Richard Ramirez, the serial killer and rapist who terrorized Los Angeles in the mid-1980s as “the Night Stalker,” died of natural causes yesterday at a Marin County, Calif., hospital at the age of 53.

Riichard Ramirez was 29 when he was convicted of 13 murders, 11 sexual assaults, five attempted murders and 14 burglaries in 1989 and sentenced to death. “The Night Stalker” was serving time at San Quentin prison. He was one of 735 people on death row. Ramirez was one of 59 people facing execution who died of natural causes since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, not including 22 who committed suicide and six who died of other causes.

When Ramirez, a self-proclaimed satanic follower, was sentenced, he told the judge, jurors and the family of his victims, “You don’t understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.”

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan agreed that “The Night Stalker’s” crimes were “beyond any human understanding.”

Ramirez was convicted of 30 felonies in addition to the murders, including burglaries and sexual assaults. Some of his murders were especially gruesome; he gouged the eyes out of one victim. Ramirez was caught by East Los Angeles residents in 1985 when he was trying to steal a car 12 hours after the LAPD issued an all-points bulletin for him. The mob beat him. When he was taken into custody he told the officers “Thank God you came.”