The Woman Who Married Serial Killer Richard Ramirez Gave up Everything to Be With Him

In an interview from prison, serial killer Richard Ramirez once discussed the brutality America was founded on. He said, "Violent delights tend to have violent ends ... Killing is killing whether done for duty, profit, or fun." Despite the fact that Ramirez went on a 14-month killing spree that started in June 1984 and was subsequently found guilty of murdering 13 people, some treated him as if he was a philosopher.

What those people didn't know was Ramirez had borrowed his violent delights line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, then repurposed it to fit his vicious narrative. Regardless of where he got his views from, the serial killer was romanticized in an alarming way. He received hundreds of letters from women who professed their love for him. He even married one of them. Where is Doreen Lioy now? Here's what we know.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Ramirez died on June 7, 2013, from complications secondary to B-cell lymphoma. On that day, an X (formerly Twitter) account believed to belong to Lioy posted, "Rest in peace, My Love." When another account asked what she was going to do now, Lioy replied, "I don't know. I haven't thought about it." The account went dark after that, and Lioy completely removed herself from the public eye.

Lioy told the Los Angeles Times that she first felt something for Ramirez in August 1985 "the night before he was arrested and police broke into the television show I was watching to broadcast his picture." She told the outlet there was something in his eyes that captivated her. Perhaps it was his vulnerability that caused her to forget the episode of Dallas she was trying to get through. "It wasn’t as if I knew him," she explained, but something happened.

Before the two began exchanging letters, Lioy sent Ramirez a birthday card which must have been sometime in February 1986. The visits began a year later and in July 1988, they got engaged when Ramirez looked at Lioy and said, "I wish to marry you." The wedding wouldn't come for another eight years.

The first time Lioy and Ramirez actually touched was in June 1996. Before that, their conversations were relegated to phone calls or visits on opposite sides of plexiglass. Regarding that first time, Lioy said, "He is very tall [6 feet, 1 inch] and very thin, and I sort of fell into his arms softly and, yes, gently." Evidently, this feeling wasn't one-sided.

Ramirez biographer Philip Carlo, author of The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez, met Lioy and said she was different from his other lovesick groupies. "He trusts her completely and she trusts him," said Carlo. "Everything in her life is about Richard. He is her sunrise and her sunset."

No one from Lioy's side of the family attended the wedding. Her twin sister Denise told the Burbank Leader (via the Los Angeles Times) that they were no longer speaking. "Our only connection is that we were born together." Naturally, this saddened Lioy who said she gave up everything to be with Ramirez. "I always knew this would require a tremendous personal sacrifice," she said.