Defense Is Given 2 Weeks to Ready Night Stalker Case

After 31 court days, 137 witnesses and 521 exhibits, the prosecution in the Night Stalker trial rested Thursday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan then gave the three attorneys for defendant Richard Ramirez a two-week break to prepare their case.

Defense attorney Ray G. Clark said it will take two to four weeks to present Ramirez’s case.

In an interview outside court, Clark jocularly reiterated that the defense tack will be “S.O.D.D.I”-- “some other dude did it.”

Placed at Scenes of Crimes

In the course of the prosecution case, which began unfolding Jan. 30, eight witnesses, including six surviving female victims, placed Ramirez at the scenes of Night Stalker crimes.

But Clark said many of the women’s initial descriptions of their assailant were “not really that consistent.”

The lawyer noted that those earlier descriptions given to police included different colors of hair as well as the race of the attacker. He also pointed out that there were discrepancies among the witnesses’ description of the condition of the assailant’s teeth.

Clark said the defense intends to call at least one psychologist as an expert witness to discuss the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications.

Unresolved Issue

One still-unresolved issue is a notion advanced by the co-prosecutors, Deputy Dist. Attys. Phil Halpin and Alan Yochelson, that the 24 jurors and alternates be taken on a tour of the 15 Night Stalker crime scenes.

Clark further raised the possibility that such a tour be undertaken at night, since all the attacks took place in darkness.

In all, Ramirez, 29, is charged with 13 murders and 30 other felonies in a spree of night-time residential attacks throughout Los Angeles County, mostly in the spring and summer of 1985.

The prosecution, which once estimated its case would take four months, managed to present all of its evidence in 31 days of testimony over two months. Just before resting the case, Halpin called a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy to testify about a previously unknown incident involving Ramirez, a self-proclaimed devil worshiper.

Deputy Gerald Newbold said he was on the Ramirez “suicide watch” Sept. 2, 1985--two days after his arrest--when he observed Ramirez sitting on the toilet of his cell in the Central Jail drawing a pentagram on the floor in his own blood.

Pentagram on Victim

In one of the Night Stalker attacks, pentagrams were found on the wall of one elderly woman victim’s bedroom and on the thigh of her sister.

At the time of his arrest, Ramirez had a pentagram drawn on his left arm. Additionally, at the end of his arraignment on Oct. 24, 1985, in Los Angeles Municipal Court, Ramirez flashed a pentagram that had been drawn on his palm, and yelled: “Hail, Satan!”

The final prosecution witness was David Law, another sheriff’s deputy, who was assigned to guard Ramirez’s cell. Law testified that on Oct. 30, 1986, Ramirez showed him two photographs of a dead woman, a Night Stalker victim, and said:

“ ‘People come up here and call me a punk. And I show them the pictures, and they go away all pale. There is blood behind the Night Stalker.’ ”

‘Thank God’

Asked for comment after resting the case, Halpin said only, “Thank God.”

Both prosecutors noted that the case is far from over.

“This is like only the first half” of a ballgame, Yochelson said.

The trial will resume May 1.