Expendable For A Cause.

By Venning

On 20^th July 1985, Chainarong Khovananth was murdered by a gunshot at close range. His wife, Somkid, was raped and robbed. The Khovananth case became the most important Night Stalker case of all because it incorporated various aspects of previous attacks, seemingly tying them all together (the use of a small calibre pistol, male occupant shot at close range, alleged child assault and robbery). Moreover, the perpetrator’s appearance matched the vague description police agencies had been pursuing – a tall, thin Latino male with dark curly hair and dental problems, including a gap between his top front teeth. The teeth aspect was not yet revealed to the public.

Back in June, Richard Ramirez was pulled over by traffic police for running a stop sign, and before he escaped, had drawn a pentagram on the car. The most recent ‘Valley Intruder/Night Stalker’ incident at that time was Bell/Lang, at which pentagrams were found, and Ramirez inadvertently became a person of interest. The car turned out to be stolen and was impounded. Inside the vehicle, a dental appointment card was discovered, made out for Ramirez’s alias, ‘Richard Mena’, which led police to his dentist, who confirmed his physical attributes. This appearance was noted. Attempts to apprehend ‘Mena’ at his next appointment failed due to police incompetence.

What Did the Night Stalker Look Like?

Judging by police statements that come with the Habeas Corpus (in Document 20-3), up to this point, victims and witnesses had given a variety of descriptions of their attacker. Maria Hernandez had seen a 5’10”-6’1” light-skinned man with facial hair. Witnesses to Tsai-Lian Yu’s murder believed the suspect was between 5’6”-5’8” and East Asian. Lillian Doi claimed her husband’s killer was white with mid-brown hair and was between 5’10”-6’0”. Launie Dempster had seen a dark-skinned Mexican lurking in cars. Carol Kyle saw a shiny-haired 5’10”-6’0” Latino with a side-swept wavy fringe and nice teeth, Sophie Dickman had seen a 5’8” white man with brown curls. The child abduction victims saw a blonde man of medium build. Therefore, it is factually incorrect that everybody described ‘Richard Mena’.

If we were not in possession of these police statements – and the court testimonies via the Habeas Corpus – these descriptions would have been buried forever. But back in the summer of 1985, this was the pivotal moment in the Night Stalker case. At this juncture, all the other witness descriptions were thrown down the memory hole. The man who raped Somkid Khovananth – immortalised in a police sketch – had a vague resemblance to ‘Richard Mena,’ and thereby became the benchmark by which all suspects would be compared. Two later victims would describe their own different Night Stalkers, but their unreleased composite sketches would never supersede the ‘Khovananth Composite.’

WANTED

On 28^th August 1985, the LAPD Chief of Police, Daryl Gates, released the ‘wanted poster’ below, stating that the Khovananth attacker was responsible for all the attacks. This included later attacks in which a blondish man was described.

At the time of the Khovananth Incident, no other attacks like it had taken place. It was similar to the Doi Incident insofar as the husband had been shot in bed, but different in that Lillian Doi was not dragged around the house and repeatedly raped (newspaper sources state that she was, but ultimately, the rape charge was dropped, no semen evidence was admitted at trial, and the Petition only mentions her facial beatings and restraints). The only reason the Khovananth case was added to the Night Stalker tally was because Avia shoeprints (that police had discovered at other crime scenes) were discovered on the front porch and back step of the house.

It seems like confirmation bias: the detectives had decided that Richard ‘Mena’ was the prime suspect, and it only took one survivor, Somkid Khovananth, to describe a man with curls and bad teeth, for them to decide he was definitely the Night Stalker. This was also reinforced by the pentagram on the car; the suspicion moved beyond mere bias.

Now their task was to find out his real name. Thousands of people contacted the police to report friends, or suspicious neighbours just because they vaguely resembled the Khovananth composite. It was only a matter of time before friends of Ramirez contacted the police – especially after the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco offered financial rewards to would-be informants. Ramirez was a burglar and two sets of criminal associates in different parts of the state reported him to the police. As a result, three different law enforcement agencies, the LAPD, LASD and SFPD simultaneously closed in on him.

In conclusion, there is a strong possibility that the Night Stalker character was engineered to look like Richard ‘Mena’ Ramirez, which caused a snowball effect leading to his capture. Being expendable to the criminal community he mingled with – and unable to defend himself due to brain damage – Richard Ramirez became the perfect prime suspect.

Further reading:

I wrote a book on the whole case in chronological order!

Ramirez’s 2008 appeal petition.

Information on Ramirez’s brain injuries.

A video explaining the Avia shoes.

Debunking the myth that the Night Stalker exclusively wore black.

Informants in the Ramirez case – collection.

Below: a video about the “Man in Black Myth”.

First posted 29th July 2023. Updated on 27th May 2025.