When it comes to notorious serial killers Richard Ramirez name tends to be found at the top of the list. Richard Ramirez who the media dubbed The Night Stalker operated in California for only a few years but he left behind at least thirteen bodies in his wake. In this article on My Crime Library we are going to take a closer look at The Night Stalker
Richard Ramirez Childhood
Richard Ramirez was born in El Paso Texas on February 29, 1960 to Julian and Mercedes Ramirez, he was the youngest of five children. Richard father was former police officer in Mexico and would later work as a laborer on the Sante Fe Railway. His father was know to be physically abusive towards his family.
Richard Ramirez would idolize his uncle Miguel (“Mike”) Ramirez a former Green Beret who would share with the ten year old child his exploits during the Vietnam war. He would also share photographs of women he had raped and murdered during the war. The uncle would also allow Richard to smoke marijuana with him while he was just ten years old.
When Richard Ramirez was thirteen years old he watched his Uncle Miguel shoot his wife in the face causing her death. Miguez Ramirez was arrested and charged with the murder however would get off on an insanity plea and would only serve four years in a Texas mental hospital.
When his uncle was sent to the mental hospital Richard Ramirez would move in with his aunt and uncle. Turns out the uncle was a sexual predator who would creep around the neighborhood peeping in windows and would often take the thirteen year old Richard with him.
When his Uncle Miguel was released from the Texas mental hospital his control over Richard continued.
Richard Ramirez would get a job while still a young teen as a cleaner at a Holiday Inn, Ramirez would use his passkey to steal from hotel guests. It was at this time he began fantasizing about rape and his interest in Satanism began.
Richard would be fired from the Holiday Inn after he attempted to rape a hotel guest. The woman’s husband would find the young teen attempting to sexually assault his wife and would beat the holy heck out of him however they lived out of State so declined to press charges
Richard Ramirez would drop out of school while in the ninth grade and would drift around until he moved to California when he was twenty two years old.
Richard Ramirez Murders
Richard Ramirez started off breaking into homes in the San Francisco area however that would soon change. The Night Stalker first victim was a nine year old girl who he would rape and murder before hanging her body from a pole. This crime would go unsolved until 2009 when DNA from the crime scene would match Ramirez.
Over the next thirteen months Ramirez would break into homes where he would brutally attack the homeowners leaving many dead. Richard would use an assortment of weapons to perform his kills from household objects to knives to tools.
Eventually the police would obtain a sketch of what The Night Stalker looked like and soon a image of him would be posted across California. Richard Ramirez would eventually see his image and attempted to flee however a group of people caught him, beat him and held onto him until police arrived.
Richard Ramirez Known Victims
When it comes to Richard Ramirez victims it can be a bit difficult for as recent as 2016 more deaths have been linked to The Night Stalker
Jennie Vincow – Jennie Vincow was 79 years old when she was murdered in June 28, 1984
Dale Okazasi- Dale Okazasi was 34 years old when she was murdered on March 17, 1985. Ramirez would also attack her roommate but thankfully she survived
Tsai-Lian “Veronica” Yu – Tsai-Lian “Veronica” Yu was murdered on the same day as Dale Okazasi, Yu was dragged from her vehicle and killed
Vincent Zazzara – Vincent Zazzara was 64 years old when Ramirez broke into his home and murdered him while he slept
Maxine Zazzara – Maxine Zazzara was murdered at the same time as her husband on March 27, 1985
William Doi- William Doi was fatally shot in his home on the 14 of May 1985. He was sixty five years old
Mable Bell – Mable Bell was 84 years old and murdered in her home on June 29, 1985
Mary Louise Cannon – Mary Louise Cannon was 77 years old when she was murdered on July 2, 1985
Joyce Lucille Nelson – Joyce Lucille Nelson was 61 years old when she was beaten to death in her home in July 7, 1985
Max Kneiding – Max Kneiding was shot and stabbed with a machete inside of his home on July 20, 1985. He was 68 years old
Lela Kneiding – Lela Kneiding was murdered at the same time as her husband
Chainarong Khovananth – Chainarong Khovananth was shot and killed while he slept on July 20, 1985
Elyas Abowath – Elyas Abowath was killed on August 8, 1985 while Richard Ramirez broke into the home
Richard Ramirez Trial
Richard Ramirez would go on trial on July 22, 1988. Richard who would show up for the trial with pentagrams drawn onto his hands and yelling “Hail Satan”. A rather odd event happened a few weeks into the trial when one of the jurors was found dead in her home. Of course people speculated that Richard Ramirez was somehow responsible for the murder however it would turn out the woman was killed by her boyfriend who would later kill himself
Ramirez was convicted of thirteen counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, eleven sexual assaults and fourteen burglaries. At the time the Richard Ramirez trial was the most expensive in California history until the OJ Simpson charade.
Richard Ramirez would be sentenced to death and sent to California Death Row
Richard Ramirez Death
Richard Ramirez would spend twenty three years on California Death Row until his death on June 7, 2013. According to autopsy results Richards cause of death was complications with B-cell lymphomas, a form of blood cancer. It was also found that Ramirez was dealing with Chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis C
Brenda Spencer was sixteen years old when she shot and killed two people at a school in California. According to court documents she would open fire from her home aiming at young children waiting to get into the school. After all of the shooting was over the Principal and Janitor were dead, eight students and one police officer was injured. Eventually she was talked out of her home. When asked why she would do such a thing Brenda Spencer infamously responded “I don’t like Mondays”. This teen killer would be sentenced to twenty five years to life. Brenda Spencer is still incarcerated in California, forty years following the shooting
Brenda Spencer 2023 Information
Brenda Spencer – Current Facility – California Institute For Women – Parole Eligibility Date – 1993
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In a prison two-and-a-half hours from the scene of the UCSB murders sits the killer who started it all, with the first high-profile school shooting more than three decades ago.
“With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially responsible,” Brenda Ann Spencer told the parole board back in 2001. “What if they got the idea from what I did?”
Spencer was 16 on Jan. 29, 1979, when she opened fire with a .22 rifle on Grover Cleveland Elementary School across from her home in San Diego, killing the principal and the custodian while wounding eight youngsters and a police officer.
“I don’t like Mondays,” she famously replied when asked her motive.
Spencer has since said she does not remember making the remark that inspired a song by the Boomtown Rats and became a kind of anthem for many of the school shooters who followed. She has said she also does not recall telling a cop, “It was a lot of fun seeing children shot.”
During a 2009 parole hearing, her most recent, she insisted that she had not intended to shoot anybody.
“So, why did you commit this crime?” the head parole commissioner asked.
“Because I wanted to die,” she said. “I was trying to commit suicide.”
“Why pick the school across the street?” the commissioner asked.
“Because I knew that if I fired on the school the police would show up, and they would shoot me and kill me,” she said. “And every time I had tried suicide in the previous year I had screwed it up.”
“Why did you have to shoot the people at the school?” the commissioner asked.
“I wasn’t specifically aiming at people,” she said. “I was shooting into the parking lot.”
The commissioner inquired how many rounds she had fired, and she said she did not recall.
“Well, that’s pretty good shooting to hit as many folks as you did if you’re not trying to hit anybody from across the street,” the commissioner noted.
“I don’t remember aiming at anybody,” Spencer insisted.
“Do you remember them taking cover?” the commissioner asked.
“Vaguely,” she said.
The commissioner asked if she remembered the police coming, and she said she did.
“You hit one of those fellows, too,” the commissioner noted.
“Uh-hmm,” Spencer said.
The commissioner reminded her that she had eventually surrendered.
“[You] put your gun down,” the commissioner observed. “You didn’t follow through with your plan.”
“No, I had gotten scared,” she said.
“This gun was a gift?”
“Yes,” she responded.
“From whom?”
“My father.”
The commissioner observed that Spencer had described a dark side to her father, while others described him as a decent man.
“He liked to keep appearances up, that everything was fine in the house,” Spencer now said.
“What about your mother?” the commissioner asked.
“She just wasn’t there,” Spencer said.
“But your father was always there.”
“Yeah.”
“And apparently you two slept in the same bed?”
“Yes.”
She had submitted a written statement in which she alleged that her father had begun fondling her when she was 9 and had sexually assaulted her virtually every night.
The commissioner said they would get back to all that. He returned to the shooting.
“You didn’t go to school that day?” the commissioner asked.
“No, I wasn’t feeling good,” she replied.
She said she had been under the influence of alcohol, pot, and downers.
“They made me numb so I didn’t feel anything,” she said.
She confirmed that she had heard the kids in the school across the street.
“A lot of kids laughing and doing their thing?” the commissioner asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Did that upset you?”
“No.”
“It didn’t upset you that they seemed to have happier lives?”
“No,” she said. “I was just set on committing suicide.”
“I am sorry you had to go through everything you went through, but what I’m trying to do is find out why you would open fire and kill two people and hurt so many others,” the commissioner said. “You indicate you weren’t really trying to hit anybody—but you did a heck of a job of hitting a lot of people.”
“The only thing I was concentrating on was getting the police there so that they could shoot me,” she said.
“Well, you could have shot out one window of the school and the police would have come.”
“I didn’t think that.”
“You didn’t have any anger at the children?”
“No.”
“You weren’t trying to hit anybody?”
“Not that I remember.”
The commissioner asked if she recalled saying she had fired on the schoolyard because “I don’t like Mondays.”
“I might have said that,” she replied. “It would have been the drugs and the alcohol talking.”
The commissioner quoted the police negotiator’s report, which said she had told him, ”It was fun to watch the children that had red and blue ski jackets on, as they made perfect targets.” The negotiator added that she told him she “liked to watch them squirm around after they had been shot.”
“It’s entirely possible I said that,” Spencer told the parole board.
“Do you have any idea why you’d go out of your way to harm so many innocent people?” the commissioner asked
“I didn’t consider that other people would get hurt,” she said. “I didn’t think it all the way through”
“Several children were injured by gunshot wounds. The principal of the elementary school, Burton Wragg, age 53, had gone to the aid of the students and was subsequently shot himself,” the commissioner said. “Michael Suchar, age 56, school custodian, went to the aid of Mr. Wragg and was also shot.”
“Uh-hmm,” Spencer said.
“You’re shooting people as they come to the aid of others,” he said. “You’re shooting these people as they become targets, and yet you told me that you didn’t intend to hit anyone.”
“No,” she said.
“Are you pretty good with a rifle?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I guess.”
She was asked if any adults had seen danger signs before the shooting.
“A month before I was arrested, my [high school] counselor took me to see a psychiatrist,” she reported.
She said the psychiatrist had recommended she be hospitalized as a danger to herself and to others.
“My dad told them that nothing was wrong with me and everything was fine, and leave us alone,” she recalled.
That had been just before Christmas. She had asked her father for a radio.
“I don’t know why he bought me a gun,” she said.
The San Diego District Attorney’s Office sent a representative to the hearing. He informed the board that on the Saturday before the shooting Spencer had told another teen that something big was going to happen on Monday that would be on TV and radio.
“On Monday morning, January 29th, she asked her father if she could stay home from school because she didn’t feel well,” the deputy district attorney reported. “Her father left home for work around 7 o’clock in the morning. Then the inmate proceeded to commit one of the most notorious crimes in the history of this nation.”
He went on: “At 8:30 a.m., the children were lining up to enter Cleveland Elementary School… She picked up her .22 caliber, semiautomatic scoped rifle and began shooting children. Principal Burton Wragg heard the shooting and ran out to get the children out of harm’s way, and the inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. The head custodian, Michael Suchar, known as ‘Mr. Mike’ to the children, ran to Mr. Wragg’s aid, and the inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. She shot eight children, and she shot a responding police officer, Robert Robb, in the neck. But for the heroic efforts of a police officer who risked his life to drive a trash truck in front of her residence to block her field of fire, no doubt further children would have been shot.”
The D.A. representative added that Spencer had complained to the police negotiator that the custodian had tried to get everybody off the school grounds.
“She shot him because, by her own words, he was making it more difficult for her to shoot the kids,” the representative said. “The number of shots fired and the number of vital hits speaks of incredibly accurate, directed shooting, and these were moving targets.”
The representative further reported that blood and urine samples taken after Spencer’s arrest tested clean. He concluded that no drugs or alcohol had been talking when she said she just didn’t like Mondays.
“Basically, what she’s telling this board are a series of untruths,” the representative concluded.
A lawyer representing Spencer spoke next. He suggested that the testing of the time may have simply failed to detect the intoxicants. He allowed that Spencer’s father had never “owned up” to sexually abusing her. But the lawyer also noted that while visiting Spencer at a juvenile-detention facility after her arrest, the father had met a girl who resembled his daughter, but was younger.
“[The father] then went on and had a sexual relationship with her and married her,” the lawyer alleged.
The commissioner read into the record several victim-impact statements. One was from Wilfred Suchar, son of the murdered custodian, Michael Suchar. He said his wife had heard on the radio of a shooting at the school and called him at work. He had gone to his parent’s home to tell his mother, Valentina.
“We found her singing as she gardened in the backyard,” the son recalled. “We were all very upset and shocked on the way to the hospital, because no one would tell us Michael’s condition. When we arrived, we found him not in the hospital room, but down in the basement, dead. He had died trying to help the children and Principal Wragg, killed by Ms. Spencer trying to liven up her Monday.”
He said that his mother never recovered.
“She was lonely and scared, and became more and more depressed,” he said. “There didn’t seem much I or the rest of the family could do to help her.”
He went on to say that his father “had gotten out alive from some rough times in the Pacific during World War II. He was then a part of the Allied occupying forces in northern Germany. Here he met his wife-to-be, Valentina. She, because of the language and cultural differences in the United States, always counted on him to manage their affairs. Suddenly, he was gone. I think her premature death in 1991 was at least partly the result of this traumatic experience.”
He ended by saying on behalf of his deceased parents and the surviving members of the family that they opposed parole for Spencer.
“My question is, will there be another boring Monday for her?” he asked.
The custodian’s brother, Andrew Suchar also submitted a statement, noting that Michael had survived two ship sinkings during the war only to be killed by a 16-year-old in a schoolyard. The brother said that although his widowed sister-in-law lived until 1991, “her life actually ended in January 1979. The victims are not only those killed, but the survivors who live the tragedy for the rest of their lives.”
And then there was a statement by Steve Wragg, son of Principal Burton Wragg.
“My dad and Mike were the only two to die that day,” he said, “The kids that they were trying to save all lived. Some of them were seriously injured, but all survived. I hope that somehow my dad and Mike know this.”
There was also a statement from the principal’s daughter.
“People have told me that I look like him, act like him, that my kids are the spitting image of him,” she said. “When the kids hear this, they can’t possibly relate to such statements, because they have never met their grandfather, and they know they never will, because I’ve told them over and over again that he is dead, that he was murdered by Brenda Spencer.”
The daughter spoke of scattering her father’s ashes in the desert.
“The place he loved the most. The small ceremony solidified my understanding of love and eternity, and of our ties to one another as human beings. Yet, while it was all happening, so beautiful, so serene, I couldn’t get over the perverse violence associated with my dad’s passing. I still can’t.”
She described going to the school to collect her father’s personal effects
“The blood hadn’t been scrubbed from where he had fallen on the concrete. I walked around this place, not stepping on the splotches and the puddles, and didn’t want to be hugged by anyone. Nothing can console me ever.”
She then spoke words that have gained ever more truth after ever more mass shootings.
“A person can be attending school and be gunned down.”
She added, “It happened here first.”
Other statements came from children now grown.
“My name is Crystal Hardy,” one began. “I was 10 years old when I was shot by Brenda Spencer.”
She described arriving at school and hearing shots and seeing the principal and the custodian lying dead. A teacher had called for her to duck.
“But I wasn’t able to run from the bullet Brenda had for me,” Hardy said.
She recalled lying in the nurse’s office, bleeding as bullets crashed through the window.
“I was greatly comforted when the policemen arrived to carry me away. I can still remember the pool of blood on the nurse’s bed, and the terror didn’t end there. Later, of course, I had nightmares, and to this day I fear that someone is pointing a gun at me when I’m walking in open places.”
“And recently, my boyfriend wanted me to go to a shooting range with him because it’s a sport he enjoys, and although I was hesitant, I thought, ‘Well, it’s been a long time, I’ll probably be OK.’ And I sat there as he shot the silhouette, but he had to stop because I started frantically crying. It was completely uncontrollable.”
There was also a statement by a parent, Francis Stile, whose two daughters attended the school. He recalled “the phone call from the neighbor who said there had been a shooting at Cleveland, the frustration of not being able to get near the school because the incident was still going on, the terror in my wife’s eyes, her screams of anguish at not knowing whether our girls were involved, the phone call from the hospital telling us that one of them had been wounded, looking at the bullet hole in her right elbow and the bullet burns on the inside if each thigh where a bullet had passed between her legs.”
The other daughter had been saved from harm when a notebook with a pouch of pens stopped a bullet. Both girls had witnessed the death of the principal and the custodian.
“They still speak of hearing the gurgle in Mr. Wragg as he lay there dying… If such evil can occur in such a benign and tranquil setting, then it can happen anywhere and probably will.”
A former student named Cam Miller attended the hearing in person and offered the last statement.
“I was 9 years old when I was shot,” he began.
He recalled that his mother had just dropped him at school directly opposite Spencer’s home and he had been starting up the sidewalk when he saw the bodies of the principal and the custodian. He had then blacked out as a bullet passed within an inch of his heart, exiting his chest. He survived but remained terrorized.
“I would have to call to my mother two or three times each night to walk me around the inside of my house, just so I knew that Brenda Spencer was not inside my house,” he recalled.
He had been called to testify against her.
“I walked into court and saw this monster glaring at me,” he remembered. “The look at Brenda Foster gave me was enough to scare any young child to death.”
Thirty years later, Miller beheld her in another proceeding and asked the board not to parole her. The board denied her and she will not be eligible for another hearing until 2019.
In the meantime, she will sit as inmate W14944 in the California Women’s Institution, seeming to see no irony in having used heated metal to brand the words “Courage” and “Pride” across her chest. She is now 51 and will no doubt hear of more school shootings and ask herself if they got the idea from what she did on that long ago Monday.
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Brenda Spencer is currently incarcerated at the California Institute For Women
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Brenda Spencer has been eligible for parole since 1993 however has been denied repeatedly. Her max sentence is life
Tylar Witt was just fourteen years old when she planned the murder of her mother. According to court documents Tylar Witt was dating a much older teen and when her mother learned that her daughter was sexually active she was going to press statutory rape charges against the boyfriend. So the teenage girl planned the murder of her mother. In the end Witt mother would be brutally stabbed to death in her bedroom. This teen killer would end up testifying against her boyfriend and in exchange she received a lesser sentence of fifteen years to life
Tylar Witt was 14 when she helped her boyfriend murder her mom. And on Friday she got a reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against her love-struck accomplice.
Witt, now 16, got her conviction reduced from first-degree to second-degree murder, while Steven Colver, now 21, was sentenced to life without parole for the murder of 47-year-old Joanne Witt in 2009. Witt will now serve 15 years to life in prison.
The teens hatched the murder plot after Joanne Witt made a statutory rape complaint against Colver and gave police her daughter’s diary.
During the sentencing hearing Friday in Placerville, Calif., Michael Witt – who mopped up his sister’s blood from her bed after she was stabbed 20 times – unleashed his anger, calling Colver a “psychotic S.O.B.”
“I hope and desire that Mr. Colver experiences the worst possible experiences our wonderful prison system can bestow upon him,” Witt said, according to the Sacramento Bee.
El Dorado Superior Court Judge Daniel Proud told Tylar she deprived her family of a mother “who dedicated her life to you.”
“Joanne Witt loved her daughter,” the judge said. “She was a protective and caring mother. She tried her best. I’m sorry Ms. Witt because the person who loved you more than anyone in the world, without reservation, is gone.”
Tylar’s grandfather, Norbert Witt, accused Colver in court of both murdering his daughter and of corrupting his granddaughter by exposing her to “heavy narcotics and sex.”
Jan Colver vowed to appeal the decision, saying she still believes her son’s story that Tylar stabbed her mother before Steven even arrived at the house.
Tylar testified at Colver’s trial that they planned to commit the stabbing together, but as Colver entered the bedroom, she stayed outside and “put my hands on my ear, closed my eyes and hummed.”
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Norb and Judy Witt worked hard and planned well to live it up in retirement, traveling whenever they wanted in their luxury RV. In 2009, they spent two months traveling the country, came home to El Dorado Hills, Calif., and days later, got the phone call.
It was their daughter, Joanne’s, boss wondering if they knew where she was.
“And he says, ‘Well–she didn’t show up for work on Friday and she didn’t show up today. And we’re worried that something might be wrong,” said Judi Witt.
Joanne Witt was 47, a single mother raising her teenage daughter, Tylar. She was an engineer for the county. The thing was Joanne always called when she was not coming to work.
“When you heard that she hadn’t been at work the previous Friday or that Monday, did that strike you as odd?” “48 Hours Mystery” correspondent Richard Schlesinger asked Norb Witt.
“Oh, yeah!” he replied. “And, well, like her boss said, she’s never missed work without calling.”
“Well, Norb says, ‘We’re only two miles away. We’ll go check on her,” added Judi.
Joanne’s boss was one step ahead of them.
“He says, ‘I’ve already called the sheriff’s,” Judi said. “And he says, Joanne had confided that she and Tylar had been having some problems. … he says, ‘we were concerned …'”
“I got in the car and got over there so fast,” Norb recalled. “I think I was in a daze by the time I got there. … there was two sheriff’s cars … and two deputies out there walking around the house. … And I said, “Well, I think I can get you in the house.”
Norb unlocked the house, but the sheriff’s deputies ordered him to stay outside while they searched it. Before long, they told him Joanne was upstairs in her bedroom; she was dead.
“They never said killed or murdered … they just said deceased. So we didn’t know what was going on,” Norb said. “But when the CSI van came in and we had probably 20 detectives wandering around the place … we knew that … she had been killed.”
Joanne had been stabbed about 20 times.
“… it was a very, very, very … gruesome scene,” prosecutor Lisette Suder said. “There was a wound that almost decapitated her. Very violent!”
The news got even worse. Their 14-year-old granddaughter, Tylar Witt, was nowhere to be found.
“… we didn’t know if Tylar had been kidnapped or …” said Judi.
“We knew nothing,” added Norb.
The couple says they were in total shock and concerned about Tylar.
But it didn’t take detectives very long to conclude that Tylar was not a victim. Just weeks before Joanne had complained to authorities about her daughter’s relationship with 19-year-old boyfriend Steven Colver. Now, detectives wanted to talk to both of them.
Steven Colver and Tylar Witt met at a coffee shop soon after she started ninth grade and he had started college. Norb Witt says it wasn’t long before Steven started influencing Tylar — and not in a good way.
“… he had a 14-year-old that looked at him as god. I mean, he had total control over her,” Norb explained. “We knew that drugs were involved. We knew that a lot of drugs were involved. … They were into marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine. What does that do to someone’s mind?”
Just weeks after they met, Steven and Tylar convinced her mother to let Steven rent a room in their home. Joanne thought the two were just friends. They told her he was gay. And Joanne told skeptical friends Steven could help Tylar with her homework and help her pay the mortgage.
“No one — every friend she had, everyone in the family — did not want him in there. But,” said Norb, “Joanne was very strong willed …”
So she let Steven move in. But within a month, Joanne had become suspicious. Then she came home one day and was shocked when she went into Steven’s room.
The prosecutor took “48 Hours Mystery” through the house.
“This is the room where it all began …” Suder said of the bedroom where Steven had stayed. “… Joanne walked in and caught them in a compromising position … they had just or were about to engage in a sexual relationship.”
“Tylar was naked?” Schlesinger asked.
“Right. She was actually inside this closet, crouched down, covering herself, but naked!”
Joanne did what any parent would do. She ordered Steven to leave and she called in two of her male co-workers to help throw him out.
“She said she was gonna kick Steven out and she didn’t want to be there alone,” said Vinnie Catapano, a friend of Joanne’s.
Catapano helped move Steven’s things to the sidewalk and then confronted him. “The first thing I said to him is, ‘If it was me – you’d be in jail right now.'”
Joanne believed Steven had committed a crime — statutory rape — by having sex with Tylar, who was a minor. Joanne warned Steven she’d call the sheriff if he didn’t immediately stop seeing Tylar. Catapano took a more direct approach.
“So then I told him, ‘You know, if you make contact with Tylar again — either by phone or in person — I’m gonna hurt you. And I’m gonna hurt you East Coast-style, not West Coast-style,” he told Schlesinger.
Asked what that meant, Catapano told Schlesinger, “Well … I was trying to intimidate him.”
“Did he seem intimidated?” Schlesinger asked.
“Absolutely not. And that, again, annoyed me more,” Catapano replied.
Steven Colver was also apparently not deterred by Catapano or Joanne Witt.
“… he snuck over to the house 20 times,” said Norb.
They continued their affair during the day when Joanne was at work and late at night when she was asleep. When Joanne found out, she made good on her threat and called authorities, who opened an investigation.
“… she wanted him away from her daughter. But they couldn’t stand the thought of not being together. And so that’s when the plotting began,” said Suder.
Within days, Norb Witt unlocked the house and sheriff’s deputies discovered the results of that alleged plot. Norb and his wife, Judy, now faced a terrible choice. Getting justice for the murder of their daughter meant turning their backs on their granddaughter.
With a sigh, Norb told Schlesinger, “If she hadn’t done whatever she did … her mother would still be alive today, probably …”
And prosecutors say Tylar and Steven apparently didn’t intend to stop with Joanne. They had more killing in mind.
Rachael Mullenix was sixteen when she was arrested for the murder of her mother in California. According to court documents Rachael Mullenix was upset that her mother wanted to end the relationship with her daughters boyfriend Ian Allen. The mothers body would be found floating in the bay near Newport Harbour Yacht Club and she had been stabbed over fifty times and stuffed into a cardboard box.
Rachael Mullenix and Ian Allen had fled the state and would be arrested in Louisiana. Rachael told the jury that her boyfriend had murdered her mother and she was shocked when she walked into the brutal murder however she would be convicted of murder and this teen killer would be sentenced to twenty five years to life in prison
Rachael Mullenix 2023 Information
Inmate Name
MULLENIX, RACHAEL SCARLETT
CDCR Number
X34327
Age
30
Admission Date
11/03/2008
Current Location
Central California Women’s Facility
Location Link
Directions
Parole Eligible Date (Month/Year)
12/2026
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A Huntington Beach teen convicted of the brutal slaying of her mother again proclaimed her innocence today, telling an Orange County judge she never could have committed such a crime.
“She was my life. To have someone say I stabbed her really affects me because I didn’t,” 19-year-old Rachael Mullenix told Superior Court Judge David A. Thompson. “My mom is my heart. Every day without her is a struggle … I did not do this to my mom.”
Moments later, Thompson sentenced Rachael Mullenix to 25 years to life for the Sept. 13, 2006 slaying of Barbara Mullenix – whose body was discovered floating in Newport Bay with a butter knife embedded in her right eye.
Earlier, Thompson denied the teen’s motion for a new trial.
The crime made headlines when the body of Barbara Mullenix was pulled from the waters near Newport Harbor Yacht Club a day after the murder. The woman had been stabbed more than 50 times and stuffed in a cardboard box. Investigators deduced she had been killed the night before in her Huntington Beach home – where she lived with Rachael Mullenix.
Rachael Mullenix, who has no prior criminal record, and her boyfriend, Ian Allen, were arrested in Louisiana a few days later. Deputy District Attorney Sonia Balleste prosecuted them both for murder, arguing the couple thought the mother was interfering in their relationship.
At the sentencing, Mullenix cried as her father said he loved his daughter and believed she wasn’t a murderer.
“She didn’t do this,” said Bruce Mullenix. “I will never stop supporting her for the rest of my life.”
After the hearing, Balleste said the sentence wasn’t stiff enough.
“She’s an expert manipulator who is a danger to our society,” the prosecutor said. “She should never be let out.”
Rachel Mullenix was convicted in July. She testified Allen was the sole murderer, and that she was shocked when she walked in on the attack. She claimed she tried to pull Allen off her mother, but that he pushed her away. She told jurors she cleaned up the crime scene and helped dispose of her mother’s body because she was scared of Allen – whom she accused of kidnapping her.
The teen’s trial testimony echoed her statement in court today.She told jurors she loved her mother, whom she called “her best friend.”
But in her diaries, which were used by the prosecution as evidence, Rachael Mullenix repeatedly wrote that she hated her mother.
Allen, who was convicted during a separate trial last month, also claimed innocence. His defense was that Rachael Mullenix was the murderer, and that he had shouldered the blame out of love. Jurors in his trial were as unconvinced as those in Mullenix’s trial, convicting him of first-degree murder.
Allen, who also faces 25 years to life in prison, will be sentenced Nov. 14.
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It’s impossible for Huntington Beach teenager Rachael Mullenix to have reacted more bitterly to her mother’s 1 a.m. curfew, especially after she bragged she’d discovered how to use sex to manipulate men.
In September 2006, Rachael, then 17, and her 21-year-old boyfriend, Ian Allen, used three or four knives to stab Barbara Mullenix more than 50 times and then dumped the corpse in Newport Harbor near Corona del Mar with a butter knife protruding from an eye socket, according to police reports.
From her new home–a prison cell at Chowchilla’s Central California Women’s Facility, Rachel Mullenix continues to insist she is innocent of a murder committed solely by Allen, and that both Orange County homicide prosecutor Sonia Balleste and an inept defense lawyer robbed her of a fair trial.
According to Rachael, Balleste didn’t just improperly inflame the jury but she also presented “a deliberate distortion of evidence” while her counsel failed to make key objections.
Besides, she argued, Balleste should have been softer on the defense given her youth.
It is true the prosecutor called the defendant “a vampire” during the trial, argued it was “impossible” only one person inflicted all the stab wounds even though her own forensic expert witness had testified otherwise, and won on the record rebukes from the judge, David Thompson.
But federal magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian studied the complaint in depth and noted critical, incriminating evidence: After the duo was arrested fleeing in Louisiana, cops placed them in a police vehicle, secretly turned on a recording device and left them alone.
Rachael Mullenix can be heard reminding her boyfriend to take the fall and urging him to claim he’d kidnapped her after the killing.
Law enforcement also recovered text messages Rachael sent Allen in the hours before the attack on Barbara, including, “Ian, I don’t care what I have to do in order to be with you! Nothing is going to take you away from me.”
Chooljian concluded Balleste’s conduct did not sabotage due process rights and that Rachael’s lawyer hadn’t committed malpractice in her defense.
This month, U.S. District Court Judge Manuel L. Real accepted Chooljian’s findings and closed the case.
Upshot: Rachael, now 25, will continue serving her 25 years to life punishment.
Allen earned the same sentence and lives in a California State Prison cell at Centinela.
Mother-Killing Daughter: Prosecutor, Inept Defense Lawyer Robbed Me Of A Fair Trial
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Daniel Marsh was fifteen years old when he broke into an elderly couples home and butchered them. According to court documents Daniel Marsh not only stabbed the couple to death but after they were dead he removed organs from their bodies. Daniel Marsh who once was given an award for saving his fathers life was soon arrested and at trial this teen killer would be quickly convicted and received two sentences of twenty five years to life.
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A sigh of relief rushed over the courtroom as a Yolo County judge ruled Davis murderer Daniel Marsh would remain in prison to serve out his life sentence.
Friends and family members of the victims celebrated in the courthouse halls after the Wednesday ruling. Some said they could “sleep again” now that they know justice has been served.
Judge Samuel McAdam delivered his ruling following a lengthy transfer hearing for Marsh, who is now 21. The hearing reexamined the murders of Oliver “Chip” Northup, 87, and his wife Claudia Maupin, 76, who were stabbed to death on April 14, 2013.
Marsh was 15 when he broke into their home with the intention of killing someone. It was this juvenile status at the time of the crimes coupled with the passage of Proposition 57 that necessitated Marsh’s reappearance in Yolo Superior Court.
McAdam listened to testimony that delved not only into the crime itself but Marsh’s state of mind before, during, and after the murders. Prop. 57 calls attention to factors such as the juvenile’s prior criminal history as well as the sophistication and gravity of the crime, in this case murder.
McAdam rehashed the facts of the case, calling attention to recent testimony, including that of defense expert and forensic child psychiatrist Matthew Soulier. McAdam pointed out Soulier’s unique perspective in that the psychiatrist evaluated Marsh during the original trial and then again for the transfer hearing. Soulier was able to draw a comparison on Marsh that no other expert could, McAdam said.
Soulier explained that much of Marsh’s trauma related to his parent’s divorce in earlier testimony.
Splitting his time between parents, Marsh “had no real accountability in life,” McAdam said. Soulier placed the blame on Marsh’s parents, who despite their son reporting homicidal thoughts to school professionals, failed to keep Marsh in therapy.
Marsh used drugs and alcohol with his friends, had an abusive sexual relationship with his girlfriend and watched “gore porn” on the internet.
“It was all very dark,” McAdam said of these activities.
“In retrospect, it is easy to criticize the parents,” McAdam continued. “But no one is to blame for the crimes here but Daniel Marsh.”
McAdam noted that “Marsh made every effort to conceal his crime,” and that he “left home with the intent to kill.” There was an extraordinary amount of sophistication in this crime, regardless of the offender’s age.
Another factor McAdam considered was whether Marsh could be rehabilitated by age 25, which would be his release date under Prop. 57.
Marsh only started utilizing mental health services in prison during the past six months, McAdam revealed, and his therapy sessions have been focused on adjusting to life behind bars. Although Marsh has not had a violent episode since he started his term, he has not worked through the trauma related to the murders themselves.
McAdam noted that his “counseling has been superficial” and he has yet to fully address his crimes.
“The court’s concern here is that these traumas are triggers,” he said. “He does well in a controlled setting but what happens when he is not in a controlled setting?”
McAdam found that there is “no chance” that Marsh will be rehabilitated before he turns 25.
McAdam, speaking to the gravity of the crime, highlighted Marsh’s video recorded police interview, in which the teenager described his crimes and the feelings connected to them.
“Marsh continued stabbing them because in his words ‘it just felt right,’” McAdam said. “The harm caused by these crimes is incalculable.”
McAdam referenced testimony from the victims’ friends and family, who continue to heal from Marsh’s actions.
“They are still in intense grieving over their deaths,” he said. “Their pain and suffering is palatable.”
On Wednesday, the same could be said for their joy.
“We can sleep again,” Victoria Hurd, the victims’ daughter, exclaimed outside the courtroom. “We are so relieved… we got justice. I feel like we had a really good victory today.”
With McAdam’s ruling Daniel Marsh was transferred back to prison to finish out his original sentence of 52 years to life.
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Eighteen years ago last month, the families of Oliver “Chip” Northup Jr. and Claudia Maupin joined together at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davis, where they replaced the traditional declaration of “I do” with “we do” as the couple became husband and wife.
They reunited Friday in a Yolo County courtroom, this time not in celebration but to share their memories of their beloved parents, whose brutal stabbing murders on April 14, 2013, unleashed a crippling devastation that spanned several generations, they said.
The emotionally charged hearing ended two hours later with the victims’ killer, 17-year-old Daniel Marsh, receiving the maximum possible sentence of 52 years to life in state prison for his role in one of Davis’ most disturbing crimes.
“The aggravating factors are overwhelming,” Yolo Superior Court Judge David Reed said of the crime, citing Marsh’s meticulous efforts to plan — and later conceal his role in — the murders. Reed also noted that the teen bragged about the slayings, confessing to police that he felt so exhilarated by them that he tried twice to kill again.
“Daniel’s actions cannot be described as impetuous or recklessly impulsive. He thought about killing someone a long time before doing it,” Reed said. “He was proud of what he did. Daniel mutilated Oliver Northup and Claudia Maupin because of morbid curiosity.”
With that, Reed handed down consecutive terms of 25 years to life for each of the murders, plus an additional two years for Marsh’s use of a knife to carry out the crimes.
Daniel Marsh was tried as an adult, although his young age made him ineligible for either the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. His defense attorneys made a bid for a reduced term of 25 years to life, arguing that the maximum sentence would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
A lesser term would not guarantee Marsh’s release, “but it gives a promise that there is an opportunity to parole,” Deputy Public Defender Ron Johnson said prior to Reed’s decision. Juvenile offenders should be treated differently, he added, because of their immaturity, impulsivity and lack of insight into the consequences of their actions.
Marsh’s prosecutors disagreed, saying the defendant’s deeds, in fact, warrant harsher punishment than the law currently allows.
In 28 years as a prosecutor, “never have I seen such a heinous and reprehensible act, and never have I seen a defendant with such an evil soul,” said Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Cabral, the case’s lead prosecutor. “This case screams out for 52 years to life. Nothing else would be appropriate.”
Joining the victims’ families in the courtroom were several jurors from Marsh’s trial who had rejected the teen’s insanity defense — claims that his tumultuous family history, his struggles with mental illness and the side-effects of antidepressant medications rendered him unable to know right from wrong at the time of the killings.
Friday’s hearing brought to a close the case that began 20 months earlier when Northup, a longtime attorney and musician for the popular Putah Creek Crawdads folk band, failed to show up for two of the group’s performances. Maupin, a church leader who spoke daily with her three daughters, also was uncharacteristically unreachable.
Police officers conducting a welfare check discovered the bodies of Northup, 87, and Maupin, 76, in the bedroom of their Cowell Boulevard condominium.
Each had been stabbed more than 60 times by a then-unknown intruder who had sliced through a screen and slipped into the condo through an unlocked window. Some suspected a burglary gone awry, or perhaps an act of revenge by a disgruntled client from Northup’s law practice.
Two months later came an arrest, the identity of the suspect nearly as shocking as the crime itself: Daniel Marsh, a Davis High School student who at age 12 was hailed an American Red Cross hero for saving his father, Bill Marsh, from a heart attack.
On Friday, however, the focus shifted to the lives Daniel Marsh had ended as members of Northup and Maupin’s families delivered their victim impact statements, describing as best they could the losses they have endured.
For Mary Northup, the youngest of Chip’s six children from his first marriage, it was her near-daily contact with her father, whom she’d often encounter while taking walks near her workplace.
The murders, she said, left her unable to work or to even experience the typical rituals of grief, as the couple’s home was sealed and many of their belongings seized as part of the crime-scene investigation. The killings became the talk of her youngest son’s school, requiring a switch to a private, out-of-town campus.
All the while, Daniel Marsh demonstrated no remorse or insight into his actions, Mary Northup said.
“After watching the defendant over the past year and a half, I believe the main thing he has learned is not to disclose the details of his next murder,” she said, a reference to Marsh confessing to the killings to two friends, who later reported him to police. “He will never have a moral compass or be able to control his behavior.”
By contrast, Northup was remembered for the values he instilled in his children and grandchildren, including the importance of giving back to their communities. A World War II veteran, Northup later served on the Woodland school board, was active in the Rotary Club and took on social justice issues in his legal practice.
He found his perfect match in Maupin, a woman who smelled of roses and possessed an unwavering zest for life. She brought a comforting presence to all family events, from casual barbecues to childbirths.
“She lived her life loving people, always willing to lend a hand, a shoulder or an ear,” Victoria Hurd, Maupin’s eldest daughter, said in a statement that brought even Cabral and fellow prosecutor Amanda Zambor to tears.
“If she were here, she would help us survive this. … But she is not here, because Daniel Marsh killed my mother for his own perverse gratification,” Hurd added, disclosing that Maupin’s wounds were so extensive, an expert had to restore her body “just so we could hold her hand and kiss her goodbye.”
Northup’s son, James Northup, spoke of the joy of his granddaughter’s birth being shattered by news of the murders, a trauma that led to anxiety and sleeplessness for much of his family and, for him, a recurrence of ALS — also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — that had previously been in remission.
“I hold Daniel Marsh accountable in a great way,” Northup said. His mother Peggy — Northup’s first wife — presented Reed with a collage of family photos, demonstrating “what one man’s own family of six children represents. All of these people lost a person that they counted on.”
Daniel Marsh did not offer a statement. After receiving his fate, the teen stood and glanced briefly at his father at the rear of the courtroom before officers escorted him away from the hushed audience. He is expected to be sent next month to a state juvenile detention facility, then transferred to state prison upon reaching his 18th birthday.
Because of his juvenile status, Daniel Marsh will receive a mandatory parole hearing upon his 25th year of incarceration, according to Cabral, who said if he’s able he plans to be there to oppose his release.
While Daniel Marsh appeared to cry briefly at one point during the victim impact statements, for the most part he remained stoic, looking down at his folded hands on the table in front of him.
The lack of emotion did not go unnoticed by Hurd, who was a presence in the courtroom throughout Marsh’s prosecution and attended each day of his trial.
“That’s so sad to me,” she said after the hearing. “I don’t know how to wrap my mind around that, that there’s no remorse when people all around the courtroom were sobbing. It’s just really a sad day for everybody.”
A man convicted of killing an elderly California couple when he was 15 years old could be released from prison next year under a state law that would make him eligible at the age of 25.
Daniel Marsh will be in a northern California court Wednesday as part of his efforts to be freed early, despite his conviction and 52-years-to-life prison sentence for the 2013 murders of Oliver Northup, 87, and Claudia Maupin, 76. The victims – a husband and wife – were stabbed more than 60 times each.
“Close your eyes for a second. Let that sink in – 128 times he stabbed them,” Sarah Rice, Maupin’s granddaughter, told local affiliate FOX 40 earlier this month.
Rice and other family members were joined by the district attorney from Yolo County – where a jury convicted Marsh – last week to denounce his and others’ early release, according to the report.
“What he’s been doing for the past eight years is honing his skill,” Rice previously told the news station. “I hate to think that he has the capacity to do it again, but he’s already said he would.”
The California law, which was passed in 2018, gives offenders convicted of most violent crimes committed as juveniles the chance to be set free when they turn 25.
Marsh was 15 in April 2013 when he murdered and mutilated the elderly couple in Davis. Marsh had targeted their home after searching the area for open doors and windows to get to potential prey, according to FOX 40. He sliced a hole into a window screen at their home and looked on as his victims slept, the station has reported.
“This was not a crime of passion or juvenile impulse. It was a well-planned and executed random act of violence,” Mary Northup, the daughter of one of Marsh’s victims, said in 2018.
Investigators found no forensic evidence linking Marsh to the crime, but the teen confessed to authorities after another teen told police Marsh had been boasting about the slayings, “48 Hours” reported.
“It was the most horrific, depraved murder I’ve ever seen as the district attorney in this county,” Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig told “48 Hours” at the time.
Marsh allegedly told authorities he dreamed of being a serial killer and, according to FOX 40, told investigators he enjoyed the slayings.
He pleaded not guilty, claiming insanity, and was tried as an adult in 2014, local reports state.
Marsh, who is now 24, is expected to appear in court at 2 p.m. local time, or 5 p.m. ET.
Daniel Marsh, who was convicted of a brutal double murder in Davis when he was a teen, will remain in prison after his appeal to be released on SB 1391 was denied.
Marsh has been pushing to be released as part of SB 1391, a law that prohibits adult prosecution of juveniles under 16. Marsh was 15 when Claudia Maupin and Chip Northup were murdered.
Maupin and Northup’s family have been campaigning to stop Marsh from being released
“This is not a juvenile who needs a second chance. This is a man who thought about what he was doing and has been quoted as saying he would do it again,” Victoria Hurd, Maupin’s daughter, previously told CBS13.
Marsh had an appeal hearing back in August. He could have been released as early as next May on his 25th birthday.
However, on Wednesday, family says they were notified that Marsh’s appeal had been denied. He will remain in prison and serve out his sentence.
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