The corpse was barely cold when the cooing began.
Suspected assassin Luigi Mangione, 26, is accused of shooting insurance CEO Brian Thompson, a father of two, on a Manhattan street on Dec. 4.
Thompson was shot in the back in a targeted hit.
But what was astounding was the coterie of undergrads, humanities professors and other women flooding social media declaring Mangione was the woke woman’s Fabio.
Serial killers like Paul Bernardo, Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez — a.k.a. the Night Stalker — have also had groupies. None more than the oily Ramirez.
“They’re drawn to me for all sorts of reasons,” Ramirez told his biographer Paul Carlo. “To get something out of me, to question me. Maybe they’re intrigued by murder or murderers. Some are religious. Some are sympathetic. They’ve come to me from different walks of life, these women.”
In 2010, I interviewed a wealthy and attractive young woman named Samantha Spiegel for the London Daily Mirror. Just 20 at the time, her father was the lawyer who soaked Exxon for the notorious Alaska oil spill in Valdez.
She regularly sent fan letters, and raunchy photos and engaged in phone sex with Ramirez and his fellow death row denizen, Robert Alton Harris.
“I like the idea of nurturing a side of them that doesn’t get looked after. It’s my rescue complex. And they help my low confidence. They send letters complimenting me,” Spiegel told me.
Richard Allen Davis lies closest to Spiegel’s heart. On Oct. 1, 1993, he kidnapped, raped and killed 12-year-old Polly Klaas after breaking into her home in Petaluma, Calif.
“I wrote to him and said: ‘I don’t condone what you did, but I forgive you’. Our relationship then progressed to another level,” she said in 2010. “He’s a really great conversationalist and under other circumstances I could really see myself falling for him.”
Davis remains on death row where he will no doubt exude his last breath.
Now, a new documentary is delving into the sex appeal of a monster entitled Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker Tapes on Peacock.
Some women thought the serial killer who terrorized Los Angeles in the early 1980s was a doppelganger for Mick Jagger.
Ramirez butchered more than a dozen victims until he was finally nabbed in August 1985. His M.O. was to break into homes and then raping and murdering the occupants.
When his death penalty trial began, women lined up to get a seat in the courtroom or even a glimpse of the killer.
“He reminds me of Mick Jagger,” spectator Mary Curby told reporters. “This is a very lurid case, it’s got all sorts of elements that are very appealing to the populace. It’s got sex and violence.”
Another woman added: “I just wanted to see what he looked like. I think he’s cute.”
One fangirl was an L.A. punk musician who went by the name Eva O. She was smitten at first sight and admitted this year she was in a “dark place” at the time.
“He was a very handsome, striking guy. And I was really hung up on this whole rock star thing,” Eva told the documentary. “Obviously, I was trying to be a rock star. He’s got all of this security around him when he goes to court. He’s in the magazines every day, newspapers every day.”
But one fan was more devoted than the rest: Tiger Beat editor Doreen Lioy. She would later marry the serial killer, and admitted she fell in love after seeing him on TV.
“When I saw this picture, I was just fascinated by the face,” Lioy said. “It left me with a haunting feeling. Something about his eyes, I think. Whatever there was behind his eyes just pulled me in immediately.”
She bought clothes for court for Ramirez, began a letter-writing campaign and became a close confidant. At their first meeting, she recalled that “magic happened.”
“When I met him I knew. I knew he was the right one for me,” Lioy said, adding that she was “very proud” to become the serial killer’s wife.
But despite the gushing, schoolgirl bromides, it didn’t save the Night Stalker. He was convicted on all 43 counts and given a one-way ticket to the green room at San Quentin.
By the time Ramirez died on death row from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on June 7, 2013, he and Lioy were getting divorced.
Still, the question is why?
“When you look at the attraction to Richard Ramirez, the motives can be things ranging from wanting to save this person, or having a traumatic history themselves, to individuals who really do get off on the violence and the blood,” forensic psychologist Joni Johnston told producers.
“And then of course, we cannot overlook the fame angle because it’s a vicarious way for them to be famous themselves.”
The victims’ families were never starry-eyed over the Night Stalker. Colleen Nelson’s grandmother Joyce Nelson was murdered by Ramirez in July of 1985.
She was repulsed by Ramirez.
“It was really hard to be in that courtroom and to look at him knowing what he had done to my grandma,” she said. “He was very arrogant and he had groupies and he would pull his glasses down and kind of check you out.”
She added: “You could feel the evil in that room.”