JUST IN: ROBERT MORENO RAMOS Executed | Crime, Last Meal + Final Words | Death Row US Texas …

After spending more than 25 years on death row, Robert Moreno Ramos was executed with lethal injection at Texas State Penitentiary in 2018. In this video, we will talk about his crimes, last meal, and last words. To understand why the state had to kill the condemned, we have to go back to the crimes that led him there.

 to how a man decided he was tired of his wife and the perfect plan was to get rid of his whole family for another woman. This is a story that mirrors the cases of Chris Watts and Chris Coleman, men who chose murder over divorce, who saw their families not as human beings, but as obstacles to their desires. Let’s go back to the events that led the condemned to be executed.

 November 1991, Austin, Texas. A 36-year-old man walked through the streets of the Texas capital with a secret that would eventually lead him to death row. Robert Moreno Ramos was visiting Austin when he met Marissa Robbo, a woman from Brownsville who was also in town. The attraction was immediate and what started as casual conversation quickly turned into something more.

 But Robert Moreno Ramos was living a lie. Back in Progresso, Texas, a small border town about 20 mi southeast of Macallen in Hidalgo County, Robert had a wife and family waiting for him. His wife Leticia was 42 years old. They had children together, including two young ones still living at home. But when Marica Robo asked about his life, Robert spun an elaborate deception.

 He told Marica that he wasn’t married. He said that Leticia was a widow he was helping to support. Ahei claimed the children living in his house weren’t his, but hers, and that he was simply providing shelter for this struggling widow and her kids out of the goodness of his heart. Marissa believed every word.

 The affair continued through the end of 1991 and into early 1992. Robert would travel between Progresso and Brownsville to see Marica, maintaining his double life with practiced ease. To his church community in Progresso, he was a family man, a husband and father. To Marissa, he was a single man ready to start a new life. By January 1992, Marica wanted more.

 She wanted marriage. She wanted commitment. And Robert Mareno Ramos agreed. They set a date. February 10th, 1992. But there was one problem Robert hadn’t solved. He already had a wife and she wasn’t going anywhere willingly. This case bears striking similarities to other family annihilators who killed for new relationships.

Chris Watts in Colorado murdered his pregnant wife Shannan and their two daughters in 2018 to be with his mistress. Chris Coleman in Illinois killed his wife and two sons in 2009 for his girlfriend. The pattern is disturbingly consistent. men who see their families not as human beings but as obstacles to their desires.

Robert Moreno Ramos was about to join this category of killers. To understand what happened in February 1992, we need to understand who Robert Moreno Ramos was. He was born in Awascalientes, Mexico, a city in the central part of the country. His childhood was marked by extreme violence and poverty.

 His father was a brutal man who regularly beat young Robert with chains and hung him upside down as punishment. Although the abuse was so severe that it would later be described by attorneys as shocking brutality. Robert grew up in Guadalajara and Tijuana before his family moved to the United States in 1970 when he was a teenager.

 He never finished high school, dropping out before his senior year. By the time he was an adult, Robert was working as an aid for a disabled man and his family in the Progresso area. But the violence he experienced as a child had left its mark. According to later medical evaluations, Robert suffered from bipolar disorder for most of his life.

 He also had brain damage that affected his ability to control his impulses and regulate his emotions. These mental health issues were never properly treated, never properly diagnosed in any official capacity that could have helped him. What was clear, however, it was Robert’s capacity for violence, particularly against women. In 1988, Robert married another woman in Renosa, Mexico, just across the border from Texas.

 One year later, in 1989, that woman disappeared. She was never seen by her family again. Her body was never found. Her mother would later testify in court that she believed Robert was responsible for her daughter’s vanishing. But without a body, without evidence, there was no case to be made. Robert moved on. He married Leticia and they built a life together in Progresso.

 They had children together. From the outside, they looked like any other family in this small border community. Inside the home, the truth was far darker. The oldest son, Osmar, would later testify about what life was really like with Robert Moreno Ramos as a father. He described constant verbal abuse.

 You physical violence and emotional torture. He testified that he witnessed Robert abuse Leticia every single month. The violence was regular, predictable, and terrifying. Church members in Progresso knew the Ramos family. They seemed normal enough. No one intervened. No one knew the full extent of what was happening behind closed doors.

And by November 1991, when Robert began his affair with Marissa Robo, the stage was set for something terrible. February 7th, 1992. It was a Friday in Progresso, Texas. Robert Mareno Ramos had a problem and he had 3 days to solve it. His wedding to Marissa Robbo was scheduled for February 10th.

 He had promised her a new life, a fresh start, a real marriage. But Leticia was still there, still his legal wife, still living in the home they shared. Divorce wasn’t an option. It would take too long. I cost money Robert didn’t have and would expose his lies to Marissa. If Marica discovered he had been married all along, that the widow story was complete fiction, the relationship would be over.

 Robert had painted himself into a corner, and he chose the most horrific way out. That Friday, a neighbor heard screaming coming from the Ramos house. It was a woman’s voice filled with terror and rage, shouting and swearing. The sounds were disturbing enough that the neighbor would remember them clearly months later when police came asking questions.

But in the moment, the neighbor didn’t call for help. The screaming stopped and the house fell silent. Inside that home, Robert Moreno Ramos had picked up a miniature sledgehammer. What happened next was brutal and methodical. Robert attacked Leticia with the hammer on striking her head repeatedly with blunt force.

 The forensic evidence would later show that her injuries could not possibly have been self-inflicted. She died from massive head trauma. The two young children were also killed with the same weapon. Both suffered fatal head injuries from the sledgehammer. The medical examiner would later testify that all three victims died within the same time frame and their bodies were buried within 12 to 24 hours of their deaths. Blood was everywhere.

 The bedroom was covered in it. The hallway had blood evidence. The bathroom became a crime scene. But Robert wasn’t done. He had 3 days to cover his tracks and he got to work immediately. Robert Mareno Ramos stood in his bathroom looking at the floor. Beneath those tiles, he would hide his family. He dug into the bathroom floor, a creating a makeshift grave large enough for three bodies.

 He placed Leticia, Abigail, and Jonathan into the ground beneath his own house. Then he began the coverup operation. Robert installed fresh tile over the burial site. He made it look brand new, like recent home improvement rather than a grave marker. He went through the house systematically, removing every trace of his family’s existence.

 All of Leticia’s clothes went into the attic. All of the children’s toys went up there, too. The closets now contained only men’s clothing. If someone walked through the house, it would look like a bachelor lived there. Over the next few days, church members from their congregation stopped by the Ramos house to visit the family.

 Robert met them at the door with a story already prepared. He told them that Leticia’s mother had died in California and and the family was moving there to handle the estate. He said they were extremely busy with preparations and couldn’t take time to say proper goodbyes to everyone. The church members accepted this explanation and left.

February 10th, 1992. Three days after murdering his wife and children, Robert Moreno Ramos married Marica Robo. The ceremony went ahead as planned. Marica had no idea that her new husband had just committed triple murder. She had no idea that when Robert brought her to live in his house in Progresso, she would be sleeping, eating, and living directly above the bodies of his previous family.

 Robert moved Marissa into the house. She settled in, believing she was starting a new chapter of her life with a man who loved her. The fresh tile in the bathroom looked nice. The house was tidy, organized, I with none of the clutter you’d expect from a home where children lived. Everything seemed perfect.

 Under the bathroom floor, three bodies decomposed in the Texas heat. Living with murder requires constant lying. For nearly two months, Robert Marina Ramos maintained his deception through an everchanging series of stories. Different people asked questions, and Robert gave different answers to each of them. On March 4th, 1992, Robert’s cousin asked where Leticia and the kids had gone.

 Robert told him they had all been killed in a car accident and their bodies had been cremated. The cousin accepted this tragic story. Other people in Progresso asked similar questions. Where did the family go? Why so sudden? Robert rotated through explanations. Sometimes he said they were in Austin. Sometimes he claimed they had gone to San Antonio, but other times he said they were visiting family in Mexico.

 He told some people they were in California handling his mother-in-law’s estate. The stories never matched up, but Robert delivered each lie with confidence. Marica lived in the house, unaware she was sleeping above a burial site. Did she ask questions about the widow and her children who supposedly lived there before? If she did, Robert had answers ready. Maybe he said they’d moved on.

Maybe he said they found another place. The lies came easily to him. But someone wasn’t satisfied with Robert’s constantly changing explanations. Leticia’s sister had been trying to reach her for weeks. Phone calls went unanswered. Leticia wasn’t responding to messages. The sister knew her sibling wouldn’t just disappear without contact, especially not with young children.

Something was wrong. After nearly 2 months of dead ends and growing concern, Leticia’s sister went to the police in late March 1992. She filed a missing person’s report for Leticia, Abigail, and Jonathan. They had vanished without a trace, and the last known person to see them was Robert Moreno Ramos. March 30th, 1992.

Police officers arrived at the Ramos home in Progresso to question Robert about his missing wife and children. It had been almost 2 months since anyone had actually seen Leticia, Abigail, or Jonathan. Robert agreed to speak with the officers. The interview lasted 20 minutes, and in that short time, Robert gave multiple contradictory accounts of where his family had gone.

 First, he said they were in Austin. Then, he changed it to San Antonio. Then, he mentioned Mexico. The officers noticed the inconsistencies immediately. Nothing Robert said made sense and his explanations kept shifting even within the same conversation. Robert agreed to accompany the officers to the police station voluntarily.

Once there, they arrested him on outstanding traffic warrants. It wasn’t a murder arrest, not yet. The police didn’t have enough evidence, but they had Robert in custody and they had time to investigate. April 6th, 1992. One week after the initial questioning, police obtained permission to search the Ramos house.

 What they found immediately raised red flags. There was blood evidence throughout the home. The bedroom had blood. The hallway had blood. The bathroom had blood. This wasn’t a small amount. This was extensive blood evidence indicating something violent had happened in that house. The officers searched systematically.

 In the attic, they found bags and bags of clothing, all women’s and children’s clothing. They found toys, all children’s toys, hidden away in the attic space. The closets throughout the house contained only men’s clothes. It was as if a woman and children had been erased from the home. The bathroom had fresh tile. It looked new, recently installed.

 The officers noted this in their report along with hammers and other equipment they observed around the property. They photographed everything. The evidence was mounting, but they still didn’t have bodies. April 7th, 1992. Robert was questioned again. The police confronted him with what they’d found in the house.

 the blood evidence, the hidden clothes and toys, the suspicious fresh tile in the bathroom. Robert’s story changed again. First, I he claimed he had come home from job searching and found his wife and children already dead. He said he panicked and buried them. He didn’t say where. The detectives pressed harder. Robert changed the story again.

 Now, he said he came home and found the children already dead and found Leticia mortally wounded from an apparently self-inflicted injury. He claimed she had hurt herself with a hammer and he simply delivered a final blow to end her suffering. Then he buried all three of them to hide what happened. Where did you bury them, Robert? Under the bathroom floor.

 Police returned to the Ramos house with a search warrant. They brought equipment to break through the bathroom floor. The fresh tile was removed carefully, piece by piece. Then they began digging into the foundation beneath. The bodies of Leticia Ramos, Abigail Ramos, Pen and Jonathan Ramos were pulled from the ground beneath the bathroom where Robert had buried them two months earlier.

 The medical examiner was called to the scene. The forensic examination revealed the truth that Robert’s lies had tried to hide. All three victims died from blunt force trauma to the head. The injuries were consistent with being struck repeatedly with a hammer. The forensic pathologist who examined the bodies testified that it was extremely unlikely, virtually impossible that Leticia’s injuries were self-inflicted.

The pattern of wounds, the force required, the locations of impact, all pointed to homicide. The medical examiner also determined that all three victims had been buried within 12 to 24 hours of their deaths. This timeline matched perfectly with February 7th on the day the neighbor heard screaming from the Ramos house.

Robert had killed them, buried them, and then carried on with his wedding plans as if nothing had happened. But police found one more piece of crucial evidence. They learned that Robert had traveled to Mexico after the murders. When they searched his residence across the border, they recovered a small sledgehammer. It was stained with blood.

The murder weapon. Robert Moreno Ramos was formally charged with capital murder. In Texas, killing more than one person during the same criminal transaction qualifies as capital murder, making the defendant eligible for the death penalty. Robert had killed three people, including two children.

 The prosecution would be seeking execution. The trial of Robert Moreno Ramos began in January 1993 in Hadalgo County, Texas, but almost a year had passed since the murders. Robert sat in the courtroom facing the possibility of lethal injection for what he’d done to Leticia, Abigail, and Jonathan. The prosecution’s case was overwhelming.

 They presented the blood evidence found throughout the house. They showed photographs of the burial site beneath the bathroom floor. They introduced the bloodstained sledgehammer recovered from Robert’s Mexican residence. They presented the timeline. Murderers on February 7th, wedding to Marica Robato on February 10th, just 3 days later.

 They showed how Robert had systematically erased his family’s presence from the house, hiding their clothes and belongings in the attic. They documented his constantly changing lives from car accidents to moves to California to trips to Mexico. Every story different. Every story designed to buy him more time. The medical examiner testified about the injuries.

 Blunt force trauma, multiple strikes to the head, impossible to be self-inflicted. The victims were buried within a day of their deaths. The forensic evidence was undeniable. The defense lawyers argued that unknown drug dealers had committed the murders. They suggested that Robert had come home to find his family dead and panicked, choosing to bury them rather than report it.

 The defense presented no physical evidence for this theory. There was no proof of drug dealers, no evidence of any third-party involvement, nothing to support their claims except speculation. The jury deliberated. On March 18th, 1993, they returned with their verdict, guilty of capital murder. But the verdict was only half the battle.

 In Texas death penalty cases, there’s a separate punishment phase where the jury decides between life in prison or execution. This is where defense attorneys present mitigating evidence, reasons why their client’s life should be spared, factors that explain but don’t excuse the crime. This is where Robert Mareno Ramos’s defense team failed catastrophically.

The punishment phase of a capital murder trial is critical. This is when defense lawyers present evidence of their client’s difficult childhood, mental illness, brain damage, abuse, anything that might make jurors see the defendant as a human being worthy of mercy rather than just a monster worthy of death.

Robert Moreno Ramos had significant mitigating evidence available. He had been brutally abused as a child, beaten with chains, and hung upside down by his father. He grew up in shocking poverty. He suffered from bipolar disorder that had gone untreated for most of his life. He had brain damage that affected his impulse control and emotional regulation.

These weren’t excuses for murder, but they were factors that could have influenced a jury’s decision between life and death. None of this evidence was presented. Robert’s courtappointed defense attorneys offered zero evidence during the punishment phase. They didn’t call mental health experts. They didn’t present testimony about his childhood abuse.

 They didn’t cross-examine the state’s witnesses. They made a closing argument that was later described as almost incomprehensible. Barely five pages long and largely incoherent. Most shockingly, they never asked the jury to spare Robert’s life. They didn’t argue for life in prison. They didn’t make a plea for mercy, and they essentially gave up.

The prosecution, meanwhile, brought forward devastating testimony. Robert’s oldest son, 19-year-old Osmar Ramos, took the stand. He testified about growing up in that house, about the verbal abuse, the physical violence, the emotional torture. He described watching his father abuse his mother, Leticia, every month.

 He told the jury about living in fear of Robert Moreno Ramos. Osmar testified that his father would continue to commit criminal acts of violence if given the chance, his own son, telling a jury that Robert was too dangerous to let live. Then another witness took the stand. A woman testified that Robert had married her daughter in 1988 in Reosa, Mexico.

One year later, in 1989, her daughter disappeared. The woman had never seen her daughter again. She told the jury she believed Robert was responsible for her daughter’s disappearance and likely death. The prosecution painted a picture of a serial domestic abuser, possibly a serial killer, a man who had gotten away with one woman’s disappearance and then murdered an entire family for his own convenience.

 The defense said almost nothing in response. There was one more element to the prosecution’s closing argument that would later become the subject of international legal complaints. The prosecutor made an appeal to the jury based on Robert’s nationality. He pointed to the American flag in the courtroom and said, “If a man chooses to enter this country, then that man must abide by the laws.

” And so, Robert Mareno Ramos chose to enter the United States. and you decide the message that people of this state will receive by your verdict. The prosecution was essentially arguing that Robert’s status as a Mexican immigrant was relevant to whether he should be executed. This argument had nothing to do with the crime, nothing to do with the evidence, but it played into the jury’s sense of Texas identity and border security.

 The jury answered the punishment questions in the state’s favor. On March 23rd, 1993, just 5 days after his conviction, Robert Moreno Ramos was sentenced to death. The entire trial from jury selection through sentencing had been completed in a matter of weeks. Robert was transferred to death row where he would spend the next 25 years watching other condemned prisoners be executed while his own appeals wound through the courts.

After Robert Mareno Ramos was sentenced to death, a critical issue emerged that would haunt his case for the next two decades. Robert was not a United States citizen. He was a Mexican national born in Aguas Scalientes who had lived in the United States since 1970, but never naturalized. Under international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations signed in 1963, foreign nationals who are arrested have specific rights.

Article 36 of the Vienna Convention requires that when police arrest a foreign national, they must inform that person of their right to contact their home country’s consulate. The consulate can then provide legal assistance, help find qualified attorneys, and ensure the person receives a fair trial. Robert Moreno Ramos was never informed of these rights when he was arrested on March 30th, 1992.

 And no one told him he could contact the Mexican consulate. He didn’t get a lawyer until 3 months after his arrest. During that critical early period when police were questioning him and building their case, Robert had no legal representation and no consular assistance. The question became, would Mexican consular assistants have made a difference in his trial? Would Mexican government lawyers have pushed for better defense counsel? Would they have insisted on mental health evaluations? Would they have ensured that mitigating evidence about his childhood abuse and

bipolar disorder was presented to the jury? In the mid 1990s, as Robert’s appeals began, his attorneys started arguing that the Vienna Convention violation had deprived him of a fair trial. But US a courts repeatedly ruled that individuals couldn’t enforce Vienna Convention rights in American courts. The treaty was between governments, not individuals.

 So, Robert couldn’t use it as grounds for appeal. The issue didn’t die there. Mexico was watching. By 2002, the Mexican government had identified dozens of Mexican nationals on death row throughout the United States who had never been informed of their consular rights. Robert Mareno Ramos was one of them. In November 2002, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures in Robert’s favor, asking the United States to preserve his life while they investigated.

In 2003, Mexico filed a case with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands. On the case bundled together Robert and 51 other Mexican nationals on death row who had been denied their Vienna Convention rights. Mexico argued that the United States had violated international law and that all these cases needed to be reviewed.

The International Court of Justice heard arguments from both sides. In 2004, the ICJ issued its ruling. The United States had indeed violated the Vienna Convention. The court recommended that all 52 cases be reviewed to determine whether consular access would have affected the outcomes. The ICJ specifically said these reviews should happen through whatever process the United States chose, but they needed to happen.

 This should have been a major victory for Robert Mareno Ramos. An international court had ruled that his rights were violated. Uh but there was a problem. The ICJ’s rulings aren’t automatically enforcable in the United States. President George W. Bush issued a directive that states should review and reconsider the cases identified by the ICJ.

 He encouraged state courts to examine whether Vienna Convention violations had affected these trials. It looked like Robert might get a new hearing. Then in 2008, the US Supreme Court issued a devastating ruling in a different case. The court held that ICJ decisions are not binding on US state courts unless Congress passes legislation making them enforceable.

 The president couldn’t order states to comply with international court rulings. Only Congress had that power. Congress never passed such legislation. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Robert’s appeals based on the Vienna Convention. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. The US Supreme Court declined to review the issue.

 Robert Moreno Ramos had won at the International Court of Justice, but lost in every American court. In 2005, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights issued a merits report on Robert’s case. They concluded that the United States was responsible for violating Robert’s rights to equality before the law, due process, and a fair trial.

 They specifically noted that the prosecutor’s appeal to the jury about Robert’s Mexican nationality was inappropriate and prejuditial. They recommended that Robert receive a new sentencing hearing with competent legal representation and with all relevant mitigating evidence presented. The United States did not comply with these recommendations between 2004 and 2018 on five other Mexican nationals who had been named in the IICJ ruling were executed.

 All five executions were carried out by Texas. Robert Moreno Ramos would be the sixth. While the Vienna Convention battle was being fought on the international stage, Robert’s attorneys were pursuing another line of appeal, ineffective assistance of counsel. The argument was straightforward. Robert’s trial lawyers had been so incompetent that he never received a constitutionally fair trial.

The evidence for this claim was compelling. During the punishment phase, when Robert’s life hung in the balance, his lawyers had presented exactly zero evidence in his favor. No mental health experts, no testimony about childhood abuse, no evidence of bipolar disorder or brain damage, nothing.

 But there was a catch. To prove ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal, you need to investigate what evidence was available that the trial lawyers should have presented. This requires a competent appellet attorney who will dig into the case, interview family members, obtain medical records, consult with experts. In the mid 1990s, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals appointed Robert and appellet attorney.

 This lawyer had no experience with capital cases. He later admitted he didn’t have the resources or training necessary to properly investigate a death penalty appeal. He failed to develop the evidence of Robert’s mental illness and abusive childhood. He essentially dropped the ball during a critical stage of the appeals process.

By the time Robert got a better attorney, years had passed. The courts ruled that many of his claims were procedurally barred because they hadn’t been raised properly earlier on the incompetent appellet attorney had foreclosed Robert’s chance to get real review of his trial lawyer’s failures. In 2015, a new attorney named Danalin Reer took over Robert’s case.

 She began investigating properly for the first time. What she found was shocking. Medical evaluations confirmed that Robert Moreno Ramos had suffered from bipolar disorder for most of his life, including at the time of the murders. Bipolar disorder can cause extreme mood swings, impulsive behavior, and episodes where someone acts completely out of character.

Left untreated, it can be devastating. Robert also had documented brain damage. Brain scans and neurological testing showed damage to areas of the brain responsible for impulse control and emotional regulation. This brain damage likely resulted from the severe abuse he suffered as a child, one when his father beat him with chains and hung him upside down.

 Speaking of that childhood abuse, Reer documented it extensively. Robert had grown up in what she called shocking brutality and desperate poverty. The physical abuse wasn’t occasional. It was regular and severe. The psychological impact of being raised in that environment, combined with untreated mental illness and brain damage, created a perfect storm of dysfunction.

 None of this excused murdering Leticia, Abigail, and Jonathan, but it was exactly the kind of mitigating evidence that jurors are supposed to consider when deciding between life and death. Studies show that jurors who understand a defendant’s mental illness and trauma background are more likely to vote for life in prison rather than execution.

 But Robert’s jury in 1993 never heard any of it. And now are more than 20 years later, the courts ruled that it was too late to present this evidence. Robert’s early appellet attorneys incompetence had locked in the failures of his trial attorneys. The system had failed at every level and Robert would pay with his life.

 Danalyn Wesser filed extensive pleadings arguing that no court, no factfinder, no decisionmaker had ever been given the full picture of who Robert Moreno Ramos was. She called it a freakishly improbable injustice. A case where systematic failures at every stage of the process meant that Robert would be executed without ever receiving full and fair review of whether his death sentence was constitutional.

Three retired justices from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed with her. In an extraordinary move, they filed documents with the US and Supreme Court supporting a stay of execution for Robert. These former judges who had served on Texas’s highest criminal court argued that the current court had appointed an incompetent appellet attorney whose failures had denied Robert any real chance at justice.

 But the current Texas courts weren’t listening. As 2018 arrived, Robert Moreno Ramos had been on death row for 25 years. He was now 64 years old, elderly by prison standards. Other prisoners in his unit had been executed over the years. Robert had watched the number of condemned men around him slowly decrease as Texas carried out its execution schedule.

 In early 2018, Robert received news his execution was being scheduled for November 14th, 2018. The Texas Board of Pardons and Parles would review his case for possible clemency, and it was his last realistic chance. Danalin Reer prepared a comprehensive clemency petition. She laid out everything. The Vienna Convention violations, the incompetent trial attorneys who presented no mitigation evidence, the failed appellet attorney who didn’t investigate, the bipolar disorder, the brain damage, the childhood abuse.

She argued that Robert had never received even one full and fair review of his case at any stage. The Mexican government submitted its own materials supporting clemency. Mexican consular officials had been working on Robert’s case for years. They prepared detailed briefings on the Vienna Convention violations and the international legal issues.

 On October 2nd, 2018, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights held a special working meeting between United States Representatives and Robert’s legal team. The commission urged the US government as a matter of urgency to halt the execution and comply with their previous recommendations for a new sentencing hearing.

On November 1st, 2018, the IAR issued a press release calling on the United States to suspend Robert’s execution. They reminded the US that they had issued a merits report in 2005 finding violations of Robert’s rights and that those violations had never been remedied. On November 12th, 2018, 2 days before the scheduled execution, the United Nations issued its own statement.

UN human rights experts called on the US government to halt the execution. They noted that Robert had psychosocial disabilities predating the time of the offense and that international law prohibits executing people with such disabilities. And they stated, “Any death sentence carried out in controvention of a government’s international obligations amounts to an arbitrary execution.

 We call for his death sentence to be anulled and for Mr. Ramos Moreno to be retrieded in compliance with due process and international fair trial standards. On November 13th, 2018, one day before the execution, the Mexican government held a press conference in Mexico City. Officials called the scheduled execution a flagrant violation of human rights and international law.

 They noted that if Texas executed Robert, he would be the sixth Mexican national executed after the International Court of Justice ruling. and all six executions had been carried out by Texas. The international pressure was enormous, but Texas wasn’t backing down. On November 12th to 2018, the Texas Board of Pardons and Parrolles issued their decision.

 They declined to recommend either a commutation of sentence or even a six-month reprieve. The execution would proceed as scheduled. Robert’s attorneys filed emergency appeals to multiple courts. On November 13th, a federal judge in Austin heard arguments on a lawsuit Robert had filed against the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, alleging they had systematically denied him the ability to present his ineffective council claims.

The judge dismissed the lawsuit. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied relief. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied relief. Multiple appeals were filed with the US Supreme Court. The execution was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. on November 14th, 2018. As that hour approached, Robert was prepared for the execution chamber, but the process was held.

 Prison officials were waiting for word from the Supreme Court on whether the final appeals would be granted. Hours passed. 6:00 p.m. came and went. 7:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. The condemned man waited, not knowing if he had minutes or hours or possibly even a reprieve. Finally, around 900 p.m., the word came down.

 The US Supreme Court had denied both final appeals. There would be no stay of execution, no further delays. After 25 years on death row and appeals that reached the highest courts in the world, Robert Moreno Ramos’s legal fight was over. Texas doesn’t offer special last meals anymore. That practice ended in 2011 after a condemned prisoner ordered an enormous feast and then refused to eat any of it.

 Now prisoners on their execution day receive the same meal as the general population in their unit. On November 14th, 2018, Robert Mareno Ramos ate whatever was being served that day in the Pollinsky unit where death row is housed. There’s no record of what that meal was. It wasn’t special. It wasn’t chosen. It was just food the same as any other day.

After the Supreme Court’s denial came through around 900 p.m., Robert was transferred from the Palinsky unit to the Huntsville unit where Texas carries out its executions. The drive takes about an hour. During that ride, Robert knew exactly what was coming. He’d been on death row for 25 years.

 He’d watched other men take this same ride and never come back. At the Huntsville unit, there’s a small room called the death chamber. It contains a gurnie where the condemned prisoner is strapped down. There are windows where witnesses can watch, some for the victim’s family, some for the prisoner’s family, and some for the media and some for state officials.

 Robert was brought into the death chamber shortly after arriving at the Huntsville unit. He was strapped to the gurnie. IVas were inserted into his arms. These IVs would deliver pentoarbital, a powerful sedative that in large doses stops breathing and heart function. The warden asked Robert if he had any final words.

 Robert Moreno Ramos spoke, “I am very thankful for all the hard work the Mexican consulate put in a fight over my death sentence, if there was a reason or not. I am thankful for the humane treatment that I was given here at the two prisons that I was at.” He paused, then continued with words that many people found cryptic. I am getting my gold watch that it took the governor 30 years to forge.

 What did he mean by the gold watch? Some interpreted it as sarcasm and suggesting that 30 years on death row was his reward from the state. Others thought he was referring to time itself, the decades he’d spent waiting to die. The meaning remained ambiguous. He ended with, “Thank you, God. Lord, send me a chariot. I’m ready.

” The warden gave the signal. The pentabarbital began flowing through the IV lines into Robert’s body. The drug works quickly. Robert took a couple of deep breaths. He sputtered once. Then he began to snore as the drug sedated him. Within seconds, the snoring stopped and all movement ceased.

 Medical personnel monitored his vital signs. 11 minutes after the injection began, at exactly 9:36 p.m. Central Standard Time, Robert Moreno Ramos was pronounced dead. He became the 11th person executed in Texas in 2018 and the 21st person executed in the United States that year. None of the execution of Robert Mareno Ramos sparked immediate international condemnation.

The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights issued a statement on November 15th, 2018, the day after the execution. They condemned it in the strongest terms. The IACR condemns the judicial execution of Roberto Moreno Ramos which took place on November 14th, 2018 in Texas, United States in violation of his fundamental rights and in defiance of the recommendations issued by the commission. They continued.

The Interamerican Commission declares that the United States in executing Roberto Moreno Ramos pursuant to the criminal proceedings at issue in his case has committed a grave and irreparable violation of the fundamental right to life under article one of the American declaration. The Mexican government issued its own statement expressing outrage.

 A Mexican officials noted that six Mexican nationals had now been executed after the International Court of Justice ruling finding Vienna Convention violations and all six had been executed by Texas. They called it a pattern of disregard for international law. The United Nations reiterated its position that the execution violated international human rights standards, particularly given Robert’s documented mental illness and the procedural violations in his case.

But in Texas, the response was different. The Texas Attorney General’s office defended the execution, stating that Robert’s death sentence was appropriate due to his violent and dangerous nature. They argued that he had received multiple levels of court review and that the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming.

 And supporters of the death penalty pointed out that Robert had spent 25 years on death row, receiving far more review than most criminal defendants ever get. They noted that multiple courts, both state and federal, had examined his claims and found them lacking. The international pressure, they argued, was irrelevant to American criminal justice.

 Critics of the execution pointed to the systematic failures at every stage of Robert’s case. The Vienna Convention violation was never remedied. His trial attorneys presented no mitigating evidence. His first appellet attorney was incompetent. By the time he got competent counsel, the courts ruled it was too late to present new evidence.

No factfinder ever heard about his bipolar disorder, brain damage, or childhood abuse. Is the debate continues about whether Robert Moreno Ramos received justice or whether he was the victim of a system that failed him at every turn. But everyone agrees on one thing. Leticia Ramos, Abigail Ramos, and Jonathan Ramos were innocent victims who died brutal deaths at the hands of a man who saw them as obstacles to his desires.

 Robert Moreno Ramos fits into a disturbing category of killers. Family annihilators who murder for a new relationship. This pattern appears repeatedly in true crime history. And the similarities between cases are striking. Chris Watts in Frederick, Colorado, murdered his pregnant wife, Shannan, and smothered his two daughters, Bella and Celeste, in August 2018, just 3 months before Robert’s execution.

 Chris was having an affair with a co-orker and saw his family as an impediment to his new relationship. Like Robert, Chris tried to hide the bodies and lied to police about what happened. Like Robert, Chris portrayed himself as a concerned family member searching for his missing loved ones. Chris Coleman in Columbia, Illinois, murdered his wife, Sherry, and their two sons, Garrett and Gavin, in May 2009.

Chris was having an affair and wanted to be with his mistress. He staged the scene to look like an intruder had killed his family. Like Robert, Chris lied extensively to police before the evidence caught up with him. The psychology of these family annihilators shares common elements. They see their families not as human beings but as problems to be solved.

 They are deeply narcissistic, viewing their own desires as paramount. When divorce seems too complicated, too expensive, or too threatening to their self-image, they choose murder instead. And they often have relationships lined up before they kill. Sometimes even setting wedding dates like Robert did. After the murders, these men typically play the role of the grieving husband and father.

 They speak at vigils, give media interviews, help with searches. Robert skipped this step. He simply lied about where his family had gone. But the core psychology is the same. The ability to kill the people closest to them and then carry on as if nothing happened. Robert lived with Marissa in that house for 2 months, sleeping above the bodies of his victims. He went to work.

 He maintained conversations with neighbors. He attended to daily life while three corpses decomposed beneath his bathroom floor. This level of compartmentalization is characteristic of family annihilators. I they can separate the horror of what they’ve done from the daily performance of normaly. What makes Robert’s case particularly disturbing is the suggestion that Leticia might not have been his first victim.

The testimony about his previous wife who disappeared in 1989 raises chilling questions. If Robert killed her too, then he was a serial domestic killer, someone who had developed a pattern of murdering women who became inconvenient to him. The fact that Robert got away with that first disappearance may have emboldened him.

 When Leticia stood in the way of his new life with Marissa, Robert already knew he could make a woman vanish without consequences. This time he chose a different method, burial under his own floor. But the principle was the same. Remove the obstacle, hide the evidence, move forward. It’s easy in cases like this to focus so much on the killer, the legal issues, and the execution that we forget about the people who were murdered.

Leticia Abigail and Jonathan Ramos deserve to be remembered as more than just Robert’s victims. Leticia Ramos was 42 years old when she was killed. She had lived with domestic violence for years, enduring regular abuse from Robert. Her son, Osmar, testified that he witnessed Robert abuse her every month.

 She stayed, perhaps for financial reasons, perhaps for the children, perhaps because she feared what Robert would do if she left. So many domestic violence victims faced this impossible choice. Church members in Progresso knew the family. Leticia was part of that community. She had friends, relatives, a life beyond the walls of that house. When she was killed, I her sister immediately knew something was wrong.

Leticia wouldn’t have just disappeared without contact. That sister’s persistence, her refusal to accept Robert’s lies, is what eventually led police to investigate. The two young children were collateral damage in Robert’s plan. They hadn’t done anything wrong. They were simply there, witnesses to what Robert planned to do to their mother, and Robert couldn’t leave witnesses.

 The brutality of killing your own children for convenience is almost incomprehensible. Osmar Ramos lost his mother and two younger siblings that day, but he had already lost his father years before to violence and abuse and cruelty. When Osmar testified against Robert at sentencing, describing the abuse he and his mother endured, he was speaking truth that the defense attorneys never bothered to present.

 Osmar was both a victim and a witness, traumatized by a childhood of violence and then forced to relive it in court. The family of Robert’s previous wife, the woman who disappeared in 1989, never got closure. They testified at his sentencing, but there was no body, no proof, no justice for their missing daughter.

 If Robert killed her, he took that secret to his grave. And Marica Robo was victimized, too, though not physically. She was deceived and manipulated into a relationship based entirely on lies. She married Robert, thinking he was a single man who had helped a widow and her children. She moved into a house where three bodies were buried under the bathroom.

 When the truth came out, the horror of what she’d unknowingly been living with must have been overwhelming. Are the case of Robert Mareno Ramos highlights many of the ongoing debates about capital punishment in the United States. Supporters of the death penalty point to cases like this as exactly what execution is meant for.

 a man who brutally murdered his wife and two children for his own selfish purposes, who had possibly killed before, who showed no genuine remorse. The evidence of Robert’s guilt was never in question. He eventually admitted to burying the bodies. The forensic evidence was overwhelming. This wasn’t a case of disputed facts or questionable conviction.

 Robert Moreno Ramos absolutely killed Leticia, Abigail, and Jonathan. The question was whether execution was the appropriate punishment. Opponents of the death penalty point to the systematic failures in Robert’s case as evidence of why capital punishment is problematic. The Vienna Convention violations were never remedied.

 His trial lawyers failed to present any mitigating evidence. His first appellet lawyer was incompetent. The jury never heard about his bipolar disorder, brain damage, or severe childhood abuse. Does this mean Robert didn’t deserve to die? Or does it mean the process that led to his execution was fundamentally flawed? There’s also the question of mental illness.

 Robert suffered from untreated bipolar disorder for decades. Bipolar disorder can cause severe impairment in judgment and impulse control, especially during manic or mixed episodes. Would Robert have killed his family if his mental illness had been properly treated? We’ll never know. The brain damage issue is similarly complex.

 Robert’s brain scans showed damage to areas controlling impulse regulation and emotional response. This damage likely resulted from severe childhood abuse. To what extent was Robert responsible for actions influenced by brain injury? These aren’t excuses for murder, but they’re factors that jurors are supposed to consider when deciding between life and death.

Robert’s jury never got that chance because his lawyers never presented the evidence. The international law issues add another layer. The International Court of Justice, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, and the United Nations all said that Robert’s execution violated international legal standards.

 Does it matter? Should American courts be bound by international rulings? Or is American sovereignty more important than international treaties? Texas has executed more people than any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. on Texas accounts for more than a third of all executions in the United States during that time.

 The state views capital punishment as a legitimate tool of justice and has shown little interest in international pressure to change its practices. But the international community increasingly sees the death penalty as a human rights violation. Most developed nations have abolished it. The United States is the only wealthy western democracy that still executes people.

And within the United States, executions are concentrated in a handful of states with Texas leading by a wide margin. Robert Mareno Ramos’s execution occurred in 2018 at a time when American death penalty practice was declining. Only 21 people were executed in the entire United States that year, down from a peak of 98 in 1999.

 Our public support for capital punishment had been steadily dropping. Some states were abolishing the death penalty. Others had informal moratoriums, but Texas continued executing at a steady pace. 11 executions in 2018, all by lethal injection, all at the Huntsville unit, all following the same procedure that ended Robert’s life.

 After spending more than 25 years on death row, Robert Moreno Ramos was executed with lethal injection at Texas State Penitentiary in 2018. The facts of what he did are not in dispute. On February 7th, 1992 in Progresso, Texas, Robert Marina Ramos murdered his wife, Leticia, with a sledgehammer. He murdered his daughter Abigail. He murdered his son, Jonathan.

He buried all three bodies under the bathroom floor of their home. 3 days later, he married another woman and moved her into that house, living above the burial site for 2 months while lying to everyone about where his family had gone. He was caught because Leticia’s sister refused to accept his lies. He confessed because the evidence was overwhelming.

 He was convicted because the jury saw through his defense attorney’s weak claims about drug dealers. He was sentenced to death because his lawyers presented no reason to spare him. He spent a quarter century on death row because his appeals, though numerous, ultimately failed. The Vienna Convention violations weren’t remedied. The ineffective council claims were procedurally barred.

 The international pressure made no difference to Texas courts. Was justice served? That depends on how you define justice. For Leticia, Abigail, and Jonathan, there is no justice that can bring them back. They died brutally, murdered by someone who should have protected them. Their lives were cut short because Robert Moreno Ramos valued his own desires over their existence.

 For Osmar and the rest of the family members, Robert’s execution may have provided some closure. The man who destroyed their family, who terrorized them for years, who took away people they loved, that man is gone now permanently. For the international legal community, Robert’s execution represents a failure of the United States to honor its treaty obligations and respect international legal standards.

 The Vienna Convention was violated and no American court provided a remedy for the death penalty debate. Robert’s case provides ammunition for both sides. He was undeniably guilty of horrific crimes. Yet his path to execution was marked by legal failures at multiple stages. And what we know for certain is this. On February 7th, 1992, three people died who should still be alive.

 Leticia would be 74 years old now. Abigail would be 39. Jonathan would be 35. They would have lived full lives, had families of their own, experienced joys and sorrows and all the ordinary moments that make up a human existence. Robert Moreno Ramos took all of that away from them because he wanted to marry someone else and didn’t want the inconvenience of divorce.

 That’s what their lives were worth to him, less than the hassle of legal paperwork. On November 14th, 2018, at 9:36 p.m., Robert’s own life ended on a gurnie in Huntsville, Texas. He was 64 years old. He’d spent more time on death row than Abigail and Jonathan had been alive when he killed them, and his last words included, “I’m ready.

” After 25 years of waiting, perhaps he was. But ready or not, the state of Texas ended his life, completing a process that began 26 years earlier with a sledgehammer, a bathroom floor, and a wedding date that couldn’t be postponed. The case of Robert Mareno Ramos is closed. The condemned is dead. The victims remain gone, and the questions about justice, international law, and capital punishment continue to be debated.

 This has been the story of Robert Mareno Ramos, executed November 14th, 2018 for the murders of Leticia Ramos, Abigail Ramos, and Jonathan Ramos. May the victims rest in peace.