Richard Ramirez, born Ricardo Leyva Munos Ramirez on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas, lived a troubled childhood that tragically set the stage for his transformation into the infamous “Night Stalker.” As the youngest of five children born to Julian and Mercedes Ramirez, Mexican immigrants who worked tirelessly to make ends meet, Richard grew up in an unstable and volatile household characterized by poverty, abuse, and poor health, exposing him to a toxic environment that would come to shape his sinister perspective of life. From a young age, Ramirez faced immense challenges. At the tender age of five years old, he suffered multiple head injuries, one of which from a swing that left him unconscious and triggered debilitating epileptic seizures. Biological factors such as Richard’s epilepsy, stemming from his early head traumas, along with potential …show more content…
This early exposure to such extreme violence and deviance shaped Ramirez’s naive and impressionable young mind. Moreover, the exposure to such cruelty only intensified as Ramirez grew older. Ultimately, at the age of 13, Ramirez bore witness to Miguel's killing of his own wife, Jessie. Ramirez watched the entirety of the domestic violence committed by his cousin. The combination of the violent and disturbing images Miguel had shown Ramirez as well as Ramirez’s presence during Miguel’s killing of his own wife, desensitized Ramirez to brutality and severely impaired his moral constraints. Eventually, Miguel committed suicide, and by that point Ramirez had begun to embrace the life of crime, breaking into homes and stealing from