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This thesis explores the celebrity status of serial killers in contemporary American society through the case study of Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker. how media representation and public fascination contribute to the glorification of serial killers, leading to the normalization of their heinous actions. It also touches upon the phenomenon of serial killer groupies and the murderabilia industry.
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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature
The USA is a country with one of the highest occurrence of serial killers in the world. It is also a country where its serial killers have become iconic figures and fascinating subjects of mass media industry and personal fantasies and desires. The aim of this thesis, choosing the Night Stalker Richard Ramirez as its case study, is to demonstrate the celebrity status of serial killers in the contemporary American society, for they are as celebrities presented. The thesis starts with the serial killer celebrity culture, showing how mass media benefit from the gruesome events happening around the country, giving them much more space than to any other news, and, therefore, making from the perpetrators of such events the most interesting phenomenon that is worth to be aware of. It also demonstrates how public reacts to such news and how media go even further by making fictitious killers from real life killers, particularly in the movies, who are subsequently celebrated as heroes, which leads to a wrong supposition that real killers are of the same kind as the fictitious ones. Next two chapters deal with the life, crimes and the trial of Richard Ramirez in order to raise an awareness of the potential reader about who Ramirez is. The trial chapter already touches the serial killer groupie phenomenon, the term that will be explained later in its subchapter. In view of the fact Ramirez has been on death row for 24 years, it is necessary to explain the reason why he has not been executed yet. The fifth chapter provides information about how easy it is to obtain an address of the killer on the Internet. It also calls attention to various organizations which for money, working on the same base as dating agencies, can find a perfect penfriend match among killers for anyone who wishes to be involved in the correspondence with such person.
The term celebrity once meant a person who was a leader, whose qualities one admired and aspired to. Today it means only someone whose name and face is known for whatever reason. As David Schmid, a cultural studies professor at the University of Buffalo, states in his book, “One now achieves fame not by performing meritorious acts or possessing outstanding qualities, but by being seen” (9). Mass media play a significant role in defining and disseminating fame and the celebrity status because they are the most powerful means of spreading information. They can reach a worldwide audience which is something that was quite unique before their expansion. If any news spread around the world, it was definitely not the one about a crime that occurred in a neighbor village. Yet people have always been interested in criminals, as they were phenomenon not to be seen very often. With the mass media development, what once used to be kept on a local level, has now become a worldwide commotion. 2.1. The Role of Mass Media Representation of criminality has always had an important role in the American mass media. Since the development of “yellow journalism” at the late nineteenth century, sensational news, more than any other news, often held a prominent place in American popular culture. According to David J. Krajicek, an American journalist interested in true crime, the occurrence of sensational news even doubled during the 1980s. Those were the years which have seen the biggest change in how the American mass media represent crime. “Media have done an increasingly poor job of developing a balance between what is interesting and what is important … Newspapers and television news broadcasts [have] lowered their editorial standards in order to compete with tabloid media” (30). This has had a damaging impact upon the reporting of crime.
Instead of the objective stories about the crime problems, the mass media audience have been receiving stories about the “sensational trial of the year”, “the most horrific murders of the century”, and therefore, the criminals who commit them. The media commonly overemphasize violent crime. “The selection of crime problems is often limited to the most bizarre or gruesome act a journalist or investigator can uncover … Although murder constitutes a tiny fraction of all crimes committed in the United States, murder and other crimes of violence dominate media reporting of crime” (Schmid 14), which leads to minimization of other crimes. According to Elliot Leyton, a Canadian social-anthropologist, the media further distinguish between a murderer and a multiple murderer, preferring the latter. He claims that “No one ever became famous by beating his wife to death …; but virtually all multiple murderers achieve true and lasting fame. They are the subjects of articles and books, radio and television shows – for the remainder of their lives – and they thus attain an immortality” (16). Most single murderers do not even warrant news coverage, unless there is something unique about them or their victims. Serial killer is a type of a multiple murderer who have killed three or more victims, but each was killed on separate occasions over weeks, months or years, often with an inactive period in between the killings. It should not be confused with mass murderer and spree killer who are both considered to be multiple murderers, but of different kinds. Mass murderer kills four or more people at one location during one continuous period of time, and spree killer kills two or more victims with no inactive period between the killings, but on more than one location. His or her spree is thus considered to be a single event (Montaldo). Serial murder fascinates society more than single murder. According to Julie B. Wiest's, who has received her M.A. on a thesis dealing with serial killers in The New York Times coverage, research: “In the case of single murder, people in society tend to identify and sympathize with the victim and his or her family and demand punishment
Media can shape people's understanding of their world, and through this extensive coverage of murder in eighties, people began to believe that crime was on the rise. They believed it was a very important issue, otherwise it would not have such a great interest of the media. As Philip Jenkins, a former professor of Criminal Justice and American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, emphasizes in his article Myth and Murder: The Serial Killer Panic of 1983-1985 , different forms of media smoothly worked together to disseminate this panic: “The visual media strongly reinforced the concept of a new and appalling menace … Each of the major news magazines had at least one story of this format, while an HBO America Undercover documentary focused on three well-known serial killers of the last decade: Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper, and Henry Lee Lucas. Interviews with all three were featured, as were harrowing reconstructions, using actors” (55). This panic has made celebrities out of a large number of serial killers for they were presented everywhere. Many serial killers have been given nicknames that reflected some elements of their killing style, such as the Night Stalker, or the location of their killings, for example, the Boston Strangler. This nicknaming further served to promote the killer in the media and heighten the fear among people. Mass media generally lack sense of ethic and morality. Television companies are capable of broadcasting movies about psychopathic killers of sorority sisters just a few days after murders of two female students sleeping in their dormitory room who were killed by an unknown intruder (who later turned out to be Ted Bundy), as it happened in Florida in 1978 (Schmid 22). In 1989, three weeks after Richard Ramirez was sentenced to death, one production company released a movie Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker based on the true story of this Californian killer. Media are keen to provide their audience with all of the details and similarities, stories of the killers' lives, and core information about their murders that the killers gain an official status of being
celebrities from the very beginning. What is more, the public is keen to know such information because otherwise the media would not have the reason to provide it. It is a cycle in which both media and public participate. Media awaken the interest and fascination among people, and people, by keeping this interest and fascination alive, make media pursue the stories over and over again. Public response to serial killers combine repulsion and condemnation with attraction and admiration. “Even though the “normal” celebrity (for example, the film star) seems to be a wholly loved and admired figure, in fact the public's relation to the celebrity is also characterized by resentment, even violent hatred” (Schmid 6). It is similar with the serial killer who seems to inspire only the hatred. And yet, there are many people who feel fascinated by him or her and consider him or her to be admirable. Mass media benefit from both the fascination and the horror that the public feels towards the killers. 2.2. Fictional Serial Killers People gain so many of their ideas about the world from what they see presented in the media. Especially the movies have a significant impact on how one perceives the world. Schmid claims that there are two main features present in the American cinematic culture, and that is stardom and violence (105). By combining these, one get movies such as Psycho (1960), Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The last mentioned movie received such a great extent of popularity that no other movie of this kind before and no other after has ever achieved. The character of Hannibal Lecter portrayed by one of the most talented living actors, Sir Anthony Hopkins, gained himself an iconic status of a serial killer who is extremely intelligent, charming, and both physically and mentally powerful. Leyton says it is no wonder
Since 1980s, when the occurrence of active serial killers in the United States plainly exploded, publishers and film-makers have simply believed there is an immense market for stories on such theme. The serial killer has become a part of American culture like the cowboy. According to Jenkins, an interest in true crime can be traced back to the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, although it was not until 1888, when the Jack the Ripper case brought the great publicity to this topic ( Using 81-2). Jack the Ripper has occurred in an enormous number of books and later movies since his first murder. “The idea of using a serial killer as a fictional villain [in mass media] is by no means a recent innovation, but the volume of such depictions has expanded enormously over the last … decades” ( Using 81). The portrayal of the killers has grown in number, and the way the killers are portrayed has changed with it. Those who once used to be “monstrous lunatics” are now “far more complex images” ( Using 95) such as Sir Anthony Hopkins' Dr. Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs with two sequels, Woody Harrelson's Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers (1994), Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000), and Elijah Wood's Frank in recent Maniac (2012). The makers of Maniac went even that far that the entire movie is shot from the killer's point of view. It is difficult then to remain without even a bit of positive emotion towards the killers when the spectators are confronted with the stories of the killers' lives that are in most cases forlorn and miserable. Sometimes for the media the movies are not enough, and when this happens a series is born. This year is going to be the eighth year of a successful broadcasting of the Showtime TV channel's series about the “everyone's favorite serial killer”, Dexter (“Official Website of Dexter”). Michael C. Hall, the actor who portrays Dexter Morgan —a Miami forensic expert, who spends his days solving crimes, and nights committing them—has won a Golden Globe award for his role in Dexter. This series is another
example of the celebration of the serial killer phenomenon, making a hero from a killer who, as the official website proclaims, everyone loves. These all-star cast movies and series and the very own interest of other media cause the public to feel the attraction towards such people, and when it is almost impossible to get in touch with the “normal” celebrity portraying them, who are usually the very opposites to the characters they play, why not to get in touch with the notorious celebrity. The following chapters will try to demonstrate the fame of serial killers on one particular serial killer, Richard Ramirez. Since his first recognized murder and his imprisonment above all, Ramirez has enjoyed much popularity from media and, therefore, the public. It was already mentioned that the movie discussing his life was released only couple weeks after the end of his trial, which was later followed by several other movies, dozens of books, essays, and documentaries. It has been stated by one of the most popular Hollywood actors of the present time, James Franco, a Golden Globe winner who has been very recently honored with Hollywood Walk of Fame star, that he is about to start shooting a movie about Ramirez's life which he wants to direct and at the same time play the main role (Zakarin). With the development of digital media, the Internet in particular, it is now easy to find information not just about the killers but also about their fans who run or contribute to various fanzines and blogs. What is even more startling, these fans participate in a special kind of consumerism, so called murderabilia industry, where they sell or exchange particular souvenirs they have received from the killers themselves. So instead of talking about the movies and books which existence is (at least after reading this chapter) everyone aware of, the closer look will be taken at the Internet websites, fan sites, and this murderabilia industry in which Ramirez figures.
3.1. The Ruined Childhood Richard, the youngest of five siblings, was born in 1960 in El Paso, Texas to his Mexican-American parents who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico borders in the late 1940s. He was an active child who liked to play, dance, and was good at school. However, his childhood was not a happy one. The family was very religious, Richard's father being very dominant and abusive person who often punished his children for even small disobedience. When Richard was older, he used to hide, scared of his father's temper, often sleeping in the cemeteries because he believed his father would not find him there. Richard's older brother Joseph suffered from a disease which caused his bones to curve as they grew (Carlo 183). The other brothers, Robert and Ruben, as soon as they were old enough, started to smoke marijuana and as for Ruben, he started stealing things and robbing houses. For his sister Ruth, Richard was a living baby doll. She loved to take care of him, treating him as he was her own son. His parents were hard-workers, and although Richard had a nanny and there was still someone around their house, at the age of two he was knocked unconscious by a heavy drawer and couple years later suffered from his first seizure. The epilepsy he was diagnosed with might have been caused by this incident or by the fact that his mother, when she was pregnant with him, used to work in a shoe factory manipulating with dangerous chemicals without any protection of breathing the fumes ( Biography ). Due to this disease, Richard was unable to do sports at school and, since he was a hyperactive kid and needed to vent somehow, started to hang out with wrong people doing wrong things. Richard had an older cousin, Miguel, who was a Vietnam veteran and a cold- blooded killer. In Vietnam, Miguel liked to rape and kill Vietnamese women and
children. To keep this memories alive, he used to take pictures of his doings. And then he was showing them to young Richard, talking about the awesomeness of taking someone's life (Carlo 207). To Richard, Miguel was a hero. He was able to do all this things and get unpunished. One day, Richard was at Miguel's house and saw how his cousin brutally murdered his own wife. Although he did not tell anyone he witnessed such incident, Miguel was soon caught and sent to mental asylum. However, couple years later he was released, although he was the same unchanged monster as before, and Richard and him became buddies for once more. Together they were using drugs and robbed, Richard once again listening to Miguel's war stories, watching the pictures of raped, dead women over and over again. He was fascinated by them. He knew it was wrong to be aroused by such brutality, but he could not help himself (Carlo 208). It was undoubtedly Miguel who had done the final job of what had Richard later become. Richard came from a very religious family, but soon started to believe that The Church and Jesus are not the right ones to worship. He was addicted to LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs and often dreamed about riding with the devil. Satan, he concluded, was a perfect match to worship. Satan, unlike Jesus, would have approved of the thoughts and feelings he was having (Carlo 208). Richard wanted to be like Miguel. He wanted to rape and kill his own victims. Miguel once told him that “having power over life and death is a high, an incredible rush. It is godlike. You control who will live and who will die—you are God” (Carlo 208). Miguel gave him all the hints how to protect himself, how to become unnoticed, and how not to get caught. Richard's craving for the power over another human being was so strong that one day he hid in one of the hotel rooms where he used to work while he was in high school. He attacked a young woman, attempting to rape her, when her husband appeared and beat him up. Richard was taken to court, but the case was shortly after
to make the same mistake of being unprepared again. He decided to choose the occasion more carefully. 1985 happened to be the year when the true terror began. During six months, Richard traveled from town to town around California, entering someone's home, killing the husband, raping and sodomizing the wife, but at least sparing their children (if there were any). In case the wife remained obedient and calm, he spared her life as well. One of his female victims managed to pull out a gun on him which was, unfortunately for her, unloaded. Ramirez beat her to death and took her eyes as a trophy. Her eyes were never found, and he never said what he had done with them. There were several speculations he might have eat them but more probable is he got rid of them, as he had never showed any cannibalistic tendencies before. Those six months between his second murder and his capture, Richard managed to kill over 14 people and commit at least 30 other felony ( Biography ). He did not care if his victims were young or old, black or white. Two of his victims were two eighty year old sisters, subsequently found in their house beaten by a hammer, one dead, the other sodomized but alive, dying couple months later in a hospital. Media described him as an intruder, Satan's servant because he was leaving drawings of pentagrams on his victims' walls and forced his female victims to sing praises of Satan before he raped them. Media claimed that no one was safe from him, as he traveled around the Southern California, always choosing a different city for his striking. He soon gained himself a nickname “The Night Stalker”. People were scared of leaving their homes after dark and letting their children outside alone. And yet, a fact which is very interesting, Richard never had to use violence in order to break into someone else's house. He always found unlocked doors or opened windows, sometimes unlocked dog holes in the doors. He considered these to be invitations.
He was very active and wanted more and more. However, soon he started to make mistakes. Sparing the lives of the children and some of the women was undoubtedly a generous gesture from such killer, but it also meant leaving witnesses who had seen his face. He was described as a tall, dark, handsome Hispanic with very bad teeth, and soon couple of police sketches occurred in the streets. Richard was still using the same guns with the same bullets for killing his victims, so the police knew it was just a one guy responsible for causing this whole mess. The same shoe print was found on several crime scenes. What is more important, it belonged to a shoe that had just recently been brought into America and only couple pairs were sold in California. All of these could have been sufficient clues for police to find him sooner, unfortunately, the police of different counties were not really united and cooperative with each other and often kept the evidence in secret from each other ( Biography ). Richard's last sodomized but survived female victim was able to provide full description of him and his car, as she saw him leaving her house from the window. Afterwards, the car was found with several fingerprints left on the steering wheel. Due to Richard's previous arrest for stealing a car, the police finally had a name of their man. Meanwhile, Richard left the town and traveled to his friends' in Texas. He was decided to start normal life. He had enough money which he made by ransacking and robbing of those houses where his victims lived. Unaware of his name and pictures being in every newspapers, hanging on every bus stop, he for once more entered Los Angeles. As soon as he got off the bus, people began shouting “Killer! Killer!” and started chasing him around the streets. Richard knew it was his end because the mobs were about to kill him. When the police came, Richard was beaten and half death. Yet they managed to save his life and took him to prison ( Biography ). California was finally free and save.
