Expendable For A Cause.

Some people accuse us of claiming that all the police – from multiple agencies – were all involved in a grand plot to “put an innocent man in jail” and they had no motive to mass participate.

That is not what we’re saying.

That isn’t how it would work, anyway.

Here’s what I think happened. Gil Carrillo put forward his hypothesis about the “man in black” who is a “sexual deviant” aroused by seeing fear in his victims’ eyes. Carrillo’s hypothesis meant that the killer had no M.O. and their fate rested on whether they fought or “acquiesced” to the Night Stalker’s demands.

None of the other detectives believed him, not even his partner Sergeant Frank Salerno. Their lieutenant, Tony Toomey, was uninterested. At the Bennett incident, this changed. There, Salerno saw the shoeprint and then asked Carrillo to tell him all his theories. This was explained by both men on the Netflix documentary.

Now, Carrillo had convinced someone who would be taken seriously – Salerno already had an important role in the Hillside Strangler case. According to the biographer Philip Carlo, Salerno was made acting lieutenant for team 3. This cannot yet be verified this anywhere else, and Carlo is often inaccurate. But there it is.

This next section says Captain Bob Grimm put Salerno in charge of forming a task force.

If this is correct, then Gil Carrillo had the ear of the man now leading the task force – Salerno – and everyone else was following Salerno’s orders. They had no authority to question them and would have assumed the information Salerno was giving them (via Carrillo) was correct.

MONTEREY PARK PD

I also wrote in the book about how Carrillo involved himself in Monterey Park crimes. Monterey Park has its own police department. Some cases were eventually given to the Sheriff’s Department – the Yu case (originally thought to involve a Chinese spy, and the Dickman case. Carrillo also showed up at the Doi crime scene and due to the presence of shoeprints, the Sheriff’s Department was also involved in the Nelson murder.

In the early July newspapers, the killer was announced to be a tall, thin, curly-haired man. We know from their statements that this is untrue. My book showed that this character was based on Richard’s alias “Richard Mena.” But once the Sheriff’s department controlled the Monterey Park cases and it was circulated in the media, all the Los Angeles County police departments were on the lookout for this false suspect.

LAPD & GLENDALE PD

After the Khovananth and Kneiding attacks on 20th July 1985, the Khovananth composite drawing was released. The Khovananth incident was dealt with by the Los Angeles Police Department, so now they were involved and created their own task force. The Kneiding incident came under Glendale Police Department, so they also became involved. Can you see how it’s snowballing?

During this period, Sergeant Christansen was in charge of firearms examination. He originally declared that the Kneidings and Chainarong Khovananth were shot with a .25 calibre ACP. Note: This was not the final evidence submitted by the prosecution at trial.

SFPD

It was an officer from Glendale Police Department that heard about the Pan murder in San Francisco. He heard there was .25 ACP shell casings at their crime scene and contacted them. He thought the 20th July cases were related to Pan.

The mayor of San Francisco then “revealed” that the .22 bullets had been used in a “dozen” Los Angeles cases. Both Kneiding and Khovananth were later declared to be separate .22LR revolvers. But you can again see how this is escalating. It was all being televised.

San Francisco were given a list of what features to look out for now that the Night Stalker was up there. This list was shared from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. This means the LASD was influencing how the SFPD examined their own cases.

Carrillo and Salerno were assisting them and flew up there to examine the crime scene – and were followed by news reporters. There was no chance of separating the San Francisco murder from the ones down in Los Angeles. There was now no independence from the Night Stalker machine.

THE OCSD

Then the Night Stalker allegedly hit down in Orange County, which has its own Sheriff’s Department. But Carrillo and Salerno headed down there too – also with the media.

Then all the informants crawled out and Carrillo and Salerno were not heavily involved in all that aspect of the investigation – it was led by Sergeant John Yarbrough. The rest of the task force and team took over dealing with stolen property, interrogating Ramirez’s associates and allegedly physically intimidating the fence, Felipe Solano. Meanwhile, up in San Francisco, Inspector Frank Falzon punched Armando Rodriguez so he would co-operate.

There was no rowing back from this – the police become tunnel-visioned. The media hysteria put them in a race against time. Politicians were becoming involved and putting pressure on the LASD and LAPD. The phones were ringing off the hook with sightings. There was no time for random detectives to say to Salerno, “Oh, hold on, let me just read all the victims’ original statements. I just need to check that we’re pursuing the right guy.”

The Assistant District Attorney was then desperate to take the case – they all want to prosecute the big names – he’s not going to question the evidence because it will humiliate multiple police forces. Someone like Richard Ramirez wasn’t important enough to do that. So they made the evidence fit. Only a few senior detectives were involved, the rest were following orders and one can argue that they too were caught up in hysteria and confirmation bias.

If you want to read about the entire case in chronological order, as well as the trial, please buy the book! Also, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to give us nice reviews. I really appreciate them, they mean a lot.