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August 22, 2024 45 mins

Ramon discovers a dark secret that threatens everything, including his own life.  

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
They take me then it blacked out suv to this
location where they had already dug out this shallow brave.
When I get there, they tell me, okay, if I need
you to strip down to your underwear. They showed me
how to pose on my hands bown beyond my back
and it looked like I was a little bit swollen.
They put more blood on me, and they been threw

(00:21):
dirt on me, which I thought it was stilely grading
and close my eyes. The only thing that I could
remember was the sound of the thirty five millimeter as
it went around me, just clicking taking pictures of me.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm Andrea Gunning And this is Betrayal, A show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Ramone's Sosa's story is one of those stranger
than fiction kind of tales. It's a betrayal that threatens everything,
including Ramone's life. Ramone grew up in Puerto Rico, the

(01:13):
only son in a traditional and tight knit family. Ramone
idolized his father, who was a professional wrestler like.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Pecan you see and w WWF? And I used to
see him on TV all the time in Puerto Rico.
He was big, muscular and had this or about him.
When he walked into the road.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
As a kid, Ramone tagged along with his dad to
the gym, and it was there where he fell in
love with what he calls the real thing boxing.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I started boxing about seven years old in Puerto Rico.
That was my life. School boxing home, school boxing home.
That was It takes a lot of discipline in boxing
if you want to do it right, and that's what
it taught me.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
And all of that discipline started to pay off for Ramone.
He fought in hundreds of amateur matches as a teenager
and he was winning a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
A lot of the trainers that worked with me they
said that I had a lot of natural talent and
people started saying, man, you'll be good when you grow up.
For my size, I hit very hard.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
He's careful to point out that even though he was
a champion in the ring, he never fought outside of it.
He felt like it was his responsibility as an athlete
to maintain a strong sense of right and wrong.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I don't fight in the street. Boxing is a skill,
and when you get in that ring, it's like a
chess match.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
He dreamed of going pro and taking care of his family.
The Sosas moved from Puerto Rico to Houston, Texas when
Ramone was a teenager. After sweeping the amateur leagues, Ramone
went pro.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
My father actually had to sign my contract to turn
pro because I was under age.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
He was a professional boxer for a few years before
he eventually settled into a new career coaching and training
young boxers in the US.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
But when it turns into a business and you see
like everybody wants to make money from you, everybody wants
a piece of the pie, it was tough. When they
started getting to me.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
In his early twenties, he fell in love and got married.
He and his first wife had three kids.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
I mean praise to all the mothers that stay at
home with their kids, because you know what, that is
a tough, tough job. It's a full time job.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Raising three kids together strained their relationship. They moved to
Houston to be closer to Ramone's parents. That's where he
still lives today. But even with his parents' help, Ramone
and his first wife.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Knew that they weren't a match.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
They needed to separate.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
It did not work out. Even though we couldn't work
it out. We did the best that we could for
our kids. And to this day, you know, we have
grandkids together. So I respect her, she respects me.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Ramone missed being a full time dad.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
With more free time on his hands, he decided to
start a nonprofit, an after school boxing program.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
We're at risk.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Youth and I We'll pick him up after school, taking
him to the gym. They would get a snack or
work help in the box, and then we also talked
about life situations.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
He loved being involved with the community and helping kids
who needed a positive influence.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
In their lives. That's how he met a close friend.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
His name is Mundo's names you real name, That's the
name that he went by.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
As a teenager. Mundo had been involved with a gang
and went to prison. Now that he was out, he
was turning his life around, looking for a purpose, and
he always loved boxing. He saw a sign about the
after school program and he asked Ramon if he could volunteer,
and he.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Said, ah, can I start today? I said start today,
he said right off the bat, He said, yeah, I
want to start today. So he went to his truck,
got some workout clothes and he went running with my kids.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Mundo kept coming back after day, and Ramone liked how
he related to the kids. He was honest with them
about the bad choices he'd made.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
He had all these tattoos with his gang name on
his back. He never hardly ever took off his shirt
because he didn't want people to see that kind of
stuff and the kids to see that kind of stuff.
And that's what I liked about him, that he mentored
so many kids in the gym to not go through
the same thing that he went through.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Ramone and Mundo became close friends. They ran the after
school program together, and Mundo even started working alongside Ramon
at his day job training professional boxers.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Ievie came kind of like my right hand man, and
I would tell people when he went to the boxing
tournament and saying shows with me. They had this my
other son, you know, it was my third son. He
came really really close to me. He called him Pop
says I was like a father figure to him.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Ramone and Mundo worked side by side training professionals and
then running the after school program.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
It went on like this for years.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
That was until Mundo got married and had a ki
of his own, and Ramone moved to the other side
of the city. Eventually, the two slowly fell out of touch.
Ramone was now seven years out from his divorce and
he wanted to find someone to share his life with.
That's when her friend told him about a new dance
club in Houston.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
He goes, you know, he could played that SASA regular,
you know that kind of stuff that you like. I
want to go check it out, and I hear there's
a lot of beautiful ladies there too.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
It was a Saturday night and a weekend where Ramone
didn't have his kids, so he decided to go check
it out.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
I mean it was packed, it was going on, you know,
and music was the kind of music that I liked,
and the dance floor was pegged. There she was.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
He was mesmerized by this one woman on the dance floor.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
So I kept looking at this leader on the other
dance where she danced very very well, and I might
thinking like, well, she looks Colombian or from the Caribbean,
the way she's dancing. She was wearing a tight meani
black dress. It looked like it was painted on her.
Beautiful all this kind she had wall black hair. Next
thing I know, I see her walking towards me, and

(07:12):
I said, okay, I'm trying to be cool about it,
and she steps on my toe. She had high heels
on it, and there must have been three inch skills
and I'm like, oh my goodness, I just went down.
I had a beer. I just went down. And she
starts telling me in Spanish, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry, but you okay, And then we tell you.
All I could do was just look up, stand at

(07:35):
hand and say we should dance with me, and she said,
of course, I danced with you, and that's where it
all started.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Her name was Lulu.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Her real name is mar Yeah, they moved this. She
went by Lulu.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
They had an instant connection.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
After that night on the dance floor, Ramon and Lulu
started going on dates, and she admitted she hadn't stepped
on Ramon's by accident.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
So, yeah, I did that on purpose.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
I wanted to get to know you, and that's exactly
what they did.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
We had a lot in common. She told me that
she was a divorced mother too, had recently moved to
Texas or Mexico City for a better life for herself
at her kids.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
After a few dates, Ramone explained to Lulu that his
career as a boxing coach was very demanding. It meant
working late nights and traveling to tournaments on the weekends.
He knew it was the kind of schedule that could
make dating difficult, if not impossible, but it didn't scare
Lulu off. She was supportive of his career and she
wanted to help him succeed.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
She started going to those tournaments with me, sit there
the whole time, supporting me, helping me with the kids.
And I liked that about her.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Just like Ramon, Lulu was a hard worker.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
The way she was making ends meet to try to
take care of her family was working underground. She would
clean houses.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Lulu was determined to become a US citizen. In addition
to cleaning houses and raising her kids, she went to
night school to improve her English.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
And I would help her too, you know, talking to
her in English when I could. She was just talk
to more in English because I wanted to learn English.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Ramone was impressed. They both had young kids from their
previous marriages. After about six months of dating, they started
getting to know each other's families.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
There was family gatherings on her side in my side.
Ludy was always there helping out, cleaning, helping, you know,
with the food. She was always very helpful with everybody.
And my mother in family, they liked her. They saw
how she treated me, and they saw that I had
been a lull for seven years now, and they kind
of saw something in her that, you know, she might

(09:46):
be the one.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Having his mother's approval sealed the deal for Ramone one
night in two thousand and nine, after a year and
a half together.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
I went on one knee and I had proposed to her.
She said yes, of course, and then she started crying
and crying, and they said, what's going on with you?
Are you okay? And all she kept saying was that
after all she went through with her ex husband, she
thought it would ever happen again. And she saw it
in me that I was a good man, and she

(10:16):
just couldn't believe that I asked marry her.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
During their engagement, Lulu doated on him.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Oh my goodness. There was times where I would have
a drink and I wasn't even halfway done and she
would go give me another one. Guys were like, man,
how do you find a woman like that? She's beautiful
and she treats you like a king, you know, kind
of like make you stick your chest out a little
bit too, like, wow, that's my lady, you know that

(10:44):
kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
The couple had a quick engagement.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
It was a second marriage for both of them, so
they opted for a simple courthouse ceremony with a backyard reception.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
It was at my sister's house. Matter of fact, she
wanted to give me that as a present. She had
a big celebration from my mayor. A lot of family
and friends were there, her family, her mother, and her
sister and brother love. They were all there.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
In the middle of the reception, surrounded by family, music
and food. Something strange happened that Ramone will never forget.
Lulu's mother approached him and she had a stern look
on her face.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Her mother walks up to me, and then she just
whispers in my ear, Now she's your trouble. He walks away.
I mean, wow, that's the first red flag was out
there right at our wedding night.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
In two thousand and nine, Ramone Sosa was newly married
to his second wife, Lulu. She was hard working, portive
of his career, and she went above and beyond to
make him happy. Instead of a honeymoon, Lulu wanted to
take a more practical approach. She wanted to invest in
becoming a citizen.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
That's what she wanted, and it's also okay, well that's
what you wanted. I was happy for her because she
was just tired of cleaning houses and you want to
get a regular job and be here legally.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
It was a mountain of paperwork, the first big hurdle
the couple faced together.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
And it's that cheap, and we did it. We went
over there to the immigration attorney and I signed all
the papers. Seemed like he was like a well, three
hundred pages. That's a lot of responsibility that you take
where you sponsor a person to be in this country legally.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
With Lulu's immigration paperwork underway, they started their new life together.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
The first years of our marriage, what you call the
honeymoon years, were wonderful. I was still very involved in boxing.
I had my nonprofit. She supported that also. She cared
a lot about me. She cared that I was a
father figure to her son and her daughter.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Early on in their marriage, Ramone told Lulu about his
career dreams. He wanted to open his own boxing gym
in Houston, a place where he could coach and train
the city's best boxers. But he knew this dream was
a few years away. He didn't have the money for
all the upfront costs.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
I told her how much he was going to cost,
and she goes, I can get that for you, and
I said, what are you talking about.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Lulu was determined to help Ramone's dream come true.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
She was borrowing money for family and also she maxed
out all these credit cards as she had, and that's
what we were able to open up our first gym
and buy all the equipment.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
The plan was dubious, but it worked and he was
grateful for it. The Jim quickly became a full time
job for both Ramone and Lulu. He did the head
coaching and training, and she handled the business side of things.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
She told me that back in Mexico City, she used
to work for Ford and she was an executive secretary
and she knew how to keep the books and she
was good at it. So I was very happy that
I had somebody that because I mean, I'm not good
at that part. I'm good at training people. I'm good
at teaching him how to fight a box.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Andy was his gym became d plays for leap boxers
to sharpen their skills, and it was growing quickly.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
The business took off. It took off, and it took
off quick. My day started at four in the morning.
I was till night in the evening, working saturdays too,
and I mean that was literally exhausted every day. But
that's surprised. You pay when you own a business.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Within a year, he had already paid Lulu back and
they were starting to make real money.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
I just kept saying to myself, like, wow, this is
what I wanted. I mean, I didn't become a world champion,
I didn't go to the Olympics, but still doing something
with boxing. And at the same time, I'm making money
and we were financially doing very very well. We were
to the point where we under the buy a big house, cars, vacations,

(15:13):
so everything was good and to me, life was good.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
One day, Ramone got an unexpected visitor at the gym,
his old friend Mundo.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
And I was like, Wundo, and it was like we
picked up right where we had left off.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Mundo asked to come work with Ramon again, but Lulu
wasn't so sure about him. She didn't like his luck
or his criminal background.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
She told me, I don't know about having somebody like
that around our business. You know, she saw the tattoos.
I've had to be honest with her that, you know,
told his background home, everything that happened to him. And
you know, he had been released from prison back in
the day being shot at gang member. But he cleaned
his life. He wanted to live with different life. But
then when Mundo started coming around helping me at helping

(16:05):
with the gym and helping the weekends so we could
have days off. When she saw the benefits in him,
then she said, okay, well we can use them.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
So Mundo started working nights and weekends at the gym.
It was a relief. The Sosos really needed the help.
They were beginning to struggle at home with the pressure
of parenting and managing their business.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
So at home, racing the family was getting difficult, and
Lulu would take the issues that she had with her
kids that on me. So, yeah, the family dynamic we
were seeing cracks.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
After the first three years of marriage, Ramone started noticing
that Lulu was changing too.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
She was becoming more demanding.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
She didn't want my kids to come around. She didn't
want my family. Even my family start coming to my
house because they saw how she changed, how she was
in the same person, the very nice lady that they
had met when I first met her.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Lulu was getting controlling about how Ramone spent money, while
she was spending more than ever.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
She would go shopping and come back from the wall
with all these bags. I said, what are you doing.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Ramone's concern was amplified when he discovered.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
I started noticing that the books were not adding up
to the number of people members we had in the gym.
And every time I will bring up that situation of said, hey,
what's going on here? This is not adding up the
bottom line, and she would always say, I don't worry
about it. And I was upsetting.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
So we hired someone else to take over the books.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
One night, Ramone came home from the gym to find
that Lulu was hosting a party at the house, a
party he hadn't heard about. There were balloons and a cake.
Lulu's entire family.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Was there, and I can tell that she had been
drinking because she was just learned a little bit, and
she had a bottle of wine in one hand and
a cup of the other, and she said, say hello
to your new American wife, and I'm like, what are
you talking about.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Lulu had applied for citizenship and she was approved.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Earlier that day.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
She'd gone to her naturalization ceremony and officially became a
US citizen, but she hadn't mentioned it to Ramone, her
husband and the sponsor of her visa.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
And I said, wait a second. You're here legally in
this country because of me. Your kids are here legally
because of me, and you don't have the respect to
ask me like you I want to go to the celebration.
It got to the poor where I asked her, point black,
did you marry me just to be here legally with

(18:54):
your family, the money, the American lifestyle. She came back with,
look at me, I'm beautiful, look at my up body.
I can get anybody I want, and men to have
a lot more money than you. But no, I chose you.
I want to be with you, and I love you.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
He wanted to believe her, but he was still disturbed
by her choices, not to mention her controlling behavior, not
wanting his kids around her, spending, the discrepancies in the books,
and now she hadn't even invited him to her citizenship ceremony.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
And I said, now this is that cool or like
the way his marriage is going?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Ramon pulled away emotionally and physically. He knew something was wrong,
but he was too busy with his Jim to take
immediate action and file for divorce. In the meantime, the
couple started sleeping in separate bedrooms.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
We're still married but living separate lives, basically in the
same house.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
He didn't expect Lulu to be the one to file
for divorce, but one day she came to him with
the papers and she had a bold request.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
She wanted to keep the house and the business.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
I said, no, no, I don't think so. I said,
we're going to go half. Everything is going to split
down the middle. You go your way, I go my way.
But all the money and time that I have invested
in this marriage and everything that we have, no, I said, no,
this is my house. So I told her we can
work it out, or we can go to court. And
that's when I got my attorney and we'll fight it out.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
He had been through a divorce before, and although the
first one was difficult, it had been fair and respectful.
But this divorce was about to take a devastating turn.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
I remember I was driving, Mundo calls me.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Mundo explained that the night before, he'd been closing the
gym when he overheard Lulu talking about hiring a hitman.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
And you know, Mundo being funny and when we joke
around before all the time. I said, Mundo, you know
qu're joking around, man, you know what we're going through.
This's is just not cool to be joking like that.
He said, nah, nah, no, Pops. I've seen that look
in people's eyes when they want to kill somebody, and
she has that look.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Munjo approached Lulu to ask about what he overheard.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
And he walked up to her. I said, and you
guys used to be careful what you're saying because you
never know who's listening. And he said, are you guys
talking about remote and said yeah. Mingo said you want
him gone and you want to disappear. And Mundo did
the pistol sign with his hand and he said, you

(21:42):
want him gone like this like you know when she
said yeah, I'm tired of him. I wish she was
going to disappear. Yeah like that. I just want him
going out of my life. And Mungo said, I'll tell
you what you know. I got some people that can
do the job for you.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Mundo told Lulu he could help, that he knew someone
who could do the hit. Instead of calling up a connection,
he went straight to his good friend Ramone.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
I was upset. I was so upset. I mean I
had to pull over. I had so much rage. I
didn't know what to do. That was like, man, what
I do? So I called the police? So he said, no,
he is to do. I talked to her and I'm
going to start meeting with her, and I'm going to
record every day or a foe and see how far

(22:44):
she's willing to go. And then I what I want
you to do is take all these recordings to the
police and see what they wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Ramone was skeptical that this plan would work, and taking
Mundo at his word meant Lulu was dangerous. So right
after that phone call, he decided to go to the police.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
And I told him the situation, what happened, and he
responded with you know what, you guys are going through
a divorce. Women and men sometimes say things when they're upset,
even that they want to kill their wives or their husbands,
but as they's just saying it out of anger, there's
really not a lot of evidence to do anything with that.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
He wasn't sure if Mundo's plan to use secret recordings
would be admissible or even legal. It sounded kind of
like entrapment, so he asked the detectives about it.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
I told the black Woo does it look And he said,
you guys keep getting more evidence and I said, okay,
apparently that is legal. So that's what we did.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
So they moved forward with the plan.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Mundo would meet with Lulu in private places like cars
to see if she was actually serious about hiring a hitman,
and all the while he was secretly recording on his phone.
For this to work, she'd have to believe that Mundo
was in one hundred percent. But why would she trust Mundo,
one of Ramone's best friends. Ramone has a simple answer.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Lulu's so desperate in everything that's going on the voice
I going her way. Her life is slowly crumbling.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
The most difficult part of their plan was that Ramon
would have to play dumb and spend a few more
days sleeping under the same roof as Lulu, pretending that
he didn't know what she was planning. Ramone remembers turning
into his driveway that day, something he'd done a thousand

(24:48):
times before, and he always felt comfort and relief when
he got home, But now it was.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
All so eerie.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
His house a would be crime scene and him an
unsuspecting murder victim.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Even though we were sleeping in separate rules. I had
to go home and see this lady and look at
this lady, knowing that she wanted to have me killed.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
He barely said a word to her.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
That night. He locked his bedroom door. He tried to sleep,
but he was wide awake with thoughts racing. People say
things they don't mean during a divorce all the time.
Could she just be fuming or could she actually go
through with it? The next day, Ramon got his answer.
It turns out Lulu was in a hurry. She wanted

(25:43):
to take Mundo up on his offer right away.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Lulu wanted me dead before our divorce was finalized, because
she said to Mundo, look, if he dies after our
divorce is finalized, my kids get everything. But if he
died before that, the wars is finalized, she gets everything.
And the Wars was going to be finalized about a
what so she wanted me dead as soon as possible.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Ramone had spent seven years with Lulu. For most of
that time, he genuinely adored her. He wanted to give
her that second chance at a loving partnership, and he
dreamed of seeing her succeed alongside of him. Instead, she
was throwing it all away, and Ramone heard everything captured

(26:34):
on tape.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
I could believe what I was hearing from Lulu. She's
selling Mundo how she's practicing, how she's going to cry
when the police calls her after they kill me, and
she's literally making cry and sounds and she starts laughing
after that.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
In one of the first recorded conversations, Lulu dropped a bull.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Lulu was planning to have me kill two years prior
to our divorce. I was like what, and Mundo said, yeah,
have it or one of the recordings, and I listened
to it and I said, I can't believe what I'm
listening to.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Two years earlier, they'd taken a family vacation to Mexico City.
Ramone thought their relationship was in a good place, and she.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Was so happy to show me Mexico City and go
to the Pyramids. She had a whole tenerary for everything
we were supposed to do in Mexico City.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
She told Mundo that she was planning to kill Ramon
on that trip.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Lulu wanted his savings, his business, and his life insurance.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
She was conspiring to commit the crime with a friend
back in Mexico and the plan.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Was, Yeah, bring him over here. We'll disappear. People disappear
here all this time. What we can do is have
you guys held for ransom and then they're going to
let you go, and then we're going to disappear him.
And then Mundo asked Lulu, and so how come you
didn't go through with it? And Lulu said, well, I

(28:17):
didn't have the heart to do it. Then, well now
I do.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
This chilled him to the bone. He didn't recognize this woman.
He never heard his wife speak like this before, the
coldness in her voice, her laughter.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
It never crossed my mind that lou had this whole
blooded heart through our good times in our marriage. I
never would have ever thought in a million years this
person had that kind of mind to do this kind
of stuff.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
He became genuinely terrified for his life.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Ramon left the house and stayed with his parents who
lived across town. In the meantime, Mundo asked Lulu if
she wanted him to reach out to one of his
guys if she was ready, and she said she was,
so Mundo called his contacts.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
He called one of them John Boy in the other
one Paco.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
If those sound like characters from a crummy action movie,
it's because they are.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Told me that he saw blood and blood out and
those are those two characters right from that movie.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
But Lulu bought it. So Mundo texted Paco, who was
actually Ramone using a burner phone.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Then I said, well, Mundo, I'm not a street guy,
so he's already teaching me how to talk or text
in that gang Lingo to pass as a criminal. Basically,
he's meeting with Lulu and the person that do. I
text Munda say, hey, the boss lead ready to do this.
We need two hundred dollars for the toy.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Mundo explained that the hit would cost twelve thousand dollars,
but the guys would need two hundred dollars up front
for the gun.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
She went to our bank. We still had count together.
She went to our account, got the two hundred dollars
out of our savings which is basically my money too,
and get Mundo two hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
As soon as the money changed hands, they had enough
to go to the police. The moment was both a
relief and a horrible betrayal, and with this evidence, the
police were finally ready to move on Ramon's case. They
took it very seriously.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
They had to get all these different agencies together and
come up with the plant Safe troopers they share with
the part with FBI. They got real quick.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Law enforcement wanted to collect evidence of their own. They
decided to see if Lulu would make a down payment
for the hit and if she would exchange the money
with one of these fictitions, hitman in person.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
The state police brought their undercover police officer to play
it as one of the hitman's to start meeting with
Lulu in person. I mean, this guy, if he saw
her in the street, he thought that he was really
a gang member hit man. You know. He put everything
to the tee. He had all the tags. Anybody to talk.
He had a mean look like then you will be
scared of him.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Lulu met him in a car, which of course was
an undercover police car full of cameras.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
She said she didn't have the cash to pay him just.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yet, but she brought my own jewelry as a down
payment for my own murder bracelets, watches just so stiff
that I had left behind at the house, and she
gave that to him as a down payment. And then

(31:53):
she also had the nerve to tell look, and he
also wears this really nice watch and if he has
it on, you can keep that too, because it's worth something.
And then after he dies, I'll give you the rest
of the money. And he said, okay, we're going to
take care of business now.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
That night, the police asked Ramone to come to the
station right away.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
And I said, what about Mungo. He's not coming, said no,
we just need to talk to you. When I arrived
at the station, go to a special room that we
always met. And when I get in and I started noticing, like,
wait a second, there's a lot more people in this
room than before. The FBI guy was there. At the

(32:35):
State Police detective a DA or assistant DA was there,
so it was a packed room. And they start telling
me and say, okay, Ramona, we feel that we have
enough evidence to arrest Lulu right now. But here's the deal.
You guys own a business here locally. She's a mother,
she's there been in trouble, and we need to make

(32:57):
this slammed on the case, and that if we go
to a jury trial, we might have one of the
jurists true slight for her. And you just want to
make sure it's a slag done case. So we have
decided to stage your death and show her your picture
and then recorded.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
It sounded over the top. He'd never heard anything like it,
and to be honest, neither have I. The police told
Ramon that they need him for three days, so he
quickly went home and packed a bag. He was advised
not to tell anyone where he was going at Mundo,

(33:39):
not his parents, not his kids. He returned to the
police station the next morning and was surprised when the
police started doing special effects makeup to make it look
like he'd been shot in the head.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
The police even had a.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
Reference image, a photo of a real murder victim whose
body had been dumped in the desert.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
They take me in a blacked out SUV to this
location where they had already dug out this shallow grave.
And when I get there, the detective tells me, okay,
meet you to strip down to your underwear. They showed
me how to pose on my hands bound behind my back,
and it looked like I was a little bit swollen.
They put more blood on me, and they even threw

(34:25):
dirt on me, which I thought it was so degrading,
and closed my eyes and the only thing that I
could remember the most from that scene was the sound
of the thirty five millimeter as it went around me,
just clicking taking pictures of me. And then the detectives

(34:47):
health give me the shows we're done here to close
on and they took me away to a hotel.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
He sat in the hotel room for two days, not
able to contact anyone, just waiting for the to arrest Lulu.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
I couldn't sleep. All I did was paced back and forth,
thinking about all the different situations. What if it doesn't happen,
whether she doesn't fall for it, What are my kids
gonna think when they see my parents? Everybody, I mean all,
I mean, so many things going through my head.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
Meanwhile, back in Houston, the.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Undercover police officer was in the car with Lulu and
he shows Lulu the picture of me in the Charlotte grave.
So next thing she does, she starts racing up her
hands up like racing the roof, like she's laughing, like yeah,
about to get paid. I hit the battle and then

(35:43):
walks out of the car, closes the door, no idea whatsoever.
The whole time she was starting to an undercover police officer.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Lulu was arrested right there for solicia citation a first
degree capital murder. After the arrest was made, the police
called Ramone's hotel room to let him know.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
I literally sat on the edge of that bed and
tears started coming down. Tears of anger, tears of sadness.
Not because I was still in love with this person,
but she didn't think about me being a son, me

(36:29):
being a father, you know, a friend, a brother, all
those she didn't think of. I known of that, and
you're taking me away from my kids, my mother, and
my father. That hurt me a lot.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Ramone says the worst part of this entire betrayal was
what happened next. He hadn't been able to talk to
his family for three days and explain where he was
going or what was going on. He's the kind of
son who called his mom nearly every day. He knew
she'd be panicked, so as soon as he could, he
dialed his parents' house.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
My father asks the phone, and my dad never asks
the phone. My dad is not a phone person. It's
just we'll throw what yet. And I can hear the
cracking in his voice. In the background, I hear my
mother screaming and cry and kind of cry. You hear

(37:28):
funerals when somebody passes.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
His parents had just heard the news of Lulu's arrest,
but they didn't know it was a setup. The only
thing they knew was that they hadn't heard from Ramon
and that his wife had just been arrested for soliciting
his murder.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
And I try to drive as fast as possible, trying
to get to her. And when I get there, my
dad opens the door. In my dad's eyes were bloodshot.
I've never seen my dad cry ever. He just hugged
me and I went straight to my mother. She was
laid on the couches. She can't catch your bread then,
and she's crying. I said, mom, come fam okay. I

(38:09):
mean I'm okay, And you know, I tried to explain
to her that I was gonna be okay, but she
still couldn't catch a bread. She was basically hyper ventilating,
you know, because she was so anxious.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
This is the moment that still haunts Ramone seeing his
own mom grieve his death. It's something few people ever
see and it's extremely difficult to process.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
You know, I'm their only son, and never forget that
it's going to be the picture that always be able.
My was my dad hold myma's head telling her it's
gonna be okay.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Even though Lulu was being held on a million dollar bail,
Ramon couldn't shake this fear that she'd somehow find him.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
I didn't know Flulu had a plan B or C.
So I was sleeping with a loaded shotgun next to
my bed. Then I had another loaded gun on the
counter of my kitchen, which was a forty milimeter that
I had a nine millimeters loaded in my vehicle at
all times, ready to go.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
In the year following Lulu's arrest, he didn't leave the
house unless he had to.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Over time, all of that fear turned to anger.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
I had so much bottled up anger inside of me,
my family, my kids, and my mother. All that anger
I had it bottled up inside of me. Anybody that
has gone through something so traumatic like have went through,
you can't live with that much anger. I couldn't continue
to live the way I was living with that anger

(39:52):
with loaded guns around me all the time. I was
a ticking bomb Briton. I was afraid of myself.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
After fifteen months in jail, Lulu pleaded down to second
degree solicitation of capital murder. Ramone channeled his anger into
writing a victim impact statement to deliver at her sentence.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
In hearing, I.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Mean, I was gonna let her have it verbally of
all the pain and anger that she had cost me
in my family. When they let me talk, it was packed.
A lot of people were there, from them press I
get up. I took a deep breath. I forgave this lady.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
This was about him.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
It wasn't about making Lulu feel better or letting her
off the hook. It was about making this moment into
a ceremony for himself, a ceremony to release all the
anger he'd been carrying.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
And once I did that, it was as if all
that anger was gone real like all that air out
of the balloge and I was able to breathe, And
you know, it's just life was beginning to be more
normal now.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Lulu was sentenced to twenty years, but ended up serving
eight and a half. She was released in November of
twenty twenty three, and she'll serve another twelve years on parole.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
She's on the very very street rules with the Texas
State Parole Board. She misses up, she's going right back in.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Ramon decided to move on from the spaces they shared,
which meant selling the house and the gym.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
It was just way too many memories. I just need
to move on.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
As for Mundo, they're still friends today. He doesn't think
about Lulu every day like he used to. It's in
part because I mean love again.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yes, yes, it's just being wonderful to me. Puerto Rican too.
I say that because we have a lot of common
because of our cultures.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Ramon is determined to turn his betrayal into a positive force.
He wrote a memoir about his experience. It's called I
Walked on my Own Grave, and he wants to tell
his story on stage as a one man play.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
I'm not an actor, I'm not a professional speaker. But
when you speak from the heart, it means something, and
I think I'd like to do that. Tell my story
on stage, the real deal, everything that happen't.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Part of his healing process has been understanding that there's
a term for what Lulu did to him, the terror
he lived with for years afterwards. It's domestic abuse. Even
though his story has so many twists and turns, that's
what it boils down to his own spouse try to
have him killed. As you know, we end all of

(42:54):
our weekly episodes with the same question, why did you
want to tell your story?

Speaker 1 (43:01):
My hope is that my story helps men and women
that are caught in difficult situations in their marriage. And
I'd go through what I went through because I was
a victim of the Messican Bees, and it's hard for
people to understand that what is it mean? You're a
boxer and you're this, and you're that. So I advocate,

(43:22):
you know, for men that are victims for the Messican
Bees to never give up get help. I mean, just
like women, men should be getting the same type of help.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
On the next episode of Betrayal.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
Who wants to file a police report against their father?
You know, I didn't want to put my dad in jail.
I really didn't like I didn't want to be the
kind of person who did that.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email
us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Also, please be sure to follow us at Glass Podcasts
on Instagram for all Betrayal content, news and updates. We're
grateful for your support. One way to show support is
by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts, and don't
forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five star reviews go
a long way.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show
was executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted
and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by
Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are

(44:49):
Christen Mercury and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Ali
Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt
Delvecchio and Nico Auruka. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines.
Music library provided by my Music and for more podcasts
from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

(45:11):
you get your podcasts.
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