shooting two victims in the head; the wife survived.
He drew another pentagram at the scene and wrote
lyrics from a heavy metal song. A bullet from the
scene was matched to others in Los Angeles County.
Fear spread through the San Francisco Bay Area.
The mayor of San Francisco attempted to allevi-
ate the panic by releasing confidential facts to the
media. After seeing the resulting reports, Ramirez
threw his sneakers and gun off the Golden Gate
Bridge.
Ramirez changed his hunting grounds on August
24 and broke into a couple’s home. He shot the man,
raped the woman, and bound her. She worked free,
however, and saw him leaving in a station wagon. A
teenager had earlier seen the station wagon cruising
suspiciously and had taken down its license plate
number. When the police found the car, a forensics
team discovered a fingerprint and matched it to
Ramirez with the help of a newly functioning com-
puterized fingerprint system. The police released
Ramirez’s pictures to the media. He was foiled trying
to steal a car when a citizen identified him. He tried
to run, but a mob caught him. The police arrived in
time to save his life.
Ramirez never showed any remorse for his crimes
and often turned and jeered at the victims in court.
He flashed a pentagram that he had drawn on his
palm and declared “Hail Satan” in the courtroom.
Ramirez was convicted of sixty-seven felonies, in-
cluding fourteen murders, and he received nine-
teen death sentences.
Impact Richard Ramirez’s random and brutal
crimes of rape, murder, and pedophilia made him
stand out even in a state that produces 10 percent of
the world’s serial killers. He killed with more fre-
quency than a normal serial killer and spread fear
over much of California.
Further Reading
Carlo, Philip.The Night Stalker.New York: Pinnacle,
- Story following the serial killer convicted of
fourteen murders in the Los Angeles area.
Linedecker, Clifford L.Night Stalker.New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1991. Account of Ramirez’s two-
year rampage as a sadistic serial killer, his arrest,
and the subsequent sensational trial.
Newton, Michael, ed.The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.
2d ed. New York: Facts On File, 2006. General ref-
erence to serial killers.
James J. Heiney
See also America’s Most Wanted; Atlanta child mur-
ders; Central Park jogger case; Crime; Goldmark
murders; Latinos; Post office shootings; Rape; San
Ysidro McDonald’s massacre; Stockton massacre;
Tylenol murders.Nobel Prizes
Definition Prizes, established by the will of Alfred
Nobel (1833-1896), awarded for achievements
in various areas
The Nobel Prizes are generally recognized as the world’s
highest honor in each of the fields in which they are
awarded. Nobel laureates gain international acclaim and a
monetar y award, as well as prestige for their home countr y.
In the 1980’s, North Americans dominated the sci-
entific Nobel Prizes and received a few of the awards
in literature and peace as well. Of the ninety-four
prizes awarded during in the decade, Americans
won forty-six and Canadians won four.
Chemistry Achievements in biochemistry predom-
inated among the chemistry laureates of the decade.
Walter Gilbert (with Briton Frederick Sanger) studied
base sequences in nucleic acids, and Paul Berg was
honored for work on recombinant deoxyribonu-
cleic acid (DNA). Thomas Robert Cech and Sidney
Altman discovered catalytic properties of ribonu-
cleic acid (RNA), while Robert Bruce Merrifield de-
veloped new methods for preparing peptides. Fun-
damental studies of chemical reactions were the
basis of awards to Roald Hoffmann and Japan’s
Kenichi Fukui; John Polanyi, Dudley Herschbach,
and Yuan Tseh Lee; and Henry Taube. Taube spe-
cialized in electron-transfer reactions of metal com-
plexes. Donald J. Cram and Charles J. Pederson,
working with France’s Jean-Marie Lehn, designed
and synthesized highly selective organic reactants.
Jerome Karle and Herbert Hauptman developed im-
proved methods for determining crystal structures
by X-ray diffraction.
Economic Sciences Americans won seven out of
the ten Nobel Prizes in Economic Sciences awarded
during the decade. Most of the recipients worked
at the nation’s major universities: the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology, Yale, the University of
California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago,
and the University of Pennsylvania. James BuchananThe Eighties in America Nobel Prizes 711