Hunting The Night Stalker: Gil Carrillo on Catching Serial Killer Richard Ramirez

We sit down with former investigator Gil Carrillo to unpack the Night Stalker case, the media storms, and what it takes to solve chaotic crimes with clarity and humanity. Gil shares investigative craft, lessons from partnership, and the legacy he hopes to leave.

• career arc into homicide and first Night Stalker call
• partnering with Frank Salerno and roles on the case
• why the AVIA shoe was evidence, not signature
• media pressure, threatened leaks, and strategy
• dentist stakeout, malfunctioning alarm, lost opportunity
• jurisdiction, egos, and information sharing
• community capture, restraint, and aftermath
• interrogation tactics and dynamic listening
• scientific mindset at crime scenes and coping
• representation, family, and legacy
• why serial killers persist despite technology
• making the Netflix documentary and its impact
• mentorship for young investigators and future lawyers

Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to my channel

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to my channel. Welcome back into another video. In today's video, I have a great podcast episode for you guys that I'm so excited for you guys to listen to. Um, I've been talking about doing something like this for a long time, and finally, we had the opportunity. Myself and my cousin Steph, uh, she helped me and she joined me in this podcast to have and have a conversation with former FBI agent Gilbert Carrillo. And he was one of the agents that helped capture uh the Night Stalker, also known as Richard Ramirez back in the 80s, guys. I mean, this podcast was uh full of a little bit of everything, but I will say that in order for you guys to get the context of the video, I would love for you guys to go to Netflix and watch the Night Stalker. Um and it's a docuseries uh around uh Rich Ramirez, of course, and and and every all the events that took place uh back in the 80s of his killing spree, right? Um, so some of the questions that we had were based from the documentary and what we have seen, and of course, questions that we came that we had on our own after watching the documentary. But let me tell you guys, this was um I thought that this was going to be a episode just talking about those events, but I think I learned a lot today from from Gilbert. Um, we had meaning meaningful conversation, we had an honest conversation. I met a great man today, an honorable man, a man with integrity, a man with a lot of humility. And um I learned a lot from him today. I and truly when I say that, what a good man he is. Um, you know, if if there was superheroes in this earth, he's one of them. And uh I truly believe he is to his community and the people in the country he served. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Of course, uh, you will see that we were a little bit nervous, you know. We got the legitters a little bit, but it's normal. Uh, it's not we don't do this often. I don't do this often on my channel, but I just hope that you guys really enjoy the conversation behind the questions that we had, and of course, the stories that Gil had to share. Uh, again, an honorable men. And um, you know, I think one day, us as men, we will strive to be somebody like him in the future. So, without further ado, I'll let you guys enjoy the podcast. I'll let you guys enjoy the video. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe uh to my channel. If you're listening to all the audio platforms, you can watch this video on 4K in YouTube. But this one might be 1080p. I don't know, it probably. Um, but if not, you can listen also to a talk. This podcast is an audio platform. So thank you guys for supporting. Thank you guys for love. And I hope to bring more uh content like this to my channel. Um, all right, let's do it. All right, well, let's get started, Gil. Let's uh let's start it. Let's let's let's do it. Um, so thank you for for being here again. Thank you for coming to my podcast. Um, we're excited to ask the questions. And one of the first things that we wanted to do, so you can just introduce yourself to our audience. Um, and what was your title at the time of the events that took place with the night stalker, also known as uh Richard Ramirez?

Career Path And First Night Stalker Call

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Okay, well, uh good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. It's a pleasure and an honor to be with you today. Uh I had a very long career in law enforcement, 38 years in law enforcement, 21 of those years, were as an investigator working in the Homicide Bureau. And my last five years, I was a lieutenant, supervising lieutenant in the Homicide Bureau. So I had 14 investigators working for me. And during the time of this investigation, I was uh at that time, I know something that you I don't know that anybody over there is old enough to remember, but we used to use beepers and I had a pager, and so I was up in the rotation 10:40 at night, March 17th, 1985, and they called, I they called me up, didn't have to page me, I was at home, and they said, You got a murder. 8510 Billage Lane in the city of Rosemeade. So I said, okay. So I went just like any other murder, routine mundane murder, and that's what started it. Uh I then became the only investigator that was on it from beginning to end. And uh my partner ultimately ended up being uh Frank Salerno, who was uh a well-known figure in the homicide bureau. Everybody looked up to him, everybody recognized him. He was the he was the he was the we used to call him, he was the Goomba. He was the he was the leader. He asked me to uh in December of 84, we were at a Christmas party, and he asked me if I would uh I was interested in becoming his partner, his partner was retiring. And so I said, Well, sure, I'll I'd I'd I'd take it. And I went back and I sat with my wife and I said, Frank Salerno just asked me to be his partner. And she goes, So? Who's Frank Salerno? And I said, Who's Frank Salerno? Don't you understand? That's Frank saying, Frank. He worked on the Hillside Strangler, right? And he he could have had anybody in that bureau that he wanted as a partner, but yet he chose myself with only four years experience, three years experience at that time. Uh, I went to March uh 23rd, 1981, was when I got assigned to Homicide Bureau, and he asked me to be his partner, and so I was excited. Uh, in January, he asked me to meet him at one of our substations, and I did, and he said, Uh, hey, listen, I want to talk to you. Remember at the Christmas party? I asked you if I uh you'd consider being my partner, and you said yes. He said, Well, I'm here to tell you that I was in my cups, you know, I've been drinking a lot that night. And so I think, okay, now he's letting me down. He's drunk and really didn't mean it. And so, in order to be cool, I said, Yeah, so was I. And he says, Well, I'm not in my cups right now. He said, I want to know if you'll still be my partner. I said, Yeah, I'd certainly still be your partner. He said, Good, because I've already talked to the captain about it, told him you agree, we're gonna hook up. So that was done in January, but we really didn't hook up until June because of uh he became the acting lieutenant for a while. My partner went off sick, so it wasn't until actually June the 27th, June 28th, and we became partners on the case of Patty Lane Higgins in uh another incorporated city out here, City Barkidias. Then we became partners full-time.

SPEAKER_05 6:56

Did did he ever tell you, or did you ever ask yourself why did he choose you? Like what was like the the the reason behind that or his purpose?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

No, in in the documentary, you know, I I've learned, you know, you don't know the answer to a question, don't ask the question, you know, because I may not want to like, I may not like it.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Right, gotcha. I never did. I was satisfied with the fact I don't need a reason why. He asked, that's all I needed. But in the documentary by uh Netflix, they asked him why. And he said, I picked Gil because he was young, he was Hispanic, he spoke the language, and he was good, and I just thought that we'd uh made a good partner. Wow, and so that's why I asked him, and and I was elated, I didn't care why. You knew you were in.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah. Um how did you how did they um give you the case or how do they assign the cases um to you?

Partnering With Frank Salerno

SPEAKER_02 7:49

You were on a numerical uh rotation. You you know, when I went up uh that week, uh it's you know, you're they had one through uh seven. So it's two-person teams, so it's one, two, three, four. And when they get to your name, the next case that comes in, pure up, it's your case. And nobody knew this was going to be a serial case. This is just another routine, mundane murder. And so we got it. I was working with a partner by the name of Jimmy Mercer at that time, and we went out to 8510 Village Lane for the death of Dale Okazaki and the wounding of Maria Hernandez, and that just started it. And then I started there was something different about the case. Uh, I owed this entire investigation, uh, 90% of it to the knowledge that I gained from one man, retired FBI agent, college professor by the name of Dr. Robert Morneau. And Morneau, I took two semesters of uh advanced criminal investigation pertaining to sex crimes from him at Cal State, Los Angeles, and he taught me stuff that you know would make people's heads pin. Most investigators did not subscribe to it. If you don't know sex crimes, then you wouldn't believe half the stuff he taught. And that's what got me through this case.

SPEAKER_05 9:05

Wow, you know, in in in regarding towards the the doctor side of things, right? So Stephanie and I, we actually went to a criminologist event last week. Uh, I don't know if you ever heard of um Dr. Scott Bond, um, but he's a criminologist and he's written books about serial killers. And I kid you not, the third serial killer that he was mentioning was Richard Ramirez, and he he stated that, and I want to know your your thoughts on this, that the characteristics of Richard Ramirez uh as a serial killer is power control and thrill. From your experience, do you characterize him as that, or is there something else that you would see him as uh from your experience?

SPEAKER_02 9:53

No, that that pretty well sums it up. The power experience uh he'll he'll in essa, and he did tell us, you know, if you acquiesced his commands, you survived. If you didn't, you died. So he liked the power. And the thrill was always sex, he was a sexual deviant.

SPEAKER_05 10:12

So it was all because of lust that he was making all these all these mergers.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Well, in my opinion, I'm not a high-paid doctor. I'm not just I'm not in my opinion, that from what I learned from Morneau. Now, if you talk to uh uh Frank, uh my partner, Frank just thought he was a a burglar that would do whatever he wanted to when he was there. You know, we want to rape, we rape, if we got a burglarized, and I thought it was much cheaper than that. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

And uh we've seen like in many other serial killers, they have like a signature um kind of something that they do when leave that makes them very known as that, like you know, the killer. Yeah. Um, for Richard, besides um, you know, the shoe, because we know the shoe was a big thing in your investigation. Um, did did he do anything else? Because throughout the the documentary we saw too, is it was just like he was just picked randomly or didn't really have like a specific type of person that he was going after.

Modus Operandi And The AVIA Shoe

SPEAKER_02 11:13

The shoe was not part of his not part of the emote. That's just what he was wearing. That's just evidentiary. That was there for evidence. And I can tell you without equivocation, 1356 pair of model 440 of videos arrived in New York on January 9, 1985 from China for distribution throughout the US, of which one pair ended up in downtown LA. So that was just pure evidentiary works. He had no uh his only consistency was his inconsistency because normally serial killers do things in the same fashion, you know, and he used guns, different caliber guns, different types of guns. He used knives, he used blunt force trauma. One point it looks like he used a machete, uh, used a hammer for as a sex instrument after he hit people with manual strangulation, ligature strangulation. And his victims range in age from five all the way up to 85. So you can see there his only consistency was his inconsistency, which made it that much more difficult to solve the case.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

You know, and let me tell you, I was so frustrated. I'm so sorry, Carlos, but I was frustrated with the media and how they were just willing to spread all of the evidence that you had, like, especially when um uh who was it for Larry Einstein? My yes, yes, I was just like, where's the common sense here? Like, and which is what one of my questions was like, do you think it was just because of the time that maybe serial killers weren't as well known, or is just beginning to spread out that they were just you just thought, oh, you know, me spreading all this evidence, it was gonna be more helpful than me keeping it. And and we know we saw that, you know, Richard was very well aware of everything that was happening.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

It was, but you're asking me about six different questions in one statement. What she did was irresponsible, it was pure political. Nobody else did it out here. I'd uh uh there was uh I'm trying to think of her name, and she we ended up uh as friends, very good friends. Um is it the reporter? Yes, Laurel. Laurel Erickson Laurel Erickson, yeah. Laurel Ericsson at one time during the case, I want my I want my captain, I wanted her arrested, I wanted to arrest her for extortion. She was she was trying to extorter, she knew about the shoe print. Yes, and she found out about the shoe print because one of the houses we did a search warrant on, we have to leave a copy of the warrant that what we were looking for, and it specifically stated the AVIA shoe print, the AVIA shoe. She knew that information, and so she was threatening our department. Either you give Frank and Gil, we get a stand-up with them, which would have been an exclusive. And if they won't give it to us, if you won't let us have it, then we are gonna go public with a shoe print. And that was the only time that anybody threatened. And as we became friends and we became friends with her producer, Paul Skolnick, uh, Paul said she was never gonna, she was never gonna do that. But you learned how good she was because she was an attractive lady at the time. Uh, not that she's not attractive now, but she was much younger, she was attractive, and so she would sit there and she can, like I said, we became friends. We drank together. She'd sit there and say, Do I play dumb blonde or do I put my finger right here? Or do I blow blow their egos up so much that they're gonna give me something? You know, just she used every trick in the book. She was good at what she did, and she got her information out. Uh, conversely speaking, he was just as good. Henry Alfaro, who is a reporter out here with ABC, uh I remember him going up to San Francisco and he saw him. He says, Hey Gil, he says, How about a story? What's going on? I said, Henry, we're in San Francisco. You need anything? You got to go to San Francisco. We can't give you anything. He said, Okay, you owe me one. And I said, All right, you're on. So when we finally got the case filed and we held them at preliminary hearing, he said, Gil, you owe me one. I said, Okay, let's go. And I gave him an exclusive by myself, just with him, wow, to report. You know, and I just saw a reporter uh this last weekend, and an old reporter that I used to work with uh out in the field. And I said, I don't, because I've been gone for 15 years, and I said, I don't know if you remember, I just wanted to say hi to remember you, not only forget everything you did for us, but the Knights Doctor documentary. You know, yes, you're from that, and yes, I remember doing stand-ups with you, and we really miss you. You were so good because you knew what to do. I knew and understood that the news media needs us, and we need the news media just as bad as they need us. Right. We need them to get certain words out, we want information out, they need us so they can have information to put out because that's what keeps their media going. Right. Information they put out.

SPEAKER_05 16:23

You know, that that was one of my questions and frustrations when she came to you and you know, she was telling you, I'm going to release this information to the public if right, if if you don't give me something. I was like in the back of my head, I'm like, is there like a like a law behind that? Can you can't you get in trouble for doing that? Is there like something in place?

Media Pressure And Leaks

SPEAKER_02 16:43

I was ready to go. I wanted to arrest her, but my captain said no. So what he did was he made a stay in the office for about 30 minutes, so they got in place in our parking lot. And then he said, Okay, now you can go. We had to leave, we have work to do out the street. As we're walking out, she came up to us in the parking lot, and she really on that particular day, she talked to Frank. I'm standing right next to Frank and says, Hey, Frank, because everybody knew Frank, nobody knew me. You know, Frank was a big, big stud of the Hillside Strangler. And can you tell us? He gave him some answer just to blow her off, but nothing particular to the case. And uh, that's just the way you know Frank knew how to do things. And back then, as a matter of fact, everybody knew Frank. And because people would ask, other cops would say, Well, who's working the case? Well, everybody knows Frank Salerno and the other detective. Nobody knew my name. You know, I was right, I wasn't coming up. You were coming up, yeah. And so at the end of it, two guys that I made come off the golf course on their day off, getting, we need you to do some work. I was they're the ones that we found that researched the shoe print for us. And we said, find us. And so they gave me a little plaque, and they got uh ping pong ball. And they put they glued, they cut it in half, they put two balls on this uh ping pong, on his plaque, and it said uh to gill Todd, which stood for the other detective real. You had the balls, and you had the perseverance and tenacity. Wow. Great job. So that's awesome. It was a nice way to see it.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

I was like if right now, like you looking back, and you know, with everything, a lot of people becoming crime junkies and going through cases again and just hearing about everything. Do you ever have moments where you question your approach or um to how you handled the case?

SPEAKER_02 18:50

No, absolutely not. The the way we handled the way I was on that case couldn't have been handled any other way. I'm very glad with the input. You take luck over skill any day, but it just so happened he happened to be Hispanic, I happened to be Hispanic. And you know, Frank went in there and admonished his constitutional rights, and he invoked right away, which means anything he says can't be against him, so we're all shut down. Can't ask him anything. And he said, All right, I'll bets are off, see it. And he was his responsible. Hey, wait a minute, I got some questions. And he said, Well, what kind of questions do you have? And he sat down and we started talking. First thing he said was, Oh Ale. And well, I knew what O'Dale was. All right, and my partner didn't. He called Frank Mr. Salerno, but he called me guilt. And him and I got along. And I never, he's never once, nobody's ever heard me badmouth him. Uh, he never heard me raise my voice, he never heard me call him names, he never heard anything. It was like just talking to you and I right now. And that got me through the case of the way I approached the investigation, the way everything everything that went on. It was just so difficult because we asked for I'm on January the March, April, uh, April 10th, not January, April 10th. I went, I attended a meeting, uninvited. I attended a meeting in Monterey Park Police Department. They had members from LAPD, Montebello Police Department, Monterey Park Police Department, and some uh deputies that were working the uh sex crimes unit uh from our department. And he held this meeting. I was I heard about the meeting because a friend of mine told me, hey, they're holding a meeting and the FBI is gonna be there. So I went down there for an exchange of information. Everybody presented their case, what their case was. The FBI agent was there, he was there to collect their information. They were giving over the reports, and then he was gonna take it back to Quantico, Virginia's the behavioral science unit. He was gonna send everything back there so they could go over it and come up with a profile on who the suspect might be. Well, I went and everybody got their shot at presenting, and they said, Okay, Gil, what are you here for? And I said, Well, here's my case. And I at that time had linked two child abductions and two or three murders by that time. And I said, I believe this is why, yeah, da da da. But nobody, and the reason it was so tough, even for people from my bureau, they didn't believe me. Because in back then, everything that the FBI did, and we did in law enforcement, is predicated on history. Somebody's done this before. Let's see what they do. Nobody in criminal history had ever been documented what I was alleging at the time. So people didn't believe me. People didn't believe in it. They thought I was blowing hot air. Matter of fact, I won't say publicly everything they were saying, but I was a young punk Mexican trying to make a name for myself. Wow with a few explicatives thrown in there just uh to get them by. When in fact, come around July, my captain called back to Quanico and said, Hey, where's the profile? You guys are supposed to help. My guy gave you all the paperwork, and I said, What paperwork? We didn't get anything from him. Well, come to find out, the FBI agent that was there thought that I was blowing hot air. So he sent everybody else's paperwork, but didn't send money. Wow. So he didn't send my paperwork in. So two days later, the FBI flew out from Quantico and they were here to help out, you know. So it was uh it was it was tough, all predicated on criminal history, and to this day there hasn't been a topic at because nobody knows what Richard was really doing. Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah. There was a part too where where you had uh two other agents um in at the dentist's um office, and um I I can't remember if I was a director or something, they were like, Why are you wasting so much money on having these agents there? And the day that you pull them out and the LAPD puts in that the um the alarm, everything goes off and he goes in. And I was just like, listen to him, please.

Interagency Friction And Jurisdiction

SPEAKER_02 23:14

It was the uh at that time, it was the under-sherap of Los Angeles County who did it, ordered us to pull him out. It was a waste of money because the doctor's office was in LAPD's area. We stuck two Asian detectives in there just to stake the place out in case Richard came in. And that doctor's office, he was a open seven days a week. You know, he he was a money hungry man, he did a lot of work, and we were getting no results. I had gotten a copy of the x-rays, who the reason we thought he was gonna be in there, and I showed them to a friend of mine that I grew up with who was a dentist, and he's the one that told me he's got an impacted tooth, it's gonna be killing him, he's gotta go back. That's why we stuck the investigators in there. The under-shered said, pull them out, it's a waste of our money. Let LEPD put their own robbery alarm in there, it's their jurisdiction anyway. Let them do that. So I said, Yes, sir. So we did it, and they put it in, and it wasn't LEPD's fault, it was a malfunctioning alarm. The alarm never went off. I got the call that night from the dentist saying, Hey, what happened? We did what you said, we pushed the alarm, nobody ever came. And so the next day, deputies went back in there. It was like, okay, close the barn now that the animals have gotten loose, you know, and they shut the door, and Richard got his work done and got away.

SPEAKER_05 24:36

And he committed war crimes after that after that, right? Yes, he did. Oh man. Uh, can can can you do us a favor, Gil? Can you help uh help me understand how how does jurisdictions work within law enforcement? I fear I hear a lot about that when it comes to even uh other serial killers where uh offices were not sharing information, and uh that's one of the reasons why when you committed a crime somewhere that nobody connected them fast enough. How does that work and why why does that happen?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Well, it happens because sometimes because of egos. Uh Monterey Park was a city, it's an incorporated city. You have to understand that even in New York and in Georgia, everything's divided into either counties or incorporated cities. Yes, sir. And there are unincorporated cities that are cities, but they're not incorporated, so they come under the jurisdiction of the county area anyway. So the Sheriff's Department, which is Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, we are in charge of all unincorporated cities, all unincorporated areas in Los Angeles County. Gotcha. Incorporated cities have their own police departments. Los Angeles Police Department, Monterey Park had theirs. The chief of police from Monterey Park, he was not exchanging information at all. He would, he had an ego thing. He wanted his boys to solve this major case. We were big brother coming in and stepping in and you know, stepping all over. So he didn't want it. They can do whatever they want. It's their city. If we felt that it was a danger, we have the sheriff has the power to go in and say, okay, we're taking this now. He never exercised that, but he does have the ultimate power. The sheriff is the ultimate law enforcement representative in the particular county he's at. So although we had at that time uh close to probably close to 10,000, we had about 9,500 uh sworn personnel. LAPD had about the same, and we'd go back and forth. Sometimes they'd have a little more, sometimes they'd have a little less. We just go back and forth. So out of New York, you have the city of New York, which has probably one of the, if not the, them in Detroit, uh, one of the largest departments in the United States. But inside your New York, they have smaller cities that are incorporated that have their own agencies. So they would handle their own stuff, and they always have the ability to contact whatever jurisdiction. So if a murder happens, say in like I the city of Rosemead is an incorporated city, but they contract with the sheriff's department to handle their murder slot. So we handle their murder. Monterey Park is an incorporated city, but they don't contract to us. They use our crime lab, but they have their own cops and they do their own investigations. We should be exchanging information. Right. And we do for the most part. We exchange, you know, in this case, we exchange information with whoever wanted to listen to us. We work very closely with LAPD on this case. Uh, we work very closely. Arcadia was another case we worked with. Uh, you know, a lot of agencies are smaller agencies, but we do their, you know, they they hire us, they to do their to do their homicide is a specialty, and you need to devote an awful lot of time. It's very scientific, and it's it's a lot of man hours and logistical problems that go along with homicide. So they just uh contract to us to do their work, and that's why when you get egos from chiefs of police from smaller cities, that because they want the big news and media, they want to let everybody know they're capable of solving big crimes, then they don't exchange information. We can't stop that.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Oh man, that's unfortunate. I have another question too. Um, with Richard, uh Richard, he uh I mean, I feel like as y'all were getting closer to capturing him, he was committing more and more and more crimes instead of like cooling off or you know, maybe saying, Okay, I'm not gonna do anything else now. Do you think it was that fear that he was gonna get caught soon? So he wanted to get everything out, or it was do you think it was more of a count cat and mouse game for him?

The Dentist Stakeout And Missed Alarm

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Like, okay, I can't answer. I I really can't, not being a wise guy. I can't answer questions like that because now you're asking me to tall to you about the operation of his mind. I had trouble without staying up with my own mind, much like trying to figure out his mind. Uh, he knew we talked to him, I talked to him, and he was getting tired towards the end. And he he knew that cash was inevitable. Uh two weeks, uh, the week before he was arrested, we had no idea who this guy was. We didn't identify him until uh around the 28th of August, which was Wednesday. We we had by this time, now we knew he was called Ricky or in Despeinado, but we didn't know, you know, you got a nickname and a street name from somebody in Los Angeles County where millions of people reside. We had no, up until then, we had no idea who he was, where he was, or anything like that. But on that Sunday, we got called out to Mission Viejo, which is about uh from it's not in Los Angeles. County, that's in another county. That's Orange County jurisdiction. So it's about uh I'd say 50 miles south of downtown LA. And I told my captain at that time, we'll have within two weeks. We didn't have we had no idea who we want, we'll have him in two weeks. The night before he was captured, I said, we'll have him in a week. Wow. And the day before he was arrested, the captain called us and he said, uh, the sheriff from Los Angeles County, him, the chief of police from LAPD, Daryl Gates, the chief, the sheriff of Orange County, Brad Gates, and the chief of police in San Francisco. They were gonna have a meeting in Sheriff Block's office, our sheriff's office, and they were gonna be on a conference call with San Francisco. And the topic was we've now positively identified him Friday afternoon. So do we go public with his identity and release it? Or do we hold it? And he said, What do you guys want to do? I said, you know what? We understand why, but we're asking for 24 hours. We'll have him in custody. Because if we don't have those 24 hours, he's gonna see his name and then it's gonna be chased, and he knows we're after him now, it's gonna be that much more difficult to get him. And he said, Okay, he came back about 20 minutes later and he said, We lose. They're releasing his name today. And we understood, you know, because if he killed again that night and we didn't release it, it'd have been bad for everybody. Wow. So uh as it turned out, you know, hindsight's 2020, they did the right thing, they released it, and just so happened that all the stars aligned and he ended up at the bus depot and got identified.

SPEAKER_05 31:46

Gil, so in the documentary, when I was listening to it and in the the part where he got captured and all the running he did, I felt like it was a lot. But can you give us like a uh like a description of how much he actually ran?

SPEAKER_02 32:01

Um it was in a sprint and he ran about two miles, and in those two miles, he had to jump uh over walls and fences uh to get to the around the block, get across the street. Then he actually had to run across ten lanes of the five freeway. Uh even though there wasn't a bunch of traffic, people are speeding that Saturday morning uh across a 10 freeway and he kept running in a northeasterly direction. And he's running through LEPD's area, and then he crossed the center divider, which now put him in the county area, he ended up on uh the name of the street, just Hubbard Street. And he he got about uh three-quarters of a block down the way. He tried to carjack. First, he tried to carjack a man right away, wrecked the car in the driveway, didn't get away. Then he got out of there and he ran up the block a little bit, and he tried uh carjacking the lady. The lady he uh tried carjacking was screaming. Her husband came out, he had a pipe right there by the door, ran up and hit him in the head. Now, here's a guy that's been run jumping fences, not much of a fight, hit him in the head, but the neighbors heard what was going on, they saw the commotion. So Richard turned to start to run away from them, and he was just exhausted. He quit. They didn't beat him up, he just quit. He said, Okay, you got me, and they just encircled him until the cops got there.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

How proud were you that the community like really was there to be like you know, the community you were protecting to were like there to defend themselves as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Like, how proud of you that I wasn't I wasn't I had no feelings at that time. Uh the realities are that day, I could I I'm exhausted, you know, we're tired, we're the total focus on what we have to do. I can't think about, oh, we're excited, we're happy, you know, congratulations, I'm proud of. I wasn't. I really wasn't. I'm happy that they did what they did. But the realities are because I'm Hispanic and because I grew up in Navarrio, and because it was a cop that took me home at the age of 17 and told my parents signed for me to get off the streets, they'll end up dead or in prison. I know what it's like. So I know in the barrio, you know, these people are they're just out there seeing what's going on. Hey, and you're not gonna mess with the people in our barrio, but there was no fight. They didn't have to fight because he was exhausted. They sat down, they did the right thing, they didn't beat the dog snot out of him because these were good people. I was happy that they didn't beat him uh to death. If it had been the banger, the gangbangers that got him, they'd have killed him. Just because he was without knowing who he was, just because he was trying to harm somebody in their barrio.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Oh, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

These were good citizens, they were good people. So, no, I wasn't I wasn't proud of all Hispanics, I wasn't proud of my people. I wasn't I was happy he was in custody, and now the work was really gonna go on forwards.

SPEAKER_05 34:54

Awesome. Um, I had a question in regards to the way he moved around from from crime to crime. We saw in the documentary that there was sometimes he stole some cars, um, maybe the use of bikes, but did he ever go on foot at all? Because these locations, in my mind, they look kind of closed, but I'm not sure because I obviously I've got no they were several miles apart.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

All of them number one, I don't know where you where you heard he went on bikes. We have no knowledge of no bikes at all. Okay, and the only time he was on foot was when he'd get out of the car. It was a stolen car. He'd steal the car, go caper, get out of the car to do his business, then he'd get back in the car to get away.

SPEAKER_05 35:32

And this was every time he committed a crime, was this uh I'm assuming I'm assuming it wasn't a new car every time, but he always had a stolen car to drive around.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Different cars.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

Wow. Wow, that's a lot of cars to steal, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Um, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Um what advice would you give to a young investigator now or a criminology student now that is entering the field from all the experience that you've had? Like what advice would you give them that is just starting up?

Community Capture And Aftermath

SPEAKER_02 36:06

The same advice that I'd give to anybody going into any field that they're working that's torn into a marriage, going into a relationship with a guy or a girl, anything. And that is number one, you have to have an infinite amount of understanding of the suspect, or exchange a suspect for your employee, your husband, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. Everybody does something for a reason. You don't condone what they do, but you have to have an understanding. I knew that Richard, in my mind, was a sexual deviant, and he was doing this, as you said, for the thrill that the doctor said. The thrill. Uh, he was doing it for a reason. There's his reason, and I understand it. Because if he doesn't do that, he doesn't satisfy his need for sex. There's thrill. I don't condone his actions, but I understand them. And it makes it a lot easier for me to talk to him if I understand them. Number two, you have to be a dynamic listener. You have to focus. When I'm in an interview situation, uh an interrogation or an interview, uh interview is with somebody that's on your side, you know, their victim or a witness. An interrogation is somebody that has something to hide from you, and you need to elicit their information. I become an intent listener. I actually watch the words come out of their lips. You know, I just come out of their mouth. I watch her, I'm focused, turn everything out. I don't write anything down. And when I go into an interrogation, you sit there and I have a notebook in front of me, open up with a pen, and I sit okay. Your name, Carlos Gonado, where do you live? Okay, and your age, date of birth, you work, where you work at, and you live with your family, you you have a mother, father, okay. All right, hold up that book with my pen inside and push it away from me. That way the person I'm interrogating doesn't think that I'm writing. Correct. Because if you're writing, and something I tell my wife all the time, I reminder of it, and that is if you're thinking of a response, if I sit there and say, you know what, that shirt you're wearing, you know, it you know, it's terrible. You shouldn't be wearing that shirt. And you in your mind say, you know, everybody's been telling me, I know what he's gonna tell me, he's gonna tell me that my shirt is no good, that it it's I shouldn't be wearing it, but I haven't finished my statement yet, then you're really not listening to me. Your mind is thinking of a response, right? And if your mind is thinking of a response, then you're not paying attention, you're not listening to me, right? So you need to be a great listener, better than the average person. You need to have the understanding you have to put yourself in their shoes. How would you like to be treated if you were in their shoes? And never forget where you came from. Never forget where you came from.

unknown 39:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Special advice I can give somebody.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

I love that.

SPEAKER_05 39:12

Thank you. Thank you for your words. That's actually uh that almost made me cry a little bit. Um I was gonna I was gonna ask you um in regards to the the documentary, when when you got the call, how does that work in Netflix? Because I'm curious, how does how does Netflix call you? How do they reach out to you? How long is the process of building a documentary like that? Because it felt pretty big. Four episodes, I feel like it takes a lot of time that goes into building a documentary like that. How long was the process when it came to that?

Interrogation Approach And Listening

SPEAKER_02 39:47

It's hard to remember what the process was like because it also happened during COVID. So they had to stop production for a while because of COVID. So they couldn't get out, they couldn't get out there to work and do anything like that. What actually happened was uh a friend of mine, Brian Gracias. Brian, I knew Brian's family, his uncles, I knew his grandparents, uh, his uncles were in law enforcement. He had uh his dad and uh his uncle uh another couple uncles were in the fire department, and he got injured on duty, so he had to medically retire from law enforcement. And then medically retiring from law enforcement, he went into writing, and he was writing for the program Chicago PD, and was a nationally uh played program on on television, and he called me up one day and he said, Hey, Gil, you know, I'm over here writing, and you know, but I've been thinking, man, I got an idea because if you look at TV and movies today, there are no heroes in Mexicans. He says, Latinos are always dopers, they're thugs, they're murderers, they're robbers, they're beaters. You know, they're they're up to no good. We don't have anybody to look up to. He says, I've known you, I know what you've done, I know about so much of you. He says, I think you're a hero, and I I would like to sit down with you. And I have a friend of mine that's a co-writer, we'd like to take you out to dinner and just sit down. So that's what we did. We sat down, went out, and they had this idea they wanted to put something together, and it was pie in the sky. And so I went out and met him and came back. The wife said, Well, how'd it go? I said, Well, yeah, it was all right. I mean, pie in the sky. Uh, had a good steak and drank some good wine and met another friend, this uh Tim Waltz, who was uh Brian's friend, co-writer. And then Brian went to work on uh oh the motorcycle outlaw gang show. I forget uh about a motorcycle gang. They were on TV for a long time too. And uh God, how can I forget? But anyway, he went to work on that. And Tim Walsh called me up about a year later and he says, Hey Gil, I'd like to take you out to dinner. I want you to meet somebody else. I said, All right, so I went and met him, and that's when I met uh Tiller Russell, who was the director of the Netflix bot. Okay.

unknown 42:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

And he just said, Gil, Tim has told me all about you. He said, I just want to meet you, see what was going on, and see what you were like. So we met, we had dinner, and by the time we were done, he said, Well, hey, listen, I'm sold. I want to do uh documentary. And you know, what you did was phenomenal, and I think we could do something good. And he said, Are you in? I said, I'm in. We shook hands. He said, I'll have my attorneys contact you in the morning. He said, We don't need attorneys right away. You got my handshake, and I'm a man of integrity. I'll talk to nobody else. You know, I'm I'm with you. There'll be a time when attorneys have to get involved, and we'll do it at that time. So that's what started it. And then he went and he told me that night. He said, Okay, what we'll do. He says, I'm gonna start uh writing this up, and as we get it written up, he says, I'll call you up and see how we're gonna do. This is my plan, this is what I want to do. I said, You don't have to tell me anything. You guys are the professionals, I'm just the talking head. And he said, Okay, well, once we get it all shot and we go into editing, we'll call you in the editing room so you can be there with when we edit. I said, I don't need to be there for the editing either. You guys are the pros, I'm just the talking head. When it drops, let us know and I'll watch it like everybody else. Wow. And so that's what we did. And the night that it dropped, he called me up and just said, Gil, it's gonna drop tonight at midnight, and uh enjoy the ride. I said, What do you mean, enjoy the ride? He said, I'll talk in about a week or two. And I had no idea what he was talking about, and I learned very quickly what he was talking about. And since that time, because of the documentary, I've I'd I'd done a lot of speaking before all over the place, but man, I'm talking all over the US. Nothing like this. Wow, you know, I was asked to fly, they wanted to fly me last year, last November. I was asked to go to Prague, Czechoslovakia, uh, to go talk at a conference over there. So it just opened up an awful lot of doors for me and opened up a lot of stuff, and people want to do a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Do you feel that the documentary captured the essence of like your work and the partnership that you had with Frank or have with Frank um throughout the whole documentary?

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Yeah, it did. It my stuff, excuse me, there was a fly around here, it bothered me. Um it did. Everything in there was truth. Uh the documentary made it sound like Frank and I were partners from the very beginning. You assumed that we were partners. We actually, I got the first murder March 17, 1985. Frank and I didn't hook up until June the 28th of 85.

SPEAKER_05 44:54

Three months or so.

SPEAKER_02 44:55

Yeah, and then he was arrested August 31st of 85. So it it did, it followed it. It was good, it was right on. The only mistake I could see that it made at one point in time it said I transferred to homicide uh uh uh October 1st of uh 1970, uh 1970, 71. And that was the day I joined the department. That's not the day I went to homicide. And that's the only mistake. And they just I'm sure they took it out of context, and I didn't hear I didn't even hear it the first time they said it out. Uh the documentary uh itself, in talking to uh Tiller, I expressed to him that uh I can say this. I told him I didn't give two shits about television. I really didn't care. Uh what I wanted to do in life is I wanted to leave a legacy for my grandchildren. And that that's all I wanted to do. All I ever wanted out of life before was to prove to to earn to make my dad proud of me. I wanted to uh wanted him to become proud of me. And my dad passed before uh the actual arrest or anything, and uh he did capture that the essence of of the documentary because when I watched it at time I I cried. It showed some pictures of my dad and myself as a kid, and uh I laughed, and I'm always laughing. And so he uh I talked to him two weeks later and he said, What'd you think? I said, You got it, you nailed it. I said, I can't thank you enough. I cried and I laughed, and that one scene that I now know uh subliminally my dad's proud of me. You stuck that in there, and I know my dad's proud of me. He said, Exactly. He said, and while during the editing, we went ahead, and when that part came on, the part you're talking about, I shut the machine down, turned on the lights, and everybody in the room was crying. He said, So I knew we had a hit, I knew it was gonna be good, and it did, it came out uh very good. I've been very pleased with the outcome of it, and I couldn't have asked for anything better.

SPEAKER_05 47:10

Well, um, in regards to your father, um is is is how how important it would have been for you? Well, and and you talked a little about in the documentary of him being around why you accomplished such a big feat in your career, because I thought it was you know massive. But as a as a man um who, and just to get a little personal, I my father wasn't around when I was growing up. I can only imagine in my head the things that I feel like I've accomplished in my short career in my life. How proud, you know, I would have loved to hear those words out of come out of him and like I'm proud of you, son.

Desensitization, Science, And Crime Scenes

SPEAKER_02 47:48

And I could have it would have meant the world to me. Let me tell you, uh, it was a different time at that time, the culturally, even speaking. Um, my dad was dying of cancer. He was in bed in the hospital bed, and my family was around. I asked everybody to step out of the room. I wanted to talk to my dad alone. So I stepped out of the room, I grabbed my dad's hand, I said, Dad, I gotta tell you something. And he said, What is it? I said, Dad, I love you. I had never said I love you to my dad. I'd said it to my mom, but I'd never said it to my dad. My dad never once told me he loved me. I said, Dad, I love you. My dad put his hand on mine, he said, Me too, Mijo. Me too. But didn't say I love you. So I remember when my uh dad passed the next day. I told uh my sister was down the house, my sister was helping my mom, they were going through his personal belongings, and I told my sister, I wish I had just heard my dad say I love you. And I said, I know he did, but I just wish there had been some confirmation. But a half hour later, she came in. My dad, being old school Mexican, had a little metal file box, and she says, Well, let me tell you something. Question my dad's love for you says, in this file box that we found in the closet was the deed to the house, all the insurance papers, every important document, and ten thousand dollars in there, and it was all wrapped up in this newspaper. And you open up the newspaper, and it's me on the front page, it's an article about me when I was helping start in an orphanage in Vietnam. And so I know that he that he loved me, and I know he was proud of me. When my dad passed, his boss from work called my mom up and said, Have your son come up, come pick up a turkey and a bottle of whiskey. That's what they used to give the employees where my dad worked. So I went down there as a construction worker. So I went down his the yard and I walked into the business office, and there's these old guys sitting around. He says, Oh, you must be Carillo's boy. I said, Yes, sir. Oh, I'm Lino and I'm Blinky and I'm so-and-so. They give me these. I said, Well, it's an honor to meet all of you. I said, I've heard of your names. My father's talked about you to my mom, but this is the first opportunity I've had to meet you. They said, Oh, we knew all about you. Your dad was so proud of you. Wow. From the time you went into the army, then when you became a cop, forget about it. Then you were going to college, he just couldn't stop talking about you. But I never heard it.

SPEAKER_04 50:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:29

And uh, so I know, and when he was sick, uh, his brothers came out from New Mexico and they were at the house, and I went home. I was just transferring into Homicide Bureau, and I got an evaluation that said I was outstanding. And those are hard to come by back then. And so I showed it to my mom, and my mom said, I mean, well, look it. She gave it to my dad. My dad read it, and my dad looked at me and said, I'm proud of you. And my mom, I was I was mama's boy. She, I had six sisters, no brothers, so I could do no wrong. And mom, my mom's book said, You mean it took 28 years of life, and for somebody else to tell you how good your son was for you before you could say you were proud of him? And his brothers right there said, Oh shit. And he said, No, he says it was part of me helping him become a man. I wanted him to work hard, and he's done good. And I'm thinking down deep inside, hey dad, that's a good one. Good, you're quick on your feet. That's a good response. I didn't think you know that that was the truth until I met his co-workers, and then I knew it was a truth.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

So it was uh that night that I came home after we got the conviction. I came home, I crawled in bed, and my wife had never seen me cry. I crawled in bed, I said nothing, and I just started crying like a baby. And she just put her arm around me and said, It's okay, he was with you. You're dead with you. So it's all good now.

SPEAKER_05 51:55

That that that's amazing. And and do you now emphasize that to your kids of um verbalizing the affection, the I love you, the day that goes by that I don't say I love you. Wow.

Representation, Legacy, And Family

SPEAKER_02 52:11

Even when they went to bed and they were pissed off at me, if they get trouble, I'd say I love you. Good man. I love you. You know, uh my daughter, one of my daughters, I just uh I know this is gonna rub you wrong, but I took my two grandboys to go meet a couple of Dodger players. One of the sports agents is a friend of mine called me and said, Hey, bring them down. So I took them down to meet the players. And one of them was Max Muncie. And my grandson's nine or ten years old. All the way home, my daughter said he kept saying, Man's, I met Max Muncy before series. That was the best day ever. And I didn't get to meet Max Muncy. My daughter, my wife had to take him because I was a keynote speaker for a veterans event on Saturday. So I had to miss him because I was already committed to doing something else. And I told uh sports agent, because then I waited around. Uh I got to meet uh Anthony Banda, the pitcher. And so I told him, I said, you know, he says, I'm so sorry, Jill, you had to miss Max. I said, It's okay. You know, it really wasn't Max so much, you know. Although I love him, you know, I love the Dodgers, I'm a big fan. I said, but I want to be around my kids. I love seeing my grandkids do this. So my daughters sent me an email, said, Dad, these are days that my kids will never forget. They love you so much, and too bad you had to miss Max. I wrote her back. I said, you know, it's not missing Max that bothered me. It's missing my grandkids watching them be happy and surprised and enjoyed. Yeah, I get so much love and so much warmth out of that. That's what I do this stuff for. The only bad part is I wish I'd have been more of a dad when I was younger, as opposed to everything was at work and I wasn't around as much, and I didn't spend as much time with you guys as I do with your kids. And she said, Oh, dad, don't say that because you never missed a football game, you never missed anything we had in school, you made PTA me, you did everything with us. You just had to work, and there's never been a doubt of your love for us. So as long as they know it, you know, even if they're pissed off of them.

SPEAKER_05 54:29

Thank you for sharing, Gil. That thank you for that. Uh, I know it's uh very vulnerable, but I appreciate you sharing that with us, um, especially here. Um I wanted to to to ask a question. Uh, I don't even know how to go from that to this, but I think it's a little bit deep, if you ask me. But what at what point in your career do you constantly see death around you and do you get desensitized or used to it? How does that work in a professional professional mind like you, especially in the case of Rachel Ramirez, where he was constantly you had to go to crime scenes. How did that work in your head and let us in on a professional uh level? How how did that go for you?

SPEAKER_02 55:18

Everything we did on murders, okay, and and I I don't want to get in trouble with anybody. Ladies, don't write letters, please. Uh everything I do on a crime scene is very scientific. So imagine, if you will, a gynecologist that day in and day out examines female in her private parts. And when he's examining them, he doesn't get start breathing heavy, start doing anything else. He's got his game face on. He's it's very scientific to him. Right. When a football player goes to Sunday football, and that quarterback puts on his helmet. He doesn't care about family life, he doesn't care about what's going on outside. It's game time. All he's thinking about is that football game and what he's got to do. He's studying, he's a professional. When I go to a crime scene, I don't see blood, guts, and gore. I see a story. It's telling me what happened. I'm reading blood droplets, blood spattering, cast off blood, wounds, direction, trajectories. What is it around? What does it smell like around me? What do I see? I'm looking for evidence. That's what I'm doing. I'm not concentrating. You, if you saw somebody decapitated running across the street in downtown Manhattan and was hit by a diesel truck and decapitated, holding$10,000 in his hand, you'd go up and see the blood, guts, and the gore. I'd walk up and see$10,000 in his hand first, because that's unusual. So I look at things very scientifically. Now, if it's not my case, if I have nothing to do with this, if it's some other kind of death, uh, accidental death, car crashes and stuff like that, uh, those things are ugly. You know, they just they bother any. But murders and stuff like this, they don't bother me. And it's all scientific.

SPEAKER_05 57:20

Gotcha. I was wondering because how do you turn either that switch on, especially coming back home to your family after seeing what you just saw? Uh, in my eyes, I'm like, I don't know if I will be able to handle that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 57:31

No, you don't. You come and you beat up your wife. That's it. Just start punching her around, thinking about her. You know, it becomes just like a doctor, you know, it becomes a job. And you try not to let your personal feelings get away with you. It's tougher dealing with the surviving family members because they express emotion. And it is tougher with me when you're dealing with grieving families that have children that have been lost. You know, it's I'm still uh still got feelings. You know, they did a uh CBS did a four-minute and 28-second interview here at my house with me upon my retirement. They were talking, they entitled Legend Retires. And at the towards the end of that, they said the reporter said, you know, after 38 years of law enforcement and as many years as he worked in murders and the tragedies he had to deal with, you'd think that he would be bitter, that he'd be cold and distant from reality. But no, I can tell you firsthand that Joe has never lost his faith in humanity, and I haven't. I don't look at the negative side of things. I always look at the possibility. I'm not the eternal optimist, but I see something. My glasses perennially have filth, or my wife's glasses perennially half empty. You know, she'll see the negative part of it on too far.

SPEAKER_05 58:52

Wow. Oh Steph, do you have anything else?

SPEAKER_00 58:57

Honestly, I've you have inspired me so much. Like my um background of my I have a bachelor's in criminal justice, so all of this is really, you know, amazing for me. The work that you have done is just amazing, uh, very inspiring. Um, you know, as Hispanics, it it's it's tough because we have to open our own doors, we have to break down these barriers ourselves a lot of the time. So your story is very inspiring. What you've done is very inspiring. I'm very grateful that I got to meet you, even though it's virtually it's it's an amazing. And I'm I'm just so happy that you were a part of such a big, big, big part of like you know, change in the community.

Why Serial Killers Still Exist

SPEAKER_02 59:39

Well, well, thank you. You know, there's uh a I'm sure he's retired right now, Jaime Escalante, who was the star. Edward James almost played the character of uh Jaime Escalante. He was a teacher at Garfield High School, which is just in the radio here in East LA, and he taught math. And he got him. Pass this and it's a great movie. If you haven't seen it, see it. What is it? What is the name? Stand and Deliver. I'm gonna write that down. And uh starring Edward James Almost. And in the movie, he says, Ponganas, you can do anything. And he proved that Ponganas you can do anything you want to. It's hard to believe that I was once standing on a corner with my feet at a 45-degree angle saying, So what the fuck can this guy do? I say it's hard for me to believe that. And I love all I wanted to do, I had three goals when I got out of the army. One, I wanted to go to college because I thought college was only for rich white people, and I was mature now and I wanted to go to college. I I had six sisters, no siblings, no cousins, no nobody in my family had ever gone to college. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to become a cop because I wanted to give back, save somebody's life like that cop saved me. And number three, I wanted to hook up with my ex-girlfriend, break up with her, and watch. I wanted revenge. I wanted to see her suffer like I had after receiving a dear job letter from her in Vietnam. And I got out in June of 70. By September of 70, I had her eaten out of the palm of my hand. And the day after Christmas, we got married. So this Christmas will be 50. We're getting ready. We're planning our 55th, uh 55th wedding anniversary this year.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

Wow, congratulations. Congratulations. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

It's all her, trust me. She's she's the one that's kept this marriage together. Yeah, she's an angel. You have you have had to extract it. She's going straight to heaven, she's not passing goats, she's not collecting$200. She's paid her dues.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:50

Wow. That that's awesome. You know, when you when you were talking like that, it only reminded me of the Blood and Blood Out movie. Oh, yeah. Is that how how truth like depicted?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:01

Is that really real? I grew up watching that, Gil. Gil, I grew up watching that in the 90s when I was a kid. Yeah, all of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:11

Yeah. That's the way it was. What happened is you're gonna be a shalom. No, it was uh I love the movies.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:21

I I when I I'm telling you, I used to go to sleep sometimes because of um I had uh uh older stepbrother, and we used to watch those movies back in the day, and and it is just so influential to us, especially growing as a kid, you know, throwing the VL and stuff. It was just it was part of culture for us, even in El Salvador. I was in El Salvador, by the way, at the time. So it was big even then, and it's always been big, and I always remember that movie and LA because of that. East Lois, you know, East Lois home, you know what I mean?

Netflix Doc: Making And Impact

SPEAKER_02 1:02:50

Even the white guy in the movie, the one with the pig leg, they got shot. That was that was portrayed. You're supposed to be a guy by the name of Joe Morgan, who was part of Emmy eventually. And uh those were real, they were portraying real characters. It was it was it was it's funny for me to watch, you know. I I specialized in gangs early on, and I started the playing clothes gang unit uh for the Sheriff's Department at East LA Station. And so part of my job was interacting with gang members, you know. We were playing clothes because they wouldn't talk to people in uniform, and you had to listen to what they had to say, and you know, keep an eye on them and keep checking them. You know, they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, so you could get information out of them without them knowing you're getting the information out of them. Wow, you know, you'd sit there and say, Hey, I saw Flucky the other day driving that blue car now, huh? Charlotte Holmes, yeah, I saw him. It was him, he was driving that blue car. It's not blue, it's green. Oh, okay. You know, it's oh, my eyes are going wrong. So you you just was able to develop information. And I went, I took my wife to go see the play Zutsu, and it was a play starting in Edward James almost was in it. And they had taken gang members from different gangs and they took them in a group to the theater to watch Zutsu. And as soon as Edward James, the way the movie starts, the play play starts out, he comes out and he leans back in his zootsuit with one leg kicked out and he's going, What a little. And I'm sitting there telling the wife, you mean I pay 25 bucks to come and see some guys say what I le players? I get there for free every day out there. And then during the intermission, the gang members got in a fight with each other. They're in the it's in in the where they're they were selling all the the food, the snacks, the cokes, and everything. And they broke it up right away. People started cheering. They thought it was part of the play. Oh, and it was a real fight. It was a real fight. The guys were back there throwing throwing lampes, you know. So it was uh good time. That gave me my start, and I was a natural for it. That's why they asked me to do it. And I wouldn't change anything in my career. It was good to be. Well, surrounded by good people.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:09

Well, Gil, I have this last one question for you, and I think this is just might be more just for me. Um, but I've heard theories about this before, but why do you think that now, and the only thing I can think of is technology, but why do you think that now you see less serial killers? Is it because we catch them uh earlier because of DNA? Why do you think there is less of this commonality that uh in in the day-to-day now?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:37

I don't think there is less. There's still names. Oh, yes. The only difference is as we get smarter in investigation and technology, uh-huh, they get smarter in studying what we're doing to help them.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:52

Like a cat mouse almost.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:54

Yeah, murder is an irrational act followed by acts of rationality. Irrational for me to kill somebody. Now, rationally, I'm gonna do everything I can to prevent them from capturing me. And the only most of the reason these guys get captured is because they talk to a friend, to somebody, they get loaded, they lose lips, eat chips, and that's what happened. But they're still out there, they're just well aware of what we can do. You know, we did all of this without DNA.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:24

Yeah, that wasn't a pre because DNA came available in like 86 or so, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

Well, they just started the end of 85. They started uh DNA, but we didn't, we didn't have it.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:37

That's even more impressive. Yeah, you you might actually be a superhero.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:42

You definitely are.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:44

Yeah. I'm just an overweight retired cop. Well, Gil, listen, um, thank you for for truly, and I mean this, for taking your time and giving us a shot to have a conversation with you. I think you are truly an inspiration uh to many, and I'm honored to have a conversation with you. I actually learned things for you today. I'm gonna go back and watch this again and just learn from the words that you were speaking to us. I feel like there was a lot of wisdom and a lot of experience that was coming towards us and to many people in my community. So um it's an honor to have you here on my channel. And uh, whenever you're in Atlanta or whenever, you let me know and the red cap carpet will be rolled out for you, man. I would love to meet you in person.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:27

Thank you very much. If I get out there, we'll sure do that. If there's anything I can do for either one of you, for you or Stephanie. Uh Stephanie, congratulations on your bachelor's degree. Don't give up, keep keep doing what you gotta do. Perseverance will pay off.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:42

Amen.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:43

And she's she's undersold this. She's actually trying to become a lawyer, Gil. She's working towards that.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Okay, well, I I gotta be honest with you. I gotta be honest with you. When I finished my uh, I was finishing up on my associate degree, and I I talked to my wife, we're newly with kind of newly, you know, first couple of years. And I said, Dear, how would you what would you say if I said I want to continue on and become a lawyer? Because I got a taste of criminal law, one of my classes. I became a prosecutor and then I played the defense attorney, and I really loved litigating. I I really enjoyed it. He says, What does it mean? I said, it means four more years of college, four more years of no personal life, working and going to college, that's it. For a better ending, though. In the end, it will be better. And she said, No, she didn't want me to give up four more years. You know, she she was thoroughly satisfied. She had been with me from the very beginning. Uh, she knew that we got what got married I was gonna become. She went through the process and she said, I don't need money. So here we are. And I I remember specifically doing uh with a brand new deputy district attorney, he was doing a murder prelim for me, a preliminary hearing, and he was nervous because he had it was the first one he had ever done. And I said, Come on, let's go in this room. So I went in the room and I told him what he had to do. All he had to do was to show that a crime was committed, and there's reasonable cause to believe that the man we have before the judge is the man that did it. We don't have to prove that he's guilty, we don't have to do this, doesn't take a lot of work. I'll be right there at your be holding your hand right next to you at the seat. And so we had him in there about a half hour talked to him, coached him through this. About five years later, I'm with a deputy district attorney friend of mine. He says, Hey Gil, he says, Remember this guy? And I looked, I said, Well, not really. You know, he's a public defender, he's working for the other side. I said, No, I don't care. He's an attorney, you know, they've got a job to do. And he says, he knows you, and he looks at me and he says, You don't remember, but you gave me a class for half hour in a room that would have taken three hours minimally in college just to prepare me for this, and you did it. And so you want to be a lawyer, you you'll be a good one. You'll be a good one. You you you got the drive, you know, just grind away. It's not gonna come easy.

unknown 1:10:20

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:21

It it it hasn't been easy trying to get there, but I I'm working on it. I'm working on it, and I I my passion is definitely there for it. So I I've already been a paralegal for immigration, so it's it's definitely uh, I can definitely see it coming soon. Yeah, Lord permit.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:39

I I would have loved to have been uh I love to have been an attorney. And so one of my best friends, uh attorney today, very, very he said, Gil. I said, No, it's too late, Lenny. I'm not I'm not going back to school, I'm not doing it for more. I'm done, I'm satisfied. So that's it. I just sent uh day before yesterday, uh, what would be the granddaughter of a good friend of mine that grew up on the block. He didn't get off the block, he ended up dying in an overdose. And his granddaughter, whom I watched a little baby, his daughter, his daughter is his is the girl's mother. I just got an email two days ago saying she passed the bar.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:22

Oh wow, that's a success.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:25

Let's go. Congratulations. God bless her.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:28

Awesome.

Mentorship, Law, And Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_02 1:11:29

So uh my buddy Tony Burr into Mother Bernadette. God bless you.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:36

Amen. Amen to that. Um, is there anything that you'd like to add to this, Gil? I don't know if you want to, I don't know, promote something or you don't have a book, right? I looked, I don't know if you've no not yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:47

No, they've been after me to write books, you know. Uh uh James Franco is on me. He wants to write a book. He wants to do a movie screen on my life story, you know. But I really don't care. You know, I I don't I'm I'm satisfied with who I would love to do a book for cops, you know, technical you know, stuff to do. But just to write a book on some of my cases or what's gone on, I'm afraid I'll get somebody in trouble, not with the law, but with their spouses or you know, somebody that they've hurt. And I I I told I told my wife, I said, I want to do it because I'll write something down. You'll read it, you say, Oh, I know who you're talking about there. I know who you're talking about there. And so it's I see your thing. My ego is not that big. I'm I'm satisfied with who I am and the way things have gone with my life. So I can't. I just thank uh all those supporters and all those people that have kind words to say about this old man and enjoy your life and do what you want to do, be safe.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:49

Thank you, thank you, Gil. We'll be following through uh so your journey through social media.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:52

So there you go.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:55

Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:56

All right so much for this opportunity, and then you have a great night, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:00

Thank you, and a happy Thanksgiving, happy veterans day, happy veterans day tomorrow. I start up, I'll be at two Veterans Day events tomorrow, and then my daughter, who works for the Disney Corporation, she's an executive assistant, one of them. Oh, yeah. And she says, Dad, I want you to go with me. She doesn't work at Disneyland, she, you know, her offices are in Burbank with the headquarters, but she says they're having a special ceremony, celebration, something for vets, and I want you to be there with me. Oh so I'll be with my friends at the VFW till two o'clock, then I'll go with her to Disneyland. She says, Dad, after the ceremony, if you want to go home or back to your buddies, you can. We'll just see how it, you know, it's up to you. It's gonna be a long day for you. So I'm still an old source. Well, have fun and have a good time. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:49

Thank you, sir. You too, you and your family. All right, bye. There you go. Have a blessed one, sir. You too. God bless. Thank you, sir.