The young child in this picture went on to become one of the world’s most wicked men.

This kid was the youngest of five children born to a Mexican immigrant family in El Paso, Texas, on February 29, 1960.

The family was Catholic, and his father was a railway worker.

It appeared to be a normal working-class childhood in the American Southwest from the outside.

However, this child’s reality was anything from typical behind closed doors.

His father was a violent alcoholic who frequently abused him physically as a result of his angry outbursts.

Before turning six, the youngster sustained numerous head injuries and was knocked unconscious so frequently that he eventually got temporal lobe epilepsy.

Sometimes his father would tie him to a crucifix in a cemetery overnight as a kind of punishment, leaving the terrified youngster alone in the shadows between the gravestones.

He started drinking beer and consuming marijuana when he was ten years old in an attempt to find a way out of the violence in his home.

The transformation

According to Biography.com, the youngster was only 15 years old on May 4, 1975, when he witnessed something that would have broken most people: his elder cousin Miguel shot and ki**ed his wife Jesse in the face during a domestic dispute, directly in front of him.

The boy’s response was terrifying once more. He become gloomy and reclusive after the shooting. Miguel left Jefferson High School in the ninth grade after being found not guilty due to insanity.

He moved in with his sister and her husband Roberto shortly after, who was a compulsive “peeping tom” who accompanied him on nighttime voyeuristic excursions while spying on women through their windows.

Miguel occasionally accompanied them on these unsettling journeys after he was discharged from the mental hospital in 1977.

He had made California his permanent home by 1982, when he was 22 years old. Around this time, he started taking cocaine often, and it soon became his preferred drug.

He began committing thefts and burglaries to fund his addiction.

Between San Francisco and Los Angeles, he led a restless life without a permanent residence or job.

Although his criminal activity was getting worse, nobody could have foreseen what would happen next.

Reign of terror

Mei Leung, a nine-year-old girl, was the victim of his first known murder on April 10, 1984, in the Tenderloin neighbourhood of San Francisco.

Before hanging her partially nude body from a pipe, he r***d, stabbed, beat, and strangled her to death after luring her to a basement.

It wasn’t until 2009 that DNA evidence ultimately connected him to the crime.

He ki**ed 79-year-old Jennie Vincow in her Glassell Park flat two months later on June 28, 1984, by repeatedly stabbing her while she slept and severing her throat so severely that she was almost beheaded.

He then launched a wave of terror that would engulf California in fear for more than a year following a nine-month break.

He went on a murderous rampage that terrorised the entire state between March and August of 1985.

He would break into houses after dark, usually through unlocked windows or doors, and assault anybody he found inside. His method was unnerving in its randomness.

Elderly couples and young women were among his victims. He stabbed many, bludgeoned others with tyre irons and hammers, shot some and sexually molested countless others.

Satanic signature

His use of Satanic imagery was what made his actions more unsettling.

He used lipstick to draw pentagrams on victims’ bodies and walls. He made the survivors “swear on Satan” that they had nothing of value hidden. As he attacked victims, he would say, “I love Satan,” and insist that they declare their love for the devil.

He killed 64-year-old Vincent Zazzara and his 44-year-old wife, Maxine, in one especially horrifying attack.

He disfigured Maxine’s body after killing her by cutting an inverted cross into her chest. He then gouged out her eyes and put them in a jewellery box, which he kept as a hideous memento in his apartment.

He used a hammer to beat 83-year-old Mabel Bell and her 81-year-old sister Florence Lang, shocked them with an electrical line, and then rap*d one of them.

He used lipstick to draw Satanic pentagrams on Bell’s thigh. Due to their injuries, both women passed away.

Joyce Lucille Nelson, 60, was stomped to death by him, leaving her face imprinted with his Avia sneaker.

The hunt

The media called him the “Valley Intruder,” the “Night Stalker,” and the “Walk-In Ki**er.”

One of the biggest police manhunts in California history was initiated. The investigation was directed by detectives Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno, who meticulously linked crimes from other jurisdictions.

A teenager managed to break free.

James Romero III, 13, was up late on August 24, 1985, when he heard unsettling sounds outside his Mission Viejo residence.

He saw the burglar driving off in an orange Toyota after spotting a man lurking nearby.

James committed the car’s make, model, colour, and part of its license plate to memory; these details would be important.

On August 28, the stolen Toyota was discovered abandoned in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. Police found a single fingerprint on the rearview mirror, even though the murde**r had tried to clean it.

According to Britannica, the print was linked to a 25-year-old vagabond who had a lengthy jail history for narcotics and traffic infractions.

His mugshot was made public by police on August 29, 1985.

At the press conference, they announced, “We know who you are now, and soon everyone else will. There will be no place you can hide.”

Identity revealed

Richard Ramirez was his name.

Unaware that his face was featured on television screens and in newspapers all over California, Ramirez boarded a bus to Tucson, Arizona, on August 30, 1985.

When he arrived back in Los Angeles the following morning, he passed the police officers stationed at the bus terminal.

A group of elderly Hispanic women recognised him as “el matador,” or “the kil**er,” when he entered an East Los Angeles convenience shop.

Ramirez ran away in a panic when he saw his face on the top page of the Spanish newspaper La Opinión with the headline “Invasor Nocturno” (Night Invader).

He tried to carjack cars as he rushed over the Santa Ana Freeway, but irate locals retaliated. Manuel De La Torre used a fence post to hit him over the head.

He was chased along Hubbard Street in Boyle Heights by a group of over 10 locals who battered and restrained him until the cops showed there.

Justice and death

Ramirez exhibited strange behaviour during his trial, which started in July 1988.

He shouted, “Hail Satan!” while holding up a hand with a pentagram on it during his first court appearance.

A cult-like following of Satan worshippers attended the events, and he wore black and dark sunglasses.

He was found guilty by a jury on September 20, 1989, of 13 murder charges, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries.

He was sentenced to death on November 7, 1989. His response was chilling: “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.”

His actions demonstrated “cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding,” according to the judge who maintained his 19 death sentences.

Ramirez never apologised.

He married 41-year-old Doreen Lioy, one of his supporters, in 1996 while serving nearly 24 years on death row at San Quentin State Prison.

He publicly boasted to prison guards about ki**ing “more than 20 people” while he was detained.

Richard Ramirez passed away on June 7, 2013, at the age of 53 due to B-cell lymphoma complications. He most likely passed away by himself in his locked hospital room, with no one claiming his body before it was incinerated.

It’s nearly impossible to connect the innocent face of the young boy in the picture with the monster he turned into.