Concern for Victims Prompts O.C. to Drop Case Against Ramirez : Crime: Death sentence given Night Stalker in L.A. makes further prosecution unnecessary, says D.A. Former Mission Viejo woman is spared the ordeal of testifying.

Night Stalker Richard Ramirez, sentenced to death in Los Angeles for 13 murders, will not be prosecuted in Orange County for rape and attempted murder in a 1985 attack on a Mission Viejo couple, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James G. Enright said Wednesday.

“We didn’t want to put (the rape victim) through the ordeal of testifying again unless we had to,” Enright said. “Now that Ramirez has received a death sentence, it’s simply not necessary.”

At a preliminary hearing two years ago, the young woman took the witness stand to identify Ramirez as the man who broke into the home she shared with her fiance on Aug. 25, 1985. The two had discussed the terror of the Night Stalker attacks in Los Angeles County just before falling asleep, she said.

The fiance, William Carns, now 33, was shot three times in the head and has been in continual recuperative therapy since. The assailant told the young woman before raping her that he was the Night Stalker, and made her declare that she loved Satan.

A youth recorded in part the license plate numbers of a suspicious vehicle near the couple’s home that night, which helped lead to Ramirez’s arrest in Los Angeles a few days later. The Mission Viejo rape victim told a judge in Santa Ana two years ago she could identify Ramirez, now 29, a self-proclaimed devil-worshiper from El Paso, Tex., by his walk, and the unique way he pronounced the word jewelry as jewerly when he robbed the couple. Ramirez had been ordered to repeat the word during a line-up after his arrest.

The young woman, also now 33, has moved to Northern California, where Enright says only her employer knows about the Night Stalker incident.

“I talked to her on Oct. 13 and told her that we would not go forward with our case if the jury death verdict for Ramirez was upheld by the judge in Los Angeles,” Enright said. “She was very, very relieved. She did not want to testify again.”

Enright said that even though Carns would not be a witness--he has no memory of events that night--he, too, was relieved to know the Orange County case against Ramirez was now over. Enright said the couple are no longer engaged.

“One of the many, many tragedies of this whole thing is that their relationship is no longer the same,” Enright said. “The impact has been incredibly traumatic for both of them.”

Prosecutors were pleased by the young woman’s poise and by the clarity of her answers when she testified at Ramirez’s Santa Ana hearing. But Enright said the strain on her convinced him that he did not want to put her through it again.

“Time and expense are factors for not going forward, but really the overwhelming reason is the wishes of the victims,” Enright said.

When Ramirez’s Los Angeles jury returned a death verdict against him in September, the Mission Viejo woman told a Times reporter she did not want to testify again because she would have to relive bad memories.

“It’s not fair to the victim to have to do all the enduring,” she said then.

Orange County prosecutors had held a bench warrant for Ramirez ever since his arrest. Enright said the warrant was withdrawn today.

Technically, the Orange County charges against Ramirez could be reinstated should he win his automatic appeal of his Los Angeles death sentence. But even if an appeal were successful, Enright said, refiling of the Orange County charges would be unlikely.

“If he won quickly on an appeal, he would just be brought back to Los Angeles for a new trial,” Enright said. “But I suspect that his appeal is going to take about 10 years.”