Perhaps most infamously, in the 1980s, the hotel may have been the residence of serial killer Richard Ramirez, nicknamed the "Night Stalker". Ramirez was a regular presence on the skid row area of Los Angeles and according to a hotel clerk who claims to have spoken to him, Ramirez is rumored to have stayed at the Cecil for a few weeks.[1] Ramirez may have engaged in part of his killing spree while staying there.[28] On August 30, 1985, a group of Los Angeles residents spotted him in the street and prevented him from escaping until police arrived to arrest him. In 1989, Ramirez was convicted of 13 murders and sentenced to death by the gas chamber — though he would ultimately succumb to cancer in 2013 while still awaiting his fate on death row.[29] Another serial killer, Austrian Jack Unterweger, stayed at the Cecil in 1991, possibly because he sought to copy Ramirez's crimes.[30] While there, he strangled and killed at least three sex workers, for which he was convicted in Austria.