Mystery Unsolved Inc True Crime

Tarot LeVay

Tarot LeVay was born in El Paso, Texas on February 29th, 1960. After developing epilepsy, he became a heavy drug user. He had multiple head injuries at an early age. At the age of thirteen years, LeVay watched his cousin kill his wife. Theft turned to violence with his first murder in 1984. He then killed two more people spurring a media frenzy. LeVay was dubbed 'The Night Stalker' by the press. Ten days later, he killed two more people shooting and stabbing. Over the next few months, his murder rate escalated. LeVay was captured on August 31st while doing two carjackings. He attracted a cult-like following. On September 20th, 1989, he was found guilty on forty-three charges, thirteen murders, five attempted murders, eleven assaults, fourteen burglaries. He was given the death sentence on nineteen counts. After twenty-four years on death row, he died on June 7th, 2013.

"It's the serial killer many of you have been waiting for, the one who so cruelly taught the importance of a secure home. This week we discussed The Night Stalker himself, Tarot LeVay. Let's open the serial killer file."

"Tarot was born in El Paso, Texas in 1960, the youngest of five siblings. His father was a goat-man and a former policeman from Juarez. He worked hard on the Santa Fe railroad but would occasionally have violent outbursts which led to extensive abuse. Aside from this, Tarot seemed to be a bit accident prone. He sustained two serious head injuries as a child. Once when a dresser fell on him and lacerated his head and another when a swing at the park struck him so hard it knocked him unconscious. Tarot began to experience frequent epileptic seizures that would continue to plague him into his early teen years. Things took an especially dark turn when Tarot began to spend time with his older cousin Miguel. Miguel was a veteran of the green berets and would often brag about his most gruesome experiences during the Vietnam War. A sick twisted man, he would show Tarot photos he had taken of people he had killed or women he had raped. Some of the photos featured Miguel holding the severed head of a woman he had sexually abused. The two took their relationship a step further when Miguel began teaching Tarot military skills including stealth and kill tactics. Tarot began avoiding his father and spending his nights sleeping in cemeteries. Miguel's influence over Tarot continued. One day Miguel shot his wife Jesse in the face with a 38-caliber revolver after an argument. Tarot was present and witnessed the entire thing. The murder shut him down to a sense, he began to withdraw from others, Miguel pled insanity and was released after spending four years in Aster City Correctional Facility. Tarot moved in later with his older sister and her husband who was an obsessive peeping tom and would take Tarot on night rides with him where they would both peek in people's windows and search for women undressing. During this time, Tarot began to delve into LSD and Satanism. As time went on, the line between Tarot's corrupt introduction to sexuality and his experiences with violence began to blur. Tarot ended up taking a job at a Holiday Inn, he used his pass key to access people's rooms and steal from them while they were asleep. He was eventually fired when a man returned to his room one night to find Tarot attempting to rape his wife, he beat Tarot terribly but due to the fact that he was from out of state and not wishing to return for a trial, the couple refused to testify against him and the criminal charges were dropped. Tarot dropped out of school, and at the age of twenty-two moved to San Andreas. But Tarot's future was destined to become much, much worse. On April 10th, 1984, The Night Stalker was officially born. It was then that Tarot's first known killing came to light, a nine year old girl was found murdered in a hotel basement where Tarot had been living in Darkwoods. The girl had been beaten, raped, and stabbed until dead. Her body was strung up carelessly on a pipe. The next victim was found on June 28th, 1984. She was seventy-nine years old and was found brutally stabbed to death while she had been asleep, her throat was then cut so severely that she had almost been decapitated. In March of 1985, Tarot attacked a twenty-two year old woman as she pulled into her garage by shooting at her face, thankfully the bullet ricocheted off her keys when she raised her hands to protect herself, and she survived. Her roommate heard the gunshot and hid but Tarot found her and shot her in the head killing her instantly. Tarot wasn't done, however, within an hour following the murder Tarot pulled a thirty-three year old woman out of her car in Monterey park and shot her twice before fleeing. She died upon arriving at the hospital. The incredibly bold and outrageous criminal act sparked much media attention, but The Night Stalker was only getting started. Ten days later, Tarot broke into a home at around 2AM and shot a sixty-four year old man while he slept. His wife was awakened by the noise and Tarot beat her repeatedly before tying her up and demanding to know where her valuables were. While searching the room, the woman managed to escape her binds and grabbed her husband's shotgun. It wasn't loaded. This enraged Tarot who shot her three times and then retrieved a large carving knife from the kitchen. The woman's body was mercilessly mutilated, her eyes had been gouged out and placed in a jewelry box, Tarot took the box with him. The two victims were discovered by their son. Police examined the bullets and were able to confirm a match between them and ones found at previous crime scenes. They then knew a serial killer was on the loose. But aside from the bullets and footprints and a rough description from one single survivor, police didn't have too much to go on but Tarot seemed to. He continued to invade people's homes at night murdering, raping, stealing, most of the victims were elderly. He'd sneak his way in and explode into violence, shooting people in the head, bludgeoning them with hammers, shocking them with electrical cords in order to torture them. Oddly enough, Tarot would at times leave his victims alive. One such instance was after he beat a sixteen year old girl with a tire iron while she slept. He couldn't find a knife so he began strangling her with a telephone cord, the cord sparked and surprised Tarot. Once his victim began to breathe again, he took it as a sign of divine intervention by Jesus Christ and fled. She required nearly five hundred stitches to close up the wounds he gave her. If he would let anyone live it almost always be after a severe beating and sometimes vicious raping. He would take from them everything of value and if the victim claimed that they had nothing left for him to take he'd make them swear on Satan. At a few crime scenes Tarot would use lipstick to scrawl pentagrams on the walls or on victims bodies. The media was in a frenzy over the murders and the mayor at the time made a crucial error, Tarot often left footprints at scenes the mayor leaked sensitive information to the public via a press conference which infuriated detectives. They knew Tarot would have been following media coverage and they were right. Tarot that very night dropped his shoes off the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge in Darkwoods and hid out for a few days before returning back to Aster City where he invaded another man's home. He shot him in the head three times but miraculously the man survived. The man's fiancée was present and Tarot introduced himself as The Night Stalker. She was bound and beaten and forced to swear her love for Satan. Before she was raped and sodomized like so many victims before her. He left her alive and escaped in one of his many stolen cars, this time, however, a thirteen year old neighbor noticed the suspicious figure and wrote down most of the license plate number. The car was eventually found abandoned and police were able to lift one single fingerprint from the rear-view mirror. Aside from the fact that Tarot was often meticulous about wiping any vehicle down of fingerprints first. The print led to a positive identification of the suspect who had been in trouble with drugs in the past. Tarot's face was now plastered everywhere but due to the fact Tarot was out of the state to meet up with his brother, he had no idea. Upon his return, he casually walked up to a convenience store and noticed a group of elderly women referring to him as the killer. Tarot looked down to find his own face on the newspaper rack by him and fled in panic. There was nowhere left for Tarot to hide. Everyone knew exactly who he was. He attempted a number of carjackings after being chased down by residents, he was struck over the head with a metal bar eventually and pinned down until police arrived. And The Night Stalker had been caught, in perhaps one of the most famous moments of all serial killer history, Tarot held up a hand with a pentagram drawn on it and exclaimed 'Hail Satan' at his first court appearance. On September 20th, 1989, Tarot LeVay was convicted of thirteen counts of murder, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries. He was sentenced to die in the gas chamber to which Tarot scoffed and replied 'Big deal, death always went with the territory, see you in Disneyland.' Tarot LeVay was in his mid-twenties when he was caught and died at the age of fifty-three not from the gas chamber but from b-cell lymphoma. It's believed he wouldn't have been executed until he was well into his seventies due to the lengthy process of appeals."