(Sky News Photo)

By JASON TAYLOR

Two decades after the serial killer Richard Ramirez, a.k.a, the Night Stalker was sentenced to death, DNA evidence has linked him to the 1984 rape and murder of a 9-year-old San Francisco girl.

Ramirez was one of America’s most notorious serial killers who terrorized California residents for several tense weeks in the spring and summer of 1985, and was subsequently convicted in 1989 of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries. A professed devil worshiper, Ramirez would scrawl satanic symbols at the scene and into the bodies of some of the victims, and had sometimes gouged their eyes out.

The news comes five years after cold-case detectives in San Francisco reopened the unsolved slaying of Mei Leung, who in 1984 was sexually assaulted and killed in the basement of a residential hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Leung was killed just after she had walked home with her 8-year-old brother from a friend’s house. Ramirez lived just a few blocks from the crime scene at the time, but at that time there was no  usable evidence that could link him to the crime.

Investigators obtained a confirming sample of Ramirez’s DNA on Wednesday to compare with a sample found at the crime scene and a sample previously taken from the convicted murderer.  Ramirez said nothing when he provided the oral swab for the DNA test, said Inspector Holly Pera of the homicide cold-case unit. Pera, who has been on the force for nearly 30 years, said she remembered the slaying from her days as a patrol officer. “It’s the type of case – involving a little girl – that you don’t forget,” she said.

Ramirez is also the prime suspect in other unsolved San Francisco murders. Whether or not the Night Stalker will stand trial for the murder of little Mei Leung or any of the others has yet to be determined.