The Last Victim (19 page)

I tried to run away but I was frozen to the spot, unable to move, to speak, to act, to do anything but play the helpless spectator.
I could do nothing to save this little girl. I was too afraid and powerless to help.

The next thing I knew, Ramirez was pointing a gun at my head. He repeatedly screamed, “You are not one of us!
You
are not one of us! You are going to
die
!”

Two or three nights a week, for a period of months, I would awaken from this dream, drenched in sweat. I was completely disoriented,
unable to sort out what was real, whether any of this had really happened. Sometimes it was Ramirez who would see through
me; at other times Gacy, Manson, or Dahmer. In every case, I would suffer terribly for my betrayal.

Some nights, I can remember the sound of Gacy’s voice, calling out to me from a long prison corridor. “Jaaaason . . . Jaaaason.”
It would continue: “I see you. I am watching you. Come to me . . . ha ha ha. Don’t worry, boy, I will just come to you . .
.”

I remember almost being able to make out the face of the figure who stood at the end of the hall. Hearing the echoes of my
name, and the creepy sound of babies crying in the background, I’d soon awaken and not sleep again for the rest of the night.

I
f there was no respite during the night, the days were far worse. Gacy was pushing me for more and more attention, making
more bizarre demands. Ramirez, as well, was hungry to meet me and kept asking for my phone number. I was able to put him off
by telling him I didn’t have a phone.

Meanwhile, my family and friends noticed the strain I was under. At times I appeared vacant and distracted; more disturbing
were my overreactions to things that seemed quite ordinary to others.

One evening I was sitting in a movie theater with Jarrod, waiting for the film to begin. It’s common in Las Vegas theaters
to scan the audience, since there are frequent sightings of our more famous citizens such as Andre Agassi, Mike Tyson, or
Wayne Newton. As I was making my usual survey, I noticed one strange-looking man sitting by himself. He caught my attention
because there was a black bag placed protectively between his legs under the seat. I also noticed that he was looking carefully
around the theater, which seemed suspicious to me even though I was doing the same thing.

“Jarrod,” I whispered, “look at that guy over there.” I nodded my head in the man’s direction.

My brother briefly glanced over his shoulder, then resumed eating his popcorn.

“Jarrod!” I said more urgently. “Look, he’s checking everyone out who walks into the theater.”

“So what?” he mumbled with his mouth full, rooting around in the box for another handful of popcorn. “What’s the big deal?”

“Look at the bag he’s got on the floor. I swear, there’s something real weird about him. I bet he’s got a gun in that bag.
Maybe more than one. What if he plans on opening fire on everyone in the theater?”

My brother just shook his head with disgust. “Jason, just chill out. Come on. The movie’s about to start.”

“Listen to me,” I pleaded. “You know that I’ve been reading a lot about mass murderers and serial killers and I’m telling
you this guy has the look. These guys have some type of anger towards society. They just snap one day. They want to take out
as many people as they can before they kill themselves.”

Now Jarrod was angry. I know I was scaring him. “Jason, he’s a dork. He’s not going to hurt anyone. He’s just—”

The lights dimmed and the previews came on.

The longer I sat there, the more uneasy I felt. I could just sense that something wasn’t quite right with this man. I had
to do something.

“Jarrod, come on!” I demanded.

“What?” he said, really irritated with me now.

“Come on. We’re leaving. I’m not taking a chance that we could be hurt by some wacko. There are so many of these guys around.
They could be anywhere.”

I knew I wasn’t making much sense. A part of me realized I was probably overreacting. But I’d been so immersed in the world
of killers for so many weeks that now I saw danger everywhere.

When verbal persuasion failed, I grabbed Jarrod by the arm and yanked him up from his seat. He started yelling at me to leave
him alone. People stared. I noticed that even the weird man seemed embarrassed by the argument. Jarrod finally gave in and
left with me. He was so mad at me that he refused to talk to me for several days afterward. I realized then how much these
killers were getting to me. Whereas previously I’d been getting enough out of the protracted dialogues with Ramirez, Gacy,
Manson, and others to want them to continue indefinitely, now I felt an urgency to push things toward some sort of conclusion.
If I didn’t bring things to a close soon, there wouldn’t be much of my mind left.

Although Ramirez had been putting pressure on me, I decided to give it right back to him; I was tired of being coy. In my
next letter to him, I asked what it was like to be in prison. I wondered how he dealt with all the everyday strains. I wanted
the reassurance that no matter how much I was suffering, he had it far worse.

“It’s frustrating in here, for sure,” Ramirez answered. “But even though I’m here, Evil lives in the world. As it should.”

Then he signed the brief note, “Alive in the grave, R.”

From this point on, Ramirez and I continued to write back and forth. In each letter I focused on a few questions I was curious
about, all under the guise of being a devoted, concerned protégé who wanted to understand his world. Inevitably, he’d comply
with my request for information, but always in brief, enigmatic answers that had the word “evil” embedded in the message somewhere.

Like any good behavioral psychologist, I rewarded him, each time he cooperated, by sending more photos of models who he believed
were in my cult. He must have thought I’d discovered Lucifer’s little black book, so numerous and gorgeous were the women
I’d managed to conscript.

Of all the letters I received from Ramirez, the one I found most fascinating was written on his own letterhead. On the top
of the page it proclaimed: “From the domain of the Night Stalker.” In the body of the letter, he apologized for not having
written in a while: “They took away all my stuff for 10 days. They accuse me of some bullshit. Thanks for the great pictures.
She’s lovely. You are lucky. Morals, scruples and all that other shit are just words to make people feel better about themselves.
Enclosed is a flyer from a Satanic group in Florida. . . . Say hi to Jodie for me.” (Jodie was supposedly one of the girls
in my cult, the most beautiful model of all from the photographs I had available. I told Ramirez she was completely in love
with him and hoped to one day meet him in person.)

The rest of this letter was taken up with diligent answers to each of the questions I’d asked him—he really was being most
cooperative. I first asked him about the type of power he felt when he was taking the life of an innocent woman with his bare
hands. To my surprise, he answered very directly: “The power is indescribable. But it’s there. As for now, I can only fantasize.
That’s why this lifestyle sux. But out there, you can feel the draining of their energy, the total ecstasy. Get your mind
into it. Savor it.”

He included many graphic drawings in his letters to me. Sometimes the pictures were satanic symbols, or images of dismembered
women. In one case he sent me a self-portrait in which he appeared as a manifestation of the devil. One hand is raised in
defiance, middle finger extended, the numbers “666” etched on the palm. In another drawing he called “Trophy Collection” there
was a mantel with a female torso on top. The body was severed in half, with both arms amputated as well. Blood dripped from
the body, onto the mantel, and then into space.

Another drawing he did for me was titled “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” Across the top and side of the page are the words to
a song, “I got pieces of April . . . over here . . . over there,” followed by musical notes surrounding the words. In the
center of the page are pieces of a woman’s body—a female head, torso, buttocks, leg, and arm—all severed and mutilated.

Since things were heating up with Gacy, I decided to take a break from Ramirez for a while, in the same way that I’d cut things
off with Dahmer. My excuse for not being able to write for a while was that I was going to jail for beating my girlfriend.
I felt that this was something he’d understand and appreciate.

In spite of my resolution to set some limits on myself, I was surprised how hard it was to let go of Ramirez. He’d been the
most cooperative of all my correspondents, willing to talk about almost anything I asked him about. Yet as much as I was learning
from him, I was paying a price with my own sanity.

There was no way I could keep juggling all these relationships at the same time. Gacy was the first person I contacted and
I’d already invested a great deal of time and energy in that relationship. Moreover, he was becoming more and more demanding
of my time. I figured that once I stabilized things with him, I could return to Ramirez.

In spite of this resolution, I found myself thinking again and again about the Night Stalker—about the opportunity he represented.
Many times I thought about writing him again, but I’d restrain myself, remembering what happened the last time we’d been in
close contact. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I wrote him again after a month-long interlude.

“Richard,” I greeted him, “I’m back, and ready for the Dark Lord. I was in jail because I beat the shit out of Tonya, but
that will not slow me down in any way. The urge becomes stronger, and our followers are waiting. I want to keep the letters
coming again. I want the teachings to continue.”

“Greetings,” he wrote back cheerfully, as if our month-long hiatus was perfectly natural. “Thanks for the $10. It’s been ages
since I last heard from you. Say hi to Tia for me. So you were in the slammer. That’s fucked. Did you ever get in touch w/Order
of the Evil Eye? Ever heard of Hand of Death? Thanks for the two pictures. That girl looks like she’s really enjoying it.
Seen any good movies lately? Send more pictures of girls w/their butts in the air and back of their feet showing. To be sure
I get them, send the pictures certified.”

He really liked the idea that I went to jail for beating my girlfriend. In fact, this appealed so much that he immediately
wrote again to get more details.

“What did you do to Tonya?” he asked. “Did you break her jaw? Did you stick needles in her feet and hands? Did you record
her howls?”

I found this very disturbing. Was he truly wondering what I did to her, or was he subtly suggesting things for me to do to
her in the future? I later learned that he was actually telling me what he wanted me to do to her on his behalf. I was now
his implement of destruction.

He sent me the guiding motto of his life, urging me to follow this sacred truth:

Grant me the serenity for what I cannot change

The courage to change that which I can

and the wisdom to hide the bodies of people I kill

If I wasn’t aware of the number and exact nature of the crimes he’d committed, I might think that he was pulling my leg. But
this wasn’t Ramirez’s way of elbowing me in the ribs, or winking at the mystique that had attached itself to him. He was
serious.

To learn more about the way he operated when he was in a killing mood, I went the indirect route once again, letting him know
that I was planning on performing a “sacrifice” of my own in the near future.

“What do you do right before you take the life of a victim?” I asked. “What goes on in your mind?”

“1st you have to be calm,” he advised me. “Then, you savor the moment, you smell the aroma of the moment, the electricity,
the blood, the beast.” He closed the letter by warning me to be careful, to make sure I “tidy up.” By this, he meant that
after I finished raping and killing my victim, I should cover my tracks and destroy any evidence that might link me to the
crime.

As I read this, I thought: What if I weren’t a kid trying to learn from these killers? What if I were really a budding killer
myself? Ramirez, Dahmer, Gacy, and Manson could supply me with all the motivation and ideas I’d ever need to carry through
on a plan of total destruction. It occurred to me that there probably
were
people out there who were serious about carrying on the work of these deranged killers. If I could access this “network”
so easily, why not them? It was an unsettling thought.

Shortly after resuming my correspondence with Ramirez, I was again feeling that I’d gone beyond what I could handle. The cumulative
months of receiving letters describing Manson’s insane views on the world, Dahmer’s attempts at seduction, Ramirez’s satanic
visions of murder, and Gacy’s sadistic sexual fantasies pressed down on me like a coffin lid.

With increasing desperation, a part of me groped for the sunlight, afraid that the old Jason might be irrecoverable.

“S
o how is your weekend?” Gacy asked during one of our usual Sunday morning chats. These conversations had by now become almost
routine.

“Fine,” I answered. “Didn’t do much. Had a report to do for school. Went out to eat with my family last night.” By this time
I was almost relaxed when we talked. Usually, about ninety percent of our conversation was about ordinary stuff anyway.

“Yeah?” Then out of nowhere: “How’s Jarrod doing? Did he play baseball this weekend?”

The alarms started going off. “He’s fine, I guess,” I answered testily. “As a matter of fact, he’s at practice now.” Gacy
always interpreted this sort of guarded response as jealousy on my part that he was directing so much attention my brother’s
way. I didn’t bother to set him straight.

“So how is
your
weekend going?” I said.

“It’s fine. I tried to catch up on some letters I hadn’t finished. There are so many people writing me these days.”