← Back to the front page

Dark Historical Facts for the Macabre History Fan

Khalid Elhassan August 4, 2021 36 min

The macabre Night Stalker in court — Richard Ramirez in court. Encyclopedia Britannica

A young Richard Ramirez and his equally macabre older cousin Mike. Crime Viral

28. The Macabre Mentorship of a War Criminal

Twelve-year-old, Richard Ramirez, bonded with his older cousin, Mike, over marijuana and beer. The former Green Beret and war criminal not only regaled his younger relatives with gruesome war stories of mayhem, murder, and mutilation but also gave him tips and lessons on how to kill with stealth. He told Richard: “Having power over life and death was a high, an incredible rush. It was Godlike. You controlled who’d live and who died.” The macabre mentorship was interrupted in 1973, when Mike got into an argument with his wife and fatally shot her in the face in front of the then thirteen-year-old Richard.

Mike Ramirez was tried for the murder of his wife, but he got away with it because he was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity, caused in large part by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from his Vietnam War years. He spent four years in the Texas State Mental Hospital and was released in 1977. He promptly resumed his mentorship of Richard, who by then had fallen under the influence of yet another horrible older relative – this one a peeping Tom.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.