Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more!
Families of Some “Night Stalker” Victims Had Warned Them To Lock Their Doors
California grandmother Joyce Nelson told her son she "wouldn’t want to be a prisoner in her own home” when he asked her to lock her doors with the "Night Stalker" on the loose.
In the summer of 1985, with the "Night Stalker" on the loose, Joyce Nelson’s son warned her to lock the doors of her Los Angeles County, California, home and keep the windows closed.
But the grandmother, who’d raised two boys on her own as a single mom, brushed off the warning.
“She told my dad she wouldn’t want to be a prisoner in her own home,” her granddaughter Colleen Nelson recalled on Peacock’s new two-part docuseries, Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes.
Three days later, 60-year-old Joyce would be dead, the latest victim of Richard Ramirez, a violent serial killer stalking the streets of Los Angeles, and known at the time only as the "Night Stalker."
Ramirez’s brutal crimes and the police effort to track down the elusive killer are the focus of the Peacock special, now streaming, which also includes haunting prison interviews captured with the murderer himself.
Ramirez was convicted of killing 13 people in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, sometimes targeting older couples or victims.
Joyce Nelson was "just amazing," victim's granddaughter says
Joyce, who was killed on July 7, 1985, had been beaten to death after Ramirez broke into her Monterey Park home.
“Her face was stomped on,” recalled Glynn Martin, a former sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department. “It was a brutal beating murder, a departure from shootings, which had been one of the other attributes of the murders that were being investigated.”
Colleen remembered her grandmother as a person who was “just amazing.”
“Whatever we wanted to do, she was right there with us,” she said. “Her house was just a place filled with so much joy, so much happiness. I can remember thinking at that time that everything was gonna be different.”
Joyce’s family members were far from the only ones to have a loved one ripped away by Ramirez’s horrific crime spree. Less than two weeks later, Ramirez killed Max and Lela Kneiding in their quiet Glendale community.
Max and Lela Kneiding "the glue for our family"
“It was beautiful, a very safe, just All-American neighborhood to grow up in,” their granddaughter Robin Sandoval recalled. “My grandfather was quite beloved, just a very gentle, church-going man, and my grandmother knew how to do everything.”
Sandoval remembers warning her grandmother to keep their doors locked about a week before they were killed,
“I told my grandma, 'You’ve got to lock your doors. There’s a weirdo running around San Gabriel Valley and he’s murdering people,'” Sandoval said. “She says, ‘I’m not locking my doors, I’ve never locked my doors in my life and I’m not about to do it now.’ And so, she didn’t.”
It would turn out to be a tragic mistake. The couple was discovered by their daughter dead in their home on July 20, 1985. They had been hacked to death with a machete.
“My grandparents were the glue for our family and the family very quickly started to fall apart a little bit," Sandoval said. "Nobody really knew what to do. It was so omnipresent in our lives."
Murders of Vincent and Maxine Zazzara "ruined our entire family"
Peter Zazzara lost his father Vincent Zazzara and stepmother Maxine Zazzara on March 27, 1985. Ramirez broke into their Whittier home that night and shot Vincent, who lay asleep on the couch, to death. Maxine tried to defend herself with a shotgun they kept in the home, but it didn’t fire. An enraged Ramirez then shot her three times and took out her eyes as a “souvenir,” according to forensic psychologist and author Joni Johnston.
“The loss of my dad was, well, it ruined our entire family, honestly,” Peter said on Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes. “I was about 25. We had a very close family and within a couple months, it was basically just dissolved.”
Circus around Ramirez case compounded trauma for families
The losses that all of the victims’ families suffered were made even more difficult to bear after Ramirez was arrested and became a celebrity of sorts, attracting a horde of female groupies desperate to get a glimpse of him.
“I was 18 years old at that time," Colleen told Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes. "It was really hard to be in that courtroom and to look at him knowing what he had done to my grandma. He was very arrogant and he had groupies and he would pull his glasses down and kind of check you out.”
For Sandoval, the hardest part of the 1989 trial was watching her mother get on the stand and testify about finding her grandparents dead in their home.
“She had to describe the scene of what she found,” Sandoval said. “There were so many questions for her and it was tragic to watch her and the victims go through it. It was horrible.”
Ramirez was convicted of 13 counts of murder and 30 other felonies.
About a week and a half later, he was sentenced to death.
"My own way to defy him"
Colleen gave a victim impact statement at Ramirez’s sentencing hearing.
“I felt like it was so important to be like a representative for my grandma,” Colleen explained on Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes. “It was just my own way to defy him, to share with the court how much we were going to miss out on because she was taken from us.”
Although it’s been decades since the brutal crimes were committed, the victims’ loved ones said their lives were forever changed by the gruesome acts of violence. But they've found ways to honor and remember their family members.
“My dad was a hero,” Peter said of his veteran father, Vincent. “I was thinking about all the good times we had, I was thankful for what we did have, because honestly, a lot of people don’t have that. I was lucky.”
Colleen’s family has also chosen not to focus on the violent way her grandmother died.
“There’s an amazing aspect to this story in my family and how they’ve survived," she said. "They’ve learned to forgive. They’re still teaching that to me all these years later.”
