How East Los Angeles Residents Captured Richard Ramirez
What follows is an excerpt from “Eyes Without a Face: The Night Stalker’s Reign of Terror” from Headliner Books. It was originally published in the Herald Examiner and is reprinted with permission from Hearst Newspapers.
Sunday, September 1, 1985
In the end, there was no place left to run.
Richard Ramirez, the man police say is the Night Stalker, was hunted down by the people of East Los Angeles, angry people wielding metal bars and pruning shears.
Terrified, panting, dripping sweat, Ramirez ran and stumbled through the streets of the Hollenbeck district, begging for water at one house, abandoning his knapsack at another.
Everywhere he turned, alert eyes followed. Until the moment he was finally cornered, cowed and exhausted, on a neighborhood street, the fugitive was seldom out of sight.
It was a capture worthy of American folklore, likely to become an East Side legend.
“I went after him because he was messing in my neighborhood,” one of his captors, Jaime Burgoin explained simply.
In the dramatic end, four people — two of them Mexican immigrants — stood over Ramirez as he slumped, bleeding against a chain link fence until sheriff’s deputies arrived to handcuff the man they had sought for six months as the slayer of 16 people.
Among the captors were Jaime’s father, 54-year-old Jose, his brother Julio, 17, and a neighbor, Manuel De La Torre, 36, who felled Ramirez with a steel bar.
On Aug. 31 on the East Side of Los Angeles, Richard Ramirez had no shortage of enemies.
If he didn’t know already, Ramirez learned early yesterday that he was a wanted man. The suspect grabbed a copy of the Herald with his face splashed across the page as he passed the Wyvernwood Market at Eighth Street and Evergreen Avenue, the owner said. He didn’t bother to pay.
Maria Victoria, 59, who lives on nearby Garnet Street, looked out to see a man resting on her front porch. He said nothing, but went next door, where resident Frances Romero was watering her lawn.
“He asked in Spanish, ‘What street is your house on?’” she said. He turned the corner swiftly.
Henry Villa, 61, never saw Ramirez. But in his back yard he found a dark blue bag apparently dropped by the fugitive. Inside were a pair of binoculars. Villa noticed that his aluminum ladder had been tipped against a wall fronting the Santa Ana Freeway.
On the north side of the freeway, Martin Areas, 42, heard a thud behind him. He turned and saw a man land on a car hood after jumping from the freeway barrier. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and was carrying a bag.
“He looked like he was tired,” said Areas. “He was sweating. I didn’t see him for very long. He ran down the alley.”
Hilda Aleman, at 3542 Seventh St., is very precise about the time she first heard her Doberman, Champ, growling behind her house. It was 8:15 a.m. — she looked at the clock. She saw a man dressed in a black shirt and pants, with dark sunglass, lurking near her son’s truck.
“He said to the dog, ‘Shut up! I’m tired,’” she said. “The man was huffing and puffing and his hair was all wet with sweat.”
The man jumped over the fence, then headed hurriedly east on Seventh Street. Salvador Chavez, 38, said he spotted the suspect just east of his home at 3558 Siskiyou St.
“I saw this man dressed in black. He looked very nervous. He was looking from left to right and behind him.”
A little before 9 a.m. Bonnie Navarro, 48, of 3668½ Percy St., answered a knock on the door to find a tired, sweating man standing on her porch.
She said the man motioned with both hands against his throat as he asked her in a deep voice for a drink of water.
“He looked very tired. He was all wet with sweat.” She recognized him instantly. She covered her eyes with her hands and screamed: “It’s the killer! It’s the killer! And I slammed the door. 1 guess I scared him. He ran away.”
Her son called police. Within minutes, a helicopter was hovering overhead. Seven patrol cars followed. When Ramirez rounded Indiana Street to head north, he came across a woman in a parked copper colored Oldsmobile.
“He pulled a knife on the lady,” said Arturo Benavidez, who watched from his barbershop. “He said, ‘Give me the car.’ She yelled, ‘Help.’”
Benavides, joined by another man, chased the man down a graffiti-lined alley. At the end of the block, Ramirez hopped a 6-foot-high brick wall into a yard on Percy Street.
“El maton, el maton!” — the killer, the killer — Maria Cortez yelled from her front porch.
Her son, nephew and a neighbor chased the man out of the yard, one of them waving a large pair of pruning shears.
The chase came to an explosive end on Hubbard Street.
Ramirez jumped over a fence into the backyard of 55-year-old Fhastino “Tino” Pinon, who was working on his red 1695 Mustang.
The newly painted car’s motor was running. A tall, dark-haired figure leaped into the Mustang.
“I said, ‘Hey, get out of there,’” said Pinon “He said, ‘No, I have a gun.’”
As Pinon jumped into the car, Ramirez shifted into reverse.
As if in a car-chase movie, Pinon leaned into the car and began struggling with Ramirez over the wheel as his feet were dragged along the grassy yard.
Ramirez hurdled the gate of Pinon’s home, then ran toward a copper-colored Granada parked on the opposite, south side of Hubbard Street.
Angelica De La Torre, 29, was on her way to buy gifts for her 3-year-old daughter’s birthday. She was just starting the car when a man grabbed her and pulled her out.
“I saw his eves, and I knew it was him,” she said.
Jose Burgoin, 54, a retired construction worker, had been watering his plants across the street. He dropped his hose and raced across the street. He managed to Ramirez from the car, and the two men tumbled to the ground.
Manuel De La Torre, Angelica’s husband, pulled a steel rod from his chain-link gate and went for Ramirez, striking him in the back of the head.
Ramirez fled west, with De LaTorre and Burgoin in pursuit. Jaime and Julio Burgoin also gave chase.
Suddenly, the fugitive seemed to run out of gas.
“He kind of stopped,” Jaime Burgoin said.
Jaime reached him first and unloaded with his right fist.
“I hit him and he went down pretty good, if I do say so myself,” he said.
When and incensed De La Torre arrived, he struck the back of Ramirez’s head once or twice with the metal rod.
Jose Burgoin and Manuel De La Torre and Mexican immigrants and speak little English. Jaime and Julio Burgoin were born in the U.S.A. and are bilingual. None of them knew immediately who it was that was leaning against the chain-link fence, exhausted and dazed.
It was only when someone in the growing crowd pointed out photos of Ramirez in newspapers that the four realized whom they had captured.
“I hope the fear for everyone ends now,” Jose Burgoin said.
