Salon.com > Murders

Could the Night Stalker have terrorized Los Angeles today?

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 18:00:00 +0000

News that Richard Ramirez died in prison today at age 53 will provoke reactions in anyone who lived in Los Angeles in the ’80s. What sort of reaction will vary. Ramirez, a serial killer the Southern California press dubbed the “Night Stalker,” carried off a string of particularly gruesome murders in 1985. The L.A. of that year was a city whose police chief, Daryl Gates, was a deeply controversial figure. Gates had come up through the ranks as a detective on the spectacular Manson Family and Hillside Strangler cases. He had become a fan of overtly military tactics, and, faced with the emergence of L.A.’s crack epidemic, found his metier. Charges of excessive force and racism dogged his administration (the Rodney King beating would happen on his watch).

David Vitter’s hypocritical, punitive, horrible new amendment

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:16:00 +0000

In a sleepy moment on the Senate floor Wednesday, Senate Democrats accepted an amendment to the long-delayed farm bill that, if passed in its current form, would represent another step in turning previously incarcerated Americans into a permanent underclass. Certain classes of ex-convicts would be denied food stamp benefits for life, under the amendment offered by Sen. David Vitter (cannily, the crime of soliciting prostitutes is exempted from this ban). While the amendment may sound like common sense, it’s actually a harshly punitive, counterproductive policy that will only increase crime and trap people in the criminal justice system.

The amendment was clearly created as a wedge issue, a perennial Republican effort to get Democratic senators to vote for something that can get used against them later in attack ads. Tom Coburn is a master of this; during the healthcare bill he offered an amendment banning sex offenders from receiving health insurance benefits for Viagra.

Brooklyn killings may have been hate crimes

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Hate crime detectives in New York City are joining the investigation into three unsolved killings of Brooklyn business owners in the past four months – crimes believed to have been carried out by a serial killer.

All three victims were shot with the same .22 caliber handgun, all three were immigrants from the Middle East, all three worked alone without security cameras and all three businesses have the number 8 in their address, authorities say.

The latest victim, Rahmatollah Vahidipour, 78, a Jewish immigrant from Iran, was fatally shot Friday in his business, She She Boutique on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. That homicide followed the Aug. 6 killing of Isaac Kadare, 59, a Jewish immigrant from Egypt, who was fatally shot in his Bensonhurst store, Amazing 99 Cent Deal.

The spree began with the July 6 killing of Mohammed Gebeli, 65, an Egyptian immigrant and a Muslim, found murdered in his business, Valentino Fashion Inc., in Bay Ridge. Detectives are “exploring a few similarities among the three murders,” The New York Times reported in Sunday’s editions.