Weak Conviction: Richard Ramirez and Tsai-Lian Yu

He should never have been convicted.

There were two main witnesses to the attack: Joseph Duenas, who saw Tsai Lian Yu in a tussle with the suspect, and Jorge Gallegos Calderon, who heard Yu screaming from behind his van. Jorge only saw the suspect from behind as he drove away on a dark street.

The first responder was a Monterey Park PD patrol officer, Dan Romero. He interviewed Jorge, who said he was unable to identify the suspect. He thought the man seemed East Asian, but it was from behind and in the dark.

In the morning, Jorge went to the Monterey Park police station and made a statement to Detective Anthony Romero. He told Anthony Romero about the suspect’s blue car and license plate. Anthony Romero asked Jorge if he had anything new to add to the statement given to Dan Romero the night before. He said no.

Then, at Richard Ramirez’s preliminary hearing in spring 1986, Jorge “surprised” the prosecutor by identifying Richard Ramirez. He now lied that he saw the entire tussle and the suspect’s blue clothes. The problem is, Jorge copied Joseph Duenas’ description - and Joseph had said the killer was 5’6” - 5’8” tall. Richard Ramirez was 6’1”.

As for Joseph Duenas, he did the right thing. After staring at Richard for some time, he retracted his identification, which had been a short, possibly Asian man.

It’s really strange that Jorge decided to point the finger at Ramirez. Did someone lean on him to do so? After all, the prosecutor had very little to tie Ramirez to the crime. Actually, they had nothing and relied on a firearms investigator’s claim that the bullet slugs in Tsai-Lian’s body matched those involved in the Okazaki crime scene (that occurred on the same night) and those in the bodies of the Kneidings (killed four months later).

However, the original ballistics report for Yu says the slugs were too distorted to compare to the Okazaki slugs and originally thought the Kneiding bullets were from a different type of pistol. The prosecutor simply found someone else who would say what he wanted and barred the defense from speaking to the original examiner in discovery.

This was an incredibly weak case and I’ve explained why in this video where you can also see the ballistics reports, police statements and the defense motion:

The rest of the case is much more detailed in Emily Zola’s book, that you can buy here. It covers the trial and nonsense police theories surrounding the Yu case.

There was also the issue of the “Chinese spy” - was this case a burgeoning international incident that was brushed under the carpet as the work of the Night Stalker? Does that explain why Joseph Duenas thought the suspect was Asian?

Unfortunately, no one questions all this stuff and they instead focus on whether Jorge and Joseph simply became “confused about the killer’s height” - that same old “trauma blindness” excuse for why the killers never looked like Richard Ramirez. It’s a shame no one comments on the spy angle, the corrupt police, and the ballistics lies. I’m sure they only debate the eyewitness identification as a sneaky excuse to talk about Richard’s looks yet again.

He was undeniably a striking looking man which begs the question why victims' descriptions were so vague. This is the only thing you should be saying about his looks.