Speaker 1: Our friend Gamble, it's a very talented musician, was teaching
Speaker 1: us when we did the Pirates of Penzance show. Gamble
Speaker 1: Musical directed that, and they were telling us all these
Speaker 1: like cool rules about music, and I wish I could
Speaker 1: remember what it was called, but it was where like
Speaker 1: you kind of pose a question and you have to
Speaker 1: get an answer, which is why things like shave and
Speaker 1: a haircut you have you can't not finish it, and
Speaker 1: then you're Roger. There you go. And there's like really
Speaker 1: a thing in music where it's like if you end
Speaker 1: on a certain note, it doesn't feel like the end
Speaker 1: you need a punctuation mode on it. Yeah, that stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Hello, how are you doing? Everybody? God, laryngitis,
Speaker 1: Larry's X. Now I'm recovering from a cold and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm about four octaves down right now. Um. There is
Speaker 1: something about the sick voice that I get. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get like a Kathleen Turner, like really smoky
Speaker 1: hot kind of tone and you're like, I wish I
Speaker 1: felt better. There's a whole Friends episode about that, I think,
Speaker 1: where Phoebe gets sick and like y she feels like
Speaker 1: she's got It's the sexiest her voice has ever sounded.
Speaker 1: She tries to stay sick I imagine, right, but then
Speaker 1: she keeps like hacking, coughing in the middle of her
Speaker 1: songs too, so it's like it does not get sexy.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel right now, like I've got this
Speaker 1: deep voice and like you have no idea what's going
Speaker 1: on in the back of my nose. I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna share it with you all. It's all the mucus.
Speaker 1: That's the no. I wasn't going to say that word
Speaker 1: because it's so disgusting, but you know, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: through it. I'm gonna here. Here's what I'll do. Here's
Speaker 1: an experiment. Right now, as I'm saying this, I'm going
Speaker 1: to elevate the pitch of my voice in post to
Speaker 1: try and make it sound Okay, never mind that, lets
Speaker 1: just go back to no filters. Just added myself twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of work for that bit. It's gonna be hilarious,
Speaker 1: shaking my head over it. It could be so funny.
Speaker 1: Uh well, yeah, I mean so, I won't waste a
Speaker 1: lot of time because I want to make sure my
Speaker 1: voice gets through the end of this episode, and this
Speaker 1: one's very exciting. Yes, many a twist and turn, because
Speaker 1: Ramon and Lulu sosa, we're totally happily married couple once
Speaker 1: they found true love in each other and they felt
Speaker 1: like their lives were a paradise. In fact, a totally
Speaker 1: useless couple for this show by all standards, an average day.
Speaker 1: Why would we ever cover them? Well, after financial troubles
Speaker 1: hit them, their relationships started to fall apart, and scared
Speaker 1: of the financial troubles Lulu would face if they divorced,
Speaker 1: she came up with a rock solid plan. She would
Speaker 1: simply high you're a hit man to half her husband killed.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, but it wasn't so easy. And this
Speaker 1: story is full of twists. So I say we just
Speaker 1: get right into it and hear the story of Ramon
Speaker 1: and Lulu. I'm ready, let's go. Hey the French, come listen. Well,
Speaker 1: Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no
Speaker 1: match making, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships,
Speaker 1: a love it might be any type of person at all,
Speaker 1: and abstract concept are a concrete wall. But if there's
Speaker 1: a story where the second glance ridiculous romans a production,
Speaker 1: if I heart radio Ramon Sosa was a former professional
Speaker 1: fighter and one of the most respective boxing trainers in Texas.
Speaker 1: Ramon had moved here from Puerto Rico when he was young,
Speaker 1: and he started boxing when he was just seventeen years old,
Speaker 1: but in an interview with ESPN, he said that after
Speaker 1: the industry sort of made him feel like a quote
Speaker 1: piece of meat, you know, like he was getting traded around.
Speaker 1: Everybody was just trying to make money off of him.
Speaker 1: He was getting regularly tenderized in and out of the ring.
Speaker 1: Uh He decided to start working as a boxing trainer instead,
Speaker 1: and young hopeful prize fighters, even Olympic boxers, would come
Speaker 1: to Houston to be trained by Ramon. A story on
Speaker 1: the CBS news show forty eight Hours said that Ramone
Speaker 1: married young. He had three children, and even though that
Speaker 1: marriage didn't work out, his daughter Mia and her two
Speaker 1: brothers loved having a local celebrity for a dad. They
Speaker 1: called him a jokester, and Mia said, quote, every time
Speaker 1: we were around, it was tons of laughs and smiles.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew Maria Durante's as Lulu. She was a beautiful
Speaker 1: woman who moved to Texas from Mexico in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands on a visitor's visa, and she had her
Speaker 1: son and daughter with her. She worked as a housekeeper
Speaker 1: and then MSUs and she spent her nights dancing at
Speaker 1: a local Latin club col she's a party girl. I
Speaker 1: guess a little bit. What else are you doing in Texas?
Speaker 1: Got a dance? I assume nachos? I hope seriously. Now,
Speaker 1: One night in two seven, the club was playing salsa music,
Speaker 1: so Lulu had put on her best dress. She come
Speaker 1: out to dance, Her cares away and all eyes were
Speaker 1: on her. She tore up the dance floor and after
Speaker 1: presumably having like a full on flash dance bucket of water? Right,
Speaker 1: what was dirty dancing to Havannah Knights? After having a
Speaker 1: full on dirty dancing to Havannah Knights experience? Although she
Speaker 1: should Mexico now from Cuba, So okay, dirty dancing three
Speaker 1: Mexico City Party, I think it's what that was. Call
Speaker 1: me and we'll work on the title. Well. Anyway, after
Speaker 1: doing her movie bio back on the dance floor in
Speaker 1: six inch heels, by the way, which I can't do.
Speaker 1: I think I don't think I can sit down and
Speaker 1: six and else, she stepped away to go get a drink,
Speaker 1: and she accidentally stepped heel first onto someone's foot nightmare scenario.
Speaker 1: The man, of course yelped in pain, but he looked
Speaker 1: up and saw this gorgeous woman and all the pain
Speaker 1: in his foot mysteriously went away, and the man was
Speaker 1: Ramon so soft. Lulu apologized, I'm so sorry. What can
Speaker 1: I do? What can I do? And Ramon took a
Speaker 1: second and he's like breathing through the pain, but he
Speaker 1: looks up at her. He says, hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: how about a dance that'll make my foot feel better?
Speaker 1: But it doesn't. The rest was history. They were on
Speaker 1: the dance floor the whole rest of the night. Their
Speaker 1: first song was Bluharia by l Grand Combo to Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: and that became their song. Friends said that they were
Speaker 1: the perfect pair. They complimented each other, they flattered each
Speaker 1: other other, and they built a huge network in their community.
Speaker 1: Their friend Beth Blair said on forty eight Hours that
Speaker 1: they were quote too fun, outgoing people who loved a party,
Speaker 1: loves to get together with friends and have barbecues, and
Speaker 1: the more people, the merrier. Now Lulu doated on Ramone.
Speaker 1: She treated him like a King. She brought him coffee
Speaker 1: in the morning, made him breakfast. He never had an
Speaker 1: empty drink glass in the evening. She's just totally into him.
Speaker 1: She's like, I want to anticipate all your need. So
Speaker 1: within a year, Ramone popped the big question. Lulu started crying,
Speaker 1: she cannot wait to get married. It was just all
Speaker 1: hearts and stars and flowers. And on March fifteenth, two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, their families emerged and she became Lulu Sosa,
Speaker 1: a real Brady Bunch kind of story. Your kids, my kids,
Speaker 1: two of us. It's going to be a beautiful story
Speaker 1: of a beautiful life together. Now. The next year after
Speaker 1: they got married, they opened a second Jim Together where
Speaker 1: Lu who ran the business side of things, and she
Speaker 1: also became a personal trainer herself. And within a few
Speaker 1: months they had pulled in almost two hundred clients. They
Speaker 1: were making around twenty thousand dollars a month, so doing
Speaker 1: really well. They bought a brand new house, cars, motorcycles,
Speaker 1: you know, just living a life of luxury. Now. Lulu
Speaker 1: love to shop. She would go buy new dresses and jewelry. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Ramone started a nonprofit called Young Prospects that helped kids
Speaker 1: from gangs and troubled backgrounds get into boxing. So we
Speaker 1: have sort of a more selfless approach to the money spending.
Speaker 1: I guess Ramon side, but whatever you know, opposites attract.
Speaker 1: Everything's great. Life is good Now. Remote sponsored Lulu and
Speaker 1: her mother and her two teenage children to get US citizenship,
Speaker 1: and this process took about three years. But by this
Speaker 1: point in their marriage things started to get rocky. They
Speaker 1: were fighting more frequently, friends and families started to see
Speaker 1: them drift apart, and soon after their business started to
Speaker 1: suffer too. By the time six years had gone by
Speaker 1: in their marriage, there was really little love left between them.
Speaker 1: Money at the gym was drying up, and Lulu started
Speaker 1: confiding in friends that Ramon had been abusive. She even
Speaker 1: claimed that he once raped her. Now March of Lulu
Speaker 1: hired a divorce lawyer, and she brought him pictures of
Speaker 1: scratches on her arms, legs, and shoulders, as well as
Speaker 1: a picture of where Ramon had punched a crack in
Speaker 1: their bedroom door. Now with the evidence in someone else's hands,
Speaker 1: she felt safe serving Ramone divorce papers. But things were
Speaker 1: not easy financially for either of them. Remember, the money
Speaker 1: was drying up. So for the time being, Lulu and
Speaker 1: Ramone had to continue living in the same house, awkward,
Speaker 1: and they slept on different floors. They didn't interact much obviously. Um.
Speaker 1: Lulu continue to manage the second gym, while Ramon mostly
Speaker 1: stayed at the first gym. He was training athletes and
Speaker 1: working with the Young Prospects Foundation, And one of the
Speaker 1: kids in the foundation was named Mundo. At least that's
Speaker 1: the name that he gave an interviews after all this
Speaker 1: stuff went down. This kid had a rough background. ESPN
Speaker 1: said he joined a Houston gang when he was just
Speaker 1: twelve years old. Um, he had already been shot twice
Speaker 1: in three different incidents before he ended up in jail.
Speaker 1: So he just had a like a messy situation, really
Speaker 1: tough situation. And when he got out of jail, he
Speaker 1: and his then girlfriend decided to move to a whole
Speaker 1: other part of the city and try to like turn
Speaker 1: their lives around, get ship on track. Yeah, she had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with that apparently. You know, she
Speaker 1: was like, you gotta choose me or your your life
Speaker 1: in the streets. Basically for him for making that choice,
Speaker 1: Mundo met Ramon after joining his gym and the boxing
Speaker 1: trainer took him under his wing. Mundo wanted to stop
Speaker 1: street fighting and learned how to be a real boxer.
Speaker 1: Ramon had this like special, specialized Puerto Rican style of
Speaker 1: boxing that everybody really liked um and he saw him
Speaker 1: fighting and he was like, that just looks professional, It
Speaker 1: looks real. I want to do that. So over the years,
Speaker 1: he'd gotten to know Ramon and Lulu both pretty well,
Speaker 1: and one night he overheard Lulu talking to her teenage daughter.
Speaker 1: They were discussing a patron of the gym who had
Speaker 1: connections to a hit man, an uncle of his that
Speaker 1: apparently could make bodies disappear. Mundo almost ignored it, but
Speaker 1: then he heard them say the name Ramon, and Mundo
Speaker 1: said nothing at this point, but the next day he
Speaker 1: decided to confront Lulu and ask her about it. This
Speaker 1: is when Lulu confided in Mundo that Ramon had been
Speaker 1: abusive to her and that she wished he would quote disappear.
Speaker 1: And Mundo would always tried to stay out of their
Speaker 1: fights in recent years, but he frequently got dragged between them,
Speaker 1: but this new information was a lot to he like.
Speaker 1: Went back to his punching bag, he hit it a
Speaker 1: few times. He knew what she meant by disappear, and
Speaker 1: after a few minutes he went back to her and
Speaker 1: he said, quote, I might know somebody. He told her
Speaker 1: he had two guys, Pucko and John Boy. Now Paco
Speaker 1: was the man, okay, he was so revered in Nundo's
Speaker 1: gang that they had painted a mural of his face
Speaker 1: two stories high neighborhood. That is intense. We don't have
Speaker 1: any of those we got. We got a two story
Speaker 1: tall mural of John Lewis. What did he ever do
Speaker 1: for anybody? Was super cool? Have to say, And none
Speaker 1: of our murals notorious gangsters. I don't think was there
Speaker 1: ever a two foot tall mural of like Pablo Escobar
Speaker 1: two ft tall mural? Maybe? Sorry? Well, Lulu was interested
Speaker 1: in this Paco guy sounds pretty good, and so they
Speaker 1: met a few weeks later, and Mundo texted Paco in
Speaker 1: front of Lulu saying quote, Paco, I'm here with the patrona.
Speaker 1: Y'all guys, take a truck and one g after job done.
Speaker 1: Oh seven white single cab, twenty rims see it? Oh no,
Speaker 1: And Paco texted back, quote, I talked with John Boy
Speaker 1: and it's all good homie. Just need the tools. Damn
Speaker 1: A thousand bucks in a truck, that's it. Yeah, fill
Speaker 1: a guy. She would give him remotees truck at a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Amazing. Now, how this makes me think about when, um,
Speaker 1: whenever there's an outlaw in a movie and they get
Speaker 1: their wanted poster and it's really low and then hella offended,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I feel like remote, Like, excuse me.
Speaker 1: A thousand dollars, that's it. But you gotta think that
Speaker 1: money is tight. So maybe it's not so much. You
Speaker 1: paid a thousand dollars to have me killed, but you
Speaker 1: paid you know what percentage of your current money? Did
Speaker 1: you give a lot? Maybe it was a lot. That's
Speaker 1: why you should we kill for a rich class, right
Speaker 1: for a percentage of their If Warren Buffett paid a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to have me killed, I'd be really offended.
Speaker 1: If you did, I'd be like, that's understandable. I mean
Speaker 1: it would have been irresponsible for you to offer more. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to know that I can lowball it. If
Speaker 1: I hadn't need this, so it would be a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks after the job was done. But for now, Lulu
Speaker 1: gave Mundo a hundred dollars for Paco to go buy
Speaker 1: a stolen gun. Almost three weeks past and Lulu and
Speaker 1: Mundo spoke every few days about this, and soon she
Speaker 1: told him that Ramon was about to sign divorce papers
Speaker 1: and she was getting worried because if the divorce went through,
Speaker 1: she would get nothing. If he died before the divorce,
Speaker 1: she said, quote, I'll have insurance for life, a pension
Speaker 1: for life. This is my retirement, Mundo, his life is
Speaker 1: my retirement. They agreed that it had to happen before
Speaker 1: this court date, and Mundo even offered her a few
Speaker 1: opportunities to change her mind, saying he would work it
Speaker 1: all out with Paca, but she insisted. He texted her
Speaker 1: once in Spanish, quote just remember once he's dead, there's
Speaker 1: no coming back from that, and she responded, quote clear
Speaker 1: as water. Wow, okay now. According to ESPN, on July twenty,
Speaker 1: Paco's truck pulled up to meet Lulu in a designated
Speaker 1: parking lot. She hopped in and Paco said, quote, we
Speaker 1: got him in the morning. Lulu didn't react except to say, quote,
Speaker 1: I've got a thousand dollars. Paco held out a phone
Speaker 1: and showed her a picture. There he was Ramote lying
Speaker 1: in a ditch, wearing only his underwear, his hands tied
Speaker 1: behind his back, with a bullet hole in the side
Speaker 1: of his head and blood coming out of his nose.
Speaker 1: Paco tells her he fought for his life. After a pause,
Speaker 1: Lulu said quote, he won't get up anymore, and started laughing.
Speaker 1: Paco took the thousand dollars and left, and Lulu went home,
Speaker 1: finally free of Ramon, with her future set and secure.
Speaker 1: Earlier that day, somewhere out in the Texas Desert, Ramon's
Speaker 1: body lay in a recently dug ditch. Paco kicked some
Speaker 1: dirt onto Ramon's face, then held up his phone and
Speaker 1: snapped a few pictures. Then a few seconds later, Ramon
Speaker 1: opened his eyes. Did we get it? He asks? Paco
Speaker 1: nodded and told him he thought the picture looked pretty good.
Speaker 1: Ramon stood up as one of the nearby police officers
Speaker 1: cut his ties and wiped the blood from his head.
Speaker 1: What Paco wasn't Paco at all. He was an officer
Speaker 1: from the Montgomery County Precinct three Constable's office, and together
Speaker 1: they had just faked Ramon's death. And we're gonna fill
Speaker 1: in all the details on that and find out what
Speaker 1: happened next right after this commercial bridge, Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, everybody now. So Ramone is alive and well
Speaker 1: Lulu thinks he's as dead as advertising on Twitter topical topical.
Speaker 1: So how did this happen? All right? Well, it all
Speaker 1: starts with our friend Mundo. Mundo showed up in two
Speaker 1: thousand five at Ramon's jim and, like we said, he
Speaker 1: had come from this really rough background. The ESPN article,
Speaker 1: which is called dead Man Walking by Tisha Thompson and
Speaker 1: Kevin Shaw, says that Ramone taking him in was quote
Speaker 1: the first time any male figure took an interest in
Speaker 1: his life. So, I mean this guy was really important
Speaker 1: to him. Their relationship helped give Ramon the idea to
Speaker 1: start the Young Prospects nonprofit, and the two of them
Speaker 1: became like a surrogate father and son to each other.
Speaker 1: And Mundo did admire Lulu too. He said that while
Speaker 1: Ramon was like a father to him, Lulu was like
Speaker 1: a good friend. And he said she came into the
Speaker 1: gym and started calling the shots, quote, put in a
Speaker 1: lot of work and basically took care of the business,
Speaker 1: so he did avoid those fights as their relationships soured,
Speaker 1: although he said he never saw them get physical with
Speaker 1: each other and we will get more into that later,
Speaker 1: but at a certain point, Lulu would keep calling Mundo
Speaker 1: aside and complaining to him about Ramon all the time,
Speaker 1: and when the ESPN interviewer asked if she was trying
Speaker 1: to get him involved in their disputes, Mundo replied, quote
Speaker 1: tried tried as a good word, more like dragged into it.
Speaker 1: So he felt like she was just like really trying
Speaker 1: to rope him in and get Mundo in between their fights.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just Mundo who felt the repercussions of
Speaker 1: their relationship souring. Ramon's own three children. They were pushed
Speaker 1: out of the family really early. Actually, his daughter Mia
Speaker 1: said quote, she didn't want anything to do with us.
Speaker 1: We were just nothing to her. It wasn't like she
Speaker 1: was trying to be a step mom. She knew we
Speaker 1: weren't really going to be in her picture. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: no good feelings between Ramon's own children and Lulu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not much of a Brady Bunch situation, not at all.
Speaker 1: So their friend Beth Blair told CBS that Lulu didn't
Speaker 1: like it when Ramon spent money on his own kids.
Speaker 1: She preferred the money for herself, her two kids, and
Speaker 1: her mother. So Mia and her brothers felt like Lulu
Speaker 1: was deliberately driving a wedge between them and their father,
Speaker 1: who they saw less and less of. Really wicked stepmother
Speaker 1: kind of vibes the kids here. Ultimately, none of the
Speaker 1: three of them even went to Ramone and Lulu's wedding,
Speaker 1: with Mia calling that day quote heartbreaking. With his kids
Speaker 1: out of the way and her own in the picture,
Speaker 1: Lulu and Ramone started working on getting everyone's citizenship, and
Speaker 1: Ramon says after that went through in that's when things
Speaker 1: started to go downhill between them. Over the next two
Speaker 1: year years, finances started a dwindle, and Ramon couldn't really
Speaker 1: figure out why the gym was actually doing really well.
Speaker 1: New clients were coming in. He saw people working out
Speaker 1: new faces all the time. But he says, quote, but
Speaker 1: when I see the bottom line here, it's not adding up.
Speaker 1: I was wondering that because they were saying they're getting
Speaker 1: my clients a month, that doesn't just go away out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. The Ramon started to worry that Lulu must
Speaker 1: be skimming money. But then the divorce papers came in
Speaker 1: and Ramon said, quote, she wanted everything, She just wanted
Speaker 1: for me to leave, and she keeps everything he claimed
Speaker 1: to offer her and even split divorce, but she wouldn't
Speaker 1: accept that. And then she started to play dirty because,
Speaker 1: according to Ramon, she contacted sponsors of his nonprofit and
Speaker 1: accused him of embezzling, and ultimately those sponsors had to
Speaker 1: pull out and the Young Prospects Group closed. Investigators later
Speaker 1: said there was no evidence of any wrongdoings in the nonprofit.
Speaker 1: That is sad, all those kids he was trying to help.
Speaker 1: This is this is very suspicious, and again we'll get
Speaker 1: more into this, but um, but it does feel kind
Speaker 1: of weird at this point. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like
Speaker 1: everybody's having kind of a tough time with Lulu scenes here.
Speaker 1: So when Mundo overheard her talking about the client with
Speaker 1: ties to a hit man, he immediately knew what she
Speaker 1: was trying to do. Mundo's violent background came flashing back
Speaker 1: to him and he had a tough choice to make.
Speaker 1: He knew as someone looked like when they wanted someone
Speaker 1: else dead, and he saw that look in Lulu's eyes,
Speaker 1: he knew that if he did not get between them
Speaker 1: to protect his friend, she would find a way to
Speaker 1: kill Ramone. So he approached her. He made sure he
Speaker 1: knew what she meant, and when he was certain, he
Speaker 1: invented the story about Taco. So Lulu took the date.
Speaker 1: She agreed to hire Paco, just like we said in
Speaker 1: the first part, but instead of going to some old
Speaker 1: hit man that Undo claims to know, he went straight
Speaker 1: to Ramo and he told him, quote, Hey, this lady
Speaker 1: wants to kill you. At first, Ramon couldn't believe it,
Speaker 1: but Mundo was dead serious. It was not like him
Speaker 1: to make something like this up for a joke or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But Mundo had already come up with
Speaker 1: a plan. He told Ramone that Ramon would play the
Speaker 1: hit man. They would get a burner phone, and Mundo
Speaker 1: would go back to Lulu and in front of her
Speaker 1: he would text with this Paco that would actually be
Speaker 1: Ramon with this burner phone. They agreed on this whole
Speaker 1: plan and away from the conversation to play out, and
Speaker 1: they did exactly that. ESPN reports that Paco wasn't even
Speaker 1: just some random name either. Mundo had seen the nine
Speaker 1: film Blood In, Blood Out, where Benjamin Bratt plays a
Speaker 1: character named Paco, and this guy was a man so
Speaker 1: revered in his gang that they painted his mural on
Speaker 1: this Who's story build And at the end of the movie,
Speaker 1: Paco turned out to be an undercover cop. So it
Speaker 1: was cryptic, almost like a warning to Lulu, but Mundo says,
Speaker 1: it just felt right to use that name. I guess
Speaker 1: she had not seen the film, and Mundo started secretly
Speaker 1: recording all his conversations with Lulu, and Lulu went through
Speaker 1: Ramon's watch collection and pulled several out to use as
Speaker 1: a down payment for Paco. Here's ramons watches watch a
Speaker 1: gun for his own murder. Oh my god, that's you
Speaker 1: know what. And that's the thing too. If you're going
Speaker 1: to drop a thousand bucks to have me killed, at
Speaker 1: least have the respect to make it your own money,
Speaker 1: sell your own stuff. I will not sell my stuff
Speaker 1: to have me killed. Listen, if you had some stuff
Speaker 1: that was worth a thousand dollars, we would have sold
Speaker 1: it long ago. Will you kill my husband for this
Speaker 1: eight year old play station four? It's got three versions
Speaker 1: of sky rim on it. It's my retirement plan. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sit here and plan until I waste away. So yeah,
Speaker 1: she gets these watches, she gives them to Paco, who's
Speaker 1: fortunately Ramons, so he just gets his watches back. She
Speaker 1: also gave him the hundred dollars for Paco to buy
Speaker 1: a gun. This was a cash transaction, so Ramone and
Speaker 1: Mundo decided it's time to involve the police because there's
Speaker 1: no paper trail to follow. Once cash exchange his hands,
Speaker 1: you know, and they've got all these conversations. You're done,
Speaker 1: when you're done for the lou Now, going to the
Speaker 1: police was actually a really big deal for Mundo because,
Speaker 1: as a former gang member, he was sworn to never
Speaker 1: go to police about anything ever. He said, quote, even
Speaker 1: if I try to make people understand that it's to
Speaker 1: save my friends life, it's still seen as snitching. So like,
Speaker 1: if you talk to the cops at all, you might
Speaker 1: say something that implicates me or someone care about. It
Speaker 1: doesn't even matter about that. It's just like the cops
Speaker 1: are a rival gang. You can't go to them for help,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's not cool to ever talk to
Speaker 1: them about any crime because if you're helping the cops,
Speaker 1: you're helping you know, our enemy, basically, Okay, that's a
Speaker 1: good point. I guess if you if you see it
Speaker 1: that way, I think that's how that's how he felt
Speaker 1: his people were going to see it. Maybe like if
Speaker 1: you're in the gang, we handle it. You come to me,
Speaker 1: I handle it. Yeah, even if that even it, really
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, it's just
Speaker 1: a blanket statement of just like, I don't care what
Speaker 1: the situation is. You never ever ever talked to cops. Well,
Speaker 1: they really meant that ship. So Mundo told police that
Speaker 1: he was breaking a major code and then he faced
Speaker 1: real consequences. It's just like, you know, protect me please
Speaker 1: as a witness. Now, they spoke with Lieutenant Mike Atkins,
Speaker 1: who initially had a hard time believing everything they were
Speaker 1: telling him. The story sounds crazy obviously, but Undo was right.
Speaker 1: I mean, with his background, this was a really big
Speaker 1: deal for him to beat in a police station like this.
Speaker 1: So Lieutenant Atkins decided this is probably pretty serious. They
Speaker 1: went over all of Mundo and Lulu's conversations and text jets.
Speaker 1: They made sure that she really wants him dead, that
Speaker 1: she was willing to pay for it. Technically, they have
Speaker 1: what they needed to arrest Lulu right then, and there.
Speaker 1: But Atkins thought that if this beautiful woman walked into
Speaker 1: that courtroom with no police record, abuse allegations and a
Speaker 1: halfway decent lawyer, she could probably walk. I mean, at
Speaker 1: this point, she just paid a hundred bucks for a
Speaker 1: gun and stall and and made a few comments. So
Speaker 1: you know, he's feeling like this isn't really enough to
Speaker 1: put her away. And this brings me to a thought
Speaker 1: because I was like, well, y'all had an opportunity here
Speaker 1: to stop this crime from happening right and or progressing
Speaker 1: any further, stop anybody from getting hurt or doing anything
Speaker 1: any more illegal than they'd already done. And I see
Speaker 1: the police here choosing two instead of stopping it where
Speaker 1: it is, getting a woman in trouble for as much
Speaker 1: as she had done already and nothing more. They say, well,
Speaker 1: let's try and get her in more trouble. Let's try
Speaker 1: and escalate this to the point where we can really
Speaker 1: get her some jail time. And I don't see the
Speaker 1: point in that. Yeah, I see what you're saying, because
Speaker 1: it's like, why do you want I mean, prevent the crime? Crime?
Speaker 1: Prevention is not the goal. I guess in a way,
Speaker 1: it's got sort of a twisted logic because he's like,
Speaker 1: if she gets out, she gets another chance to hire different,
Speaker 1: like an actual hit man, and actually kill this man.
Speaker 1: So we need to make sure that we have enough
Speaker 1: to prevent her from succeeding in that goal. But I see,
Speaker 1: I do see what you mean, because sometimes at least
Speaker 1: like years of like monitoring crazy crimes going on, and
Speaker 1: they're like, it's to get us to bigger you know,
Speaker 1: a bigger collar or whatever, but you feel like you
Speaker 1: just get them while you can't. If that looks if
Speaker 1: she was Pablo Escobar, right, or even if she had
Speaker 1: talked to an actual hit man and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we could follow this guy the chain up here, then
Speaker 1: you know you'd have something to like, let me lead
Speaker 1: further into this, let's see where this goes. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: probably this woman again, no police record at all, you've
Speaker 1: never done anything wrong. Probably she gets caught in the
Speaker 1: middle of something like this before it goes too far,
Speaker 1: and she's like, oh my god, I can't believe us.
Speaker 1: Stupid I was. I'm never gonna do I'm moving, I'm
Speaker 1: never gonna do anything like that again. I just need
Speaker 1: to get out of this guy's life. That's what I
Speaker 1: would anticipate, and I think she deserves that chance at
Speaker 1: this point. You know, I think she deserves the opportunity
Speaker 1: to be told, hey, we know you're doing illegal things
Speaker 1: and you're going to get in trouble for what you've
Speaker 1: done so far, even if it's not much trouble. She
Speaker 1: deserves that chance to to not do something more illegal.
Speaker 1: It's weird, especially with again, like it's not like there's
Speaker 1: a crime boss she's working for that they could track
Speaker 1: down if they let her do what she needs to do.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just weird. I guess that's a
Speaker 1: good point, Like does she actually have the capacity or
Speaker 1: the way, like the community to hire a hit man
Speaker 1: or whatever? I mean. I guess she knows this guy
Speaker 1: at the Jim, But that seems a little right little
Speaker 1: Lundo Lundo was worried that she would do it if
Speaker 1: she didn't have his interference. So, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know the neighborhood they lived in, the people that went
Speaker 1: to the gym, she might have had the opportunity, but again,
Speaker 1: you scare somebody and they get caught in the middle
Speaker 1: of it. Obviously, at that point, if she did it,
Speaker 1: she would definitely get caught. Yeah, you know, having attempted
Speaker 1: it once already, so I think it would have gone away.
Speaker 1: I think none of the none of the rest of
Speaker 1: this would have happened. I could see it, you could
Speaker 1: see it. I'm not a law enforcer, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: So Ultimately, Lieutenant Atkins determined that quote Ramon's life was
Speaker 1: seriously in danger, but he had some even scarier news
Speaker 1: for Ramon. He would have to keep living with his
Speaker 1: would be assassin, Lulu Um because they needed more evidence,
Speaker 1: and Ramone did not like that. Of course, he was
Speaker 1: worried that Lulu might snap one night and just kill
Speaker 1: him herself, and Mundo didn't like it. He was terrified
Speaker 1: that someone might find out, or that Lulu would lose
Speaker 1: her patience and both of them could end up dead.
Speaker 1: But he knew that this was the best plan for
Speaker 1: him to save his friend, so he kept talking to Lulu.
Speaker 1: Lulu kept implicating herself further. Mundo even tried to get
Speaker 1: her to back down a few times. In one recording,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, if you change your mind, you change
Speaker 1: your mind, nothing happens. Nobody's forcing you to do it.
Speaker 1: But Lulu responds, quote it's a decision I already made.
Speaker 1: If I say it, I do it. And then came
Speaker 1: the order. She wanted him dead before July, when Ramon
Speaker 1: might have signed divorce papers. So the police decided it
Speaker 1: was time to take things to the next level and
Speaker 1: fake Ramone's death, and we'll get into how they did that.
Speaker 1: Right after this Welcome back to the show, Mundo arranged
Speaker 1: a meeting between Lulu and Paco, and Paco, of course,
Speaker 1: would be an undercover police officer. As she and Mundo
Speaker 1: met Paco in an empty parking lot and climbed into
Speaker 1: his truck, Lulu vented about Ramon and him screwing up
Speaker 1: her life. The undercover Poco asked, quote, this guy, do
Speaker 1: you want him to be pretty beaten up, bucked over?
Speaker 1: Do you want us to beat him up or what?
Speaker 1: And Lulu replied quote, no, no beating, I want him dead.
Speaker 1: And Lieutenant Atkins was in an unmarked vehicle nearby, listening
Speaker 1: over the wire that Mundo was wearing, and he told
Speaker 1: the ESPN quote, I was struck by the lack of emotion.
Speaker 1: When you deal with someone who has no emotion, shows
Speaker 1: no empathy, no sympathy, those are truly truly dangerous individuals.
Speaker 1: And when they got out of the truck, Lulu and
Speaker 1: Mundo shook hands, but he felt really weird touching the
Speaker 1: woman that he had just betrayed again. He knew her
Speaker 1: pretty well too, and he had he was close with her,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure this was very complicated and it felt
Speaker 1: really weird. And then she pulled him in for a hug,
Speaker 1: which he described saying quote, I think I held on
Speaker 1: for like two more seconds because I knew what time
Speaker 1: it was. So he's kind of like didn't want to
Speaker 1: hug her because he felt really icky about what he
Speaker 1: had done. But he also was like, I mean, you
Speaker 1: made your choices, trying to talk you out of it,
Speaker 1: so let me just hold you a little second before
Speaker 1: you get in trouble for a really a lot of
Speaker 1: get into a lot of trouble. I think what's interesting
Speaker 1: here too, is that Mundo's really saving her life because
Speaker 1: he stopped her from actually killing someone, and that would
Speaker 1: have likely ended much differently. That's a good point point.
Speaker 1: He's really being a very good friend. Yeah. Now, the
Speaker 1: next morning, Ramon met with police officers and they drove
Speaker 1: out to an empty piece of county owned land very
Speaker 1: far from the main road. Ramon thought of the song
Speaker 1: that he and Lulu first danced to Bruharia. In Spanish,
Speaker 1: it means witchcraft, and one of the lines of the
Speaker 1: song is miki or you want to send me to
Speaker 1: my cold grave? Oh my lord, did she request the song? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is just like, how interesting
Speaker 1: that that was our song the whole time, Lieutenant Atkins
Speaker 1: told forty eight Hours quote, being a bunch of middle
Speaker 1: aged men, we don't, you know, we're not exactly versed
Speaker 1: on applying makeup. So apparently all these cops and Ramone
Speaker 1: got together and they had to watch YouTube and learn
Speaker 1: how to apply makeup from a bunch of teenage girls.
Speaker 1: I love the thought of all of them like crowded
Speaker 1: around a TikTok. Yeah, it's just like I love this brush.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. The men can't find out that we
Speaker 1: can shape shift right. The assistant d A was there.
Speaker 1: He brought them pictures of real corpses with bullet wounds
Speaker 1: to the head, and they poked out a good reference
Speaker 1: photo and they showed it to Ramon. He was horrified. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I think most civilians don't want to see real dead
Speaker 1: bodies would be. I would have been like, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing the makeup myself, So y'all just keep that picture.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like it to look real too, but
Speaker 1: I don't need to see a real dead body that
Speaker 1: has been shot through the head. And again, y'all do
Speaker 1: in the makeup you look at the reference photo, are
Speaker 1: in the model here? I don't need to see it now.
Speaker 1: They used corn syrup and food coloring. Smart. We have
Speaker 1: talked many times on the show about our own blood recipe. Right.
Speaker 1: They also learned that from YouTube. They also borrowed a
Speaker 1: police makeup kit that they used for disaster drills. Which
Speaker 1: what do they need for makeup wise? For st drills?
Speaker 1: I want to look like a Morton Joe or something right, right,
Speaker 1: or it's like, oh, there was a tornado and now
Speaker 1: it aged me and now they just have hair sprayed
Speaker 1: to put their hair way up. We really want to
Speaker 1: be immersive about this. Someone was electrocuted and they yeah,
Speaker 1: they do the crazy hair sticking out and like looking.
Speaker 1: And Ramon called it all very amateur like Halloween level
Speaker 1: stuff for kids. But they did a very good job.
Speaker 1: They had Ramon stripped to his underwear, they tied his
Speaker 1: hands behind his back, They laid him in the ditch
Speaker 1: that they dug for him, and then they kicked dirt
Speaker 1: on his face. Ramon said it was scary and emotional,
Speaker 1: and the quote it was eerie. I was sitting there
Speaker 1: with my eyes closed, thinking what am I doing here?
Speaker 1: Why did it come down to this? It could have
Speaker 1: been a simple divorce. This never should have happened. Horrifying,
Speaker 1: I mean him was like, Yeah, the picturing your immortality
Speaker 1: sitting there with a fake bullet hole in your head,
Speaker 1: that that was meant to really happen, seriously, and and
Speaker 1: that your wife, who you slept with and built a
Speaker 1: life with, is the one who planned it, and just
Speaker 1: adds to that horror. Right. Plus he had spent the
Speaker 1: last few weeks living in the same house with her,
Speaker 1: knowing that she was plotting to kill him. His brain
Speaker 1: must have been just whirling around a lot and a
Speaker 1: lot of crazy ways. Now a few photos later, they
Speaker 1: had what they needed and it was time to bring
Speaker 1: the evidence to Lulu. They met her in the same
Speaker 1: parking lot as before, but this time there were two
Speaker 1: hidden cameras in the fake Paco's car, and they pointed
Speaker 1: right at Lulu's face. As the officer told her, quote
Speaker 1: we got him today this morning. As she betrayed no emotion.
Speaker 1: On seeing the picture of Ramon, fake Paco said, quote
Speaker 1: the dumbass fought, which made Lulu laugh. He told her.
Speaker 1: Ramon begged and said, quote, why are you doing this
Speaker 1: to me, to which Lulu replied, quote stupid for hitting me,
Speaker 1: dumbass I Fake Paco asked he would hit you, and
Speaker 1: Lulu maintained yes, very disgraceful. After a moment, she said, quote,
Speaker 1: he won't get up anymore, and she started laughing. She
Speaker 1: gave them the thousand dollars as she went on her way.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Atkins said her laugh was bone chilling, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of freaky. But it's also interesting too. She said
Speaker 1: even here to Paco that he was hitting her. That's true,
Speaker 1: She's she was maintaining that story. It's real. If it's not,
Speaker 1: she was keeping that up. And the next morning, Atkins
Speaker 1: and a few officers showed up at the gym telling
Speaker 1: Lulu they had received a missing person's complaint about her husband.
Speaker 1: She told them she hadn't seen him or talked to him,
Speaker 1: that they were going through a divorce and the last
Speaker 1: time she'd seen him was over a week ago. She
Speaker 1: acted concerned, knowing of course, that eventually the police would
Speaker 1: likely find his body or realize he was missing. So,
Speaker 1: you know, she had to play the worried wife, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what's happen? What do you mean, what
Speaker 1: do you think you win? Or what's going on? You're
Speaker 1: too good at that. I've been practicing for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. Interesting, Listen, you said I could lowball it. No,
Speaker 1: I said you could spend a high percentage of the
Speaker 1: money you have. It's not low balling. If it's everything
Speaker 1: you out, that's what I want you to spend. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: that's very different. All right, well now I'm not interested.
Speaker 1: That's how you do it. That's the price too high
Speaker 1: for your wife to have you assassinated, and she'll just
Speaker 1: turn away. So she's playing the worried wife. And they
Speaker 1: asked her, quote, he hasn't contacted you in the last
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. She said no, And they say at
Speaker 1: MS SOSA, you're under arrest. Ramone had to call his
Speaker 1: kids and tell them what happened. His daughter, Mia said
Speaker 1: she had just gotten home from a shift at a
Speaker 1: comedy club where she was working, and she saw her
Speaker 1: brother sitting on her bed on his phone, and she
Speaker 1: knew from his face that something was wrong. He handed
Speaker 1: her the phone and Ramon was on the line. His
Speaker 1: voice was shaking and low, and he said, quote, I'm safe,
Speaker 1: but Lulu tried to have someone kill me. Now. Mia
Speaker 1: just fell back against the walls, slid down and started crying.
Speaker 1: She had always found Lulu to be, you know, cold
Speaker 1: and mean. She didn't like her, but who would expect
Speaker 1: something like this? That's intense. After her arrest, Lulu agreed
Speaker 1: to a divorce settlement that gave Ramon the gym and
Speaker 1: the house. That's so wild like she ended up a
Speaker 1: worse off. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, as she
Speaker 1: knew she'd been caught, right, and she pretty much I
Speaker 1: didn't try to fight this too hard, um, because what
Speaker 1: could she do right? Right? So I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: how their divorce settlement went down, but ultimately Ramon got everything,
Speaker 1: he said. His quote was she just gave up everything.
Speaker 1: How weird to go so hard for it and then
Speaker 1: immediately give it up. Maybe you were right. If she
Speaker 1: had been scared off, she just would have dropped it. Well. Then,
Speaker 1: after spending fifteen months in jail. In October sixteen, Lulu
Speaker 1: went before a judge and agreed to a plea deal.
Speaker 1: She pled guilty to a reduced charge of second degree
Speaker 1: solicitation of murder, which allowed her to avoid a trial
Speaker 1: with like a potential life sentence. At the end, she
Speaker 1: never made eye contact with Ramon in the courtroom. Lulu's
Speaker 1: divorced lawyer said on forty eight Hours that he believes
Speaker 1: Ramon Sosa was quote someone who was very violent to
Speaker 1: his wife, and he felt that fear was the factor
Speaker 1: that motivated Lulu to do what she did. He said
Speaker 1: the photo of a broken door proved just how strong
Speaker 1: and dangerous Ramon was and kind of points to a temper. Sure,
Speaker 1: you don't just break a bus shit open, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a normal temper. I feel like, no,
Speaker 1: not usually. I mean, you know, I've slammed a couple
Speaker 1: of game controllers in my day and broken a phone
Speaker 1: or two. Then I've you know, lightly tossed at a wall.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know if I've ever broken I remember
Speaker 1: very clearly once being a kid and being like enraged
Speaker 1: about something that probably did not matter, but I was
Speaker 1: like so mad that I really wanted to pick up
Speaker 1: something and throw it like I have seen in the movie.
Speaker 1: And I remember I had a little ceramic thing that
Speaker 1: my grandmother given me, and I really had was thinking
Speaker 1: about picking. I was so mad. I was like so
Speaker 1: ready to crush it. But I was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be really upset later that I woke that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so i've I don't think I break much stuff because
Speaker 1: I'll be mad at myself later. And I really think
Speaker 1: about that. Oh my god. I remember one where I
Speaker 1: was drawing. I had this big, big, huge sheet of paper.
Speaker 1: I was drawing a bear. I was like five years old, right,
Speaker 1: and I and I just figured out how to do
Speaker 1: the feet where I want them, and they looked like
Speaker 1: a little just cartoon bare feet, right, and I drew
Speaker 1: one of them backwards. I had the foot going the
Speaker 1: wrong way because it was such a big piece of paper.
Speaker 1: And I was so upset because I had been so
Speaker 1: proud of what I was doing, and it just like
Speaker 1: really just got to me, and I was mad, and
Speaker 1: I ripped the paper and then I was very upset
Speaker 1: because I now I had ripped it, you know, and
Speaker 1: like I just made everything so much worse. So you're
Speaker 1: right not to throw that ceramic. I think I was right,
Speaker 1: but I have seen you, in frustration punch your laptop
Speaker 1: to the point where it doesn't work any I have
Speaker 1: hit my laptop and it's you know what it is,
Speaker 1: it's always excel. It's almost always well, it's so funny
Speaker 1: is you're like slamming your fist into your laptop, like
Speaker 1: why won't this work? And I'm like, well, I have
Speaker 1: some ideas, but you know not to say that, Ramon,
Speaker 1: I don't know I did, or you know, punch the
Speaker 1: hole in the door. Does that mean he would punch
Speaker 1: a hole in someone's face or does that mean he
Speaker 1: just like had a moment of you know, ripping that bear,
Speaker 1: or that he's like I so much don't want to
Speaker 1: hit someone in the face, that I hit this wall
Speaker 1: and stead or at this door, whatever it was. Now
Speaker 1: Mundo and Ramon's daughter Mia, close friends of the family,
Speaker 1: and Ramone himself, I'll say that this guy knew he
Speaker 1: was a professional boxer, and in that he understood how
Speaker 1: dangerous his hands were and that he would never ever
Speaker 1: use them outside of a ring. Right Like he's he
Speaker 1: respects the power that he has in punching something like
Speaker 1: That's what he does, for he's literally designed to break
Speaker 1: things when he punches them. Did he sit there and
Speaker 1: go so strong? I hope. So there you got millennials
Speaker 1: for um. Ramon said quote, not even in the streets,
Speaker 1: not even in the reats. For her to say something
Speaker 1: like that was really hurtful. He's referring to you know,
Speaker 1: when he's fought. He only fights in the ring, right right,
Speaker 1: He's like regulation fights only Yeah. The one thing that
Speaker 1: Ramon did admit to was punching the bedroom door, he
Speaker 1: said in the CBS interview quote that I admit to.
Speaker 1: She was accusing me of stuff, and that's one thing
Speaker 1: I did. I took my frustrations out, but I never
Speaker 1: ever put a hand on her. Pictures of scratches on
Speaker 1: her upper arm and her leg, he says, those are fabricated.
Speaker 1: Lulu was sentenced to twenty years in prison, and she
Speaker 1: comes up for parole once per year. The last information
Speaker 1: we could find was that in twenty nineteen she was
Speaker 1: denied for the second time, So no telling. I guess
Speaker 1: if she's out today, she could be out there right
Speaker 1: now dancing in a salsa club near you. ESPN did
Speaker 1: reach out to Lulu and try to get her side
Speaker 1: of this story, but she never responded, which makes this
Speaker 1: a really tough It makes it so tough, so hard,
Speaker 1: because well, all we have is his side of the story, really,
Speaker 1: I mean him in Mundo's But we don't know any
Speaker 1: We don't really have her swearing on record to anyone
Speaker 1: well that that he did that to her. We I mean,
Speaker 1: we do in a way because she told her divorce lawyer,
Speaker 1: and there's friends of hers that have come forward and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that Ramon was a piece of ship. He beat her,
Speaker 1: he raped her, all this stuff. All of them just
Speaker 1: heard it from her. But you know, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is one of those cases. Yeah, that's that's how it goes.
Speaker 1: When how how many times a woman goes to the
Speaker 1: police and says or a lawyer and says, here, he
Speaker 1: beat me, and the guy just says, like, as she
Speaker 1: faked that, you know, and then she does something stupid
Speaker 1: and that's all you need for her case to fall apart.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, she does do some
Speaker 1: things that call her credibility into question because she, for example,
Speaker 1: the nonprofit she called and made up claims that he
Speaker 1: was embezzling from his nonprofit, and they did investigate that
Speaker 1: and said there was nothing wrong with the nonprofit. He
Speaker 1: was actually doing good things. So that's one where I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: were you trying to undermine this guy's life and destroy
Speaker 1: him so you could take all his money? I have
Speaker 1: to say, as someone who runs a nonprofit, little mad
Speaker 1: at these sponsors were not asking. Because nonprofit records are public,
Speaker 1: you can go look at that ship if you feel confused.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Again, I don't know she even provided evidence,
Speaker 1: or if they really just took her word for it
Speaker 1: because that was his wife and they were like, okay,
Speaker 1: she would know. I don't know, yeah, or if it's
Speaker 1: just it was just like, well, there's claims out there.
Speaker 1: This is getting messy. We got to back off of
Speaker 1: our sponsorship for a minute. Yeah, which I could see too.
Speaker 1: I get maybe if you're working with gang members, that's
Speaker 1: already kind of dicey. I don't know. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: other side of it too, is that it's also possible
Speaker 1: that she made up stories about him and bezzling from
Speaker 1: his own nonprofit, and also he was abusing her physically. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely mean those things could both be true too, So
Speaker 1: I could just have been like, I need to say
Speaker 1: what people will care about. It's hard to I mean
Speaker 1: not fortunately I don't have to make a judgment on
Speaker 1: this case, but it's it's hard to judge for myself. Now.
Speaker 1: Mundo gave his interview to ESPN and said, quote, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate this opportunity because nobody, nobody ever had asked
Speaker 1: me how you know, how do you feel? He said?
Speaker 1: Everyone involved got quote broken in a certain way, not
Speaker 1: just Ramon, but him and Lulu as well well. Then
Speaker 1: a local TV show made everything a million times worse
Speaker 1: for Mundo by showing his face on TV and using
Speaker 1: his real name. So, you know, we talked about how
Speaker 1: going to the police was a huge risk for Mundo.
Speaker 1: So now the gang knew what he had been up to.
Speaker 1: He was in danger now, so the police got involved.
Speaker 1: They had to pull the story from the internet, but
Speaker 1: Mundo was soon getting threats against his life and the
Speaker 1: lives of his wife and children. Mundo wrote a semi
Speaker 1: autobiographical novel called My Son Mundo, about a man quote
Speaker 1: forced to make a final decision after he's drawn back
Speaker 1: into conflict with the law due to a threat to
Speaker 1: his mentor and boxing trainer. Right, what you know, some
Speaker 1: of this, of course really happened, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it is made up, he says. But what he earned
Speaker 1: from the book managed to get him safely out of Houston.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Atkins gave Mundo his direct line and said, you know,
Speaker 1: call me any time, but he said he never heard
Speaker 1: from Undo again. Mundo says that he never got the
Speaker 1: full protections he was promised, and says that someone said
Speaker 1: he would pay to upgrade his security, but that never happened.
Speaker 1: ESPN asked him if by someone he meant Ramone, and
Speaker 1: Mundo simply replied, quote, if somebody helps you and saves
Speaker 1: your life, you shouldn't leave them out to dry. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: thrown a little shade in the ESPN article, But ram
Speaker 1: Ome says that Mundo doesn't understand that Lulu left him
Speaker 1: with a lot of debt. Um He's like, I don't
Speaker 1: have anything to give you. He declared bankruptcy. He sold
Speaker 1: the second gym and their two story house that hopefully
Speaker 1: had a mural of PoCA outside. It's got a mural
Speaker 1: of Benjamin Bratt. Benjamin Brat yural no, but he says
Speaker 1: Mundo is still a top priority for him, and as
Speaker 1: of Ramon was living in a small Houston apartment, and
Speaker 1: he keeps a lot of his and Lulu's possessions in storage, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll have a bonfire one day, you know, just
Speaker 1: burn everything. Um, He says he spends a lot of
Speaker 1: his time alone now he still gets nightmares. Living with
Speaker 1: Lulu for those weeks when he knew that she wanted
Speaker 1: him dead was extremely traumatizing. And then lying in a
Speaker 1: ditch and seeing pictures of his own dead body just
Speaker 1: shook him further. Yeah, I don't even know how I
Speaker 1: would react in that situation. I can't even put myself there. Now.
Speaker 1: Lulu had told Paco to make sure to take Ramone's
Speaker 1: watch after he was dead, and now Ramon never takes
Speaker 1: that watch off, like a superstition. Night Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: a yeah, just to remember, like this is what she's
Speaker 1: trying to take from me. This would have this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I took this off, it means I've died, right, Yeah?
Speaker 1: Maybe so? Yeah. I mean I was in a short
Speaker 1: film my friend Michael Paula directed one time, many many
Speaker 1: years ago, and I and I died in it. And
Speaker 1: I'm like in a front seat of a car and
Speaker 1: it was black and white so he used chocolate syrup
Speaker 1: works great for blood in a black and white movie.
Speaker 1: By the way, her syrup. Yeah, um, so I've got
Speaker 1: that all over my head. It's in my profile pictures somewhere.
Speaker 1: But it's uh, it's spooky. Look at too. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: I wanted that sometimes about like Sean Bean, how many
Speaker 1: times have you seen yourself die? And is it right?
Speaker 1: Does it feel weird? It must? And Lieutenant Atkins calls
Speaker 1: Mundo the real hero here for quote having the moral
Speaker 1: courage to come in and do what's right. But Mundo
Speaker 1: says he quote appreciates the lieutenant's point of view, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. People will still see him as a rat.
Speaker 1: He says, quote I saved my friend's life. That's all
Speaker 1: that matters. And his feelings about Lulu are equally complicated.
Speaker 1: CBS forty eight Hours asks him if he had anything
Speaker 1: to say to Lulu if she was watching the show,
Speaker 1: and he said, quote, redeem yourself. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be what everybody tells you you are. You know, everybody
Speaker 1: used to tell me I was something else. I proved
Speaker 1: everybody wrong, so you could do the same. So that's
Speaker 1: I mean, just like clearly at the center of this story,
Speaker 1: poor Mundo, right, Like I really see him just literally
Speaker 1: spinning plates in the air, trying to trying to save
Speaker 1: everybody's life here as best he can, and trying so
Speaker 1: hard to convince her like, girls, it's not a several times,
Speaker 1: be sure you don't want You're sure you want to
Speaker 1: go through it this And she's very stubborn. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: like right, I mean she's toughty special. Was totally free
Speaker 1: on the CBS website and it's like forty minutes long.
Speaker 1: You could see the whole documentary. Uh. The ESPN article
Speaker 1: is very thorough, but the forty eight everything has a
Speaker 1: lot of footage of you know, of recordings from their
Speaker 1: conversations between Lulu and Mundo. It's got footage from when
Speaker 1: they showed her the picture of her own in the
Speaker 1: car and she laughed, and like there is a real coldness. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is a little bone chilling, as Atkins called it.
Speaker 1: Um she scares me. Is she definitely had murder in
Speaker 1: her heart and wanted this guy dead. I cannot say
Speaker 1: how I feel about whether or not that is because
Speaker 1: Ramon abused her, Because it really might be. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to discount that. I have to wonder because if
Speaker 1: Ramona is telling the truth that he offered her an
Speaker 1: even split divorce, she would have been way better. Rob
Speaker 1: she's over, she's done with the dude, she's got half
Speaker 1: of whatever, and then she's on with her life. Now
Speaker 1: she's twenty years in prison and she had to give
Speaker 1: him the house in the gym. She has nothing. So
Speaker 1: it's like, well, who would risk that to kill someone?
Speaker 1: Unless he's lying and he did not offer her that.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say he says he offered her
Speaker 1: a split diffright, Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get to. I guess is I'm like, well, again,
Speaker 1: unfortunately we only have his side, because what if he
Speaker 1: was like, I'll never leave, you know, I'll never let
Speaker 1: you leave. There's a lot of ways to abuse someone.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing is that I'm like, if she's
Speaker 1: like faked up, these scratched pictures, these pictures of scratches
Speaker 1: on herself, Um, I can even see that as her
Speaker 1: being like, well, I you know, he abuses me, I
Speaker 1: feel abused, and emotionally I'm screamed dad, or he really
Speaker 1: scares me, is like hitting the wall when he's mad,
Speaker 1: and it makes me feel really threatened, But no one
Speaker 1: will care about that because it's not physically. There's nothing
Speaker 1: physically happening to me. So I'll make it look like
Speaker 1: something physically is happening and then someone will care. Maybe
Speaker 1: or it was just was this just ambition on her part,
Speaker 1: you know, like I I, yeah, I'm gonna sacrifice this
Speaker 1: split divorce in favor of I'm going all in. I'm
Speaker 1: going for the full thing. I'm going to get him
Speaker 1: one way or another. And you know, her first plan
Speaker 1: was embezzlement. Can I get him arrested for something illegal?
Speaker 1: Can I frame him for embezzling? Uh? And then when
Speaker 1: that didn't work out, she's like, I wish I could
Speaker 1: just kill this guy. And Mundo, you know, overheard that
Speaker 1: and went to her and largely and mostly on Mundo's
Speaker 1: side in this whole story at the end of it.
Speaker 1: But there are some things we only got his side
Speaker 1: of the story on two you know, I mean the
Speaker 1: way he frames it, she was gonna hire a hit
Speaker 1: man one way or the other, and he stepped in
Speaker 1: to stop her. But I have wonder if he just
Speaker 1: like walked away that night if it would have just
Speaker 1: been a fleeing idea, and you know, she never would
Speaker 1: have seriously pursued it until he walked up to her
Speaker 1: and said, hey, I know a guy. Right of course,
Speaker 1: that's sort of like, oh, this is real now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I so wonder I wish I had gone to
Speaker 1: trial In a lot of ways too. I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: her to get a life sentence for this. That seems
Speaker 1: crazy because nobody was hurt. But I don't think she's
Speaker 1: she would like, she's going to be prone to hiring
Speaker 1: assassins now, like you know what I mean, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't think this would happen again. But um, in a trial,
Speaker 1: I wonder if those kinds of things would come up where,
Speaker 1: you know, I imagine her defense would say, like, y'all
Speaker 1: led her into this, You convinced her to do this, mundo. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In in in some ways it kind of feels like it.
Speaker 1: It's tricky too, because the other side is that every
Speaker 1: newspiece out there about this story is about the man
Speaker 1: who escaped death from the crazy lady who wanted to
Speaker 1: kill it, you know what I mean, Because again, they
Speaker 1: only have his side of the story done. Some tours
Speaker 1: and and you know, spoke about it a lot in
Speaker 1: different places, and it's a thrilling, gripping story. And he
Speaker 1: might be completely accurate about it, might be totally truthful
Speaker 1: form from Ramon's side, but it's weird because everything is
Speaker 1: very slanted towards like, but that was bullshit. He didn't
Speaker 1: hurt her, she tried to kill him. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: and to your point, it makes more sense if she's
Speaker 1: feeling vindictive about him, like he's hurting me, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get him arrested for embezzlement. Oh that didn't work.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try all these things to hurt him. It's
Speaker 1: not even about the money anymore, right, it's I want
Speaker 1: him hurt, see him hurt well. And beyond that, Ramon
Speaker 1: maintains that their entire marriage was a set up. He
Speaker 1: at this point, he said, when he was lying in
Speaker 1: the ditch, he decided she never loved me. And he
Speaker 1: even suggests that her stepping on his foot was a
Speaker 1: set up. He was a local celebrity, he was well known.
Speaker 1: You know, he's probably throwing money around this club and
Speaker 1: you're the wolf that's an Atlantic that she was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna snag this guy, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to take him for all these worth. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what Ramon thought her long term plan was
Speaker 1: looking back at it. So to him, it wasn't about like, oh,
Speaker 1: I did something to make her want to do this.
Speaker 1: She always wanted to do this eventually. What a different
Speaker 1: character she has depending on how you look at it.
Speaker 1: That'sn't just again, really wish she'd talk, because at least
Speaker 1: you have some kind of notion, you know, about who
Speaker 1: who she is a person, because all we have is
Speaker 1: like this cold, very cold hearted kind of woman who
Speaker 1: on her side is like, I'm trying to escape an
Speaker 1: abusive man and I thought that if I left him,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have any money. And that's a common story too.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I I'm and I'd like to
Speaker 1: judge someone right away. Ramon also says that Lulu was
Speaker 1: using her marriage to him to get citizenship for her
Speaker 1: mother and two kids, and so he said that as
Speaker 1: soon as that happened, Oh, how convenient that that's when
Speaker 1: our marriage started to fall apart. Okay, I mean, but hey,
Speaker 1: very similarly, how difficult is that for her to get
Speaker 1: citizenship for her mom, who doesn't live in the States
Speaker 1: and her and her to teenage kids. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things too where I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that she deliberately married this guy just for
Speaker 1: that purpose, but you can look back at it and
Speaker 1: say she did, when in fact it's just she was
Speaker 1: just like, had no other path before her. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: This is reminding me a lot of John and the
Speaker 1: Rain Now, Bobbit, and it feels like it should have
Speaker 1: ended where they were, kind of like you both really
Speaker 1: fucked up and let's just wash our hands of this
Speaker 1: to move on with your lives. Secondly, UM, I don't
Speaker 1: know it. Twenty years is a long time, but I
Speaker 1: mean to try to kill someone that seems accurate. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, I feel frustrated. I think of, of course,
Speaker 1: many a case has come to my mind where somebody
Speaker 1: got nothing very lights lap for much worse, doing much
Speaker 1: worse to someone chantizing people much further, and they get
Speaker 1: three months six months a year. So it's like twenty years.
Speaker 1: It feels like kind of overkill. But I guess she
Speaker 1: does an opportunity every year. Opportunity every year. Um. You
Speaker 1: know again, I can't imagine these only news stories out
Speaker 1: there about these people don't kind of color people's opinions
Speaker 1: about her too, you know. And I mean again, I
Speaker 1: watched the footage of her, and yeah, she comes off
Speaker 1: as cold and uncaring and a little crazy when she
Speaker 1: laughs about him being dead and stuff. But you know,
Speaker 1: we watched him many movies and we see people, no seriously,
Speaker 1: we we see people behaving certain ways and we think
Speaker 1: that's something about their character. But I have spoken to
Speaker 1: people who seem cold and uncaring and they're not mean,
Speaker 1: they're not killers. That's just they just have a personality
Speaker 1: like that, like they've Lulu has never had everything hated her.
Speaker 1: She is a beautiful person, um, so she's had that
Speaker 1: privilege to a degree, but she's also had to work
Speaker 1: really hard and probably yeah, has had to lie just
Speaker 1: to get safely into a place where she felt comfortable
Speaker 1: in the past. And she doesn't know anybody being real
Speaker 1: friendly and smiley all the time. No, very true. So
Speaker 1: it's just so tough, and laughter can be a trauma response.
Speaker 1: You heard the laugh, So I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: know that it it's weird to just be like, well,
Speaker 1: she laughed, so that must mean And it's like sometimes
Speaker 1: you laugh because that's the catharsist that happened, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not something you choose. She was glad he was
Speaker 1: dead when she laughed. I mean, that was clear. And
Speaker 1: but also again that's another thing too. She told she
Speaker 1: thought she was in the car with two hit men,
Speaker 1: and she told them, oh, yeah, this guy beat me
Speaker 1: and that's why I had you kill him. Why would
Speaker 1: she lie to them? They don't need to know that,
Speaker 1: Why would they care? Why would they care? But he's
Speaker 1: but she heard, you know, he said sorry, but you know,
Speaker 1: Paco said, oh yeah. The guy wondered why this was happening,
Speaker 1: and she laughed and said, because he's stupid, idiot. It's
Speaker 1: because you punched me. That's why. Why couldn't you Why
Speaker 1: can't you see that? Like? Who's she lying too? At
Speaker 1: that point? And then part of me wants to say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but if she really felt like he abused her and
Speaker 1: that she had some evidence for it, why did she
Speaker 1: take the plea deal? Why didn't she fighting court? But
Speaker 1: come on, that's also a stupid question to ask, because
Speaker 1: of course, why didn't she fighting court? Whose side does
Speaker 1: the court always take in these cases? Virtually always? You know,
Speaker 1: a woman who like says he hit me, he roped me,
Speaker 1: or the guy who's like, no, everybody says, I'm a
Speaker 1: good guy, a great guy I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: I don't know. She might have felt like I'm going
Speaker 1: to get sentenced to life if i take this to trial,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'll take the twenty years, right, or her
Speaker 1: lawyer or the cops were able to convince her of
Speaker 1: that and that she took it too. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stories of that too, people taking plea deals they
Speaker 1: never should have taken because they could have, you know,
Speaker 1: but somebody told him and they took that advice. This
Speaker 1: is a toughie. I'm going to officially stamped this one
Speaker 1: undecided for myself, an official undecided stamp. Why do we
Speaker 1: get that made a real waste of money. This case
Speaker 1: is officially still wide open. I'm sure we could go
Speaker 1: back and forth on it all day. But I think
Speaker 1: the point is this is an insane story. I mean,
Speaker 1: this man had just a line of ditch plan a
Speaker 1: law and ordered dead body. No thank you. If you
Speaker 1: ever hire someone to kill me, they're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: Damn it. I'm not lying in a ditch covering makeup Wow,
Speaker 1: we've gone from low bollom to give them everything you
Speaker 1: have to do. If they're gonna do it, they can't
Speaker 1: fake it. I want to really die for sure. I
Speaker 1: just want to put on the record here that Diana
Speaker 1: tells me all the time that she's going to be
Speaker 1: the one to kill me one day from old age.
Speaker 1: Old age so fun without torturing your your whole life
Speaker 1: with your presents. But you do you know how much
Speaker 1: I've aged since we got together. You have not yet
Speaker 1: begun to age. So um, reach out and help because
Speaker 1: I blam to rest right now. Uh so please let
Speaker 1: us know if you can help me. But I check
Speaker 1: the email too, so be careful. Yeah. In fact, DM
Speaker 1: me on Instagram. Uh if you want to listen email
Speaker 1: it's predick Romance at gmail dot com. I'm a little
Speaker 1: afraid to give my details now because you might go
Speaker 1: to the cops. They've got him. But it's a Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. It's at Dynamite Boom and I if you,
Speaker 1: if you for some reason want to message me independently,
Speaker 1: am at Oh great, it's Eli and the show is
Speaker 1: at ridic Romance and I do read those messages. Be
Speaker 1: careful writing code for Eli, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: tuning in. We'd love to hear your thoughts and we
Speaker 1: would love to catch you the next episode. Love you bye,
Speaker 1: so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening
Speaker 1: to our show. Tell your friends name's uncle Sindez to
Speaker 1: listen to a show ridiculous. Well n