by Colin Wilson
Ramirez accepted, then rejected three more lawyers, finally settling upon two defenders, Dan and Arturo Hernandez. The two were not related, although they often worked together. The judge advised Ramirez that his lawyers did not even meet the minimum requirements for trying a death-penalty case in California, but Ramirez insisted, and more than seven weeks after the initial charges were filed, pleas of Not Guilty were entered on all counts.
The Hernandezes and Ramirez seemed to be trying to force Halpin into making a mistake out of sheer frustration, and thus to create a mis-trial. After each hearing the Hernandez’ made pleas for, and obtained, more time to prepare their case. Meanwhile one prosecution witness had died of natural causes, and Ramirez’s appearance was gradually changing. He had had his hair permed and his rotten teeth replaced. This naturally introduced more uncertainty into the minds of prosecution witnesses as to Ramirez’s identity. The racial make-up of the jury was contested by the defence, which caused delays. The defence also argued, with some justification, that Ramirez could not receive a fair trial in Los Angeles, and moved for a change of location. Although the motion was refused it caused yet more delays. It actually took three and a half years for Ramirez’s trial to finally get under way.
Halpin’s case was, in practical terms, unbeatable. The defence’s only real possibility of success was in infinite delay. For the first three weeks of the trial events progressed relatively smoothly. Then Daniel Hernandez announced that the trial would have to be postponed as he was suffering from nervous exhaustion. He had a doctor’s report that advised six weeks’ rest with psychological counselling. It seemed likely that a mis-trial would be declared. Halpin tried to argue that Arturo Hernandez could maintain the defence, even though he had failed to turn up at the hearings and trial for the first seven months. However this proved unnecessary as the judge made a surprise decision and denied Daniel Hernandez his time off, arguing that he had failed to prove a genuine need.
Halpin, by this stage was actually providing the Hernandezes with all the information that they required to mount an adequate defence, in order to move things along and prevent mis-trial. For the same reasons the judge eventually appointed a defence co-counsel Ray Clark. Clark immediately put the defence on a new track: Ramirez was the victim of a mistaken identity. He even developed an acronym for this defence – SODDI or Some Other Dude Did It. When the defence case opened, Clark produced testimony from Ramirez’s father that he had been in El Paso at the time of one of the murders of which he was accused. He also criticized the prosecution for managing to prove that footprints at one of the crime scenes were made by a size eleven-and-a-half Avia trainer, without ever proving that Ramirez actually owned such a shoe. When the jury finally left to deliberate however, it seemed clear that they would find Ramirez guilty.
Things were not quite that easy however. After thirteen days of deliberation, juror Robert Lee was dismissed for inattention and replaced by an alternative who had also witnessed the case. Two days later, juror Phyllis Singletary was murdered in a domestic dispute. Her live-in lover had beaten her then shot her several times. She was also replaced.
At last on 20 September 1989 after twenty-two days of deliberation the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all thirteen counts of murder, twelve of those in the first degree. The jury also found Ramirez guilty of thirty other felonies, including burglary, rape, sodomy and attempted murder. Asked by reporters how he felt after the verdict, Ramirez replied, “Evil.”
There remained only the selection of sentence. At the hearing Clark argued that Ramirez might actually have been possessed by the devil, or that alternatively he had been driven to murder by over-active hormones. He begged the jury to imprison Ramirez for life rather than put him on death row. If the jury agreed, Clark pointed out, “he will never see Disneyland again,” surely punishment enough. After five further days of deliberation, the jury voted for the death penalty. Again, reporters asked Ramirez how he felt about the outcome as he was being taken away, “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. I’ll see you in Disneyland.”
Any attempt to trace the source of Ramirez’s violent behaviour runs up against an insurmountable problem. No external traumas or difficulties seem to have brutalized him. He had a poor upbringing, he was part of a racial minority, but these things alone cannot explain such an incredibly sociopathic personality. Ramirez seems to have created himself. He was an intelligent and deeply religious child. Having decided at some stage that counter-culture and drug-taking provided a more appealing lifestyle, he developed pride in his separateness. In the El Paso of his early manhood, people would lock their doors, if they saw him coming down the street. He was known as “Ricky Rabon”, Ricky the thief, a nickname he enjoyed as he felt it made him “someone”. By the time he moved to Los Angeles, he was injecting cocaine and probably committing burglaries to support himself. He let his teeth rot away, eating only childish sugary foods. He refused to wash. He listened to loud Heavy Metal music.
It has been argued that it was his taste in music that drove him to murder and Satanism, but this would seem to be more part of the mood of censorship sweeping America than a genuine explanation. Anyone who takes the trouble to listen to the music in question, particularly the AC/DC album cited by American newspapers at the time of the murders, will find that there is little in it to incite violence.
Ramirez’s obvious attempts to repel others in his personal behaviour, and his heavy drug use seem more likely sources of violence than early poverty or music. His assumed “otherness” seems in retrospect sadly underdeveloped, having never progressed beyond a teenager’s need to appal staid grown-up society.
This is not to say that Ramirez was unintelligent. His delaying of his trial and his choice of the Hemandezes to continue the delays, shows that he had worked out the most effective method of staying alive for the longest period either before, or soon after he was captured. His remarks in court upon being sentenced were not particularly original, yet they are articulate:
“It’s nothing you’d understand but I do have something to say . . . I don’t believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society. I need not look beyond this room to see all the liars, haters, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards – truly trematodes of the Earth, each one in his own legal profession. You maggots make me sick – hypocrites one and all . . . I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil, legions of the night, night breed, repeat not the errors of the Night Prowler [a name from an AC/DC song] and show no mercy. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within us all. That’s it.”
The Night Stalker may not seem a “messiah” in any sense of the word, but it should be noted that Satanism is a religion – some anthropologists have even defined it as a sub-cult of Judo-Christianity, as its creeds are based on biblical sources. Richard Ramirez clearly felt that he was making a stand for his religion when he was on trial, and his statements won him followers . . . of a sort.
Since his conviction he has received fan mail from dozens of women, many enclosing sexual photographs of themselves. Most of these “followers” are probably just looking for a cheap thrill, like children who lean over the edge of a bear pit at a zoo – he’s caged, so they can play at titillating him. None, however, should have any illusions about what he would have done to them if it had been their house he broke into during his 1985 rampage.
Yet Ramirez gained at least one devoted and genuine friend – his wife. In October 1996 he married Doreen Lioy – a forty-one-year-old freelance magazine editor with a reported IQ of 152 – in a non-religious ceremony in the San Quentin prison.
Afterwards Doreen said: “The facts of his case ultimately will confirm that Richard is a wrongly convicted man, and I believe fervently that his innocence will be proven to the world.”
***
In 1982, Manson was moved from a maximum security jail to Vacaville Prison, fifty miles north-east of San Francisco. On the night of 29 October, a guard noticed an
open door in the prison chapel, where Manson worked as a cleaner. Manson and three other prisoners were found there. In the attic of the chapel, a search revealed a tape recorder, tin cutters, a hacksaw, sandpaper, a tin of inflammable liquid, nylon rope, and a catalogue for hot air balloons. There was also a quantity of marijuana. Manson, it seems, had been planning an escape bid in which the hot air balloon would carry them over the prison wall, and had had the catalogue sent to him quite openly.
***
The Matamoros Murders
It might seem impossible to imagine a cult leader more dangerous and inhuman than Charles Manson. But the details of the Matamoros murders – which began to emerge in mid-1989 – made it dear that Adolfo Constanzo was a serious contender for the title of America’s most sadistic serial killer.
Unlike most practitioners of black magic, Adolfo Constanzo was not just an eccentric who made up his ceremonies as he went along. According to his followers, he often boasted that he had been schooled in the dark religion of Palo Mayombe from his earliest childhood. Brought up by his expatriate Cuban mother in Miami, Florida, he claimed that she was a fully trained priestess in the blood cult, and that his earliest memory was of the sacrifice of a chicken.
Palo Mayombe is the dark sister of the Santeria religion. Both originated on the west coast of Africa and were brought over by slaves sent to the Spanish plantations of Cuba. The Spaniards had insisted, on pain of death, that all slaves convert to Christianity. They were gratified when their captives appeared to do so without fuss; in fact the slaves had retained all the essentials of their old religion by associating their gods with the icons of Catholic saints. (The Spanish overlords did not mind their slaves making blood sacrifices to the holy images – they attributed it to simple, Old Testament primitivism.)
Santeria (meaning literally “the saints’ path”) has survived as a mixture of Christianity and the old, voodoo-like African religion. Its “spells” can be used for good as well as harmful purposes and in basic attitude it most resembles the European tradition of “white magic”.
Palo Mayombe, which originated in the Congo area, is less benevolent. The religion centres around the nganga; a caldron filled with blood, a decomposing goat’s head, a roasted turtle, sacred stirring sticks and, most importantly, a human skull – preferably belonging to a violent person who died a sudden death. The confused soul of the dead person is trapped in the nganga and will obey the orders of the Palo Mayombe priest if kept in a state of contentment with freshly spilled blood. The “bound” spirit is said to be able to curse enemies, foretell the future and provide both magical and physical protection (even from bullets).
The purpose of a Palo Mayombe priest is to gain ultimate power in life since he or she believes that tales of an afterlife are lies. Dead spirits, they say, simply wander the material plane as if in limbo. At initiation, the new priest declares his soul to be dead and dedicates himself to the Congoese god of destruction, Kadiempembe “the Eater of Souls”. Thus, without an eternal spirit, he has nothing to lose and may do as he will with savage freedom. Non-believers, especially Christians, are considered “animals” who should be exploited mercilessly.
The skull for the nganga is traditionally obtained by graverobbing, but Adolfo Constanzo told his followers that his “Padrino”, or Godfather – the name given to high priests of the cult – had “hunted” living donors in his youth on Haiti. Constanzo intended to follow in his footsteps.
A dark handsome youth with piercing eyes, Constanzo always made a powerful impression. When he moved to Mexico City in 1982, at the age of twenty-one, he quickly saw that, in the corrupt, superstitious atmosphere of the capital’s underworld, a “padrino” could become a wealthy man . . .
He set up as a fortune teller and soon built a reputation for uncanny accuracy. Many of the city’s drug barons relied on his forecasts to decide when to send shipments across the American border. Subsequent investigation has revealed that much of his “divined” information came from corrupt officials in the Mexican drug administration – at least two of whom were his disciples.
He quickly built up a hard core of a dozen or so dedicated followers who would meet in the secret room in his luxury apartment that contained the stinking nganga, and enact blood sacrifices – killing chickens, goats, dogs and cats – to ensure good luck and obtain protection from the police.
Observing the huge amount of money being made by the relatively simple, uneducated drug lords, Constanzo decided to break into the protection racket. He told the head of one clan of drug dealers, Guillermo Calzada, that for a large fee he would be willing to be his in-house fortune teller – magically protecting him and his drugs at all times. Calzada, having experienced the accuracy of Constanzo’s forecasts, accepted eagerly.
Not long afterwards, Constanzo visited him and explained that in view of the fact it was his magic that was really doing the work, he deserved half the profits . . . Calzada refused, and Constanzo left in a rage. A few days later the padrino called Calzada and begged his forgiveness. As a reconciliation he offered to place a specially powerful protection spell on Calzada and his family. Calzada agreed and on 30 April 1987, he, his wife, his ageing mother, his partner Jose Rolon, his secretary, his maid and his bodyguard met with Constanzo in a deserted factory.
All seven reappeared in the Rio Zumpango river, north of Mexico City, several days later. They had been horribly mutilated before they were killed. Their fingers, toes, ears and, in the case of the men, genitals had been cut off. The hearts were also missing from some of the bodies and, more significantly, the heads.
Constanzo fed the butchered remains to his nganga, thus gaining power over the anguished spirits of the owners, who would use ghostly toes to travel, fingers to manipulate, ears to hear, and hearts and genitals to accumulate power. These damned souls were to be his servants as he expanded his operations to the Mexico–Texas border and the town of Matamoros.
Mexico City, Constanzo had decided, was too far from the most lucrative market for drugs; the United States. Matamoros, a tourist town on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, would be an ideal base for his own drugs empire. He told one of his most ardent followers, Federal Narcotics agent Salvador Garcia, to apply for a transfer to the border town and assess the situation. Some weeks later Garcia reported that the Hernandez family, well known locally to be drug smugglers, were having problems since the death of their leader in a gang shoot-out. His brothers were unable to run the business efficiently and were badly in need of magical assistance. Constanzo made suitable blood sacrifices for luck and travelled to Matamoros.
His method of contacting the Hernandez brothers illustrates his subtlety. He arranged a “chance” meeting with Sara Aldrete, an attractive honours student at the Brownsville College, just across the border. Sara had once dated Elio Hernandez, the boss of the family since the death of his brother, but had not seen him for years. Constanzo, after impressing her with his prophetic powers and luring her into bed, told her an old friend would soon contact her and tell her he was in trouble; she was to tell him that she had met a powerful magus, who might be the answer to all his problems . . .
Sure enough, Sara bumped into Elio Hernandez in the street shortly afterwards and when he had related his woes she persuaded him to meet with Constanzo. The padrino hooked Elio with his usual skill, and soon most of the drug dealers in the family gang were attending Constanzo’s blood sacrifices (Sara Aldrete was made a high priestess and was, in theory, the controller of the Matamoros branch of the cult when Constanzo was in Mexico City).
As promised, the Hernandez family business was soon flourishing under the prophetic guidance of Padrino Adolfo; the delivery runs went smoothly and the money flowed in. Then in the spring of 1988, Constanzo told them that he had a better idea than buying drugs – stealing them from small-time drug runners. Using information from one of the cult members, he located a large marijuana stash, and the family helped themselves. The original owner, and the farmer on whose land it had
been hidden, were taken to an orchard and shot in cold blood.
It was the family’s first experience of Constanzo’s ruthlessness and they were shocked; nevertheless, they swallowed their revulsion. Now they were implicated in murder, they could be introduced into the darker secrets of Palo Mayombe. They were soon convinced that every time they made an important drugs run or needed to avert misfortune they should make a ritual human sacrifice.
Between May 1988 and March 1989, Constanzo and his followers tortured and murdered at least thirteen people at the deserted Hernandez ranch outside Matamoros. Most of the victims were rival drugs dealers or, occasionally, lapsed members of the cult. But some victims were strangers who were kidnapped while walking along the local highway, and murdered without being asked their names. Elio Hernandez was horrified to discover one day that the fourteen-year-old boy he had just decapitated without looking at his face was, in fact, his second cousin.
All the cult’s known victims at Matamoros were male – Constanzo was bisexual with a distinct homosexual bias. The treatment meted out to them before they were allowed to die would have horrified an Aztec priest. The terrified victim would be beaten and kicked and then dragged into a shed that contained the sacred nganga. Often his extremities (such as fingers, genitals, nose and ears) would be cut off and Constanzo would partially flay him. Then the others would be asked to leave while the padrino sodomized him. Finally, the victim would be “sacrificed” by either cutting out his heart or lopping off the top of his head – Constanzo would often leave the death blow to one of the others to increase their complicity. The victims’ severed parts, brains, heart and blood would be placed in the nganga. Their corpses were buried in shallow graves nearby.