A serial killer terrorized Los Angeles for over a year – until the residents hunted him down.

Richard Muñoz Ramirez, dubbed the “Night Stalker” by the media, killed at least 15 people and robbed, raped and beat many others between April 1984 and August 1985. His attacks were brutal and unpredictable. Ramirez rarely used the same weapon and chose his victims seemingly at random, even choosing to leave some of them alive.

The Peacock Documentaries Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapesout December 10th and explores the life and crimes of the notorious murderer. It even includes recorded interviews with Ramirez, who died in 2013.

After a year of harrowing murders, the Texas-born killer left enough clues for police to expose him to the public. According to NBC Los Angeles, on August 31, 1985, someone reported a suspicious man they liked. Ramirez attempted to escape by stealing a car, but was pinned down by an angry mob that wanted to arrest him. When the police finally arrived, they had beaten him bloody with a steel rod.

“We said if he got caught here in East L.A. he would probably get his ass beat because all the guys here know about him,” said neighbor Eloise Cabral Los Angeles Times in 1985. “They would just love to get their hands on it. And now we wake up the next morning and find him across the street.”

How was the Night Stalker caught? Here’s everything you need to know about Richard Ramirez and the mob that captured him.

Who was the Night Stalker?

In the 1980s, a serial killer the local media dubbed the “Night Stalker” terrorized cities throughout LA County. Police eventually identified this violent offender as Richard Ramirez, a drifter from El Paso, Texas, with a history of drug abuse and car theft.

According to his obituary in The New York TimesRamirez was exposed to extreme violence from a young age. When he was 12, his older cousin Miguel Ramirez showed him photos of women he raped and killed during the Vietnam War. A year later, he witnessed the same family member shoot his wife – Miguel was later sentenced to seven years in prison for the crime.

Ramirez moved to LA when he was 15 and learned burglary techniques from an older brother. He reportedly sold stolen goods to pay for his cocaine habit and was sentenced to several months in prison for car theft before the murders began.

Who were the Night Stalker’s victims?

Ramirez committed his first known murder on April 10, 1984 – although he was not linked to the crime until years later.

Nine-year-old Mei “Linda” Leung was found dead in the basement of her home after searching for a lost dollar bill. She had been beaten, raped and stabbed. Police reopened the case in 2009 and matched DNA evidence from the crime scene to a sample from Ramirez.

He then killed 14 people between June 1984 and August 1985: Vincow, Dayle Okazaki, Veronica Yu, Vincent Zazzara, Macine Zazzara, Bill Doi, Mable “Ma Bell” Bell, Florence “Nettie” Lang, Mary Louise Cannon, Joyce Lucille Nelson, Max Kneiding, Lela Kneiding, Chainarong Khovananth and Elyas Abowath.

During his rampage, he also robbed, beat, raped and attempted to tempt others who survived. A survivor told former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detective Frank Salerno that Ramirez made her call on Satan’s name during the attack. In Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes, The convicted murderer said he was introduced to Satanism at the age of 21.

“Satan is a stabilizing force in my life,” he said in tapes seen in the documentaries. “It gives me a reason to do it. It gives me an excuse to rationalize. I was in league with the evil inherent in human nature, and that was me.”

The Los Angeles Times reported in 1986 that Ramirez bragged to a prison employee about killing 20 people. In addition to Leung’s later confirmed murder, he is also suspected of the murder of Peter Pan in San Francisco.

How was the Night Stalker caught?

Thanks to accounts from witnesses and survivors, police were able to track down a stolen station wagon that Ramirez had been driving and take a fingerprint from the back of the rearview mirror. In 2017 Los Angeles Magazine reported that after excluding 100 similar prints from its database, the LA County Sheriff’s Department found a conclusive match: Richard Ramirez.

“We have had an agonizing, in-depth discussion about whether to move forward with this identification,” L.A. County Sheriff Sherman Block told reporters after they decided to withhold his name and a mugshot from a previous auto theft arrest from the public to make accessible.

Block spoke directly to Ramirez via television cameras, adding: “You can’t escape. Every judicial officer and every citizen now knows exactly what you look like and who you are.”

It didn’t take long for someone to report a suspicious man in East LA who matched the Night Stalker’s description. When he noticed police approaching, Ramirez tried to escape by stealing a car. But the driver recognized him and alerted her neighbors.

Witnesses reported Los Angeles Times that at least four people grabbed him before he could escape and held him until police arrived. When Ramirez tried to escape the crowd of residents, they chased him and repeatedly hit him with a steel bar.

“When he stopped, everyone just caught him,” Jaime Burgoin, one of the residents who caught Ramirez, told the newspaper in 1985. “The guy hit him with the pole – he just stopped and looked back. I guess he was tired.”

What was the Night Stalker accused of?

On September 20, 1989, Ramirez was charged with 13 counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, 11 counts of sexual assault and 14 counts of burglary. He received a total of 13 death sentences.

“He never showed any remorse for what he had done,” Detective Salerno said in a 2015 episode Murder made me famous. “He was pure evil.”

While awaiting execution, Ramirez died of B-cell lymphoma in 2013 at age 53.