Scott A. Weiss

Killer Summer

True Crime EN ↓ 3 episodes

In the summer of 1985, Richard Ramirez — the serial killer known as the Night Stalker — unleashed a seven-month reign of terror across Los Angeles, leaving a trail of murder, rape, and home invasion that stretched from the San Gabriel Valley to San Francisco. He became the most feared man in California, and one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Killer Summer is a three-episode narrated memoir podcast about what it was like to be nine years old in the San Fernando Valley while all of it unfolded. Writer and narrator Scott A. Weiss grew up in Canoga Park, just miles from...

Author

Scott A. Weiss

Episodes

We Got Our Guy 03.07.2026 21:06

The finale captures the extraordinary morning the Night Stalker's reign ended — not with a SWAT raid, but with East L.A. residents Manuel de la Torre and Faustino Penon chasing down and subduing Richard Ramirez with their bare hands and a lead pipe. Woven from archival broadcast audio of the capture, the crowds outside the police station, and Mayor Tom Bradley's on-camera relief, the episode trace...

The Night Stalker 03.07.2026 19:01

As Los Angeles descends into full-blown panic, the killer finally gets the name that will define him: the Night Stalker. Told through the eyes of a ten-year-old and his cul-de-sac friends, this episode follows a ragtag neighborhood watch — flashlights, a notebook, and a porch stakeout that nearly ends in disaster — set against real archival news coverage of detectives Frank Salerno and Gil Carrill...

The Valley 03.07.2026 12:22

In the summer of 1985, a nine-year-old boy growing up in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley has no idea his idyllic suburban childhood — Cabbage Patch Kids, Dodger games, backyard pools — is about to collide with the murder spree of the Night Stalker. As the Los Angeles Times connects a string of random home-invasion killings across the region, a boy home alone with a babysitter catches a news...