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Since things were heating up with Gacy, I decided to take a break from Ramirez for a while, in the same way that I’d cut things off with Dahmer. My excuse for not being able to write for a while was that I was going to jail for beating my girlfriend. I felt that this was something he’d understand and appreciate.

In spite of my resolution to set some limits on myself, I was surprised how hard it was to let go of Ramirez. He’d been the most cooperative of all my correspondents, willing to talk about almost anything I asked him about. Yet as much as I was learning from him, I was paying a price with my own sanity.

There was no way I could keep juggling all these relationships at the same time. Gacy was the first person I contacted and I’d already invested a great deal of time and energy in that relationship. Moreover, he was becoming more and more demanding of my time. I figured that once I stabilized things with him, I could return to Ramirez.

In spite of this resolution, I found myself thinking again and again about the Night Stalker—about the opportunity he represented. Many times I thought about writing him again, but I’d restrain myself, remembering what happened the last time we’d been in close contact. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I wrote him again after a month-long interlude.

“Richard,” I greeted him, “I’m back, and ready for the Dark Lord. I was in jail because I beat the shit out of Tonya, but that will not slow me down in any way. The urge becomes stronger, and our followers are waiting. I want to keep the letters coming again. I want the teachings to continue.”

“Greetings,” he wrote back cheerfully, as if our month-long hiatus was perfectly natural. “Thanks for the $10. It’s been ages since I last heard from you. Say hi to Tia for me. So you were in the slammer. That’s fucked. Did you ever get in touch w/Order of the Evil Eye? Ever heard of Hand of Death? Thanks for the two pictures. That girl looks like she’s really enjoying it. Seen any good movies lately? Send more pictures of girls w/their butts in the air and back of their feet showing. To be sure I get them, send the pictures certified.”

He really liked the idea that I went to jail for beating my girlfriend. In fact, this appealed so much that he immediately wrote again to get more details.

“What did you do to Tonya?” he asked. “Did you break her jaw? Did you stick needles in her feet and hands? Did you record her howls?”

I found this very disturbing. Was he truly wondering what I did to her, or was he subtly suggesting things for me to do to her in the future? I later learned that he was actually telling me what he wanted me to do to her on his behalf. I was now his implement of destruction.

He sent me the guiding motto of his life, urging me to follow this sacred truth:

Grant me the serenity for what I cannot change

The courage to change that which I can

and the wisdom to hide the bodies of people I kill

If I wasn’t aware of the number and exact nature of the crimes he’d committed, I might think that he was pulling my leg. But this wasn’t Ramirez’s way of elbowing me in the ribs, or winking at the mystique that had attached itself to him. He was serious.

To learn more about the way he operated when he was in a killing mood, I went the indirect route once again, letting him know that I was planning on performing a “sacrifice” of my own in the near future.

“What do you do right before you take the life of a victim?” I asked. “What goes on in your mind?”

“1st you have to be calm,” he advised me. “Then, you savor the moment, you smell the aroma of the moment, the electricity, the blood, the beast.” He closed the letter by warning me to be careful, to make sure I “tidy up.” By this, he meant that after I finished raping and killing my victim, I should cover my tracks and destroy any evidence that might link me to the crime.

As I read this, I thought: What if I weren’t a kid trying to learn from these killers?