Surprise Data Challenges ‘Night Stalker’ Trial Alibi

Contradicting the alibi testimony of Richard Ramirez’s father, medical records introduced in court Thursday show that the serial-murder suspect could not have been in Texas in late May of 1985, when two “Night Stalker” attacks occurred, because he was in Los Angeles receiving dental work.

The surprise evidence is directly at odds with the May 11 testimony of Julian Ramirez-Tapia, who had told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury that his son was in El Paso visiting relatives at the time.

The senior Ramirez testified that his son had arrived in Texas on May 23 or 24, 1985, for a family gathering to celebrate the first communion of the senior Ramirez’s granddaughter.

Although Richard Ramirez did not actually attend the ceremony, Julian Ramirez-Tapia said he saw his son on each of the eight or nine days that Richard Ramirez was allegedly in El Paso.

Two of the 15 Night Stalker attacks for which Ramirez is charged, including one murder, occurred in that time span.

But on Thursday afternoon, Dr. Peter Leung, a Los Angeles dentist, produced records to show that he had treated a man whom he identified in court as Richard Ramirez on numerous occasions in the spring of 1985, including May 17, 21, 23 and 30.

Leung, testifying through a Cantonese interpreter, said he knew Ramirez as Richard Mena, one of apparently many aliases used by the defendant.

But there is no doubt, based on dental X-ray comparisons, that Mena and Ramirez are one and the same person, according to a second prosecution rebuttal witness, Dr. Gerald Vale, director of dentistry at County-USC Medical Center.

Vale, a forensic dentist, said he arrived at that conclusion after comparing Leung’s X-rays of Mena with the X-rays he himself took of Ramirez. Vale said he stopped counting after matching 73 points of comparison.

Leung’s name came to the attention of the Night Stalker task force investigators on June 15, 1985-- more than two months before Ramirez was arrested, according to Frank J. Salerno, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective who directed the interagency police task force trying to find the killer.

Child Attacked

It was on that day in Highland Park that Ramirez was stopped by a Los Angeles police motorcycle officer as he allegedly was fleeing from the scene of an attack on a child.

Ramirez, in his haste, had run a stop sign, and the officer stopped him for that infraction, unaware of the attack moments earlier, Salerno said outside court Thursday.

But Ramirez sprinted from the car and eluded police. In the car he abandoned was Leung’s business card, Salerno said. Ramirez has not been charged in the Highland Park attack.

Police subsequently staked out Leung’s Chinatown office, but Ramirez never returned. He was captured by citizens in East Los Angeles on Aug. 31, 1985.

Thursday’s testimony came in the waning days of the trial, which began on Jan. 30. Attorneys for both sides are expected to spend most of next week meeting with Judge Michael A. Tynan to hash out the wording of jury instructions.

In all, Ramirez, 29, is charged with 13 murders and 30 other felonies during a rampage of night-time attacks throughout Los Angeles County, mostly in the spring and summer of 1985. If convicted, he could receive the death penalty.