Expendable For A Cause.

After watching Netflix’s Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer documentary a few years ago, my co-writer Jay decided to research the abductions. It was surprising to discover old Los Angeles Times articles (from March 1985) that urged the public to watch out for a 5’9” blonde or light brown-haired man of medium build who had snatched or attempted to kidnap children from outside schools. A man fitting a similar description had entered a home and taken another male child. These are the newspaper clippings. The images might appear too small if you’re using a small device.

The article cuts off but here is the rest from an online copy:

A bedroom abduction happened again just two weeks later on 20th March, this time to a girl in Glassell Park. Other articles say she was from nearby Eagle Rock. She will be referred to as “Girl S.”

As you can see, the suspect does not resemble Richard Ramirez – not the composite sketch nor the drawing by Fernando Ponce (who later drew the infamous Khovananth sketch and also Carol Kyle’s first). Here is a coloured and clearer version of the image:

This was the point where Detective Carrillo explained that he felt it resembled the Maria Hernandez sketch so he theorised that the crimes were connected (also to the Tsai-Lian Yu case). This is a matter of debate.

By making this child molester into the shooter seen by Maria Hernandez, it looks as if Carrillo discarded what the children described: a blonde/light brown-haired white man. Hernandez said he had dark hair and was possibly slightly tanned.

One can try to argue that the children were mistaken. But the school kidnappings happened in daylight and there was an adult witness. It may be difficult to accept that a detective could either be lying or making mistakes, but not impossible. According to biographer Philip Carlo, Carrillo was so invested in connecting the children to the murders that they were made to view another suspect in an April 1985 line-up.

By late August 1985, the media was reporting that “Girl S” said the Eagle Rock abductor resembled the Night Stalker.

After Ramirez’s capture, on 8^th September, an Orange County Register article claimed that the Montebello child (the 25^th February attack) described a tall, thin man. He was originally described as average height and build. As with the adult victims, the molester is slowly being manipulated into the form of the Night Stalker, although he was always nebulous.

June Abductions

To return to June 1985, there were three child cases. One was a school abduction in Rosemead on 5^th June. The child was unable to give a good description and nothing more was heard about it. Information on the second abduction on 15^th June is difficult to find. The following details can be found in the Affidavit (Document 7.4 of the 2008 appeals documents): an attempted kidnapping was reported on Garvanza Avenue in Highland Park around 3:45pm.

There were no news articles on the incident. Carrillo had been searching through teletypes of other unrelated cases and decided it was Richard Ramirez because he was caught jumping a stop light three miles away on Delevan Drive/York Boulevard. This was the incident where they found his dental appointment card in the car and discovered his alias, Richard Mena.

The third incident on 27^th June involved Anastasia Hronas, who spoke on the Netflix documentary. This is how the incident was described in news articles – he is probably a different kidnapper to the one in February:

Gil Carrillo recently revealed that Hronas told him her abductor had an “Indian headdress” tattoo on his arm. He said he corrected her that she saw a pentagram, therefore it was Richard Ramirez. This could be interpreted as another instance where he has dismissed what the child described to make it fit with his theories, just as happened with the children who saw the average build blonde man. Children are simply brushed aside as being mistaken – even when they give very important pieces of information like distinctive tattoos.

Hronas also said on the documentary that the man took her to a home with a chain-link fence which contained two dogs, and he put a Madonna record on repeat. These should have been amazing leads, but they were dismissed. Does this sound like Richard Ramirez who was notorious for listening to heavy rock, which the media claims influenced his crime spree? He was homeless and lived in cars but somehow, he had a house and dogs.

After reading both the 2006 Automatic Direct Appeal and the 2008 Federal Habeas Corpus documents, we discovered that both children and adults were encouraged to choose Ramirez at the September 1985 line-up.

Below is an image of Judith Crawford’s notes that we found in the Los Angeles County Hall of Records. If you can read it better than us, please leave it in the comments! It [probably] says from the second paragraph:

“Prior to 1^st line-up, saw man squat down and make a V-sign with thumb and finger tucking in.“

A-K [probably refers to the surname order of witnesses]: “Someone else make a similar motion. Squatting man – John Jones, LASD.” [L.A. County Sheriff’s Department].

“2^nd person, Tom Hageboek, and told Adashek [Ramirez’s attorney] & turned own notes to ? Office (probably the district attorney). Little girl turned around and appeared to talk to someone behind her. Saw female deputy about 3 minutes later.”

The girl referenced might be Anastasia, or “Girl S.” See the video below for the deputy telling them who to choose using a hand signal.

The 2008 Federal Habeas Petition revealed that Ramirez was only charged with two child cases; both were dropped in 1986. This motion suggests that it was Hronas’ parents who did not want her to participate although Carrillo, Salerno and Halpin claim it was their magnanimous decision to spare the children pain. Besides, even with such poor defence attorneys, surely these abductions would easily crumble under scrutiny and damage the credibility of other cases.

The above was a defence motion. One might argue that defence attorneys lie and grasp at all kinds of theories to save their clients’ lives. Yes, some of them do but the Ramirez case is unusual. One: his defence made the minimal effort, even when exculpatory evidence was revealed in court by independent scientists. Two: these cases clearly had nothing to do with Ramirez. There is also suggestion that Ramirez was threatened by detectives to confess to the crimes otherwise they will pin the abduction cases on him.

People often accuse us of disrespecting victims as if showing old newspaper articles is bullying children of the past, who are now middle-aged adults. We know the children were traumatised. We aren’t blaming them for changing stories or giving inaccurate information, because they were all under 12-years-old and terrified. We are merely showing that justice was not served and we aren’t the people you should be angry with. We will never know who attacked these children now because everyone believes that it was Richard Ramirez and the victims have been given a false peace of mind: “case closed”.

There were also other similar attacks occurring in the same area after Ramirez was imprisoned. One of these men could have been the real perpetrator. If so, he went on to traumatise more children because detectives ‘cleared the books’ by sweeping them away with the Night Stalker hysteria.

You might have come to the end of this article wondering if we have an explanation for Mei Leung’s murder in San Francisco, 11 months before these Los Angeles abductions commenced. We do: the DNA sample was flawed and again, the suspect looked nothing like Ramirez and the crime has been ‘Satanized’ with time.

Whatever comes out on future documentaries or books regarding new allegations of molestation, they do not invalidate our investigations concerning the 1985 abductions. The perpetrator was most likely to be someone else.

-VenningB-

Further reading:

Children were invited to a line up in April 1985.

Further evidence of rigged identification.

Our article on Mei Leung’s case.

L.A. County child abductions after Ramirez’s arrest.

Richard Ramirez’s alleged confessions.

Anastasia Hronas and the Native American tattoo.