Expendable For A Cause.

We have examined the eyewitness descriptions and composite sketches of the Night Stalker many times on this site but we have never really discussed his clothes. The Night Stalker is a caricature. He invaded in the dark, clad in black from head to foot. He wore a “black Members Only type jacket”, dark baseball caps and most famously, black Avia sneakers. Victims only briefly glimpsed him under lights as he examined their jewellery or shone a torch, sneaked inside their garage, or lurked inside dark cars. But what did the surviving victims actually say in their police statements? Were their assailants really so shadowy? (Other discrepancies with the suspect’s physical appearance shall be put aside for this post). All police statements can be found in Petition supporting Document 20-3.

Maria Hernandez said he wore a black jacket, white shirt, dark trousers/pants.

The Yu witnesses, described the following attire:

Witness 1: Light blue shirt and light blue pants.

Witness 2: Black jacket. His other clothes were not described.

Carol Kyle: leather jacket, black and tan checked shirt, black pants, black gloves and a loose belt with big silver holes. Yes, the rapist’s jacket was black, but it does not quite fit with the image of the Night Stalker as a walking shadow.

Sophie Dickman did describe someone in all black, but she could not keep her story straight. From her police statement: black leather jacket, dark jeans, black hi-top sneakers and black mesh gloves.

The following is from the Petition (pp. 78-79): black clothing, black hi-top sneakers with a white line around the sole. The mesh gloves have been changed to black leather with ridges.

In Philip Carlo’s book (pg. 310), he states that Dickman was challenged in court over a third police statement in which she claimed her attacker was dressed as a hiker or mountain climber!

Somkid Khovananth said her husband’s killer wore brown pants and a multicoloured shirt (pg. 87 of the Petition). In Philip Carlo’s book it is described as a blue shirt with multicoloured patterns. This is ironic, because the Khovananth Incident was the case where detectives really emphasised his dark clad appearance, including on the ‘wanted poster’.

The Petersens. Despite chasing the ‘Night Stalker’ around the home, Christopher Petersen could not identify the suspect. Virginia Petersen is another who changed her story, although she did see someone in all black, apparently wearing a turtleneck shirt. At first, she could barely make out his hands and assumed he was wearing white gloves as there was a strong demarcation between the arms and hands. Later, she gave a detailed description of his fingers and claimed there was a light source to enable this which was proved impossible.

The final survivor is Sakina Abowath, the victim who first described a BLONDE MAN. He was wearing blue jeans and according to Carlo’s book, big stompy boots that took a long time to lace up. Kinney Stadia shoeprints were supposedly discovered at the scene, but evidence has not been sufficiently demonstrated.

The Myth

While Richard Ramirez did prefer dark clothes, the source of the all-in-black image seems to be Detective Gil Carrillo and he talks about it wherever he is invited. He repeatedly claims that all victims, including the child abductees, described the man in black with dishevelled hair and bad teeth. It is false information. Nevertheless, he had been pursuing someone who dressed in black from the start, which was why he targeted Arturo Robles.

In this podcast, around the 1:18:00 mark, he claims that the Task Force referred to the Night Stalker’s black costume as his “kill kit”, “killer outfit” and “murder clothes” and they were exclusively worn for the purpose of “dirty deeds.” Preposterously, he insists that they were stored in Ramírez’s Greyhound Bus Depot locker “that stunk like shit” because they were covered in the blood of the victims. But no police report, appeal petition, newspaper article or book corroborates this. No massively incriminating, smelly, blood encrusted clothes were submitted as evidence by the prosecution. A bag and a leather jacket were removed from the locker, but there was no blood. Carrillo was not in charge of raiding the locker, so this “pungent” “shit” smell is a figment of his imagination.

As mentioned in various posts in our CRIMES category (and here), three pairs of incidents occurred on the same nights. 30^th May (Kyle & Bell/Lang) 7^th July (Nelson & Dickman), and 20^th July (Kneiding & Khovananth). None of the survivors reported that their attacker was covered in blood. If he was wearing a blue/multicoloured shirt as Somkid Khovananth said, then surely it would be at least spattered – the Kneidings were left in a terrible state. Surely the tan and black shirt Carol Kyle saw would be smeared with reddish-brown stains. In other posts we have discussed the complicated diversions the killer would have needed to take for a shower and change of clothes. Dumping them at a bus depot is no more plausible. The depot was always busy, and no one reported a man bundling bloody shirts into his locker. We are hesitant to directly accuse people of lying on this blog, for libel reasons, but there is no point in dissembling: Carrillo’s blood-sodden black “kill kit” is a proven whopping lie.

But at some point, he must have truly believed it, because when he went searching for the enigmatic Avia sneakers, he was only able to buy a white pair – he assumed the black ones did not exist… so… he dyed his pair black. This sounds absurd, so here is a video of him actually saying it.

And there is this photo where you can see the dye around the edges.

This is a detective who is unable to abandon a hypothesis when it is disproven. See here for another example of Carrillo Logic. However, detectives soon created a way to make the Avias seem unique (one cannot solely blame him – Frank Salerno was also walking around with a pair). It transpired that black size 11.5 Avia aerobic models did exist and famously, only three pairs were sent to California and the latest serial killer ‘just so happened’ to select these “newly invented” sneakers out of all the brands in the world. This made them almost unique. However, there is no evidence that the killer was wearing black shoes. That is just Carrillo’s theory. The one victim who mentioned black shoes (Dickman) was not describing Avias. The killer(s) – yes, plural – could have been wearing any colour Avias, because, contrary to the official Night Stalker lore, THEY WERE NEITHER NEW NOR UNCOMMON SOLES. And he keeps saying they were 440s. They were the 445B model.

Here is an advert showing Avias with identical sole prints in December 1982.

There has to come a point where somebody interrogates Carrillo on this constant misinformation.

-VenningB-

See here for yet another bizarre claim from Carrillo.

13/11/2023