exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding". Ramirez never expressed any remorse for his crimes. He died on June 7, 2013, of complications from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution on California's death row. Early life and education Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Muñoz Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas, on 28 February 1960, at 2.07 a.m., to Julián and Mercedes Ramirez, the youngest of their five children. His father Julián, a Mexican national and former Ciudad Juárez policeman who later became a laborer on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, was an alcoholic who was prone to fits of anger that often resulted in physical abuse towards his wife and children. Richard began smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol at the age of 10. As a 12-year-old, Richard, or "Richie" as he was known to his family, was strongly influenced by his older cousin, Miguel ("Mike") Ramirez, a decorated Green Beret combat veteran who himself had already become a serial killer and a rapist during his time in the United States Army in the Vietnam War. Mike often boasted of his brutal war crimes, and shared Polaroid photos with Richard showing Vietnamese women whom he had raped, murdered, and dismembered or decapitated. Richard would later state while incarcerated that he was fascinated, rather than repulsed, by the images and stories Mike shared with him. Mike taught his young cousin some of his military skills, such as killing with stealth and effectively staying hidden in the dark, especially at night. Around this time, Richard began to seek escape from his father's violent temper by sleeping in a local cemetery. Richard was present on May 4, 1973, when Mike fatally shot his wife, Jessie, in the face with a handgun during a domestic argument. Like the graphic photos and stories of his cousin's war crimes in Vietnam, Ramirez would later similarly remark that witnessing the murder was not traumatic for him in any traditional sense, but rather a subject of fascination. After the shooting, Richard became sullen and withdrawn from his family and peers. Mike was later found not guilty of Jessie's murder by reason of insanity, with the shooting attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in Vietnam; he was confined for several years at the Texas State Mental Hospital. Shortly after the shooting, Richard moved in with his older sister, Ruth, and her husband, Roberto, an obsessive "peeping