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| Are some people born evil? |
The question is often asked whether the monsters who commit evil crimes are the product of nature, i.e they were born that way and nothing could have prevented their evil course, or nurture, i.e their life experiences shaped them into who they were.
In the case of Richard Ramirez otherwise known as the Night Stalker, the subject of a gripping Netflix documentary outlining how he was caught, it would appear at first that he was born evil incarnate.
Those who were raped, bludgeoned and stabbed and throttled by one of the most notorious serial killers to have ever scorched this earth, would probably say he was the devil. That the devil came to their homes.
But on watching the Netflix documentary there were a few throwaway facts about Ramirez that were never fully explored, possibly because no one wanted to make any excuses for such a unapologetically sick killer.
These facts that would point to Ramirez being the result of nurture, or in his case the lack of any decency in those who should have taken care of him.
Fact 1 - When Ramirez was just 12 years-old, his cousin Miguel (known as Mike) would show him pictures of war crimes he says he committed whilst in the US army. Those pictures are said to have included ones of a dead Vietnamese woman he raped. She'd been decapitated.
Could that be the source of Richard Ramirez's sick compulsion to rape and brutalise not just women but children?
Could being shown such vile images at a young and impressionable age have led Ramirez to think that sex and violence were intrinsically linked snd resulted in him recreating the kind of brutality and inhumanity his uncle had shown his alleged victims?
Fact 2 - The very same vile cousin Mike shot his wife in the face and killed her in front of the young Ramirez.
Again, we have someone young and impressionable seeing someone he looked up to commit cold-blooded murder. A man who would smoke cannabis with the boy.
Is there a possibility that had he not been shown any photographs or seen his cousin murder his wife, he wouldn't have gone on on to become one of them worst human beings to have ever lived?
The answers is we will never really know.
Lessons on breaking into homes
Fact 3 - After his cousin killed his wife, Ramirez was sent to live with his sister and her husband. Her husband was a peeping tom and used to take Ramirez with him as he peeped on women.
Is that how the man also known as the Walk-in Killer was able to sneak into his victims homes? Had he not been shown how to creep about undetected by his brother-in-law would he have been able to sneak up on his victims?
The making of a serial killer
If there was ever a set of circumstances that created a serial killer Ramirez's would be almost textbook. And that's before we even looked at his childhood brought up in a home with a violent father.
Whether Ramirez was made and not born a despicable human being, his being dead makes the city he held in the grips of fear, Los Angeles a much safer place.
