the day before he died
Richard Ramirez, who spent 24 years in prison after a spree of demonic
murders in California, died Friday, but not before turning a shocking
shade of green. The serial killer, who left satanic signs at murder
scenes and mutilated victims' bodies during a reign of terror in the
1980s, died reportedly after 'sitting up in his bed doing stretches'
just the day before at Marin County Hospital. Ramirez, 53, had been
taken from San Quentin's death row to a hospital where authorities
said he died of liver failure.
This, according to a source at the New York Post. The source said the
self-proclaimed Satanist exhibited the ghastly-hued skin Thursday and
was up and moving around his hospital bed. 'He was the color green,'
said the Post's source. 'He looked like a green highlighter pen.' He
had been housed on death row for decades and was awaiting execution,
even though it has been years since anyone has been put to death in
California. He was convicted in 1989 of 13 murders, five attempted
murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries, which terrorized
Southern California in 1984 and 1985. His charges included rape,
sodomy and oral copulation.
Though he died of liver failure, the exact cause of the ailment has
not been released due to federal patient privacy laws. At his first
court appearance, Ramirez raised a hand with a pentagram drawn on it
and yelled, 'Hail, Satan.' His marathon trial, which ended in 1989,
was a horror show in which jurors heard about one victim's eyes being
gouged out and another's head being nearly severed. Courtroom
observers wept when survivors of some of the attacks testified.
Satanic symbols were left at murder scenes and some victims were
forced to 'swear to Satan' by the killer, who entered homes through
unlocked windows and doors. Ramirez was finally run down and beaten in
1985 by residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood while attempting
a carjacking. They recognized him because his picture had appeared
that day in the news media.
The trial of Ramirez took a year, but the entire case which was bogged
down in pretrial motions and appeals lasted four years, one of the
longest criminal cases in U.S. history. Because of the notoriety of
the case, more than 1600 prospective jurors were called. After his
conviction, Ramirez flashed a two-fingered 'devil sign' to
photographers and muttered a single word: 'Evil.'
On his way to a jail bus, he sneered in reaction to the verdict,
muttering: 'Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in
Disneyland.' The black-clad killer, unrepentant to the end, made his
comment in an underground garage after a jury recommended the death
penalty for his gruesome crimes. Inexplicably, Ramirez, a native of El
Paso, Texas, had a following of young women admirers who came to the
courtroom regularly and sent him love notes. Some visited him in
prison, and in 1996 Ramirez was married to 41-year-old freelance
magazine editor Doreen Lioy in a visiting room at San Quentin prison.
Relatives called Lioy a recluse who lived in a fantasy world. In 2006,
the California Supreme Court upheld Ramirez's convictions and death
sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court refused in 2007 to review the
convictions and sentence. Two years later, San Francisco police said
DNA linked Ramirez to the April 10, 1984, killing of 9-year-old Mei
Leung. She was killed in the basement of a residential hotel in San
Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood where she lived with her family.
Ramirez had been staying at nearby hotels. Ramirez previously was tied
to killings in Northern California. He was charged in the shooting
deaths of Peter Pan, 66, and his wife, Barbara, in 1985 just before
his arrest in Los Angeles, but he was never tried in that case.
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