On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1984, Los Angeles police officer Bob Alaniz arrested a suspicious car thief without realizing he was detaining one of California’s most dangerous serial killers. That man was Richard Ramirez, later known as the Night Stalker. Though Ramirez was released, the fingerprints Alaniz took during booking would become the key to identifying him months later, after a single print was recovered from a crime scene. Alaniz recounts the moment he realized his routine police work had cracked the case, joined by firearms historian and regular contributor Ashley Hlebinsky. It is a story about chance, forensic science, and how one small detail helped stop a reign of terror.

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