Ramiro Gonzales will be the first inmate of the year to be executed

• Ramiro Gonzales will be the first inmate to be executed with the death penalty in 2021 in Texas.
• He will pay with his own life for the kidnapping, sexual abuse and murder of the young Bridget Townsend.
• The execution is scheduled for next Tuesday, April 20, 2021.

Ramiro Gonzales will be the first inmate to be executed with the death penalty in 2021 next Tuesday, April 20, in Texas. Gonzales was informed on Friday, April 2, of the date on which he would face his sentence at the Walls Unit prison, in Huntsville, by means of a lethal injection on charges of kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of a girl.

Gonzales, 39, is at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, where he has been waiting for 18 years to serve his sentence of death penalty since he was transferred from Medina County, after facing his trial in which he was found guilty of the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of the young 18-year-old Bridget Townsend.

Ramiro Gonzales to be executed in Texas to pay for his crime

The staff of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) informed Ramiro Gonzales, in the prison known as the ‘Hall of Death’, that the judge handling his case has already finally set the date of his sentence. The 204 male inmates live in the Polunsky Unit, in cells separated from each other, sentenced to lethal injection.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic that hit the world in 2020, the TDCJ decided to suspend the already scheduled death sentences. However, with the new year in addition to the execution of Ramiro Gonzales, four other inmates are already scheduled to be executed in the coming months. Each inmate spends 22 hours of each day inside his cell.

Hondo, Texas, the scene of the crime

The city of Hondo, Texas is the seat of Medina County, the scene where the crime occurred for which Ramiro Gonzales will pay the death penalty. It is a rural county with oak forests, cattle ranches, winding streams, and wide open country areas. In that area it is easy to commit a crime and escape along a country road.

Ramiro Gonzales was detained in the prison of the Bandera County, in 2003, accused of a charge of sexual assault and was about to face his criminal process, according to the documents of the case consulted by MundoHispánico in Texas. Bandera County is a northern neighbor to Medina County, both west of the San Antonio metropolitan area.

«I want to do the right thing»

The inmate Ramiro Gonzales one afternoon asked to speak with an officer of the Bandera County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) because “I want to do the right thing,” he told the trustees. Officer James McMillan, from the BCSO, was in charge of speaking with the inmate in a room separate from the rest of the inmates.

When officer James McMillan was alone with the inmate Ramiro Gonzales, the boy told him, with a pause and calm, that he knew with certainty where the body of the young Bridget Townsend, 18 years old and who had been there for two years, was. disappeared. The officer, skeptical, asked the inmate how he knew that and Gonzales replied «because I killed her.»

The doubts of the authorities before the confession

At first, Officer McMillan did not believe Ramiro Gonzales. In Texas, it is common for some inmates, with long sentences especially, to incriminate themselves in the crimes of other inmates as a bargaining chip for certain privileges among inmates, superior orders from a gang or even for pressure and violence from violent prisoners who threaten them.

McMillan told Ramiro Gonzales that the girl’s disappearance had happened in a county outside his jurisdiction, so he would have to ask his colleagues at the Medina County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) the case file, inform them of your statement and investigate the details. The inmate agreed.

The victim’s jewels

Officer James McMillan received the file on the disappearance of young Bridget Townsend and studied it thoroughly. He learned it in such a way that Ramiro Gonzales could not lie to him in the sequence of events and thus know if the man was honest or was protecting another inmate for some reason.

McMillan made a second jail date with Ramiro Gonzales and the man started talking. He told her where Bridget Townsend’s body was buried in a remote part of Medina County. McMillan heard him without surprise. So one detail changed the entire investigation. Gonzales described the jewelry the girl was wearing when she disappeared.

Ramiro Gonzales guides the police to the corpse

When Ramiro Gonzales described Bridget Townsend’s jewelry on the day of her disappearance, something that had never been disclosed to the public, Sheriff James McMillan took the confession of the inmate seriously. McMillan then proposed to Gonzales that they take a trip in a patrol, to the point where the girl supposedly was. The prisoner accepted.

Ramiro Gonzales, seated and handcuffed in the back of a Jeep 4X4 patrol, led BCSO and MCSO agents to a remote location along rough dirt roads and through the typical brush of central Texas. At one point, the man told them to stop the Jeep and that from there they would have to walk about 100 yards into the thick of the forest.

Bones in the forest

The agents lowered Ramiro Gonzales and continued walking in a group through the vast terrain until the man stopped and indicated with his hands pointing towards a clearing: «There he is!» James McMillan and other agents approached the scene and, just where the man had told them, a little digging found bones and, most importantly, Bridget Townsend’s jewelry.

Bridget Townsend’s body had been eaten by wild animals, coyotes, and herds of wild pigs, but many of her bones were still intact. Forensic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) tests, compared to the girl’s family, confirmed that the body was hers. The jewels were collected as evidence.

The brutal confession of Ramiro Gonzales

Ramiro Félix Gonzales, his full name, was transferred from the Bandera County Jail to the Medina County Jail as the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of Bridget Townsend had preceded her other sexual assault crimes. Gonzales testified before MCSO agents all the details of the crime and confessed the motive.

Gonzales insisted that he wanted to «do the right thing» and revealed the whole story. José ‘Joe’ Leal was the cocaine salesman who supplied Gonzáles with his doses. Leal was also Bridget Townsend’s boyfriend. On January 14, 2001, González called Leal at his home to order a dose of the drug. Townsend answered the phone and told her that her boyfriend ‘Joe’ was not at home.

The theft of cocaine that ended in kidnapping

Ramiro Gonzales then came up with the idea of ​​stealing Leal’s cocaine, taking advantage of the fact that Bridget Townsend was alone. The man drove up to the house and played. The girl opened it and Gonzales ran, pushing her, into the main room where he knew that Leal kept the cocaine caches and the money from the sales. The man found $ 150 and $ 500 in a closet and kept it for himself.

Bridget Townsend yelled at him what he was doing. Gonzales did not respond and continued looking for the cocaine. The girl then picked up the house phone and started dialing to call her boyfriend ‘Joe’ Leal. Gonzales knocked her to the floor. He pulled her by the hair across the floor of the house and tied her with a rope that he found in the closet. He put tape over his mouth.

The cry of the victim who cried out for his life

Then, with the truck’s lights off, he pulled Bridget Townsend out of her boyfriend’s house and threw her into the back box of his truck, covering the woman with blankets. Ramiro Gonzales fled the scene and went to a rural area outside of Hondo, Texas, with the woman behind. In the truck, the man carried a .243 rifle that his grandfather had given him.

Gonzales reached a remote spot and lowered Townsend from the truck. The woman was crying and told him that she would give her money, sex and drugs if she spared her life. Gonzales put her back in the back of the truck and sexually assaulted her. Then he lowered her, threw her into the bushes, shot her in the head, and left. He told everything because, he assured the police, «I wanted to do what is right.»