"Lock. Your. Doors." Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. This is This crime documentary series directed by James Carroll and Tiller Russell. Beneath the sunlit glamour of 1985 LA lurks a relentlessly evil serial killer. This limited docu-series tells the true story of how two detectives didn't rest to catch one of the most notorious serial killers in American history was hunted down and brought to justice.
On February 29, 1960, American serial killer, serial rapist, kidnapper, pedophile, and burglar, Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez (also known as Richard Ramirez), was born. His highly publicized home invasion and murder crime spree terrorized the residents of the Greater Los Angeles area and later the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area from June 1984 until August 1985. Prior to his capture, Ramirez was dubbed the "Valley Intruder" (as his attacks were first clustered in the San Gabriel Valley) and the "Night Stalker" by the news media. Ramírez used a wide variety of weapons, including handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a hammer, as well as Satanic imagery. Ramirez never expressed any remorse for his crimes. The judge who upheld Ramirez's nineteen death sentences remarked that his deeds exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding". Ramirez was convicted in 1989 of thirteen counts of murder, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries. On June 7, 2013, he died of complications from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution on California's death row.
Fascinating true-crime fanatics all over social media, but the new docuseries makes me want to look over my shoulder like I did during Ramírez's reign of terror. The series draws its strength precisely from what many have misunderstood as an error that serial killers are perfectly capable of integrating as anyone amongst society. The experience of watching the series is characterized by prurience, self-obsession, and, ultimately, a failure to hold to account the men who should have investigated these crimes properly. Carroll and Russell handle the material with the significance it deserved. Their use of archival footage, images, and interviews paint a full and complete picture of the events. Carroll and Russell bring new facts to light here including new details and expert witness interviews with people speaking out for the first time. The series, though, is far from a passionate crusade against capital punishment; featuring hours of Ramírez's unimaginable crimes, the movie makes death seem like the only fitting option. If we are judging the series on just the merits of where it stands with its true crime brethren, the best thing to say is it's enjoyably familiar. And yes, that is a compliment. Perhaps the most ridiculously infuriating part of this story is that nobody listened to or believed people throughout the whole effing thing. The project gives relatively short shrift to one of the creepier aspects of Ramírez's story -- namely, the spectators, many of them young women, who were drawn to the case -- a fascination, clearly, that continues.
Simon says
Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer receives:
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