The Original Night Stalker
I guess Richard Ramirez was a copycat?
Not really a copycat, the newspapers just started calling Ramirez “The Night Stalker” later on, and his crimes were much more well known than the first “Night Stalker”, so law enforcement began calling this guy “the Original Night Stalker” to avoid confusion.
About a decade ago they established a DNA link between ONS and an earlier series of rapes and home invasions that was known as the “East Area Rapist”, so people started calling him “EAR/ONS”. Then people began to speculate even earlier the same perp was responsible for a series of crimes that had been committed by a guy called “The Visalia Ransacker”.
Eventually, to streamline things some researchers and press just started calling him the “Golden State Killer” to have one name for the suspect wanted in all these crimes.