Ramirez Sold Him Victims’ Items, Man Testifies

An Echo Park man testified Wednesday that he bought several items of stolen merchandise from accused Night Stalker Richard Ramirez last year--including a television, a radio and jewelry that authorities say were later identified as having been taken during murders and other crimes attributed to Ramirez.

Felipi Solano, a laborer who was granted immunity to testify at Ramirez’s preliminary hearing, said he turned the stolen items over to police shortly after Ramirez’s arrest in East Los Angeles last Aug. 31.

According to testimony from Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Carlos Avila, the merchandise included a radio later identified by the grandson of Monrovia murder victim Mabel Bell, a TV identified by the wife of murder victim Elyas Abowath of Diamond Bar and rings identified by the daughters of Glendale murder victims Maxon and Lela Kneiding.

Solano, 53, who said he first met Ramirez in late 1984, also told a hushed courtroom that the defendant often wore a baseball cap identical to the one bearing the logo of the rock band “AC/DC” that was found in the garage of Rosemead murder victim Dayle Okazaki, who died in March, 1985.

“It may have been one just like it, but I saw him with it several times,” said the Spanish-speaking witness, as he studied the dark-colored cap, which has previously been entered into evidence. Ramirez, furthermore, sported a tattoo or drawing on his left arm that looked similar to the pentagrams that were found scrawled on the wall of murder victim Bell, Solano said through an interpreter.

Solano said he last saw Ramirez three days before his arrest, when Ramirez, who had a handgun in his possession, stopped by his house.

“He was asking me for money because he wanted to leave the state,” Solano said, “. . . I told him I didn’t have any money.”

The gripping testimony came on the first day of the prosecution’s efforts to directly link Ramirez, a 26-year-old drifter from El Paso, to evidence gathered in the massive police investigation of the killings. During the previous 23 days of the hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. P. Philip Halpin had called to the stand 110 police investigators, doctors and eyewitnesses--including six surviving victims who dramatically identified Ramirez as their attacker.

Ramirez, who could eventually face the death penalty, is charged with 14 murders and 54 other felonies in Los Angeles County in 1984 and 1985.

During Solano’s testimony, Ramirez loudly cracked his knuckles several times, but otherwise remained subdued. His lawyers, meanwhile, tried to limit the damage of the testimony by repeatedly referring to Solano as a “fence”--a person who deals in stolen goods.

“All we’re seeing is a one-sided view of the case,” emphasized Ramirez’s co-counsel, Arturo Hernandez. “Who was keeping tabs that only Mr. Ramirez was giving (stolen property) to him?”

Solano said he first met Ramirez in the downtown Los Angeles Greyhound bus depot in November or December, 1984, as he was preparing to take a bus to Tijuana. Ramirez, he said, “asked me how come I wasn’t going in a car.” When informed by Solano that his car used too much gas, Ramirez offered to sell him a small car.

Solano declined the offer, but gave Ramirez his telephone number and within a week, Ramirez called “and asked me if I wanted to buy something, a TV set.” Ramirez subsequently sold Solano electronics merchandise and $2,000 in jewelry. Solano said he bought the stolen items for resale, but had not sold them.

He said he never imagined that Ramirez, who he had known by the alias of Ricardo Moreno, might have been responsible for the Night Stalker killings until a few days before the defendant’s arrest. At that point, Solano said he was afraid to call police and instead stored most of the stolen goods with relatives and at work.

Solano was questioned by police the day after Ramirez’s arrest and Solano cooperated with authorities.

The hearing will resume April 28.