Countywide : Witness Is Happy Stalker Trial Is Over

James Romero III was just 13 years old and working on his minibike when a suspicious-looking character dashed across his family’s lawn in Mission Viejo late one Saturday night in August, 1985.

James reported the incident and gave police a partial license plate number of the station wagon in which the shadowy figure disappeared. Authorities found the car three days later. Fingerprints taken from it helped them to identify and ultimately arrest Richard Ramirez, a Texas drifter who ran up a string of brutal attacks on his way to becoming known as the Night Stalker.

For his key piece of information, James had been hailed as the “Hero of Orange County” and rewarded with cash, a three-wheel, all-terrain cycle and box seats to two Los Angeles Rams games. On Wednesday, he received word of one more reward: $1,000 from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Now 17, James is a senior at Silverado (Continuation) School in Mission Viejo and is angling for a future as a motorcycle road racer. The cash from his earlier rewards is long spent, but James, who still owns the red-and-black cycle he received four years ago, said he will stash away this check.

“I think I’ll put it in the bank right now because I don’t have any real plans for it,” James said. “But I’d like to invest in some kind of property, maybe a condo or something.”

The latest and presumably last reward caps an arduous four years for James, who had periods of anxiety that his parents attributed to his involvement in the case.

“We’re very jumpy, especially James,” said Emily Romero, the youth’s mother, a year after James spotted the man on the family’s front lawn.

On the night of that sighting, a Mission Viejo computer engineer, William R. Carns Jr., was shot in the head, and his fiancee was sexually assaulted.

James’ father, James Romero Jr., said Wednesday that his son awoke at small sounds for many months after the 1985 attacks. In the years since, the early edginess has faded, but James still remembers the night in vivid detail.

“We had just got back from vacation,” he said Wednesday. “My parents were asleep, but I went out to the garage to work on my minibike. . . . I saw someone walking in my yard outside, and he got in a car and drove right past me.”

When the car raced off, James took the time to memorize what he could see of the license plate. That information, along with his description of the car as a small orange station wagon, led police to the Toyota that Ramirez was believed to have driven that night.

As Ramirez’s murder trial progressed--in Night Stalker attacks unrelated to the Mission Viejo crimes--James thought that he might be called upon to testify as a tangential witness. He attended several preliminary hearings and said he was subpoenaed by defense attorneys. But his appearance dates were postponed several times, James said, and the trial ended without his having to appear in court.

The trial’s conclusion brought deep relief in the Romero home, said James Romero Jr. After years of hanging on every development in the case, finally the family feels free of it.

“My son’s personality seems to have changed a lot since they found this guy guilty,” Romero said. “He seems to have a real sense of relief.”

James seems untroubled by the case now. Despite the years of fallout from his chance sighting that hot August night, he harbors no regrets.

“It feels good in a way knowing that you had something to do with it, with helping out,” he said. “Yeah, it was worth it.”