The little boy in this photograph grew up to be one of the most evil men in the world.

Born on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas, this boy was the youngest of five children in a Mexican immigrant family.

His father worked as a railway laborer, and the family practiced Catholicism.

From the outside, it seemed like a typical working-class upbringing in the american Southwest.

On May 4, 1975, when he was just 15 years old, the boy witnessed something that would have shattered most people: his older cousin Miguel shot and killed his wife Jesse in the face during a domestic argument, right in front of him per biography

Once again, the boy’s reaction was chilling. After the shooting, he became sullen and withdrawn. Miguel was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and the boy dropped out of Jefferson High School in ninth grade.

Shortly after, he moved in with his sister and her husband Roberto, an obsessive ‘peeping tom’ who took him along on nocturnal voyeuristic walks, spying on women through their windows.

When Miguel was released from the mental hospital in 1977, he sometimes joined them on these disturbing expeditions.

By 1982, at age 22, he had moved permanently to California. It was around this time that he began using coc**ne heavily, which quickly became his drug of choice.

To support his addiction, he started committing burglaries and thefts.

He lived a nomadic existence between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with no stable home or employment.

His criminal behavior was escalating, but no one could have predicted what was coming next.

Reign of terror

On April 10, 1984, he committed his first known murder, a nine-year-old girl named Mei Leung in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

He lured her to a basement, then beat, strangled, r***d, and stabbed her to death before hanging her partially nude body from a pipe.

This crime wouldn’t be connected to him until 2009, when DNA evidence finally linked him to the scene.

Two months later, on June 28, 1984, he murdered 79-year-old Jennie Vincow in her Glassell Park apartment, stabbing her repeatedly in her sleep and slashing her throat so deeply she was nearly decapitated.

Then, after a nine-month hiatus, he unleashed a wave of terror that would grip California in fear for over a year.

From March 1985 through August 1985, he embarked on a killing spree that terrorized the entire state.

His method was chilling in its randomness: he would break into homes after dark, often through unlocked windows or doors, and attack whoever he found inside.