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Summer of Fear: How Los Angeles Stopped Opening Its Windows
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
In the summer of 1985, Richard Ramirez committed fourteen murders and terrorised two cities — but the satanic mythology around him may have buried the truth about the evidence. This episode examines the crimes, the AC/DC hat, and the forensic shoe print testimony that was never properly challenged.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
It's August nineteen eighty-five. The air in East Los Angeles is thick and still.
Start with the facts, because they're stark enough on their own. Between the spring and summer of nineteen eighty-five, Ramirez committed fourteen murders and eleven sexual assaults across Los Angeles and San Francisco.
There was another image that took hold early. The AC/DC hat.
The forensic centerpiece of the prosecution's case was a shoe print. Specifically, prints found at multiple crime scenes that investigators attributed to an Avia four forty-five-B sneaker.
So why did the devil worship narrative dominate while the shoe print problems went largely unexamined for years? Part of it is how media covers trials.
The arrest itself reinforced the mythological quality of the whole story. In late August of nineteen eighty-five, Ramirez was spotted in East Los Angeles.
The trial lasted four years. It ended in nineteen eighty-nine with Ramirez convicted of thirteen murders, eleven sexual assaults, five attempted murders, and fourteen burglaries.
The satanic drifter narrative was not a fabrication. Ramirez did draw pentagrams.
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