Revisiting The Life and Crimes of The Night Stalker with Journalist Frank Giradot

Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, recently died after spending nearly three decades on death row. We look back at his murder and sexual assault spree, as well as his disturbing childhood that led him to launch the most horrific one-man crime wave in California history. Journalist Frank Giradot talks about some of the details that made the case so terrifying and continually captivating--even to the extent that Ramirez became a sociopathic sex symbol.

GUEST BIO:
Frank C. Girardot Jr. has traversed the gritty streets of Los Angeles, California, rubbed elbows with police officers who were of the same ilk as the criminals they apprehended and moved among the cadavers at the Los Angeles County Office of Coroner as if he were the spirit of some poor soul who wound up there.
He knows the scene; the crime scene, that is.

Few modern newspaper reporters or editors have accumulated his vast experience -- from covering the O.J. Simpson murder trial to uncovering curious links between one Christopher Chichester and the disappearance of a young San Marino couple in 1985.

It is the latter case that consumes Girardot's attention now. Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, alias Christopher Chichester, alias Clark Rockefeller, stands accused by Los Angeles County prosecutors of killing John Sohus in 1985 and burying his body in the backyard of the San Marino home where Gerhartsreiter was staying.

Girardot's investigation with Star-News staffer Nathan McIntire in 2008 likely is at least partly responsible for the L.A. County District Attorney's Office's decision to file charges against Gerhartsreiter. Girardot's 1993 article on unsolved mysteries of the San Gabriel Valley prompted author James Ellroy to investigate the 1958 strangulation murder of his mother, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, as Ellroy described in his book, "My Dark Places." Girardot's article also has been the subject of an "E! True Hollywood Story" and an episode of CourtTV's "Murder by the Book."

ADD'L LINKS:
Crime Time shorts playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ow61...
Crime Time Full Episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCPiw...

EPISODE BREAKDOWN:
00:01 Coming up on Crime Time.
00:57 Welcoming Frank Giradot to talk about the Night Talker.
03:00 Gil Carillo and the LAPD investigation into sneakers.
05:42 Ramirez' background.
07:50 An affinity for Satanism.
10:28 Cocaine and the switch to murder.
12:25 The massive citizens arrest in East LA.
14:24 Breaking in and entering the houses of victims.
15:26 The common denominator in the victims.
16:07 The Night Stalker becomes a sex symbol.
18:30 The trail of clues to catch him.