Ramirez Is Identified as Stalker by Victim

He had her jewelry and her money. But he wanted more. Grabbing the handcuffed 62-year-old nurse by her hair, he demanded, “Where’s the rest of it!”

“That’s all there is,” she told him.

Then the cool-headed Monterey Park woman, who lived alone, suggested that he also take her car--knowing that it was prone to breakdowns. Had the intruder done so, the woman said drolly in Los Angeles Superior Court, “You would have caught him that night.” She said her car “stalled at every corner.”

Identifies Ramirez

The nurse calmly identified the man who robbed and sexually assaulted her in the pre-dawn hours of July 7, 1985, as Night Stalker defendant Richard Ramirez.

Under questioning from Daniel V. Hernandez, one of Ramirez’s defense attorneys, the slightly nearsighted woman conceded that, in her initial report to Monterey Park police, she had said her assailant was Caucasian. Ramirez is Caucasian but also Latino. She did not have her glasses on during the attack.

But the witness stood by her courtroom identification of Ramirez. She also had identified Ramirez at a police lineup shortly after his Aug. 31, 1985, arrest and at the 1986 preliminary hearing in the case.

Recognition of Jewels

The woman, who concluded her testimony Thursday, also said Ramirez was able to instantly distinguish real diamonds from cubic zirconia, the popular imitation diamond.

The nurse said she was awakened about 3:30 a.m. when her bedroom light suddenly went on. In the doorway was a tall, thin man wearing black clothes and black gloves.

“If you make a sound, I’ll kill you,” he told her as he put a hand over her mouth and a handgun to her head, she said. Then he bound her hands behind her back with handcuffs.

As the intruder ransacked her bedroom, the woman slipped a diamond and sapphire ring off her finger and tried to toss it behind a bathroom sink. But he later demanded, “What did you do with the ring?” She nodded toward it.

The man then stuffed one of his gloves into her mouth and attempted to rape and sodomize her.

Cuffed to Bedpost

Before leaving with a pillowcase full of loot--including her wedding and engagement rings, which were never recovered-- he handcuffed the naked woman to her bedpost.

She said she was able to drag herself and the bed to a window, through which she summoned a neighbor, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, who went to her aid.

The woman is the fourth prosecution witness to identify Ramirez in the serial-murder trial, which began Jan. 30. Ramirez is also charged with murdering--on the same day--a Monterey Park woman who also lived alone just a mile or two away.

In all, the defendant, 29, faces 13 murder charges and 30 other felony charges stemming from a spree of brutal, nighttime residential attacks throughout Los Angeles County.