November 04, 2025

Richard Ramirez, the Prince of Darkness

10 minutes

Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network

Show Name: Real Cases, Fictional Minds

Episode Title: Richard Ramirez, the Prince of Darkness

You are listening to Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host Jaylli Kushi.

In this episode of Real Cases, Fictional Minds, we discuss Season 5, Episode 23, titled “Our darkest hour,” and Season 6, Episode 1, titled “The Longest Night,” and how they mirror the life of Richard Ramirez.

Segment 1: Prince of Darkness

This episode ends on a cliffhanger and continues into the next season. The BAU is called to Los Angeles to investigate a string of home invasions escalating into homicides. The city is in the middle of a heatwave and rolling blackouts. The killer uses darkness to get his advantage, and security systems go down, making it easy for him to get inside homes. It starts with him murdering a couple during a blackout, leaving their son alive to witness it. That's part of his MO, meaning method of operating. The BAU works with LAPD Detectives Matt Spicer and Adam Kurzbard and realizes that the killings are a part of a decades-long killing spree. The UnSub always strikes during blackouts and leaves a child witness behind. Garcia digs through crime data and finds similar murders years ago across multiple states, proving he was active long ago, stopped, and now returned. They focus on the first recorded blackout murders 25 years earlier. To stop him, local authorities cancel the remaining rolling blackouts, but it backfires, overriding the grid and causing a massive citywide outage. While digging into old cases, Garcia discovers that the UnSubs' first La victims were Joe and Sylvia Spicer, the parents of Detective Matt Spicer. Matt was the child left behind during that invasion. He has a sister, Kristin, and a daughter, Ellie. The BAU realizes the UnSub is tainting Spicer; he sees himself as the “creator” who made Spicer who he is. Now he's targeting Spicer's daughter and sister. When he learns this, Spicer returns to his childhood home with Agent Morgan, but things go horribly wrong. They find Kristin and Ellie tied up and the homeowners dead. The UnSub ambushes Morgon, knocks him out, and when he wakes up, he's tied with duct tape, forced to watch, just like the kids the UnSub leaves behind. Spicer enters and sees the UnSub pointing a gun at Ellie. Morgan pleads for him not to drop his weapon, but Spicer surrenders to protect his daughter. On his knees, he begs for their lives. The UnSub says, “Your sister grew up very pretty.” Spicer asks Morgan to promise Ellie will be okay. Morgan promises. The UnSub confirms it, then shoots Spicer point-blank. Kristin screams as the UnSub drags Ellie away, saying, “I don't usually take kids. This one's just special.” The episode ends with Morgan tied up, Spicer dead, Ellie abducted, and the rest of the BAU cut off by the blackout. The next episode, “The Longest Night,” picks up immediately. The BAE is still chasing the UnSub, who escaped from Spicer's childhood home with his daughter, Ellie. When the team arrives at the house, Morgan refuses medical help and focuses on finding the UNSUB. During her interview with the team, Kristin tells Prentiss the UnSub’s name, Billy Flynn, and that he drives an old, filthy RV. Garcia digs into his past and learns he's been killing for over 25 years. His mother, Nora Flynn, was a sex worker. As a kid, Billy hid in her closet and watched her with clients. When he was 13 years old, he murdered one of the men that his mother was working with. He was sent to juvenile detention and released at 18. His crimes ever since have mirrored his childhood trauma- leaving children alive to relive what he once saw. Flynn forces Ellie to help him with break-ins. When she tries to get help from a homeowner, warning him that she is being kidnapped, Flynn realizes she is trying to tip them off, and he kills the man for not letting her in. Ellie proves smart and brave; she tips off homeowners who then turn into victims, alerts one of the neighbors, and even uses a phone in one of the houses they break into to contact the police. Which they do arrive at the house she called from, but Flynn keeps slipping away, switching vehicles, staying one step ahead. Knowing he listens to the radio updates about his own case, the BAU uses the Emergency Broadcast System to speak directly to him. JJ goes on air, addressing Flynn by name, using Ellie's name to humanize her, and talking about his “mommy issues.” It works; he feels exposed and emotional, knowing that everyone listening can hear about his own personal life and issues. He brings Ellie to a church and leaves her there unharmed. She runs immediately after getting dropped off at a nearby house, pleading for help. After the homeowners alert the police, the team rescues Ellie. The team asks Ellie if she can remember anything about the car she drove in, and she does, helping them track it back to a house he has found. But Flynn takes another couple hostage inside their own home and demands to speak only with Morgan. Inside, Morgan finds him staring at family photos, haunted by guilt and trauma. Flynn confesses to killing his mother, thinking he was saving her, but he's still broken by it. Then he makes a move toward the hostages, forcing Morgan to shoot him. Flynn dies, and the hostages are freed. As the BAU regroups, Prentiss gets a call from the hospital: Kristin's lungs collapsed from her injuries. She didn't make it. When Morgan steps outside, Ellie runs to him and hugs him tight. He kisses her head and tells her the heartbreaking news. His bond with Ellie- built on his promise to Spicer and her strength through trauma- stays with us. It's a reminder that while the BAU can't save everyone, their fight is always for the innocent.

Segment 2: The Night Stalker

Richard Ramirez, famously known as the “Night Stalker,” was a serial killer and rapist who terrorized California during a 14-month crime spree from 1984 to 1985. His crimes were characterized by their brutality, sadism, and fascination with Satanism. Born in El Paso, Texas, on February 19th, 1960, Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez grew up in a violent household with an alcoholic father. He was the youngest of 5 children of Mexican immigrants. His home life was very unstable, and he reportedly experienced beatings and abuse. Sometimes, Richard would sleep in a cemetery to escape the violence. At the age of 2, he suffered a head injury from a dresser falling on his head that knocked him unconscious. At the age of 5, he suffered another head injury when he got hit in the head by a swing and again lost consciousness. Years following, he starts experiencing seizures, which are later diagnosed as temporal lobe epilepsy. When he was 12, he was deeply influenced by an older cousin, Miguel, who had served in Vietnam in 1971. At age 13, he witnessed his cousin shoot and kill his wife during an argument. He later described that the crime scene and the sight of murder excited him. These early exposures to violence are often cited in profiling Ramirez’s later behavior. In the mid-1970’s he dropped out of school shortly after his 9th-grade year. In 1978, he moved to Los Angeles and became a habitual drug user, using marijuana and cocaine. Although his first crime is not officially linked to him until 2009, he commits his first known murder around April of 1984, raping and stabbing 9-year-old Mei Laung in San Francisco. This was his youngest victim. Between 1984 and 1985, Ramirez terrorized Southern California and later into the Bay Area. He broke into homes late at night, often entering through unlocked doors or windows. His attacks were completely random, targeting men, women, children, and the elderly. There was no clear pattern to age, race, or background. He used a wide array of weapons, including handguns, knives, hammers, and a machete. He also used strangulation, stomped victims to death, and, in one instance, tortured a victim with an electrical cord. His first known murder happened in 1984, when he broke into a 79-year-old woman's house and attacked her. Over the following months, his spree escalated. At first, investigators had no clue they were dealing with a serial killer. But soon, strange similarities started popping up, like people being attacked in their own homes at night, signs of forced entry, and sometimes, pentagrams drawn on walls. In March of 1985, he attacked a married couple, Vincent and Maxine Zazzara. Maxine's body was mutilated, and he left a pentagram on the wall. The craziest thing about their case was that their bodies were found by their son, Peter, who was alive. Throughout the year, he had killed 2 other families and left their children unharmed, but made them watch. Investigators later realized that this behavior fit his chaotic, impulsive pattern, unlike most serial killers. They believed that leaving some children behind wasn't out of mercy, but it was a part of his twisted desire for control and fear. He wanted them to remember him, just like how he wanted to be remembered, though the panic he caused across California. Police from different counties were comparing evidence and realized they were all chasing after the same person. During these killings, he left behind shoe prints, fingerprints, and eventually, they even got a description of him. One survivor has seen his face. Her name was Inez Erichson. She was kidnapped and sexually assaulted in August 1985. She survived and was able to give a detailed description of him to the police. Detectives also found a unique Avia sneaker print at several crime scenes, one of the key pieces that tied everything together. But Ramirez was always on the move; one night, he struck in Los Angeles, and the next, he was hundreds of miles away in San Francisco. There was no pattern to predict, no clear target, just pure chaos. He became the face of evil, a killer who claimed to follow Satan, sometimes leaving symbols or shouting phrases connected to his beliefs during attacks. Police were desperate to find him, and the pressure was on. Finally, investigators got their big break. After finding a stolen car connected to one of the crimes, they lifted fingerprints from inside. The prints matched a man already in their system: Richard Ramirez. The next day, everything unraveled for him. Ramirez didn't even realize his photo was all over the news when he took a bus through East Los Angeles, but people recognized him. A group of citizens chased him down, beat him, and held him until the police arrived. At his trial in 1989, he was charged with 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries. The evidence was overwhelming- fingerprints, stolen items, and ballistic matches. In the courtroom, he stayed defiant, flashing pentagrams on his hand and yelling, “Hail Satan.” He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He never faced execution because he died in 2013 at the age of 53 from cancer while still on death row. The story of Richard Ramirez isn't just about the crimes; it's how terror can grip an entire city, how fear spreads faster than facts, and how ordinary people can be the ones to bring a monster down.

Segment 3: Compare and Contrast

The Criminal Minds episodes “The Prince of Darkness" and “The Longest Night” are inspired by the real-life serial killer Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker. In the show, the BAU hunts a killer named Billy Flynn in Los Angeles during a blackout. Richard Ramirez committed all of his crimes in Los Angeles, and he did all of them during the night so he wouldn't be seen. They both break into homes at night, kill anyone in the house, and sometimes leave behind a child witness. Ramirez's crimes were far more brutal and chaotic. He terrorized California, breaking into homes, killing and assaulting people of all ages, and leaving behind satanic symbols. Unlike Flynn, he did not choose victims based on emotion or personal history; he attacked completely at random. The show gives its killer a tragic backstory and ends with the BAU taking him down, while Ramirez's story ends very differently. He was identified through fingerprints, recognized by people on the street, and caught by citizens, not the police, at first. In the end, Flynn's story was written to feel psychological and redemptive, but Ramirez's story was pure evil, proving that what happens in fiction is terrifying, but what happens in real life can be even worse.

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