A man witnesses a conversation he shouldn’t have— a murder plot.
One evening at the gym he’d been working out at for the last
few years, Mundo, an amateur boxer, peers through a crack in
a doorway, eavesdropping on the two women on the other side.
They speak in hushed tones, interjected with short peals of laughter.
Shivers run down his spine as he strains to catch
every word, every muscle tensed in anticipation.
“No seriously, I know a guy who can chop someone up”
“Maybe we can use him!”
Mundo recognizes one of the women as Lulu, the
wife of the gym owner and his good friend, Ramon.
Before she can leave, he corners her, asking,
“Did I hear you right back there, something about chopping people up?”
She hesitates.
“It’s my husband.
He’s ab—, I wish he’d just go away.” The man sees his opportunity.
“When you say ‘go away’ do you mean?”
Mundo makes a gun shape with his hands and fires.
“—cuz I know some homeboys who could get it done.”
She leans back, considering the offer.,
before leaning in close and whispering,
“Yes.
Get rid of his a—, just like that.”
2007, Ramon Sosa had just strolled up to a Mexican restaurant he’d
been recommended and saddled up to the bar, buying himself a beer.
Sipping on the cold one, he idly gazed
out onto the dance floor when he saw her.
A tall, dark haired woman spun on the dance floor,
as though her feet didn’t even touch the ground.
She was like a force of nature.
A tornado of whirling fabric and raven hair.
He tried to distract himself.
The ghost of his previous divorce still hung over
his head, and the idea of new love still stung.
Despite this, his eyes betrayed him, and seemed to
always find themselves locked on the mystery woman.
Pushing his hesitation down, he stepped out onto
the dance floor, but before he could get his groove
on, a lightning bolt of pain shot up his leg!
The mystery woman had driven the spike of her high heel into his foot!
She apologised profusely, but Ramon wasn’t fazed.
Gritting through the pain, he took her
hand and asked “would you dance with me?”.
Her name was Maria de Lourdes Dorantes, or Lulu among her friends.
She was in Houston on a work visa from
Mexico, working gig jobs like house cleaning.
With her were her two children, and despite wrestling with
the American immigration system, navigating non-profits,
and driving back to Mexico every 6 months to renew her
work visa, she built a modest life for her small family.
By 2008, Ramon and Lulu were deeply entwined.
Ramon was working with the non-profit he founded,
Young Prospects Boxing, a youth organisation
teaching local kids physical fitness and discipline.
Lulu was intensely supportive of his work, and as the
months passed, Ramon fell deeper and deeper in love.
By 2010, the two of them opened their
own gym together, Woodland’s Boxing.
One day, over dinner, one of Lulu’s friend’s, Katia, asked “Ramon,
why don’t you marry Lulu and help her get her legal status here in
the USA?” Ramon had never considered that Lulu might want to marry
him for anything other than love, and the notion sent him reeling.
He was stunned.
The two of them just stared at him, waiting for what he’d say.
Finally, he answered.
“I don’t think people should get married just for papers.
Marriage is a very serious commitment, and I don’t think
I’m ready for that yet.” This upset Lulu, who shot up in
a start, slamming her hands on the table saying “So why
are we even together?” Before she stormed out of the room.
The lovers reconciled before bed, but the incident left
cracks that Ramon wouldn’t see until it was too late.
Months passed, and Ramon, despite saying he wasn’t ready for
another marriage, found himself thinking of tying the knot.
After a night out at the club, as his heart threatened
to leap right out of his chest, he turned to her and
said “Lulu, I’m so happy to have met you and your family.
You’ve brought life back into me.
You’ve gone through so much and deserve to be happy
with your kids now.” Then he asked her to marry him.
After the marriage in spring 2009, the excitement in
Lulu and Ramon’s house rose with every passing day.
After years of planning, preparation, and anticipation, the
two newlyweds were on their way to the US immigration office
to finally finish Lulu’s permanent resident application.
Everyone in the house was elated, even Lulu’s two children
who’d taken their time to open up to their new father.
As Ramon got dressed before heading over to the immigration
office, he thought back to that dinner with Katia.
His mind drifted back to stories of Americans who’d
married people from other countries, only to have their new
spouses leave them the moment they became legal residents.
He pushed those thoughts aside, shoving
them into the very back of his mind.
This was different.
Lulu wasn’t like that.
Or was she?
By 2014, Ramon knew that his marriage was coming to an end.
They’d never really had a “honeymoon” phase.
She would be a loving wife for a few good weeks, and
then, on a dime, she would become vindictive and cruel.
She even started talking about selling their gym, Woodland’s and
what she would be entitled to, were the two of them to divorce.
In 2015, Lulu suggested separating.
Ramon would live downstairs, and Lulu would take the upper floor
with her kids and mother who’d been living with them as of late.
Things were tense.
If anyone saw him coming, they’d switch to hushed tones and whispers.
Ramon knew that divorce was inevitable, but when the
divorce papers were finally served, he realised she
didn’t just want a divorce, she wanted everything.
Other incidents shattered Ramon’s sense of security.
One day, after he was pulled over by a police officer, he discovered
that Lulu had secretly registered Ramon’s truck in her son Luis’ name!
To make matters worse, when Ramon confronted Luis about it, he
smugly called the police, claiming that Ramon was going to hurt
him, even as Ramon stood still, shocked at the blatant lying.
Even after Ramon told them his side of the story, they still
charged him with a— after Lulu corroborated her son’s
story, despite not being witness to the incident itself.
Years before Ramon met Lulu, at the turn of the millennium, Ramon
was working a regular day at Young Prospects when he spied a calm
young latino man standing still amidst the clatter of the gym.
He was about as tall as Ramon, and a little overweight, but
he carried himself like someone accustomed to working out.
Ramon approached him and shook his hand, asking
“You wanna learn how to fight?”
“Yes sir,” the man replied.
Ramon explained that the gym was a non-profit and any
donations the man could spare would be greatly appreciated.
Ramon continued, telling him to come back the following day
with workout clothes, but the man already had some in his car.
Ramon quickly got him working on callisthenics and stretching.
The man came back day after day to work out.
Since he was an older guy and the gym was mainly patronised by young
boys, he quickly became a role model for some of the younger guys.
One afternoon, Ramon discovered that he had been raised on
Houston’s East side in poverty, and like a lot of kids who
grew up in poverty, he did what he needed to do for survival.
The man had gotten mixed up in local gangs when he was
young, and his body was pockmarked with tattoos, bullet
wounds, and healed scars from long forgotten stabbings.
The man eventually rose through the ranks to become
the leader of his gang, but now, allegedly, he was
out and just wanted to live a quiet life again.
As time passed, Ramon and the man became close friends.
They would go to boxing competitions, and hang out on the weekends.
Whenever they went out, Ramon would introduce the man as
his “other son”, which the man bashfully reciprocated.
Ramon said later that “I did not give him
life, but one day I would owe him mine.”
The man’s name?
Mundo.
Flash forward back to 2015.
Mundo knew that his meeting with Lulu had gone well.
He’d recorded the whole thing to cover
himself, but she was absolutely on board.
Having contacted his “boys” Mundo messaged Lulu,
giving her screenshots of his conversation.
The meeting with Lulu had gone swimmingly.
Mundo laid out the plan for her.
They’d make it look like a car-jacking or robbery gone wrong.
Ramon loved his truck, they knew that he would put up
a fight if someone was trying to take it, so they’d
make it look like they murdered him to steal it.
Then, they’d dump the truck somewhere, before torching it to make it
look like the “thieves” got scared and wanted to cover up the evidence.
Lulu responded, “Perfect.
Can they take the rims and the stereo to make it look more real?
I wouldn’t get a payout from insurance anyway.” She
continued, saying “I will find out where he is staying.
I will also get his mother’s address and his sister’s
and Colombian friends too, to cover all bases.
I will either drive Luis’s or Karla’s car so I do
not get recognized.” Then she gave Mundo a step by
step list of every move Ramon made from dawn to dusk.
It was impeccable, perfect.
Lulu had been following Ramon’s routine for a while in
different cars to make sure that he didn’t notice anything off.
Mundo also let Lulu know that Paco and John
Boy had sourced a gun and wanted 200$ for it.
He let her know that after the job was done, they’d “disappear it”.
As soon as they got the money, the plan would set in motion.
Then, on July 21st 2015, Ramon was killed.
Inside of a 4 foot rectangular hole, you could see his unclothed
body laying lifeless at the bottom of the makeshift grave.
Pinned on his right temple, small like
a shirt button, perched a bullet hole.
Blood streamed down from the perforation, arching across his
chest, leaving an almost shooting-star-like trail in its wake.
A sick portent of death and destruction.
If you were in the grave with Ramon you would be able to see
a group of people crowded around the foreboding dirt pit.
Standing above Ramon, Paco and Mundo grin at their handiwork.
They glanced around at the other folks
gathered around, feeling a little nervous.
Suddenly, Ramon’s body jerks violently,
and his hands whip up to his face.
He swats at the air.
Flies have been settling on his face, tickling his nose.
“Sorry” Ramon mutters, before closing his eyes again.
The Assistant District Attorney, FBI agents, and a
handful of beat cops milling about above him relax for
a moment before their photoshoot resumes in earnest.
Moments earlier, the police had Ramon descend into the hole.
Once he was down there, police painted his right temple
like a bullet hole using prosthetics and other movie
makeup, and drew thin streaks of crimson across his chest.
His whole body was shaking, not just from thinking about
what his wife had been plotting, but from the fear,
panic, paranoia, or simply just a chill in the air.
When it came down to taking the photos,
he had to remain perfectly still.
The cops took photos of him from every angle.
They even threw a little bit of dirt
over him to make it look extra authentic.
Ramon, while laying at the bottom of his
own grave, lingered on his own mortality.
His mind fluttered back to his children, and his parents.
He hoped that they’d never have to see his body this way.
Turning back to that night in Woodland’s Gym, Mundo listened
closely to Lulu’s clandestine plans and, the moment he left the
gym for the night, immediately relayed the information to Ramon.
“Pops, I saw it in her eyes.” Mundo said, “I’ve seen
that look before, on people who wanted to have somebody
killed, or who wanted to kill somebody themselves.”
As Mundo uttered those words, all Ramon could do
was sit in the front seat of his truck in shock.
He just sat in the car as it idled, the faint
smell of gasoline coming in through the vent.
The engine revved, and Ramon realised that he’d
been pressing down on the gas the whole time.
The woman Ramon had fallen in love with,
the woman he adored, wanted him dead.
Ramon contacted a friend of his, driving his place immediately.
The man had some connections in the sheriff’s
office, so he offered to ask around.
After some cursory calls, Ramon was told there
wasn’t anything that the police could do yet.
“It's extremely unusual.
It's the first one of my career.” said Lieutenant Mike
Atkins after hearing Ramon’s confession, but equipped
with only the word of a friend, and the threats of an
angry wife, there was nothing for the police to do.
Unless Ramon started documenting conversations
with Lulu to build their case, he was on his own.
When Ramon told Mundo that he’d gone to the police, he expected his
surrogate son to come with him, but Mundo told him the bad news.
“I’ve done enough, Pops.
You can take it from here.”
Mundo told Ramon that, from where he grew
up, people didn’t do what he just did.
There were expectations of him that he
would remain loyal and never snitch.
Mundo had broken their most paramount rule.
After weeks of collecting information, recording
conversations, documenting meetings, Ramon finally
had enough information to go to the police.
When he arrived, he spoke to the lieutenant and
was immediately brought before the station captain.
They questioned him for a moment, before they asked—
“Why do you think your friend Mundo helped
you, and why is he not here with you?”
They were suspicious of Mundo immediately, and they made it
clear that without his witness, it would be hard to build a case.
Mundo had to come forward.
And on July 20th, Mundo came through.
After lengthy back and forths with
Lulu, they were ready to lay the trap.
DPS agent Edgar and Mundo, in an undercover police
vehicle, drove to their meeting point with Lulu.
She arrived, entered their vehicle, and immediately
began discussing payment with who she believed was
a Mexican hitman, but was really a cop in disguise.
With the payment agreed on, she drove away quickly to a bank,
retrieved the money, and handed over a suitcase full of cash.
This was it!
She’d put the final nail into her own coffin,
and Ramon was about to step into his own grave.
The only thing left to do was to dig a hole, and apply a little makeup.
Ramon arrived at the scene where investigator Officer
Speyer, who learned how to apply gore makeup from YouTube,
took out a series of photos from actual homicide cases to
decide which one they thought would work best for Ramon.
Having found a shot they liked, the police were able to
set the stage for the photoshoot, dressed Ramon up—or
rather, down—into his fully cadavered form, and lowered
him into the hole, snapping photos to send to Lulu.
Once they were done, the only thing left was the arrest.
Lulu had wrestled management of Woodland’s Gym from Ramon, and
had been running the place on her own for the last few months.
Today, however, would be different.
Detectives had been tailing Lulu from the
moment she woke up the moment she went to bed.
So when she finally arrived that afternoon, they were waiting.
They watched her enter the building and followed close behind.
They passed a few members of the gym idly working out,
and asked one of the members where they could find Lulu.
They pointed her out.
The detectives approached, saying “Ms Sosa, we are here because
someone filed a missing person report on your husband Ramon Sosa.
When was the last time you saw him?”
She pretended to be surprised.
“I think I saw him last Wednesday.” She continued, saying that she’d
been calling around to see if anyone had seen him, but to no avail.
That’s when they brought down the axe.
“Ms Sosa, you’re under arrest for the solicitation of the
murder of Ramon Sosa.” she protested, but they didn’t relent.
“Ms Sosa, please put your hands behind your back.
You’re under arrest.”
In Ramon’s words “Hello, Karma; welcome to The Woodlands Gym.”
Looking back at his memories, Ramon says that “The
first thing I remembered when she walked into the
packed courtroom was hearing the sounds of the chains”.
Ramon looked at the 1$ shoes given to Lulu by the state and
thought about how she wanted a better life for her and her family.
He’d been able to give her everything
she ever wanted, but it wasn’t enough.
Lulu ended up being charged to serve 20 years in
prison for second-degree solicitation of capital
murder, but now, Ramon has been able to forgive her.
Recently, he said “When I chose to forgive her, it
was like as if all the air was left out of a balloon.
I was holding on to so much hatred.
It was bottled up inside of me.
And then it was released.
And if it felt so good to no longer be so angry.”
Today, Ramon has found love again, and is engaged to be married.
He published a book in 2019 called “I Walked on My Own
Grave”, much of which was used to write this episode.
One way or another, his book is really a hit, man.
Based on our recent video about an omelette that brought down an entire
plane, we put a poll on Twitter asking, “Are you scared of flying?”
Turns out nearly 40% of you think there's nothing to worry about!
So fearless, considering surveys say around 40% of the
public DOES experience some anxiety during flights!