The Mind Of A Serial Killer

Serial killer Richard Ramirez, dubbed the “Night Stalker” during a series of Southern California slayings in the mid-1980s, has died of natural causes after more than two decades on death row at San Quentin State Prison, according to the Associated Press.

Ramirez, 53, was sent to the prison north of San Francisco after he was convicted of 13 murders in 1989. The slayings and sexual assaults terrorized Southern California in 1984 and 1985 with reports of Satanic symbols at bloody crime scenes and killer who entered through unlocked windows and doors.

Some of the victims were shot to death, others were strangled or had their throats slashed.

When he was captured in August 1985, angry residents surrounded Ramirez and beat him in East Los Angeles after his attempted carjacking.

San Quentin State Prison spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson confirmed Ramirez’s death Friday morning to the Associated Press. Ramirez, admitted to the prison in November 1989, died Friday morning, Robinson said.

Ramirez had been taken from death row to Marin General Hospital, he told the AP, but it was not immediately clear when Ramirez was transferred.

The serial slayings began in March 1985 and continued through several tense months before two major breaks in the case.

In August 1985, Ramirez shot and killed a man and beat the victim’s wife in San Francisco, but the woman survived and provided investigators with a description of the attacker that matched police sketches.

About one week later, Ramirez was back in Southern California, where he broke into a Mission Viejo apartment. He shot and killed a resident before attacking the man’s fiancee.

The woman provided investigators with a description of her attacker’s vehicle. Police located the vehicle and found a fingerprint belonging to Ramirez.

His mug shot was broadcast on television and printed in newspapers, and Ramirez was tracked down in East Los Angeles just days after the Mission Viejo killing and attack.

(Source: nbclosangeles.com)

For years, Sherry Marino has doubted that John Wayne Gacy actually killed her son, believing that some stranger was buried in the grave with Michael Marino’s name on it. Now, after an exhumation, she says she’s got DNA tests to back her up, reports AP. “We don’t know who it is, but this is not her son,” her lawyer says.

But the orthodontist who originally identified the body is sticking to his guns. “The dental identification is 100% solid, absolutely no question,” he says.Police haven’t yet seen the lab results, but they have previously noted strong circumstantial evidence supporting the identification—the body was, for example, found next to that of Marino’s friend, who disappeared on the same day in 1976. Of course it’s still possible Marino was a Gacy victim; many of the bodies found in Gacy’s crawl space are still unidentified.

A headstone on the grave of one of eight unidentified victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

(Source: newser.com)

A severed head found on a golf course 24 years ago has been identified using DNA evidence and may be linked to a serial killer, New Jersey police said today.

The head of 25-year-old Heidi Balch, who worked as a prostitute around Manhattan in 1988, was found on a Hopewell Township, N.J., golf course, in 1989, but was only identified this month after collaboration between the New Jersey State Police and the Hopewell Township Police Department.

“It was shocking,” said Hopewell Township Police Chief George Meyer, who was one of the detectives called to the scene after the head was found near the seventh hole.

“Periodically, over the years, detectives would pick up the case and make efforts at identifying her,” he said. ”I kind of thought, ‘No, she is never going to be identified.’”

A break came when detectives realized the dumped head matched a story from serial killer Joel Rifkin, who claimed to have dismembered and dumped a victim named Susie around New Jersey, State Police Det. Sgt. Stephen Urbanski told ABCNews.com. Rifkin was never convicted for the alleged crime, but is serving 200 years in prison for other murders.

Detectives decided to chase the story.

“The team obtained the names of all the prostitutes that were registered around the same time [from the NYPD],” Urbanski said.

They then compared the photos to the composite of the severed head. A woman named Susan Spencer seemed to be a match.

After chasing aliases and false Social Security numbers attached to the woman, a face on a missing persons website jumped out at Urbanski.

It was Heidi Balch.

The problem was, Balch wasn’t reported missing by her aunt until 2001 and, when making the report, she told police her niece was last seen in 1995.

Still, the team decided to pursue the lead and paid the aunt a visit. Not only did they learn that the sighting in 1995 was secondhand information, but Balch’s parents were alive and living in Baltimore.

“After interviewing [the aunt], we went down to Baltimore and grabbed the mom’s DNA,” Urbanski said.

The DNA was a match to the skull, closing the 24-year-old cold case.

“Looking at the horrific case, and after a lot of people worked on it, it was amazing it came to this,” Urbanski said. “It was a matter of finding those clues.”

(Source: abcnews.go.com)

“The death penalty is purely symbolic in California,” says Natasha Minsker, who just completed a study of the death penalty in California for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. With almost 700 people on death row in the state, the study found not only that maintaining a prison and legal system to support the death penalty cost the state billions of dollars, but that, for all the money spent, the penalty is rarely used. Since 1977 only 13 people have been executed. During the same period, 59 death row inmates died of old age or other infirmities.

What is most surprising about Ramirez’s appeals is that there is nothing extraordinary about them. It is the same process every prisoner on death row goes through. By law, every death sentence in California has to be appealed and reviewed by the state’s Supreme Court to ensure that no one who is innocent faces the ultimate penalty.

It is a slow process that begins with a very long delay. According to Minsker and other experts, it generally takes as many as five years after a conviction before a lawyer is even appointed to file a mandatory appeal. “Nothing happens in those five years,” she said. The reason, according to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a panel appointed to look at the state’s death penalty system, is that there are just too few experienced lawyers available to handle the growing number of appeals.

Then, it can take years for the appeal to be written and filed. In Ramirez’s case, his first appeal didn’t reach the California Supreme Court until 2002. In other cases lawyers have filed for and been granted more than 40 delays before even filing appeals. In virtually all death row appeals the cases are handled by public defenders, specially trained in the field, and paid for by taxpayers. And there is no limit to the number of appeals that can be filed.

Then, because of the gravity of the charges and California law, the appeal gets filed directly with the California Supreme Court, which is the ultimate arbiter of all state legal matters and is simply overwhelmed by death row cases. In 2008 it had a backlog of more than 400 capital cases alone, a number that has grown since then.

Read More

Born on March 19, 1986, in Warren, Ohio, Casey Anthony was one of two children of Cindy Anthony and George Anthony, who worked in law enforcement. Casey was a bright, personable young girl, with friends and what many thought was an ordinary American family. However, friends say that a pattern of lying began when Casey was in high school. Cindy and George attended Casey’s graduation, along with Casey’s grandparents—only to discover that she was several credits short of graduating. Casey had stopped attending classes toward the end of the school year, but led her family to believe she would walk with the graduating class.

When she was 19, Casey gave her family yet another shock. She had put on weight, and her parents suspected she was pregnant. Casey denied it, claiming she was a virgin. Seven months into her pregnancy, she told her parents the truth. The identity of the baby’s father, however, remained a mystery. On August 9, 2005, Caylee Anthony was born.

While living with her parents in Orlando, Casey and Cindy had a fight on June 15, 2008. After seeing a photo online of Casey at a “no clothes party,” Cindy accused Casey of being an unfit mother, and threatened to try and get custody of Caylee. The day after the argument, Casey left her parents’ home, taking Caylee with her.

Over the next 31 days, Cindy called her daughter to check on Caylee. Each time, Casey told her the little girl was out with a babysitter, Zenaida “Zanny” Fernandez-Gonzalez.

Read More