A Sixth Victim Points to Ramirez as Attacker

A young mother testifying about a “Night Stalker” attack described in a controlled voice Tuesday how she was raped and beaten by a profanity-spewing assailant who repeatedly ordered her to “swear upon Satan.”

The woman, who testified for about an hour, seemed not to notice defendant Richard Ramirez seated at a courtroom table until the prosecutor asked if she saw in the courtroom the man who attacked her.

“I beg your pardon?” the woman said, appearing confused.

“Do you see the man here today that was in your home that morning?” asked Deputy Dist. Atty. P. Philip Halpin.

The woman gazed around, sucked in her breath and almost shouted, “Oh yeah--him!” as she pointed toward Ramirez.

6th Identification

She was the sixth Night Stalker victim to identify Ramirez at the preliminary hearing, which will decide whether he stands trial in the series of gruesome attacks that plagued Southern California last summer.

Ramirez, 26, is charged with 14 murders and 54 other felonies in Los Angeles County during 1984 and 1985.

In Orange County, he is charged with eight felony counts in the attempted murder of a Mission Viejo man and the rape of his fiancee, and authorities are investigating him in connection with a slaying in San Francisco.

Ramirez’s friends and acquaintances have said that he was fascinated by devil worship, and demonic symbols were found scrawled at several attack scenes and in his holding cell at the court building. As he left an earlier court hearing, he shouted, “Hail Satan!”

The woman who testified Tuesday, whose identity was not given in court on orders of the judge, told of being awakened shortly after she had nursed her 3-month-old baby and gone back to sleep. She said she was aroused by “a popping, like someone opened a soda bottle.”

Husband Was Killed

The sound was actually a gunshot that killed her husband in another room.

The woman, who testified in a heavy foreign accent, said that within seconds she could “feel somebody is on the bed. . . .

“Somebody grabbed me, turned me on my back and he put handcuffs on me,” she said. “He slapped me and he hit me with his shoes or boot, and he pushed me down on the bed. . . . I was almost unconscious.”

She said the assailant repeatedly yelled profanities at her and told her, “You don’t scream or I’m going to kill your baby.”

The baby, she said, was asleep in the same room.

“I said, ‘I swear to God I’m not going to scream,’ ” she recalled. “He said, ‘Don’t swear upon God; swear upon Satan.’ And I said, ‘I swear upon Satan I am not going to scream.’ ”

Man Demanded Jewelry

The woman, whose voice wavered only slightly as she appeared to fight back tears when she described her rape, told how the man searched the house demanding jewelry and beat her brutally because he could not find a diamond wedding ring.

“I said, ‘I swear I don’t have it.’ He hit me again and said, ‘Swear upon Satan.’ ”

The woman, who stands 4 feet, 11 inches, said her tall assailant bound her legs as well as keeping her hands cuffed behind her back and dragged her to another bedroom where he raped her and forced her to perform oral copulation on him. She said he also attempted to sodomize her.

During the assault, she said, “I could see him so clearly. . . . I saw his face. . . . He slapped me and said, ‘You bitch, don’t look at me.’ ”

Child Begins Crying

During the night of terror, she said her second child, a 3-year-old son, awoke and began crying. She said she begged the assailant to let her go in and comfort the child, which he allowed her to do.

“I cannot comfort him (her son) with my hands because of the handcuffs, so I just put my head on him,” she said.

She said the child later awoke again and wandered into the room where his mother lay naked and handcuffed.

At that point, she said the assailant also tied up the child.

After the assailant left, she said she was able to untie her son and told him to go and wake his father.

‘Daddy’s Not Waking Up’

“I could hear him (saying), ‘Daddy, wake up.’ He came back and said, ‘Momma, daddy’s not waking up.’ ”

Then, the woman said she began screaming loudly for her neighbors, and urged her son to rouse them when they did not answer.

“He was so scared because I was screaming. He said, ‘No, momma. I stay with you.’ ”

Then she said she told the child the neighbors would give him candy and ice cream and he went to summon them.