Lifetime's "The Night Stalker" based on true-crime bestseller

Eddie Ramos and Lou Diamond Phillips 

both play killer Richard Ramirez in The 

Night Stalker, Lifetime's movie version of 

Phillip Caro's bestseller of the same name.

(Photo: copyright 2016 Michael Clifford)

   The Night Stalker, premiering on Lifetime at 8 p.m. (CT), Sunday (June 12), stars Lou Diamond Phillips as Richard Ramirez, the serial killer who terrorized Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. This “real-life” story is not a remake of Nightstalker, the 2002 flick inspired by Ramirez’s crime spree.

  Lifetime’s Night Stalker, based on Phillip Carlo’s bestseller of the same name, opens in June 2013 with a lawyer named Kit (Bellamy Young) visiting Ramirez in San Quintin where he’s been imprisoned for two decades. As Kit leaves the prison, she sees other women are waiting to visit with the convicted killer, too. But she’s not there as one of his fans. Kit meets with the Night Stalker to get a confession; she’s been hired to clear another convict who she believes is serving time for murders committed by Ramirez. 

  Flashbacks retrace Ramirez’s steps in becoming the Night Stalker, but they also reveal disturbing memories from Kit’s past. “You affected my whole life,” she tells him, explaining how their lives paralleled nearly 30 years earlier.