Night Stalker serial killer Richard Ramirez dies Ramirez was captured and beaten in 1985 by residents of an East Los Angeles neighbourhood while attempting a carjacking. At his first court appearance, Ramirez raised a hand with a pentagram drawn on it and yelled, "Hail, Satan." After a four-year trial - one of the longest in US history - Ramirez was sentenced to death in 1989. He also was convicted of many sexual assaults and burglaries. In 2006, the California Supreme Court upheld Ramirez's convictions and death sentence. In 2009, San Francisco police said DNA linked Ramirez to the April 10, 1984, killing of nine-year-old Mei Leung. She was killed in the basement of a residential hotel in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighbourhood where she lived with her family. Ramirez had been staying at nearby hotels. Ramirez previously was tied to killings in Northern California. He was charged in the shooting deaths of Peter Pan, 66, and his wife, Barbara, in 1985 just before his arrest in Los Angeles, but he was never tried in that case. In 2007, the US Supreme Court refused to review the convictions and sentence.