After his father retired from the army, he worked long hours for the railroad and ruled the home with explosive anger. Behind closed doors, life was pure terror.
By the time this boy was six, he had already suffered several head injuries from his father’s beatings — blows so severe that he developed temporal lobe epilepsy.
At times, his father tied him to a cemetery cross overnight as punishment, leaving him alone among the graves.
The moment that changed everything
When he was 15, the boy witnessed something that would scar him forever.
His cousin Miguel ”Mike” Valles, a Vietnam veteran who regularly showed him gruesome Polaroids of women he’d tortured during the war, shot his own wife in the face during a domestic argument.
The boy watched it happen.
After that, he withdrew completely. He dropped out of Jefferson High School in ninth grade and fell deeper into darkness.
The young man then began spending time with his sister’s husband, a man obsessed with spying on women. Together, they prowled neighborhoods at night, peeping through windows.
By 22, he had moved to California, bouncing between San Francisco and Los Angeles. He was now heavily addicted to cocaine, surviving on burglaries and thefts, a drifter with no home and no future.
But very few could have predicted what was coming next. Psychologists would later describe him as a “made” psychopath rather than a “born” one.
Night Walker is born
In April 1984, he committed his first known killing.
DNA would link later link him him to the horrific crime.
Two months later, he struck again, stabbing 79-year-old Jennie Vincow to death in her sleep. Her throat was slit so deeply she was nearly decapitated.
