For example, the Night Stalker series finale on Netflix begins with the revelation that Ramirez was tied to a graveyard cross by his father during childhood, and it's also revealed that Ramirez witnessed a murder as a young boy. According to psychiatric analysis presented in the HBO documentary Crazy, Not Insane , a serial killer like Ramirez was prompted to kill because of cerebral trauma.
Overall, Night Stalke r is a strong piece of filmmaking that will undoubtedly entertain Netflix audiences. But it would've been beneficial to establish a clear connection between the subject's childhood experiences and his crimes as an adult. Night Stalker effectively documents Ramirez's modus operandi, as the killer would often target families during his spree. First, he would murder the man of the household, and then sexually assault a female.
Ramirez also molested young children. So, a basic psych evaluation suggests that the Night Stalker killed males who were symbolic of his father, and that he targeted females who reminded him of painful childhood memories.
The attacks on kids also imply that Ramirez resented the fact that he didn't have a normal upbringing, at least according to what Dorothy Otnow Lewis discussed in Crazy, Not Insane. And all I could think was how terrified this person must have been of the police. To their credit, Night Stalker producers Tiller Russell and James Carroll have created a series that attempts to do exactly what true crime media should do: demystify the perpetrator and elevate the people impacted by their crimes.
But the strident erasure of Ramirez from this story of his crimes has also made Night Stalker a deeply confusing entry point for anyone who is unfamiliar with the case. Night Stalker is emphatically not about Richard Ramirez. In fact, the series has done a stellar job of assembling dozens of people who encountered Ramirez over the course of the investigation into his crimes, from random witnesses to people who survived his attacks.
Salerno is framed as larger than life, with stirring musical cues. These two are unquestionably our heroes. So the brief glimpses of him that Night Stalker offers are actually more confusing than enlightening — they feel like odd interruptions, cameos from a strange minor character who inexplicably pops up occasionally, waving pentagrams on his palms.
Why pentagrams? Why is Ramirez embarking on his crime spree? What makes his crimes in particular so memorable in the annals of serial killing? Ramirez began to claim he worshiped Satan while still a teenager, and was committing sexual assault by his 20s.
His attacks were mostly about sexual gratification and power, as well as notoriety; Ramirez clearly craved fame and relished being in the spotlight after his arrest. On the one hand, the production must have felt it would be satisfying to deprive Ramirez of some of that notoriety.
To some extent, it is satisfying. To what extent was Ramirez responding to the Satanic Panic of the era, and to what extent was he acting independent of it, but still becoming a part of the larger societal hysteria? Because Night Stalker is all about glorifying the cops. The main thread tying the narrative together is detective Carrillo. But Carrillo and Salerno, for all their earnestness and passion as they recount their roles in the narrative, are still cops.
The summer of , when Ramirez began his attacks, was also the summer in which then-police Chief Daryl Gates used the Olympics as an excuse to occupy parts of inner-city Los Angeles. This was among many actions that resulted in increased tension and clashes between police and locals, particularly in communities of color.
But Night Stalker never confronts this dynamic; instead, it suggests that the people of Los Angeles are unequivocally grateful for the police, and happy to work with the cops to catch the killer. They are not smelling him or concentrating on his teeth. They are getting turned on or whatever because of who he is. Then they became more or less groupies around the court proceedings.
Then they would see a more normal-looking man. He added the fact that Ramirez knew how to play up to the crowd helped. But, why? Serial killer expert and author Peter Vronsky told Oxygen. Hybristophilia is a condition in which a person is sexually attracted to a partner who is known for committing a horrific act, such as murder. There's even a hybristophilia tag on Tumblr, Refinery29 reported last year. However, t here haven't been any major studies on the apparent phenomenon, so most evidence that exists is purely anecdotal, Women's Health reported in Sullivan said while he's noticed a trend of women recently attributing their attraction to killers to the condition, he believes most do not have it.
Katherine Ramsland noted in a Psychology Today piece that mental health experts say some women who are attracted to killers are simply "love-avoidant" — they seek relationships that can never actually be consummated because of an underlying fear of intimacy.
Other experts, she said, have theorized that biology could play a role.
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