Gilbert “Gil” Carrillo is a former homicide detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who helped capture the infamous serial killer, Richard Ramirez, who was known as the “Night Stalker.”
Fans of the 2021 Netflix series by the same name are familiar with Carrillo because he’s one of the two detectives most prominently featured in the program, which chronicles his efforts to catch Ramirez using a patchwork of evidence, including footprints left at numerous crime scenes.
However, what happened to Gil Carrillo? Where is the detective now? According to his Facebook page and news interviews he’s given, he’s retired today and living happily with his wife in California.
Here’s what you need to know:
Carrillo, Now Retired, Has Given Interviews About the Night Stalker Over the Years
FacebookGilbert Carrillo with his wife today.
By 2015, Carrillo was retired from the force, and was speaking about the Night Stalker case at events.
A profile story by the Pasadena Star News reported that Carrillo was “former sheriff’s Lt. Gil Carrillo, a native of Pico Rivera who was sworn in as a sheriff’s deputy fresh out of Vietnam in 1971.”
According to the newspaper, Carrillo was “a 38-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau, estimates he investigated between 700 and 800 slayings,” including the Night Stalker murders.
“Rich Ramirez, the infamous Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, he was a finger tapper. And you’d be talking to him, and his fingers would get going. You could actually hear him on one tape we did. Then he’d calm down again. There are things that your body does that you sometimes have no control over,” he told the newspaper.
On Facebook, his most recent posts came from August 2020, when he shared old photos from his Vietnam veteran days. He’s also posted pictures showing him with his wife and on travels with her, such as at the Eiffel tower.
Carrillo Retired in 2009 Years After Helping Crack the Night Stalker Case
MugshotRichard Ramirez
“After 38 years I have some words of wisdom to impart on young deputies and their families,” Carrillo said in 2009, as he retired, according to Daily Breeze. “This job is not easy and it’s not easy on family life. But you need the family and the family needs you.”
Speaking to recruits, he thanked the department his wife Pearl, then of 39 years, according to the newspaper, which added that he was the first Latino sergeant in the Homicide bureau and was considered a legendary detective.
“If I had to do it all over again,” he said, “I wouldn’t change a thing,” he’s quoted as saying in the interview.
Colleagues praised him in that story: “He was always one of the people you could ask his opinion of,” said Detective Philip Guzman. “Somewhere in the vast channels of all his experience you knew he had some idea or advice that would help you in your investigation.”
Incidentally, Ramirez is no longer alive. He died on death row of cancer in 2013. Read more about the death of Richard Ramirez here.
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