Late in the 20th Century, Hell glutted on humanity. Its first bloodletting of that season of the Devil occurred on the warm evening of June 28, 1984, when an earth-bound Lucifer found his way into the small Glassel Park apartment of 79-year-old Jennie Vincow. Throughout the Los Angeles area a damp humidity had oppressed the air that day, and when the evening came and the temperature slightly cooled, Jennie left her window open to invite what little breeze there might be into her flat. Like a fallen leaf, decayed and tossed from its source, a fallen angel, dark, angry and also decaying, blew across the sill of that open window. When the demon departed through that same window, he left behind Jennie Vincow, raped, beaten and nearly decapitated.

"Her body was found by her son, who lived above her ground-floor apartment, just south of...Forest Lawn Park," reports the Los Angeles Times. "Her throat had been slashed and she had been stabbed repeatedly."

The police were baffled. But, in the months to come, they were to encounter a madman whose lust for killing and depravity equaled, if not surpassed, that of Jack the Ripper or, more contemporary, the Hillside Strangler. Soon to be named the "Night Stalker" by the press, this madman bore, according to true crime author Richard L. Linedecker, "the horror in his soul of a Stephen King or a Clive Barker fright novel – and more." A Freddy Kruger. For real.

Less than a year later, the monster reappeared. This time, he waited in the shadows of an upscale condominium outside LA. The date was March 17, 1985, time 11:30 p.m., when pretty-faced Maria Hernandez pulled her auto into the security garage, unaware the monster was watching her from behind a pillar. When she alighted from her car, the killer stepped from the darkness, gun upraised and, despite her pleadings, he pressed the trigger. She stumbled. And the killer, thinking she was dead, stepped over her to enter the side door of the condo. But, Maria had been lucky – very lucky – for the bullet had deflected off the car keys she held in her hand, causing a hand wound, but nothing more.

Inside the building, Maria's roommate was less fortunate. For, when Maria finally made her way to the safety of her place, breathless, she discovered that her friend, Dayle Okazaki, had also encountered the killer. And this time, his bullet had found its mark. Thirty-three-year-old Okazaki lay in a pool of her own blood, her skull smashed by a missile fired at extremely close range.

The demon vanished just as quickly as he had appeared. The police were stumped.

All they knew of him was what Hernandez was able to tell them: He was tall, gaunt, dark, maybe Hispanic.

This time, the killer didn't wait nearly a year to murder again. He struck within the hour. His next victim that same evening was petite Taiwanese-born Tsai-Lian Yu, who, driving her yellow Chevrolet down North Alhambra Avenue in nearby Monterey Park, withered when someone with the eyes of a madman forced his way into her car and shot her. He had thrown his own car into idle, simply entered hers, pushed her onto the pavement, called her bitch, then blew her into eternity at point-blank range.

Fast. Neat. Clean.

Then dematerialized into the darkness from whence he came.

Child's play.

The police were beginning to realize they might have a problem on their hands, but they remained stumped. Eyewitnesses who thought they had seen the killer described him as tall, gaunt, dark, maybe Hispanic.

Ten days later, this elusive phantom -- whose physical description could fit any one of thousands of males in the Greater Los Angeles area -- required more blood. This time, shooting his prey didn't quite satisfy the urge; the demon must have been hungry, he must have been frantic, for when he entered the home of the sleeping Zazzara couple, he produced a bloodbath.

The couple's bodies were discovered by their son the following morning. Vincent Zazzara had been shot in the head as he dozed on the sofa. He had died quickly --  unlike his wife who suffered the percussion of the killer's frenzy. On her face he had carved the embodiment of his hate, molding her physicality into something representative of how he viewed humankind – as something made to splice and cut and gouge, to bend, to twist, to reshape to suit his own wantonness.

Clifford L. Linedecker, in his well-researched Night Stalker, describes what the police found at the crime scene: "They (the police) would never forget the sight of Maxine Zazzara's mutilated face. Her eyes were gouged out, and the empty sockets were ringed with blackened gobs of blood and tissue...The killer had plunged a knife through her left breast, leaving a large, ragged T-shaped wound. There were other cruel injuries to her neck, face, abdomen, and around the pubic area. She had been butchered..."

Investigators found footprints – visible signs of a tennis shoe -- in the service area and in the flowerbed – indicating his means of entry into the Zazzara home. There were no witnesses this time around, but a modus operandi was becoming loosely apparent. Nevertheless stumped, the law determined to put an end to this savage that had crawled up from the mud up and within their midst. That they believed this latest crime to have been committed by the same creature that had slain Vincow, Okazaki and Yu was, at this point, not much more than a hunch. But, if they were correct, the madman was becoming bolder and more sanguine; an inner lust seemed to be growing and, now fed and apparently well fed, who knows what would come next! Scouring the neighborhoods where he had already struck, blue uniforms questioned strangers, stopped midnight strollers, clambered for witnesses. But, there proved little to go on.

Deep inside, the police feared, he –It! – would strike again.

Tension of the wait was short. Elderly Harold and Jean Wu did not hear the intruder slipping into their residence through a window at pre-dawn, May 14. The first intimation Mrs. Wu had of his presence was the loud bang that stirred her awake. She woke to find the figure, smoking gun in hand, standing over her. Beside her, husband Harold groaned, shot in the head. Then – the killer's huge fists unloosened on the woman. He pummeled her, slapped her, kicked her, and demanded that she turn over loose cash to him. Binding her hands together behind her with thumbscrews, he tossed her across her bed over her dying spouse, then rampaged through the home's drawers and cabinets for money. Terrified, lying on her mattress, Jean Wu could hear three things – Harold's furtive gasps for life, furniture being invaded, and the madman's curses as he found nothing of great value.

Having rampaged through their belongings, the tall, thin, dark man returned to the Wu's bedroom and, as she lay across her fading husband, violently raped the 63-year-old woman. Satisfied, he zippered up, grinning. Then left. Another trophy his.

Mrs. Wu, after recovering from shock, told police her attacker was tall, gaunt, dark, Hispanic.

The symphony of terror played on, its next discordant notes sounded in the dark hours before May 30, at the home of attractive 41-year-old Ruth Wilson. The woman awoke in her bed to the blinding beam of a flashlight and the distinct silhouette of a pistol barrel across her gaze; behind the illumination a gruff voice demanded, "Where's your money?" Before she could muster words, the intruder yanked her by the sleeve of her negligee off her bed and led her to her 12-year-old son's room down the hall. Using the frightened boy as bait, he insisted that she produce something of value. She told him where an expensive piece of jewelry was hidden. He seemed satisfied as he studied the diamond necklace in his hands, and Wilson figured he would abscond without harming her or her boy.

She was wrong.

Locking her son in a closet, he took his pent-up emotions out on the woman in the pink negligee who stood before him. Shoving her back to her own bedroom, he tore her gown off her and, despite her protestations, had his way with her. First he bound her hands behind her with a pair of pantyhose, then fell upon her. As he raped and sodomized her, his foul breath and body odor overcame and sickened her, adding to the humiliation.

The face of the "Devil", Richard Ramirez (AP)

Miraculously, he let her live. He was gone...all but in her night dreams that would haunt her over and over and over for months to come.

When the police later interviewed her, she gave her description of the devil: