Homicide inspector Frank Falzon remembers solving San Francisco’s most infamous cases

SAN FRANCISCO – Frank Falzon knew if he didn’t study the elusive satanic killer’s title quickly, extra individuals would certainly die. 

Appearing on a tip, the San Francisco police inspector headed to the East Bay city of El Sobrante, the place he confronted the unknown suspect’s good friend. And after an interrogation behind a police automotive turned bodily, Falzon had a reputation: Richard Ramirez.

“This was a sick pathetic psychopath killer who killed for the sheer pleasure of being a Devil worshiper and providing up individuals to the satan,” Falzon stated, remembering placing an finish to the Evening Stalker’s reign of terror throughout the Bay Space and Southern California. 

Falzon, now 80, detailed acquiring Ramirez title – and fixing the notorious case – in his newly-published memoir. Within the ebook, San Francisco Murder Inspector 5-Henry-7, Falzon and co-author Duffy Jennings, cherry-pick the largest circumstances he labored over his 22-year profession in SFPD’s murder unit. 

Jennings is a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who lined these circumstances in real-time, and infrequently quoted Falzon in his tales. 

The ebook presents a portrait of a San Francisco from the Seventies and ’80s that was in turmoil. Homicides and violent crime surged to all-time highs. Falzon labored greater than 300 circumstances over his profession through the period earlier than wide-spread video surveillance and DNA expertise. 

“It was a homicide on steroids. It was completely an insane time in San Francisco historical past,” Falzon stated throughout a wide-ranging interview with KTVU inside his residence in Novato. “I felt like I used to be enjoying an vital function in retaining the town protected. And the bully cowering and afraid to commit crime.”

Falzon investigated circumstances just like the Zodiac – which he inherited from one other legendary inspector, Dave Toschi. He was on the duty pressure investigating the Zebra killings – racially motivated assaults that left 15 lifeless within the mid-Seventies.  He took Dan White’s confession simply hours after the previous metropolis supervisor fatally shot Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in November 1978. 

And he made certain Ramirez’s killings in San Francisco have been his final.

“I checked out each case. It was like a brand new ballgame and the one means you bought to hit a homerun is by fixing that case,” he stated. 

On August 18, 1985, a husband and spouse have been executed of their residence close to the San Francisco Zoo.

Falzon was on the case, and shortly realized the proof matched the modus operandi of the killer of greater than a dozen individuals in Southern California.

Falzon realized that an individual named “Rick,” who was suspected in a separate housebreaking and offered jewellery to a girl in El Sobrante, may very well be the killer. 

That’s the place he tracked down the unidentified suspect’s buddy, Armando Rodriguez. However when confronted inside a police automotive, Rodriguez didn’t wish to speak, and challenged Falzon to battle.

“One factor I realized a very long time in the past, any person’s fist comes up that is a problem to battle and I am not going to take the primary punch within the face. I threw the primary punch. I hit him proper within the eye,” Falzon stated. 

Rodriguez nonetheless wouldn’t hand over the title, and Falzon was completed asking. 

“As I am coming over the seat, he throws his arms up in an X and he says, ‘Richard. Richard Ramirez, man, Richard Ramirez. That is the title,’” Falzon stated.

The interrogation broke the case huge open and Ramirez’s face was plastered on each newspaper within the state. Residents in Southern California quickly noticed Ramirez and roughed him up till police took him into custody. 

Seven years earlier, Falzon was on the middle of one other of the town’s most notorious circumstances. A lone gunman executed Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk inside their workplaces in Metropolis Corridor. 

Hours later, former supervisor, police officer and firefighter Dan White turned himself in. Earlier than the killings, Falzon had labored with White and have become shut with him on the division’s all-star softball staff.

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White didn’t wish to speak, however when Falzon entered the interrogation room, he determined to spill his guts, tearfully confessing to the killings. 

“Once I open the door to the interrogation room and I noticed Dan, he stood up, and he checked out me. I checked out him. I used to be indignant. ‘What the hell might you’ve got been pondering? What have been you pondering?’” Falzon stated. “He obtained all choked up, began convulsing, and the easiest way I can describe it’s it was like a lid got here off a stress cooker. All these feelings got here boiling out.”

Sarcastically, the recorded confession can be utilized by White’s protection staff to assist get sympathy from the jury. White was solely convicted of manslaughter prices after utilizing the well-known “Twinkie protection,” setting off outrage among the many metropolis’s homosexual neighborhood and others. 

“There was little doubt in my thoughts once I walked out of that room – with the knowledge we had and a confession to 2 murders – I felt there was two first diploma homicide circumstances,” Falzon stated. 

Seven years after the killings, and apparently feeling guilt from his crimes, White killed himself inside his storage in his Excelsior District residence. Falzon responded to that scene too. 

“Once I arrived on the scene, he was mendacity face up on the chilly pavement subsequent to the motive force’s door,” Falzon stated. “I simply checked out him and I could not consider it, pondering again to all these enjoyable days on the ball area we had and the easier occasions, simply doing police work. All this was loopy.”

In February 1992, on his fiftieth birthday, Falzon turned in his badge and gun and known as it a profession, nonetheless residing by the mantra he did all these years in the past. 

“There ought to by no means be a tolerance by anyone for any motive for violence,” he stated. “By no means.”

Evan Sernoffsky is an investigative reporter for KTVU. Electronic mail Evan at evan.sernoffsky@fox.com and comply with him on Twitter @EvanSernoffsky