AS IS ALWAYS THE CASE, SCORES OF PEOPLE play a part in putting together a manuscript for a book. I consider myself singularly fortunate to have the family, friends, and professional colleagues who cheerfully banded together to help me tell the story of the Night Stalker.
Some, of course, played bigger roles in the project than others, but the help of each individual was important. Sometimes, it was critical to the accurate reporting of the atrocities that occurred in Southern California during the period in 1984 and 1985 when the Night Stalker was carrying out his killing spree.
I wish to single out Sgt. Frank Salerno of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department and head of its Night Stalker task force, particularly for his patience and helpful information. The assistance of other law enforcement officers and all individuals associated with the Los Angeles criminal justice system who sacrificed the time from their busy schedules to help is also greatly appreciated.
Thanks as well to my longtime friend, Vanessa, for sharing her unique knowledge of modern-day Satanismand Satanists and for helping to sort out the charlatans, the serious, the dilettantes, and the crazies.
The residents of the East Los Angeles neighborhood where Richard Ramirez was finally brought to bay were friendly and eager to tell the stories of the roles they played in the captureor merely to recount the bizarre chase that they witnessed on that crazy, blistering-hot day in August when the Night Stalker made his desperate, and doomed, dash for freedom.
At home in Florida, professional colleagues assisted with careful readings of the manuscript as it was being put together and contributed positive criticism to make the copy more grammatical and the story more accurate.
My agent, Adele Leone, and my editor, Charles Spicer, at St. Martins Press, are due thanks for their faith in me.
And, finally, my appreciation to my lifemate, Junko, for putting up with my moods as I worked against yet another pressing deadline, grumbling with each chapter I completed that it should have been done yesterday.
St. Martins Paperbacks Titles by Clifford L. Linedecker
THIRTEEN MINUTES AFTER VIVIAN GATES placed her call to the Columbia County Sheriffs Department, Doris Gearing, Wyley Gatess teacher of criminal justice, received a call at her home on New Concord Road, directly across the Thruway from Maple Drive. Mrs. Gearing and her husband, members of the Chatham Rescue Squad, were being dispatched to the Robert Gates residence on Maple Drive. They were told that there were four down and were instructed to go immediately to the scene. We both got our jackets on, Mrs. Gearing recalled. It was bitter cold a bitter night. We were first on the scene. But, at the instructions of the authorities who followed them, the Gearings were told to remain outside. They never went in to the Gates house that night.
The undersheriff who arrived at the cabin just as the Gearings did was James Bertram, a compact but powerful-looking man of middle age who had served eleven years in this position. Bertram had just fallen asleep in his chair at headquarters when he received a call telling him that there had been a shooting at the Gates residence and that there was the possibility that four people were dead. Now Bertram approached the house, crawling under the porch to look through a small storm window. He saw a woman lying on the floor and, watching her for several moments, the cold almost paralyzing on that bitter night, hecould detect no signs of movement. Crawling around to another window, Bertram got a glimpse of two others who appeared to be lifeless, an adult male and a young child who was in front of a TV that was still playing. At that point, Undersheriff Bertram returned to his patrol car and waited for two deputies to arrive. He then entered the house. As he descended the rough, steep stairs to the downstairs room, all he could see were two feet sticking up, which belonged to the white female. Going down into the room, he could see the adult male, lying with his head up against a bar, his arm bloodied, a phone to the right of him. Continuing his search, Bertram, looking to his right, saw the body of the young child, in front of the flickering television. As he had expected, there were no signs of life.
Moving through the house, Bertram came to a weight room, located over the garage. There he found the lifeless body of another white male, lying between a set of drums and the wall. Bertram also found empty casings on the floor of the weight room, as well as a live round. Other casings were found back in the main part of the house, by the entrance stairway, on the stairway itself, and in the rec room.
For Doris Gearing, the wait was interminable. I was saying to myself, Oh, my gosh, I hope its not Wyley, she recalled. The other vivid memory she retains from that cold, clear night was the extraordinary number of shooting stars in the sky.
When Bertram emerged, he confirmed that there were four down, with no signs of life. By this time twelve cars belonging to the sheriffs department were on the scene, with a Chatham Rescue Squad ambulance on hand. But, as it turned out, there was no need for the ambulance that night after all.
With the house secured, Bertram and Sheriff Paul Proper put out a call to the county coroner and put in a request for assistance from the New York State Police I.D. unit in Poughkeepsie. Meanwhile, District Attorney Eugene Keeler, asleep in his Kinderhook home, got a phone call from the sheriffs department dispatcher. Keeler picked up Nancy Snyder, his assistant D.A., who also lived in Kinderhook, and they headed over to Maple Drive. When they got there, the house was sealed off, with the sheriff, the undersheriff, the state troopers, members of the sheriffs department, and some local policemen awaitingthe arrival of the state police I.D. unit. Going into the house, Keeler saw the bodies for himself. It was not a bloody mess. It was very tragic, very sad, cold and calculating, whatever was done. His most emotional response was evoked by the figure of Jason. Seeing the three-and-a-half-year-old in front of the TV set with the snow on it, that bothered me. Otherwise, the crime scene was less gruesome than some he had seen. The rest was not bloody, he recalled. There were shots and that sort of thing and blood, but not the magnitude you see in a shotgun wound, where brains are all over the place, blood is usually all over the place, heads blown off, legs blown off. That is a gory mess. These people were shot with a weapon that did not come with a lot of gore to it.
Others on the scene, however, were considerably more shaken than Keeler. Sheriff Proper would tearfully tell reporters that night, Weve had a massacre worse than anything I ever saw in Korea. The coroner, Angelo Nero, also badly shocked, would say that he had never seen anything like this before. Whatever the emotional reactions were to the murders, these reactions had necessarily to take a backseat to the critical business of taking evidence and pursuing an investigation. And so, in those early hours of December 14, 1986, the Columbia County Sheriffs Department went to work.
At the big white house on the hill, Vivian Gates and Wyley were still seated on the couch, waiting for the police to arrive. Officer Richard Lindmark, of the Chatham police, was the first on the scene, followed momentarily by Walter Shook, a criminal investigator with the Columbia County Sheriffs Department. Shook, a tall man with thinning, lank blond hair and a long Nordic face, who had been with the department fourteen years, seven of them as an investigator, had gotten the call at home at 11:00 P.M. Now, as he entered the spacious sun porch, so cheery during the day with its pots of cyclamen and flowering kalanchoe, he saw two people sitting on a couch, an older, gray-haired woman and a thin, reddish-haired boy, a grandmother and grandson with a markedly strong family resemblance. Shook asked Wyley to tell him exactly what he had found at the log house. Wyley told him that he had been to see Heartbreak Ridge in Chatham with Damian Rossney; that he went back to Damians house to play computer games; and that while he was there he called home but the line was busy. At around 10:30 P.M., Wyley told Shook, he left the Rossney home and arrived back at the log cabin by 10:45. He entered through the garage, went into the weight room, saw his brother, checked his pulse, and found no signs of life. He then went downstairs, saw Cheryl at the foot of the stairs, saw his father lying with the phone next to him, and Jason in front of the TV. Checking for signs of life, he found none, so he got back into Cheryls car, drove over to his grandmothers, petted the dog in the garage, and, when Vivian emerged to see who it was, told her that he had something to tell her.
