Because you should be. Netflix’s new true crime-’em-up docuseries about one of America’s most depraved serial killers as told by detectives, reporters, and victims is a mesmerising exposé of bureaucratic incompetence and inadequate home security solutions in 1985.
Perhaps most defined by his randomness, Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez was an unconventionally indiscriminate psychopath who assaulted, murdered, and raped women, men, and even kids with no discernible modus operandi from one to the next. Keeping up with contemporary moral panic trends at the time, he also claimed to be a Satanist. With almost no clues besides a distinctive Avia shoe print at some scenes, an ambiguous physical description, and a lack of cooperation between departments, police were bamboozled by Ramirez and missed multiple opportunities to bust him. Awkward, and the show’s glamorising of case detectives Gil Carrillo and Frank Salerno even more so but that’s, like, a different discussion entirely.
But despite its failure to question and criticise investigation mistakes, the show is a compelling retrospective of Ramirez’s horrifying atrocities, counted in sequence with supporting commentary, archive video, and a queasy, almost tabloid-level extravagance of very graphic photography. For real, though, miss this one if you’re grossed out by blood and dead people.
Night Stalker is out now on Netflix.