California inmate sentenced to death for 1983 rape, killing dies

Richard R. Ramirez, who was sentenced to death for the 1983 rape and murder of a 22-year-old bank teller in Garden Grove, died in prison at age 66 on Sunday, May 24, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.

He died at a medical facility, authorities said, with his cause of death to be determined by the San Joaquin County coroner’s office.

He was not the Night Stalker, who shared the same first and last names and was convicted of 13 murders and 30 other crimes committed up and down the state in the mid-1980s. That Richard Ramirez, also condemned to death, died in 2013 of natural causes.

Richard R. Ramirez was initially convicted and sentenced to death in 1985, with that set aside because of alleged jury misconduct; the jury foreman was accused of not disclosing he was a candidate for a job with the FBI, which he got.

But Ramirez was convicted again, in 2013, and again sentenced to die.

In November 1983, Kimberly Gonzalez was living in Norwalk when she met him at Mr. Barry’s bar.

The two played pool, danced and kissed before he walked with her to an alley behind the bar, where he raped and stabbed Gonzalez to death. Ramirez’s fingerprints and DNA were found on a nearby beer bottle.

There are 572 people condemned to death in California, though there is a moratorium on the death penalty in the state.

Source: mercurynews.com, Staff, May 27, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
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— Oscar Wilde

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