Overview
- Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Ellis testified that Richard Ramirez said, “I love to kill people,” during a roughly half-hour monologue.
- Ellis told the court Ramirez calmly described shootings, stabbings and mutilations and claimed he enjoyed watching victims struggle.
- A judge later ruled Ellis’s account admissible despite Ramirez’s lawyer denying he made the statements.
- Reports restate that Ramirez carried out mid-1980s home-invasion attacks across California, was linked to up to 20 killings, and said he was caught after leaving a fingerprint.
- He was convicted of 13 murders along with five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries, received a death sentence, and died of natural causes on death row.