Police Coerced Ramirez, Lawyers Say : Defense Seeks to Bar Certain Evidence in Night Stalker Case

Police questioning Richard Ramirez after his arrest told him it would “haunt his mother to her grave” unless he told everything he knew about the Night Stalker serial murders, his lawyers said in documents released Tuesday.

The attorneys contended that Ramirez repeatedly asked for a lawyer in the hours after his arrest as a suspect in the string of murders but his requests were refused and police continued to question him.

“Throughout the taped interviews, the defendant repeated his demands for a lawyer several times, but the officer’s only response was to ask him more questions and urge him to talk to him, because a lawyer could only tell him to be quiet, and the police would never know the details of the charges,” the document filed by the defense attorneys said.

Attorneys Daniel Hernandez and Arturo Hernandez, who are not related, asked the judge Monday to exclude from evidence any items obtained as a result of the taped interview.

The questioning led police to Ramirez’s car, as well as to two pistols and jewelry found in a bus depot locker, the motion said.

There was no ruling on the motion Tuesday, but Los Angeles Municipal Judge James Nelson allowed reporters to look at the documents for the first time.

Ramirez, 25, is charged in Los Angeles County with 14 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 19 burglaries, 6 robberies, 7 rapes, 5 acts of forced oral copulation, 7 of sodomy, 3 lewd acts with children and 2 kidnapings.

The preliminary hearing, which began Monday, will allow the judge to decide if there is enough evidence to hold Ramirez for trial.

The motion filed by the attorneys said police told Ramirez that they would “stick him with all the crimes,” including child molestation counts, if he did not talk.

“Defendant could save everyone a lot of suffering and make things easier on himself, and if he loved his mother it would help to tell details of the crimes and which ones the defendant did not commit,” the lawyers said Ramirez was told.

The documents also quoted officers as saying: “It would ‘haunt’ his mother to her ‘grave,’ if defendant didn’t tell police everything. If it was ‘your brother or sister,’ you’d want to know who did it.’ ”