Early Life
Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas, the youngest of Julian and Mercedes Ramirez's five children. His father, a policeman who later became a laborer on the Santa Fe railroad, was abusive and believed in corporal punishment.
Ramirez may have been influenced into killing by his cousin, Mike, a Special Forces veteran who boasted of his gruesome exploits during the Vietnam War and showed him Polaroid pictures of his victims. These included pictures of the severed heads of Vietnamese women, who in other pictures had been shown fellating Mike. Ramirez was present the night Mike shot and killed his wife, and her blood spattered on Ramirez's face. Ramirez was 13 years old at the time.
Read more about this topic: Richard Ramirez
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)