them.

Connections to Other Attacks

While it seems unlikely that Ramirez committed all the Night Stalker crimes (several occurred simultaneously, making it impossible), the Nelson, Cannon and Bennett crimes are very similar in nature, and may well have been committed by the same perpetrator. However, it cannot have been Ramirez. As discussed in the Cannon and Bennett posts, the blood at both scenes was inconsistent with both the victims and Ramirez. If the same killer attacked Joyce Nelson, then it too was not Ramirez. It would be someone with Type A blood and possibly medium brown hair.

The Cannon and Bennett attacks were geographically close, but Nelson was much further away and despite its similarity (bludgeoning, slashing, stranglulation, and Avia shoes), The prosecution instead relied on its proximity to the Dickman scene that occurred on the same night, just a mile away, even though the Dickman attack was a rape – by a man she initially claimed was 5’8”.

Detective Carrillo claims that Richard had not achieved his sexual gratification from Nelson’s murder so went to deal with his ‘unfinished business’ at Dickman’s. This is pure conjecture – there is no evidence that ties the two crimes. Moreover, Sophie Dickman was threatened with a gun. If Joyce Nelson’s killer had a gun, why did he not use it? If Nelson was murdered first, then why did Dickman not report that her killer was covered in blood and bruises, from where Nelson fought back? To say Richard Ramirez was a circumstantial killer and did not have a modus operandi is lazy and too convenient.

Witness Launie Dempster

Launie Dempster, was a newspaper deliverer who was also a witness for the Doi Incident, elsewhere in Monterey Park. Dempster claimed to have seen a “Mexican” in a car outside the residence an hour before William Doi was murdered. Then she claimed to have seen the same man again on approximately 28^th May (Ramirez was in El Paso on this date) on San Patricio Drive, Monterey Park. Later, Dempster claimed to see him again on about the 5^th July, close to Joyce Nelson’s home at 3am.

It seems to have been overlooked by the defence, that if Dempster did see Ramirez at 3am in Monterey Park, she unwittingly gave Ramirez an alibi for the Bennett attack, fourteen miles away. However, she originally described this Mexican as ‘dark-skinned’ which does not describe Ramirez.

Dempster’s description was also odd. She claimed ‘Richard Ramirez’ was wearing a short-sleeved shirt but also a jacket. Unless she witnessed him in the act of putting the jacket on, she would not be able to see the length of his sleeves. And there is nothing significant about her seeing a man by his car. People get in and out of their cars at all times of the day or night.

Not only that, each time Launie Dempster had seen him, it was around 3am – 4am, in the dark and he was wearing dark clothes and sitting in a dark car. How can one accurately identify someone in these conditions?

Even less likely when one considers that Dempster had not bothered to inform the police she had seen a man near Joyce Nelson’s home until she had seen Richard Ramirez on the news. This strange delay in informing the police was also the case with some of the other victims (Carol Kyle, Sophie Dickman, Somkid Khovananth and Virginia Petersen).

Ramirez’s defence counsel failed to adequately cross-examine Launie Dempster and her motivations for reporting her sighting so late, and never questioned her on what characteristics the suspect had that led her to believe he was Richard Ramirez, given that he was originally dark-skinned. Dempster only started claiming the Mexican was ‘lanky’ after Ramirez was referred to as lanky in the newspapers – that Dempster delivered.

If Ramirez had been tried for the Nelson Incident alone – or even alongside Cannon and Bennett, he would have been acquitted, although he would have needed better attorneys than Daniel and Arturo Hernandez and Ray Clark.

5th January 2023

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