The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (75 page)

QUINTILIANO, Matthew

and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment. If nothing by reason of insanity. After three months of treatment, else, the verdict may have spared some future victims staff psychiatrists at a state hospital ordered his release, from the clutches of a bona fide “BLACK WIDOW.”

describing Quintiliano as “no longer a danger to himself or others.”

Remarried by 1983, Quintiliano had no more luck
QUINTILIANO, Matthew

with his second fling at matrimony than he had the first A 14-year veteran of the Stratford, Connecticut, Police time around. Served with divorce papers on February Department, Matt Quintiliano snapped one afternoon 11 of that year, he murdered his wife the next day and in May 1975 and accosted his wife outside the Bridgewas arrested on February 16, faced with another count port hospital where she worked, shooting her eight of first-degree murder. Held in lieu of $750,000 bond, times with a pistol. Arrested for murder (and fired from he was indicted, convicted on the charge, and confined his law enforcement job), Quintiliano spent three years to prison when psychiatrists agreed, this time, that he in custody before a panel of judges found him innocent was sane.

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R

RAGHAV, Raman

Still spending money by the cartload, Gilles de Rais On August 13, 1969, officials in Bombay, India, turned to alchemy and black magic in hopes of produc-announced that 40-year-old Raman Raghav had been ing gold from base metals. An aide, Gilles de Sille, con-sentenced to hang following his conviction of multiple ducted “scientific” experiments on the problem without murders. According to sketchy news reports, the defen-success, and his master soon fell in with charlatans dant openly confessed to slaying 41 men, women, and promising lavish rewards for a modest investment. Kid-children, his victims selected at random and slaughtered napped children, once mere playthings in a game of life for the sheer pleasure of killing.

and death, now became sacrificial objects in the pursuit See also SHANKARIYA, KAMPATIMAR

of boundless wealth. By 1439, Gilles de Rais was in league with Francisco Prelati, a defrocked Italian priest who guided him through ghoulish rituals, employing
RAIS, Gilles de

children’s blood in vain attempts to conjure gold from Born of French nobility in 1404, Gilles de Rais married a common iron and lead.

wealthy heiress at age 16, thus becoming the richest man A year later, Gilles ran afoul of the law on a trivial in France—some say in all of Europe. He was known as point when he sold his estate at Malemort to the trea-

“BLUEBEARD” for the glossy blue-black color of his surer of Brittany, Geoffroi le Ferron, in violation of the whiskers, and he moved among the highest circles in the royal injunction. More to the point, Gilles barred the land. As Marshal of France, he fought beside Joan of Arc new owner’s brother—a priest, Jean le Ferron—from at Orléans, fielding a personal army of 200 knights the premises, beating and caging him when he

against the English invaders. Following the coronation of demanded admission. Assaulting a priest left Gilles Charles VII, at which he personally crowned the new open to trial by the Catholic Church, which also filed king, Gilles retired from public life, dividing his time charges of sorcery and sexual perversion with children.

among five lavish country estates at Machecoul, Male-Torture was applied to Gilles de Rais, his servants, and mort, La Suze, Champtoce, and Triffauges.

four alleged accomplices in October 1440, producing a In retirement, Gilles squandered his wealth in extrav-variety of confessions. Gilles himself confessed to agant style, selling off some of his land to cover numerous murders, begging forgiveness from the par-expenses before his heirs obtained a royal injunction ents of his victims. On October 26, Gilles and two of barring further sales. On the side, he indulged a passion his associates were strangled to death, the nobleman’s for sadistic pedophilia, molesting and murdering peas-body partially burned.

ant children of both sexes to amuse himself. Gilles In retrospect, some historians regard the fate of admittedly patterned his life after that of the Roman Gilles de Rais as an ecclesiastical frame-up, noting that emperor Caligula, known for his debauchery and some of his lands were seized and sold by the church bloodlust in ancient times.

before his trial even began. Critics of this view point out
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RAMIREZ, Richard Leyva

that Gilles refused to confess under torture, pleading The action moved to Whittier on March 27, with 64-guilty on murder counts only when threatened with year-old Vincent Zazzara beaten to death in his home.

excommunication from the church. The conclusive evi-Zazzara’s wife, 44-year-old Maxine, was fatally stabbed dence, however, lay with the dismembered remains of in the same attack, her eyes carved out and carried from some 50 children found in a tower at Machecoul, and the scene by her assailant. The Zazzaras had been dead similar finds were reported from another of the defen-two days before their bodies were discovered on March dant’s estates. Published accounts of the case “credit”

29, and homicide detectives launched a futile search for Gilles de Rais with at least 200 murders, some reports clues.

quadrupling that figure, and he certainly qualifies as a On May 14, 65-year-old William Doi was shot in the major serial killer.

head by a man who invaded his home in Monterey Park. Dying, Doi staggered to the telephone and dialed an emergency number before he collapsed, thus saving
RAMIREZ, Richard Leyva

his wife from a lethal assault by the Stalker. Two weeks Los Angeles is the serial murder capital of the world. It later, on May 29, 84-year-old Mabel Bell and her takes a special “twist” to capture headlines in a city invalid sister, 81-year-old Florence Lang, were savagely where, by autumn 1983, five random slayers were at beaten in their Monrovia home. The attacker paused to large and killing independently of one another. In the ink satanic pentagrams on Bell’s body, drawing more on summer months of 1985, reporters found their twist the walls before he departed. Found by a gardener on and filled front pages with accounts of the sinister June 2, Lang survived her injuries, but Mabel Bell died

“Night Stalker,” a sadistic home invader with a prefer-on July 15.

ence for unlocked windows and a taste for savage muti-In the meantime, the Night Stalker seemed intent on lation. As the story broke, the Stalker had three weeks running up his score. On June 27, 32-year-old Patty of freedom left, but he was bent on making every Higgins was killed in her home at Arcadia, her throat moment count, and he would claim a minimum of 16

slashed, and 77-year-old Mary Cannon was slain in lives before the bitter end.

identical style less than two miles away on July 2. Five Unrecognized, the terror had begun a full year earlier days later, 61-year-old Joyce Nelson was beaten to with the murder of a 79-year-old woman at her home in death at her home in Monterey Park. The killer struck suburban Glassell Park in June 1984. Police lifted fin-twice on July 20, first invading a Sun Valley home gerprints from a window screen at the site, but without where he killed 32-year-old Chainarong Khovanath, a suspect for comparison, the clue led them nowhere.

beat and raped the dead man’s wife, and battered their By February 1985, police had two more murders on eight-year-old son before escaping with $30,000 worth their hands, but they were keeping details to them-of cash and jewelry. A short time later, 69-year-old Max selves. They saw no link, at first, with the abduction of Kneiding and his wife Lela, 66, were shot to death in a six-year-old Montebello girl, snatched from a bus stop their Glendale home.

near her school and carried away in a laundry bag, sexually abused before she was dropped off in Silver Lake on February 25. Two weeks later, on March 11, a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped from her bedroom in Monterey Park, raped by her abductor, and dumped in Elysian Park.

The Night Stalker reverted from child molestation to murder on March 17, shooting 34-year-old Dayle Okazaki to death in her Rosemead condominium and wounding roommate Maria Hernandez before he fled.

Hernandez provided police with their first description of a long-faced intruder, notable for his curly hair, bulging eyes, and wide-spaced, rotting teeth.

Another victim on March 17 was 30-year-old Tsa Lian Yu, ambushed near her home in Monterey Park, dragged from her car, and shot several times by the attacker. She died the following day, and her killer celebrated his new score by abducting an Eagle Rock girl from her home on the night of March 20, sexually abusing her before he let her go.

“Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez in court (Wide World API)
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RANES, Danny A. and Larry Lee

Police were still maintaining silence on the subject of on 13 murder counts and 30 related felonies. Two their latest maniac at large, but they began to feel the weeks later, on October 4, the panel recommended exe-heat on August 6 after 38-year-old Christopher Peter-cution for Ramirez, and he was formally sentenced to son and his wife Virginia, age 27, were wounded by death on November 7, 1989. “You maggots make me gunshots in their Northridge home. Descriptions sick,” he told the court. “You don’t understand me. I matched the Stalker, and he struck again on August 8, am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer shooting 35-year-old Elyas Abowath dead in his Dia-dwells in us all.” Outside the courtroom, he told mond Bar home and brutally beating the victim’s wife.

reporters, “Big deal. Death always went with the terri-That night, authorities announced their manhunt for a tory. I’ll see you at Disneyland.”

killer linked to a half-dozen recent homicides, a toll that Subsequently shipped to San Francisco for trial in nearly tripled in the next three weeks with fresh assaults the Peter Pan slaying, Ramirez was besieged by female and a new evaluation of outstanding cases.

GROUPIES lining up to visit him in jail. The competiOn August 17, the Night Stalker deserted his normal tion for his time, including brawls among his young hunting ground, gunning down 66-year-old Peter Pan at admirers, so disrupted jailhouse routines that his home in San Francisco. Pan’s wife was shot and Ramirez was moved to San Quentin in September

beaten, but she managed to survive her wounds, identi-1993, awaiting his trial on death row. Upon admis-fying suspect sketches of the homicidal prowler.

sion to “Q,” Ramirez was found to have a metal can-By August 22, police had credited the Night Stalker ister hidden in his rectum containing a key and a with a total of 14 murders in California. Three weeks needle and syringe. In June 1995, the San Francisco later, in Mission Viejo, he wounded 29-year-old Bill prosecution was postponed indefinitely, pending an Carns with a shot to the head, then raped Carns’s appellate ruling on his prior conviction, expected fiancée before escaping in a stolen car. The vehicle was sometime in the future.

recovered on August 28, complete with a clear set of fingerprints belonging to Richard Ramirez, a 25-year-old drifter from Texas whose Los Angeles rap sheet
RANES, Danny A. and Larry Lee

included numerous arrests for traffic and drug viola-Homicidal siblings, cousins, even parent-child murder tions. Acquaintances described Ramirez as an ardent teams are found repeatedly in the annals of serial mur-Satanist and longtime drug abuser, obsessed with the der, but the Ranes brothers of Kalamazoo, Michigan, mock-satanic rock band AC/DC. According to reports, present an apparently unique case of serial-killing Ramirez had adopted one of the group’s songs—“Night brothers who committed their crimes separately and Prowler”—as his personal anthem, playing it repeat-independently of one another, with no contact or con-edly, sometimes for hours on end.

sultation while the murders were in progress. One An all-points bulletin was issued for Ramirez on brother robbed and shot five men in 1964; the other August 30, his mug shots were broadcast on TV, and he raped and killed four women eight years later. Ulti-was captured by civilians in East Los Angeles the fol-mately, all they seemed to share in common was the lowing day, mobbed and beaten as he tried to steal a CHILDHOOD TRAUMA of abusive violence, fierce sibling car. Police arrived in time to save his life, and by Sep-rivalry (including separate marriages to the same tember 29, Ramirez was facing a total of 68 felony woman), and a taste for random murder.

charges, including 14 counts of murder and 22 counts Born a year apart on Kalamazoo’s east side, Danny of sexual assault. One of the murder counts was and Larry Ranes were the second and third of four chil-dropped prior to trial, but eight new felonies—includ-dren, battered incessantly by an alcoholic father who ing two more rapes and one attempted murder—were abandoned the family when they were 10 and nine added to the list in December 1985.