By Ava Jackson
Hybristophilia: a sexual interest or attraction to those who commit crimes.
According to a 2012 article in Psychology Today by Dr. Katherine Ramsland, it says that women who are attracted to serial killers are simply "love avoidant."
They seek relationships that can never actually be consummated because of an underlying fear of intimacy.
A question that has been asked for years is, why do these women fall in love with individuals who have taken and ruined so many lives? According to Harpy Magazine, the reason women fall for these serial killers is because of something called a savior complex.
"They’re easier to empathize with, therefore easier to love."
A savior complex is a persistent need to heal or rescue damaged individuals. The women who fall for such men see it as their job to try and tame and nurture them. The case of the infamous serial murderer Richard Ramirez is a major example of hybristophilia. Google lists Ramirez as one of the most attractive serial killers after Charles Manson, which would explain his female cult following. Ramirez is known for his brutal slayings in California, but very little is known about the women who tried to save him. The women that fell head over heels for him. The woman who got the chance to marry him
They are the Night Stalker Groupies.
Richard Ramirez was born Ricardo Leyva Muoz Ramirez in El Paso, Texas on February 29, 1960. His parents, Mercedes Ramirez and Julian Ramirez, raised five children together. Robert, Ruth, Joseph, and Ruben. Each was born with a birth defect, including Richard, due to Mercedes's working in a boot factory and being exposed to chemicals during her pregnancy. At the age of 2, a dresser fell on his head, knocking him unconscious. This caused him to get 30 stitches on his forehead. Fast forward three years later, he suffered another head trauma, but this time from a swing, which also knocked him unconscious.
Most people believe that Richard's violent nature stemmed from his childhood. As a young child, Richard was exposed to violent acts within his household. He and his siblings watched their father bash his head in with a hammer. They also experienced their fathers’ horrible rage, which caused a tremendous amount of fear among the residents of California in the mid-1980s. The young felon would go from house to house, breaking inside of them, causing harm to the elderly and adolescents. No one was exempt from his brutality. Victims would identify him as good looking with foul-smelling breath. showing little compassion for their lives and leaving the surviving victims with the trauma of their acts. In 1985, when Ramirez was returning to California from visiting his brother in Arizona, his mug shot had been printed in every newspaper.
In Spanish, he is known as "El Matador," or "The Killer."
The locals shouted, realizing they’d come face-to-face with The Night Stalker. Richard Ramirez was then chased down, beaten, and cornered by an angry Mexican flock until the authorities arrived.
The nightmare was finally over. The infamous Night Stalker had finally been caught. He would never be free to harm anyone else again. He’d been put into a secluded cell where he couldn’t get to anyone, but this didn’t stop other people from getting to him. As news spread of his capture, so did his backstory. How did this 25-year old El Paso native become one of the most ruthless and infamous serial killers of all time? His hygiene was bad, his teeth chipped and crooked, yet women still found ways to look past all of it. With his capture being televised on TV screens everywhere in the United States, Ramirez’s identity and so-called charming good looks were finally exposed to all media platforms. These fetching facial features drew in women. These women would come to be known as his "groupies."
In the Netflix docuseries "The Night Stalker," reporter Tony Valdez for KTTV was quoted as saying:
"In all of my years of covering trials in Los Angelos, I never saw a defendant with more sex appeal than Richard Ramirez."
He was nicknamed "Death Row Romeo" because of the infamous crimes that landed him on the death row and the looks that attracted so many women to him. Ramirez gained worldwide fame for his dashing "good looks". A well-known groupie of Ramirez was Christine Lee, a single mother of two completely drawn to the physical appearance of the killer. She was a young, beautiful blonde, only 8 years younger than Richard. And despite the gruesome details of his crimes, women continued to sit in during his hearings, hoping to catch the murderer's eye. Of the tons and tons of mail the killer received, the majority were from women.
Cynthia Haden, the juror who sentenced Ramirez to the death penalty, was another one of Ramirez's regulars. She had begun to fall in love with the killer and started to get romantically involved with him, leading to her dismissal from jury duty. Cinthia sent Ramirez a cupcake on Valentine's Day with the words "I love you" written on it. Hayden continued her rendezvous with the devil-worshipping satanist, eventually introducing him to her parents. Though she thought she and Ramirez were exclusive, Cinthia was just one of many women who wanted a taste of the notorious Night Stalker.
16-year-old Eva, not to be confused with Eva Ortiz, exchanged poems with Ramirez at first for a school project. But then the exchange became much deeper, at least for Eva. She became obsessed with Ramirez, but not in the way most would. In a television interview with Christine Lee, Eva explained that she was interested in Ramirez, saying that:
"He broke away from the system."
In personal letters from Ramirez to groupies, he often asked very deep and personal questions. But what stood out the most was his obsession with women's feet. In many of the letters, Ramirez requests that these women send him foot photographs and have their toes painted red. He also wrote on a questionnaire that his favorite meal was "women’s feet." Groupies would send very explicit photos of themselves to the prisoner so that he could hang them up on his cell wall. But not all of Ramirez’s groupies were female; some male supporters would send him nude female magazines or bring along women to prison visits.
Ramirez's potential love interest, Eva Ortiz, was Ramirez's potential love interest. The punk rocker chick wrote numerous letters to the criminal, going into detail about her fantasies. She told Ramirez that she had always wanted to murder someone and had a fantasy that she and he would kill someone and
"Make love in a coffin filled with the victim's blood."
However, he talked her out of such acts, saying to Eva that he didn't want her behind bars. Ramirez proposed to Eva, but she declined, saying in a recent documentary, "Just A Guy,"
"He did eventually ask me to marry him, but I mean, I felt like I didn’t compete." I might’ve done it if he hadn’t opened his visitation, you know, but..... no. "
This was the last time Eva and I had any contact with one another. He continued to try to reach out to Eva by calling and sending her letters. Eventually, he stopped. It has been rumored that Ramirez cried when Eva left him.
Perhaps one of the most successful groupies of them all was Doreen Lioy. From the very first sighting of the serial killer, she began to write him over 75 letters, starting in 1985. Doreen wrote various articles on how she believed in Ramirez's innocence. Her statements would get her shunned by family and friends. In an interview with the "Examiner," Doreen confesses her love for Richard. saying that she loved him "more than anything in the world".
In a separate 1997 interview, Doreen told CNN that she "believed him" and that "he's kind, he's funny, he's charming."
Doreen visited Ramirez four times a week and did not have a doubt in her mind that her future husband was innocent. The two were married on death row in 1996 at San Quentin State Prison. Though Ramirez was married, he continued to have relationships with various women through letters and scheduled visits. Not much of Doreen's early life is known. She worked as an editor at Tiger Beat magazine and grew very close with "Full House" star John Stamos. Stamos would later recall Lioy as a
"Very lonely woman", and this would later show in her choice of a future husband.
What could attract these women to this mysterious figure? Ramirez was known to have a very unhealthy diet consisting of junk food and acidic drinks. His teeth, which earlier in his trial would help witnesses identify him, were decaying and his body odor would be recalled by some as "goat-like." Ted Bundy expert and author Kevin Sullivan told Oxygen:
"There were times when he smelled terrible, but once he was in court, he got cleaned up and stayed clean."
This still doesn’t tell us what made him so appealing to these women. Criminologist Scott Bonn would go on to tell Oxygen.com that the reason Ramirez had women lusting after him was because of who he was. That it was charisma and good charm.
"I think his fangirl appeal had to do with the dark, mysterious way he presented himself, including sunglasses, dark clothes, long dark hair, and brooding death."
These women were eager to become engulfed in the shadow of this glorified dream boat. Like devoted church attendees, they visited the killer, flashed him their private areas when possible, and even went as far as asking him for his reproductive fluids. Why couldn't anybody understand them? Why was it that all they could think about were these women embarrassing themselves?
Most of his crimes were centered around raping and harming women. Yet women still swarmed around him like bees to honey.
You’d think after his death in 2013 from B cell lymphoma, his groupies would scatter. But since the 2021 documentary about the killer was released, a new generation of his groupies has come together and bonded. Yes, bonded, through Instagram group-chats, Twitter feeds, and even away from social media. The allure of Richard Ramirez has yet to die. These up and coming, young groupies continue to keep his infamous legacy alive.
From Europe to Brazil, his groupies are international. But this new generation of groupies is nothing like the older ones. With all of the new technology out nowadays, their passion for the killer can now be displayed for the entire world to see. By making edits to fan accounts and buying merchandise to show their devotion. Some have even gone as far as changing their life-long religions just to be Satanists. Such groupies can be found with just a "Richard Ramirez" word search on Instagram. Others cannot due to the criticism that comes with idolizing such a man. In researching hybristophilia, I’ve encountered a lot of his groupies personally. When asking several of them why they were interested in the killer, most of their answers were about his appearance.
His appearance caught my attention at first, "
opined a Twitter user."
"He was open-minded and didn’t care what anyone thought."
An Instagram user by the name of Malak, who reached out to me personally, says she likes Ramirez because:
"He’s a good person and his past was so hard."
Other groupies related to his sad backstory and childhood. They sympathized with that child inside of Richard that never actually had a chance in life.
"As I researched him, I found out that our childhood traumas are mostly the same.”
But the attraction to Richard Ramirez doesn’t just stop at women. Men are drawn to him not because of his appearance, but because of his crimes and image.There have been several accounts of Richard Ramirez copycats in what is called the "Richard Ramirez Fandom." These men take on the identity of Richard and use it to lure in young minors. They also make fake accounts in which they post edgy pictures dressed as the serial killer in hopes of capturing the likes of other groupies.
Even after hybristophilia had been diagnosed, outsiders couldn’t fathom it. Such young, beautiful women are putting their reputations on the line to show love and dedication to an emotionless, cold human being. And men want to pay tribute to the man by being edgy and emulating Ramirez’s alleged satanic beliefs. One thing is for sure: the appeal of Richard Ramirez is something that’s been around for years, and as long as there are people out there who romanticize and idolize him, his infamous, monstrous crimes will forever be enabled by the ones known as... The Night Stalker Groupies
Editor's note: this article ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is reproduced as written. Richard Ramirez is recorded in this archive at thirteen to sixteen or more deaths; he was convicted in 1989 on thirteen counts of murder and sentenced to death, and he died of cancer at 53 in June 2013 with the sentence never carried out. The piece is about the women who wrote to him, and two details in it should be read carefully. Cindy Haden sat on the jury that convicted and condemned him and visited him afterwards, which is extraordinary but is not in dispute. Doreen Lioy married him at San Quentin in 1996 and maintained he was innocent; that was her belief, not a finding, and the convictions stand.