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

SAN FRANCISCO - Frank Falzon knew if he didn’t learn the elusive satanic killer’s name soon, more people would surely die. 

Acting on a tip, the San Francisco police inspector headed to the East Bay town of El Sobrante, where he confronted the unknown suspect’s friend. And after an interrogation in the back of a police car turned physical, Falzon had a name: Richard Ramirez.

"This was a sick pathetic psychopath killer who killed for the sheer joy of being a Satan worshiper and offering up people to the devil," Falzon said, remembering putting an end to the Night Stalker’s reign of terror across the Bay Area and Southern California. 

Falzon, now 80, detailed obtaining Ramirez name – and solving the infamous case – in his newly-published memoir. In the book, San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5-Henry-7, Falzon and co-author Duffy Jennings, cherry-pick the biggest cases he worked over his 22-year career in SFPD’s homicide unit. 

Jennings is a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who covered those cases in real-time, and often quoted Falzon in his stories. 

The book offers a portrait of a San Francisco from the 1970s and '80s that was in turmoil. Homicides and violent crime surged to all-time highs. Falzon worked more than 300 cases over his career during the era before wide-spread video surveillance and DNA technology. 

"It was a murder on steroids. It was absolutely an insane time in San Francisco history," Falzon said during a wide-ranging interview with KTVU inside his home in Novato. "I felt like I was playing an important role in keeping the city safe. And the bully cowering and afraid to commit crime."

Falzon investigated cases like the Zodiac – which he inherited from another legendary inspector, Dave Toschi. He was on the task force investigating the Zebra killings – racially motivated attacks that left 15 dead in the mid-1970s.  He took Dan White’s confession just hours after the former city supervisor fatally shot Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in November 1978. 

And he made sure Ramirez’s killings in San Francisco were his last.

"I looked at every case. It was like a new ballgame and the only way you got to hit a homerun is by solving that case," he said. 

On August 18, 1985, a husband and wife were executed in their home near the San Francisco Zoo.

Falzon was on the case, and soon realized the evidence matched the modus operandi of the killer of more than a dozen people in Southern California.

Falzon learned that a person named "Rick," who was suspected in a separate burglary and sold jewelry to a woman in El Sobrante, could be the killer. 

That’s where he tracked down the unidentified suspect’s buddy, Armando Rodriguez. But when confronted inside a police car, Rodriguez didn’t want to talk, and challenged Falzon to fight.

"One thing I learned a long time ago, somebody’s fist comes up that's a challenge to fight and I'm not going to take the first punch in the face. I threw the first punch. I hit him right in the eye," Falzon said. 

Rodriguez still wouldn’t give up the name, and Falzon was done asking. 

"As I'm coming over the seat, he throws his arms up in an X and he says, ‘Richard. Richard Ramirez, man, Richard Ramirez. That's the name,’" Falzon said.

The interrogation broke the case wide open and Ramirez’s face was plastered on every newspaper in the state. Residents in Southern California soon spotted Ramirez and roughed him up until police took him into custody. 

Seven years earlier, Falzon was at the center of another of the city’s most infamous cases. A lone gunman executed Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk inside their offices in City Hall. 

Hours later, former supervisor, police officer and firefighter Dan White turned himself in. Before the killings, Falzon had worked with White and became close with him on the department’s all-star softball team.

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White didn’t want to talk, but when Falzon entered the interrogation room, he decided to spill his guts, tearfully confessing to the killings. 

"When I open the door to the interrogation room and I saw Dan, he stood up, and he looked at me. I looked at him. I was angry. ‘What the hell could you have been thinking? What were you thinking?’" Falzon said. "He got all choked up, started convulsing, and the best way I can describe it is it was like a lid came off a pressure cooker. All those emotions came boiling out."

Ironically, the recorded confession would be used by White’s defense team to help get sympathy from the jury. White was only convicted of manslaughter charges after using the famous "Twinkie defense," setting off outrage among the city’s gay community and others. 

"There was no doubt in my mind when I walked out of that room – with the information we had and a confession to two murders – I felt there was two first degree murder cases," Falzon said. 

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

"When I arrived on the scene, he was lying face up on the cold pavement next to the driver's door," Falzon said. "I just looked at him and I couldn't believe it, thinking back to all those fun days on the ball field we had and the simpler times, just doing police work. All this was crazy."

In February 1992, on his 50th birthday, Falzon turned in his badge and gun and called it a career, still living by the mantra he did all those years ago. 

"There should never be a tolerance by anybody for any reason for violence," he said. "Never."

Evan Sernoffsky is an investigative reporter for KTVU. Email Evan at evan.sernoffsky@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @EvanSernoffsky