Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez
[5] was born in
El Paso,
Texas, on February 29, 1960, to Julián Tapia Ramirez (February 16, 1927 – August 19, 1991) and Mercedes Muñoz Ramirez (April 10, 1927 – April 12, 2016), the youngest of their five children.
[6][7] His father, a Mexican national and former policeman who later became a laborer on the
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway,
[8] was an
alcoholic who was prone to fits of anger that often resulted in
physical abuse towards his wife and children.
[9] Ramirez was brought up a Catholic and began smoking
marijuana and drinking
alcohol at the age of 10.
[10][11]
Psychiatrist
Michael Stone describes Ramirez as a "made" psychopath as opposed to a "born" psychopath. He says that Ramirez'
schizoid personality disorder contributed to his indifference to the suffering of his victims and his untreatability. Stone also stated that Ramirez was knocked unconscious and almost died on multiple occasions before he was six years old, and as a result "later developed
temporal lobe epilepsy,
aggressivity, and
hypersexuality."
[12]
At age 12, Ramirez was taken under the wing of his older cousin, Miguel "Mike" Valles,
[13] a decorated
Green Beret who himself had already become a serial killer and a
rapist during his service in the
Vietnam War. Mike often boasted of committing brutal
war crimes and shared
Polaroid photos with Ramirez showing Vietnamese women whom he had raped, murdered and
dismembered or
decapitated.
[14] Ramirez would later state while incarcerated that he was fascinated, rather than repulsed, by the images and stories Mike shared with him. Mike taught his young cousin some of his military skills, including stealth and kill tactics. Around this time, Ramirez began to seek escape from his father's violent temper by sleeping in a local cemetery.
[15] His father would tie him to a
crucifix in a cemetery overnight as punishment.
[16]
Ramirez was present on May 4, 1973, when Mike fatally shot his wife, Jessie, in the face with a
handgun during a domestic argument.
[17] Like the graphic photos and stories of his cousin's war crimes in Vietnam, Ramirez would later similarly remark that witnessing the murder was not
traumatic for him in any traditional sense, but rather a subject of fascination. After the shooting, Ramirez became sullen and withdrawn from his family and peers. Mike was later found not guilty of Jessie's murder by reason of
insanity, with the shooting attributed to
post-traumatic stress disorder from his military service; he was confined for several years at the Texas State Mental Hospital.[
citation needed]
Shortly after the shooting, Ramirez moved in with his older sister, Ruth, and her husband, Roberto, an obsessive
peeping tom who took Ramirez along on his nocturnal exploits.
[18] After Mike was released from the mental hospital in 1977, he sometimes accompanied Ramirez and Roberto on these voyeuristic walks, spying on women in the nearby areas through their windows.
[19] By the time Ramirez had turned 14 in early 1974, he began using
LSD frequently. He and Mike resumed bonding over their shared use of drugs and alcohol. It was during this period that Ramirez began to cultivate an interest in
Satanism and the
occult.
[20]
When he reached
adolescence, Ramirez began to meld his burgeoning
sexual fantasies with graphic violence, including forced
bondage, murder, mutilation and rape.
[21] While still in school, he took a job at a local
Holiday Inn and used his
master key to rob sleeping patrons.
[22] On at least one occasion, Ramirez
molested two children in an elevator at the hotel, but he was never reported or
prosecuted for this act. His employment ended abruptly after Ramirez attempted to rape a woman in her hotel room and was
caught in the act by the victim's husband. Although the husband beat Ramirez at the scene, criminal charges were dropped when the couple, who lived out of state, declined to return to Texas to testify against him.
[23]
Ramirez dropped out of
Jefferson High School in the ninth grade.
[24][25] In 1982, at age 22, he moved to and settled permanently in
California.
[26] It was around this time that Ramirez began to use
cocaine, which quickly became his substance of choice, and began to commit theft and
burglaries to procure money for sustaining his addiction. He lived
nomadically between
San Francisco and
Los Angeles County during this time prior to his incarceration. He frequently traveled between the northern and southern areas of California both before and during his yearlong crime spree.[
citation needed]