The Boxer, His Wife, & The Hit On His Life: Ramon & Lulu Sosa

then you're Roger. There you go. And there's like really a thing in music where it's like if you end on a certain note, it doesn't feel like the end you need a punctuation mode on it. Yeah, that stuff. Well, Hey everyone, Hello, how are you doing? Everybody? God, laryngitis, Larry's X. Now I'm recovering from a cold and so yeah, I'm about four octaves down right now. Um. There is

something about the sick voice that I get. You know, sometimes you get like a Kathleen Turner, like really smoky hot kind of tone and you're like, I wish I felt better. There's a whole Friends episode about that, I think, where Phoebe gets sick and like y she feels like she's got It's the sexiest her voice has ever sounded. She tries to stay sick I imagine, right, but then she keeps like hacking, coughing in the middle of her songs too, so it's like it does not get sexy.

That's how I feel right now, like I've got this deep voice and like you have no idea what's going on in the back of my nose. I'm not even gonna share it with you all. It's all the mucus. That's the no. I wasn't going to say that word because it's so disgusting, but you know, we're gonna get through it. I'm gonna here. Here's what I'll do. Here's an experiment. Right now, as I'm saying this, I'm going to elevate the pitch of my voice in post to try and make it sound Okay, never mind that, lets

just go back to no filters. Just added myself twenty minutes of work for that bit. It's gonna be hilarious, shaking my head over it. It could be so funny. Uh well, yeah, I mean so, I won't waste a lot of time because I want to make sure my voice gets through the end of this episode, and this one's very exciting. Yes, many a twist and turn, because Ramon and Lulu sosa, we're totally happily married couple once they found true love in each other and they felt

like their lives were a paradise. In fact, a totally useless couple for this show by all standards, an average day. Why would we ever cover them? Well, after financial troubles hit them, their relationships started to fall apart, and scared of the financial troubles Lulu would face if they divorced, she came up with a rock solid plan. She would simply high you're a hit man to half her husband killed. Oh okay, yeah, but it wasn't so easy. And this

story is full of twists. So I say we just get right into it and hear the story of Ramon and Lulu. I'm ready, let's go. Hey the French, come listen. Well, Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no match making, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love it might be any type of person at all,

and abstract concept are a concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second glance ridiculous romans a production, if I heart radio Ramon Sosa was a former professional fighter and one of the most respective boxing trainers in Texas.

Ramon had moved here from Puerto Rico when he was young, and he started boxing when he was just seventeen years old, but in an interview with ESPN, he said that after the industry sort of made him feel like a quote piece of meat, you know, like he was getting traded around. Everybody was just trying to make money off of him. He was getting regularly tenderized in and out of the ring.

Uh He decided to start working as a boxing trainer instead, and young hopeful prize fighters, even Olympic boxers, would come to Houston to be trained by Ramon. A story on the CBS news show forty eight Hours said that Ramone married young. He had three children, and even though that marriage didn't work out, his daughter Mia and her two brothers loved having a local celebrity for a dad. They called him a jokester, and Mia said, quote, every time we were around, it was tons of laughs and smiles.

Everyone knew Maria Durante's as Lulu. She was a beautiful woman who moved to Texas from Mexico in the early two thousands on a visitor's visa, and she had her son and daughter with her. She worked as a housekeeper and then MSUs and she spent her nights dancing at a local Latin club col she's a party girl. I guess a little bit. What else are you doing in Texas? Got a dance? I assume nachos? I hope seriously. Now, One night in two seven, the club was playing salsa music,

so Lulu had put on her best dress. She come out to dance, Her cares away and all eyes were on her. She tore up the dance floor and after presumably having like a full on flash dance bucket of water? Right, what was dirty dancing to Havannah Knights? After having a full on dirty dancing to Havannah Knights experience? Although she should Mexico now from Cuba, So okay, dirty dancing three Mexico City Party, I think it's what that was. Call

me and we'll work on the title. Well. Anyway, after doing her movie bio back on the dance floor in six inch heels, by the way, which I can't do. I think I don't think I can sit down and six and else, she stepped away to go get a drink, and she accidentally stepped heel first onto someone's foot nightmare scenario. The man, of course yelped in pain, but he looked up and saw this gorgeous woman and all the pain in his foot mysteriously went away, and the man was

Ramon so soft. Lulu apologized, I'm so sorry. What can I do? What can I do? And Ramon took a second and he's like breathing through the pain, but he looks up at her. He says, hey, you know what, how about a dance that'll make my foot feel better? But it doesn't. The rest was history. They were on the dance floor the whole rest of the night. Their first song was Bluharia by l Grand Combo to Puerto Rico, and that became their song. Friends said that they were

the perfect pair. They complimented each other, they flattered each other other, and they built a huge network in their community. Their friend Beth Blair said on forty eight Hours that they were quote too fun, outgoing people who loved a party, loves to get together with friends and have barbecues, and the more people, the merrier. Now Lulu doated on Ramone. She treated him like a King. She brought him coffee in the morning, made him breakfast. He never had an

empty drink glass in the evening. She's just totally into him. She's like, I want to anticipate all your need. So within a year, Ramone popped the big question. Lulu started crying, she cannot wait to get married. It was just all hearts and stars and flowers. And on March fifteenth, two thousand nine, their families emerged and she became Lulu Sosa, a real Brady Bunch kind of story. Your kids, my kids, two of us. It's going to be a beautiful story

of a beautiful life together. Now. The next year after they got married, they opened a second Jim Together where Lu who ran the business side of things, and she also became a personal trainer herself. And within a few months they had pulled in almost two hundred clients. They were making around twenty thousand dollars a month, so doing really well. They bought a brand new house, cars, motorcycles, you know, just living a life of luxury. Now. Lulu

love to shop. She would go buy new dresses and jewelry. Meanwhile, Ramone started a nonprofit called Young Prospects that helped kids from gangs and troubled backgrounds get into boxing. So we have sort of a more selfless approach to the money spending. I guess Ramon side, but whatever you know, opposites attract. Everything's great. Life is good Now. Remote sponsored Lulu and her mother and her two teenage children to get US citizenship, and this process took about three years. But by this

point in their marriage things started to get rocky. They were fighting more frequently, friends and families started to see them drift apart, and soon after their business started to suffer too. By the time six years had gone by in their marriage, there was really little love left between them. Money at the gym was drying up, and Lulu started confiding in friends that Ramon had been abusive. She even

claimed that he once raped her. Now March of Lulu hired a divorce lawyer, and she brought him pictures of scratches on her arms, legs, and shoulders, as well as a picture of where Ramon had punched a crack in their bedroom door. Now with the evidence in someone else's hands, she felt safe serving Ramone divorce papers. But things were not easy financially for either of them. Remember, the money

was drying up. So for the time being, Lulu and Ramone had to continue living in the same house, awkward, and they slept on different floors. They didn't interact much obviously. Um. Lulu continue to manage the second gym, while Ramon mostly stayed at the first gym. He was training athletes and working with the Young Prospects Foundation, And one of the kids in the foundation was named Mundo. At least that's the name that he gave an interviews after all this

stuff went down. This kid had a rough background. ESPN said he joined a Houston gang when he was just twelve years old. Um, he had already been shot twice in three different incidents before he ended up in jail. So he just had a like a messy situation, really tough situation. And when he got out of jail, he and his then girlfriend decided to move to a whole other part of the city and try to like turn their lives around, get ship on track. Yeah, she had

a lot to do with that apparently. You know, she was like, you gotta choose me or your your life in the streets. Basically for him for making that choice, Mundo met Ramon after joining his gym and the boxing trainer took him under his wing. Mundo wanted to stop street fighting and learned how to be a real boxer. Ramon had this like special, specialized Puerto Rican style of boxing that everybody really liked um and he saw him fighting and he was like, that just looks professional, It

looks real. I want to do that. So over the years, he'd gotten to know Ramon and Lulu both pretty well, and one night he overheard Lulu talking to her teenage daughter. They were discussing a patron of the gym who had connections to a hit man, an uncle of his that apparently could make bodies disappear. Mundo almost ignored it, but then he heard them say the name Ramon, and Mundo said nothing at this point, but the next day he

decided to confront Lulu and ask her about it. This is when Lulu confided in Mundo that Ramon had been abusive to her and that she wished he would quote disappear. And Mundo would always tried to stay out of their fights in recent years, but he frequently got dragged between them, but this new information was a lot to he like. Went back to his punching bag, he hit it a few times. He knew what she meant by disappear, and after a few minutes he went back to her and

he said, quote, I might know somebody. He told her he had two guys, Pucko and John Boy. Now Paco was the man, okay, he was so revered in Nundo's gang that they had painted a mural of his face two stories high neighborhood. That is intense. We don't have any of those we got. We got a two story tall mural of John Lewis. What did he ever do for anybody? Was super cool? Have to say, And none of our murals notorious gangsters. I don't think was there ever a two foot tall mural of like Pablo Escobar

two ft tall mural? Maybe? Sorry? Well, Lulu was interested in this Paco guy sounds pretty good, and so they met a few weeks later, and Mundo texted Paco in front of Lulu saying quote, Paco, I'm here with the patrona. Y'all guys, take a truck and one g after job done. Oh seven white single cab, twenty rims see it? Oh no, And Paco texted back, quote, I talked with John Boy and it's all good homie. Just need the tools. Damn A thousand bucks in a truck, that's it. Yeah, fill

a guy. She would give him remotees truck at a thousand dollars. Amazing. Now, how this makes me think about when, um, whenever there's an outlaw in a movie and they get their wanted poster and it's really low and then hella offended, Like I feel like I feel like remote, Like, excuse me. A thousand dollars, that's it. But you gotta think that money is tight. So maybe it's not so much. You paid a thousand dollars to have me killed, but you paid you know what percentage of your current money? Did

you give a lot? Maybe it was a lot. That's why you should we kill for a rich class, right for a percentage of their If Warren Buffett paid a thousand dollars to have me killed, I'd be really offended. If you did, I'd be like, that's understandable. I mean it would have been irresponsible for you to offer more. Okay, cool, I'm glad to know that I can lowball it. If I hadn't need this, so it would be a thousand

bucks after the job was done. But for now, Lulu gave Mundo a hundred dollars for Paco to go buy a stolen gun. Almost three weeks past and Lulu and Mundo spoke every few days about this, and soon she told him that Ramon was about to sign divorce papers and she was getting worried because if the divorce went through, she would get nothing. If he died before the divorce, she said, quote, I'll have insurance for life, a pension for life. This is my retirement, Mundo, his life is

my retirement. They agreed that it had to happen before this court date, and Mundo even offered her a few opportunities to change her mind, saying he would work it all out with Paca, but she insisted. He texted her once in Spanish, quote just remember once he's dead, there's no coming back from that, and she responded, quote clear as water. Wow, okay now. According to ESPN, on July twenty, Paco's truck pulled up to meet Lulu in a designated parking lot. She hopped in and Paco said, quote, we

got him in the morning. Lulu didn't react except to say, quote, I've got a thousand dollars. Paco held out a phone and showed her a picture. There he was Ramote lying in a ditch, wearing only his underwear, his hands tied behind his back, with a bullet hole in the side of his head and blood coming out of his nose. Paco tells her he fought for his life. After a pause, Lulu said quote, he won't get up anymore, and started laughing.

Paco took the thousand dollars and left, and Lulu went home, finally free of Ramon, with her future set and secure. Earlier that day, somewhere out in the Texas Desert, Ramon's body lay in a recently dug ditch. Paco kicked some dirt onto Ramon's face, then held up his phone and snapped a few pictures. Then a few seconds later, Ramon opened his eyes. Did we get it? He asks? Paco nodded and told him he thought the picture looked pretty good.

Ramon stood up as one of the nearby police officers cut his ties and wiped the blood from his head. What Paco wasn't Paco at all. He was an officer from the Montgomery County Precinct three Constable's office, and together they had just faked Ramon's death. And we're gonna fill in all the details on that and find out what happened next right after this commercial bridge, Welcome back to

the show, everybody now. So Ramone is alive and well Lulu thinks he's as dead as advertising on Twitter topical topical. So how did this happen? All right? Well, it all starts with our friend Mundo. Mundo showed up in two thousand five at Ramon's jim and, like we said, he had come from this really rough background. The ESPN article, which is called dead Man Walking by Tisha Thompson and Kevin Shaw, says that Ramone taking him in was quote the first time any male figure took an interest in

his life. So, I mean this guy was really important to him. Their relationship helped give Ramon the idea to start the Young Prospects nonprofit, and the two of them became like a surrogate father and son to each other. And Mundo did admire Lulu too. He said that while Ramon was like a father to him, Lulu was like

a good friend. And he said she came into the gym and started calling the shots, quote, put in a lot of work and basically took care of the business, so he did avoid those fights as their relationships soured, although he said he never saw them get physical with each other and we will get more into that later, but at a certain point, Lulu would keep calling Mundo aside and complaining to him about Ramon all the time, and when the ESPN interviewer asked if she was trying

to get him involved in their disputes, Mundo replied, quote tried tried as a good word, more like dragged into it. So he felt like she was just like really trying to rope him in and get Mundo in between their fights. And it wasn't just Mundo who felt the repercussions of their relationship souring. Ramon's own three children. They were pushed out of the family really early. Actually, his daughter Mia said quote, she didn't want anything to do with us.

We were just nothing to her. It wasn't like she was trying to be a step mom. She knew we weren't really going to be in her picture. Yeah. So no good feelings between Ramon's own children and Lulu. Yeah, not much of a Brady Bunch situation, not at all. So their friend Beth Blair told CBS that Lulu didn't like it when Ramon spent money on his own kids. She preferred the money for herself, her two kids, and

her mother. So Mia and her brothers felt like Lulu was deliberately driving a wedge between them and their father, who they saw less and less of. Really wicked stepmother kind of vibes the kids here. Ultimately, none of the three of them even went to Ramone and Lulu's wedding,

with Mia calling that day quote heartbreaking. With his kids out of the way and her own in the picture, Lulu and Ramone started working on getting everyone's citizenship, and Ramon says after that went through in that's when things started to go downhill between them. Over the next two year years, finances started a dwindle, and Ramon couldn't really figure out why the gym was actually doing really well. New clients were coming in. He saw people working out

new faces all the time. But he says, quote, but when I see the bottom line here, it's not adding up. I was wondering that because they were saying they're getting my clients a month, that doesn't just go away out of nowhere. The Ramon started to worry that Lulu must be skimming money. But then the divorce papers came in and Ramon said, quote, she wanted everything, She just wanted for me to leave, and she keeps everything he claimed to offer her and even split divorce, but she wouldn't

accept that. And then she started to play dirty because, according to Ramon, she contacted sponsors of his nonprofit and accused him of embezzling, and ultimately those sponsors had to pull out and the Young Prospects Group closed. Investigators later said there was no evidence of any wrongdoings in the nonprofit. That is sad, all those kids he was trying to help. This is this is very suspicious, and again we'll get more into this, but um, but it does feel kind

of weird at this point. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like everybody's having kind of a tough time with Lulu scenes here. So when Mundo overheard her talking about the client with ties to a hit man, he immediately knew what she was trying to do. Mundo's violent background came flashing back to him and he had a tough choice to make.

He knew as someone looked like when they wanted someone else dead, and he saw that look in Lulu's eyes, he knew that if he did not get between them to protect his friend, she would find a way to kill Ramone. So he approached her. He made sure he knew what she meant, and when he was certain, he invented the story about Taco. So Lulu took the date.

She agreed to hire Paco, just like we said in the first part, but instead of going to some old hit man that Undo claims to know, he went straight to Ramo and he told him, quote, Hey, this lady wants to kill you. At first, Ramon couldn't believe it, but Mundo was dead serious. It was not like him to make something like this up for a joke or anything like that. But Mundo had already come up with a plan. He told Ramone that Ramon would play the

hit man. They would get a burner phone, and Mundo would go back to Lulu and in front of her he would text with this Paco that would actually be Ramon with this burner phone. They agreed on this whole plan and away from the conversation to play out, and they did exactly that. ESPN reports that Paco wasn't even

just some random name either. Mundo had seen the nine film Blood In, Blood Out, where Benjamin Bratt plays a character named Paco, and this guy was a man so revered in his gang that they painted his mural on this Who's story build And at the end of the movie, Paco turned out to be an undercover cop. So it was cryptic, almost like a warning to Lulu, but Mundo says,

it just felt right to use that name. I guess she had not seen the film, and Mundo started secretly recording all his conversations with Lulu, and Lulu went through Ramon's watch collection and pulled several out to use as a down payment for Paco. Here's ramons watches watch a gun for his own murder. Oh my god, that's you know what. And that's the thing too. If you're going to drop a thousand bucks to have me killed, at least have the respect to make it your own money,

sell your own stuff. I will not sell my stuff to have me killed. Listen, if you had some stuff that was worth a thousand dollars, we would have sold it long ago. Will you kill my husband for this eight year old play station four? It's got three versions of sky rim on it. It's my retirement plan. I'm gonna sit here and plan until I waste away. So yeah, she gets these watches, she gives them to Paco, who's

fortunately Ramons, so he just gets his watches back. She also gave him the hundred dollars for Paco to buy a gun. This was a cash transaction, so Ramone and Mundo decided it's time to involve the police because there's no paper trail to follow. Once cash exchange his hands, you know, and they've got all these conversations. You're done, when you're done for the lou Now, going to the police was actually a really big deal for Mundo because, as a former gang member, he was sworn to never

go to police about anything ever. He said, quote, even if I try to make people understand that it's to save my friends life, it's still seen as snitching. So like, if you talk to the cops at all, you might say something that implicates me or someone care about. It doesn't even matter about that. It's just like the cops

are a rival gang. You can't go to them for help, you know, Like it's not cool to ever talk to them about any crime because if you're helping the cops, you're helping you know, our enemy, basically, Okay, that's a good point. I guess if you if you see it that way, I think that's how that's how he felt his people were going to see it. Maybe like if you're in the gang, we handle it. You come to me,

I handle it. Yeah, even if that even it, really I think at the end of the day, it's just a blanket statement of just like, I don't care what the situation is. You never ever ever talked to cops. Well, they really meant that ship. So Mundo told police that he was breaking a major code and then he faced real consequences. It's just like, you know, protect me please as a witness. Now, they spoke with Lieutenant Mike Atkins, who initially had a hard time believing everything they were

telling him. The story sounds crazy obviously, but Undo was right. I mean, with his background, this was a really big deal for him to beat in a police station like this. So Lieutenant Atkins decided this is probably pretty serious. They went over all of Mundo and Lulu's conversations and text jets. They made sure that she really wants him dead, that she was willing to pay for it. Technically, they have what they needed to arrest Lulu right then, and there.

But Atkins thought that if this beautiful woman walked into that courtroom with no police record, abuse allegations and a halfway decent lawyer, she could probably walk. I mean, at this point, she just paid a hundred bucks for a gun and stall and and made a few comments. So you know, he's feeling like this isn't really enough to

put her away. And this brings me to a thought because I was like, well, y'all had an opportunity here to stop this crime from happening right and or progressing any further, stop anybody from getting hurt or doing anything any more illegal than they'd already done. And I see the police here choosing two instead of stopping it where it is, getting a woman in trouble for as much as she had done already and nothing more. They say, well,

let's try and get her in more trouble. Let's try and escalate this to the point where we can really get her some jail time. And I don't see the point in that. Yeah, I see what you're saying, because it's like, why do you want I mean, prevent the crime? Crime? Prevention is not the goal. I guess in a way, it's got sort of a twisted logic because he's like, if she gets out, she gets another chance to hire different, like an actual hit man, and actually kill this man.

So we need to make sure that we have enough to prevent her from succeeding in that goal. But I see, I do see what you mean, because sometimes at least like years of like monitoring crazy crimes going on, and they're like, it's to get us to bigger you know, a bigger collar or whatever, but you feel like you

just get them while you can't. If that looks if she was Pablo Escobar, right, or even if she had talked to an actual hit man and they were like, oh, we could follow this guy the chain up here, then you know you'd have something to like, let me lead further into this, let's see where this goes. But I'm like, probably this woman again, no police record at all, you've

never done anything wrong. Probably she gets caught in the middle of something like this before it goes too far, and she's like, oh my god, I can't believe us. Stupid I was. I'm never gonna do I'm moving, I'm never gonna do anything like that again. I just need to get out of this guy's life. That's what I would anticipate, and I think she deserves that chance at

this point. You know, I think she deserves the opportunity to be told, hey, we know you're doing illegal things and you're going to get in trouble for what you've done so far, even if it's not much trouble. She deserves that chance to to not do something more illegal. It's weird, especially with again, like it's not like there's a crime boss she's working for that they could track down if they let her do what she needs to do.

I don't know, it's just weird. I guess that's a good point, Like does she actually have the capacity or the way, like the community to hire a hit man or whatever? I mean. I guess she knows this guy at the Jim, But that seems a little right little Lundo Lundo was worried that she would do it if

she didn't have his interference. So, you know, I don't know the neighborhood they lived in, the people that went to the gym, she might have had the opportunity, but again, you scare somebody and they get caught in the middle of it. Obviously, at that point, if she did it, she would definitely get caught. Yeah, you know, having attempted it once already, so I think it would have gone away. I think none of the none of the rest of this would have happened. I could see it, you could

see it. I'm not a law enforcer, so I don't know. So Ultimately, Lieutenant Atkins determined that quote Ramon's life was seriously in danger, but he had some even scarier news for Ramon. He would have to keep living with his would be assassin, Lulu Um because they needed more evidence, and Ramone did not like that. Of course, he was worried that Lulu might snap one night and just kill

him herself, and Mundo didn't like it. He was terrified that someone might find out, or that Lulu would lose her patience and both of them could end up dead. But he knew that this was the best plan for him to save his friend, so he kept talking to Lulu. Lulu kept implicating herself further. Mundo even tried to get her to back down a few times. In one recording, he said, quote, if you change your mind, you change your mind, nothing happens. Nobody's forcing you to do it.

But Lulu responds, quote it's a decision I already made. If I say it, I do it. And then came the order. She wanted him dead before July, when Ramon might have signed divorce papers. So the police decided it was time to take things to the next level and fake Ramone's death, and we'll get into how they did that. Right after this Welcome back to the show, Mundo arranged a meeting between Lulu and Paco, and Paco, of course,

would be an undercover police officer. As she and Mundo met Paco in an empty parking lot and climbed into his truck, Lulu vented about Ramon and him screwing up her life. The undercover Poco asked, quote, this guy, do you want him to be pretty beaten up, bucked over? Do you want us to beat him up or what? And Lulu replied quote, no, no beating, I want him dead.

And Lieutenant Atkins was in an unmarked vehicle nearby, listening over the wire that Mundo was wearing, and he told the ESPN quote, I was struck by the lack of emotion. When you deal with someone who has no emotion, shows no empathy, no sympathy, those are truly truly dangerous individuals. And when they got out of the truck, Lulu and Mundo shook hands, but he felt really weird touching the

woman that he had just betrayed again. He knew her pretty well too, and he had he was close with her, so I'm sure this was very complicated and it felt really weird. And then she pulled him in for a hug, which he described saying quote, I think I held on for like two more seconds because I knew what time it was. So he's kind of like didn't want to hug her because he felt really icky about what he

had done. But he also was like, I mean, you made your choices, trying to talk you out of it, so let me just hold you a little second before you get in trouble for a really a lot of get into a lot of trouble. I think what's interesting here too, is that Mundo's really saving her life because he stopped her from actually killing someone, and that would have likely ended much differently. That's a good point point.

He's really being a very good friend. Yeah. Now, the next morning, Ramon met with police officers and they drove out to an empty piece of county owned land very far from the main road. Ramon thought of the song that he and Lulu first danced to Bruharia. In Spanish, it means witchcraft, and one of the lines of the song is miki or you want to send me to my cold grave? Oh my lord, did she request the song? Yeah?

I don't know if this is just like, how interesting that that was our song the whole time, Lieutenant Atkins told forty eight Hours quote, being a bunch of middle aged men, we don't, you know, we're not exactly versed on applying makeup. So apparently all these cops and Ramone got together and they had to watch YouTube and learn how to apply makeup from a bunch of teenage girls. I love the thought of all of them like crowded around a TikTok. Yeah, it's just like I love this brush.

Oh my god. The men can't find out that we can shape shift right. The assistant d A was there. He brought them pictures of real corpses with bullet wounds to the head, and they poked out a good reference photo and they showed it to Ramon. He was horrified. Obviously, I think most civilians don't want to see real dead bodies would be. I would have been like, I'm not doing the makeup myself, So y'all just keep that picture.

I mean, I like it to look real too, but I don't need to see a real dead body that has been shot through the head. And again, y'all do in the makeup you look at the reference photo, are in the model here? I don't need to see it now. They used corn syrup and food coloring. Smart. We have talked many times on the show about our own blood recipe. Right. They also learned that from YouTube. They also borrowed a police makeup kit that they used for disaster drills. Which

what do they need for makeup wise? For st drills? I want to look like a Morton Joe or something right, right, or it's like, oh, there was a tornado and now it aged me and now they just have hair sprayed to put their hair way up. We really want to be immersive about this. Someone was electrocuted and they yeah, they do the crazy hair sticking out and like looking. And Ramon called it all very amateur like Halloween level stuff for kids. But they did a very good job.

They had Ramon stripped to his underwear, they tied his hands behind his back, They laid him in the ditch that they dug for him, and then they kicked dirt on his face. Ramon said it was scary and emotional, and the quote it was eerie. I was sitting there with my eyes closed, thinking what am I doing here? Why did it come down to this? It could have

been a simple divorce. This never should have happened. Horrifying, I mean him was like, Yeah, the picturing your immortality sitting there with a fake bullet hole in your head, that that was meant to really happen, seriously, and and that your wife, who you slept with and built a life with, is the one who planned it, and just adds to that horror. Right. Plus he had spent the last few weeks living in the same house with her,

knowing that she was plotting to kill him. His brain must have been just whirling around a lot and a lot of crazy ways. Now a few photos later, they had what they needed and it was time to bring the evidence to Lulu. They met her in the same parking lot as before, but this time there were two hidden cameras in the fake Paco's car, and they pointed right at Lulu's face. As the officer told her, quote we got him today this morning. As she betrayed no emotion.

On seeing the picture of Ramon, fake Paco said, quote the dumbass fought, which made Lulu laugh. He told her. Ramon begged and said, quote, why are you doing this to me, to which Lulu replied, quote stupid for hitting me, dumbass I Fake Paco asked he would hit you, and Lulu maintained yes, very disgraceful. After a moment, she said, quote, he won't get up anymore, and she started laughing. She gave them the thousand dollars as she went on her way.

Lieutenant Atkins said her laugh was bone chilling, and it's kind of freaky. But it's also interesting too. She said even here to Paco that he was hitting her. That's true, She's she was maintaining that story. It's real. If it's not, she was keeping that up. And the next morning, Atkins and a few officers showed up at the gym telling Lulu they had received a missing person's complaint about her husband.

She told them she hadn't seen him or talked to him, that they were going through a divorce and the last time she'd seen him was over a week ago. She acted concerned, knowing of course, that eventually the police would likely find his body or realize he was missing. So, you know, she had to play the worried wife, like, oh my god, what's happen? What do you mean, what do you think you win? Or what's going on? You're too good at that. I've been practicing for a couple

of years. Interesting, Listen, you said I could lowball it. No, I said you could spend a high percentage of the money you have. It's not low balling. If it's everything you out, that's what I want you to spend. Oh okay, that's very different. All right, well now I'm not interested. That's how you do it. That's the price too high for your wife to have you assassinated, and she'll just turn away. So she's playing the worried wife. And they asked her, quote, he hasn't contacted you in the last

twenty four hours. She said no, And they say at MS SOSA, you're under arrest. Ramone had to call his kids and tell them what happened. His daughter, Mia said she had just gotten home from a shift at a comedy club where she was working, and she saw her brother sitting on her bed on his phone, and she knew from his face that something was wrong. He handed her the phone and Ramon was on the line. His voice was shaking and low, and he said, quote, I'm safe,

but Lulu tried to have someone kill me. Now. Mia just fell back against the walls, slid down and started crying. She had always found Lulu to be, you know, cold and mean. She didn't like her, but who would expect something like this? That's intense. After her arrest, Lulu agreed to a divorce settlement that gave Ramon the gym and the house. That's so wild like she ended up a

worse off. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, as she knew she'd been caught, right, and she pretty much I didn't try to fight this too hard, um, because what could she do right? Right? So I don't know exactly how their divorce settlement went down, but ultimately Ramon got everything, he said. His quote was she just gave up everything. How weird to go so hard for it and then immediately give it up. Maybe you were right. If she had been scared off, she just would have dropped it. Well. Then,

after spending fifteen months in jail. In October sixteen, Lulu went before a judge and agreed to a plea deal. She pled guilty to a reduced charge of second degree solicitation of murder, which allowed her to avoid a trial with like a potential life sentence. At the end, she never made eye contact with Ramon in the courtroom. Lulu's divorced lawyer said on forty eight Hours that he believes Ramon Sosa was quote someone who was very violent to his wife, and he felt that fear was the factor

that motivated Lulu to do what she did. He said the photo of a broken door proved just how strong and dangerous Ramon was and kind of points to a temper. Sure, you don't just break a bus shit open, you know, if you have a normal temper. I feel like, no, not usually. I mean, you know, I've slammed a couple of game controllers in my day and broken a phone or two. Then I've you know, lightly tossed at a wall.

Maybe I don't know if I've ever broken I remember very clearly once being a kid and being like enraged about something that probably did not matter, but I was like so mad that I really wanted to pick up something and throw it like I have seen in the movie. And I remember I had a little ceramic thing that my grandmother given me, and I really had was thinking about picking. I was so mad. I was like so ready to crush it. But I was like, I'm gonna

be really upset later that I woke that. Yeah, And so i've I don't think I break much stuff because I'll be mad at myself later. And I really think about that. Oh my god. I remember one where I was drawing. I had this big, big, huge sheet of paper. I was drawing a bear. I was like five years old, right, and I and I just figured out how to do the feet where I want them, and they looked like a little just cartoon bare feet, right, and I drew

one of them backwards. I had the foot going the wrong way because it was such a big piece of paper. And I was so upset because I had been so proud of what I was doing, and it just like really just got to me, and I was mad, and I ripped the paper and then I was very upset because I now I had ripped it, you know, and like I just made everything so much worse. So you're

right not to throw that ceramic. I think I was right, but I have seen you, in frustration punch your laptop to the point where it doesn't work any I have hit my laptop and it's you know what it is, it's always excel. It's almost always well, it's so funny is you're like slamming your fist into your laptop, like why won't this work? And I'm like, well, I have some ideas, but you know not to say that, Ramon, I don't know I did, or you know, punch the

hole in the door. Does that mean he would punch a hole in someone's face or does that mean he just like had a moment of you know, ripping that bear, or that he's like I so much don't want to hit someone in the face, that I hit this wall

and stead or at this door, whatever it was. Now Mundo and Ramon's daughter Mia, close friends of the family, and Ramone himself, I'll say that this guy knew he was a professional boxer, and in that he understood how dangerous his hands were and that he would never ever use them outside of a ring. Right Like he's he respects the power that he has in punching something like That's what he does, for he's literally designed to break things when he punches them. Did he sit there and

go so strong? I hope. So there you got millennials for um. Ramon said quote, not even in the streets, not even in the reats. For her to say something like that was really hurtful. He's referring to you know, when he's fought. He only fights in the ring, right right, He's like regulation fights only Yeah. The one thing that Ramon did admit to was punching the bedroom door, he said in the CBS interview quote that I admit to. She was accusing me of stuff, and that's one thing

I did. I took my frustrations out, but I never ever put a hand on her. Pictures of scratches on her upper arm and her leg, he says, those are fabricated. Lulu was sentenced to twenty years in prison, and she comes up for parole once per year. The last information we could find was that in twenty nineteen she was denied for the second time, So no telling. I guess if she's out today, she could be out there right

now dancing in a salsa club near you. ESPN did reach out to Lulu and try to get her side of this story, but she never responded, which makes this a really tough It makes it so tough, so hard, because well, all we have is his side of the story, really, I mean him in Mundo's But we don't know any We don't really have her swearing on record to anyone

well that that he did that to her. We I mean, we do in a way because she told her divorce lawyer, and there's friends of hers that have come forward and said, yeah, that Ramon was a piece of ship. He beat her, he raped her, all this stuff. All of them just heard it from her. But you know, I mean, this is one of those cases. Yeah, that's that's how it goes.

When how how many times a woman goes to the police and says or a lawyer and says, here, he beat me, and the guy just says, like, as she faked that, you know, and then she does something stupid and that's all you need for her case to fall apart. On the other hand, you know, she does do some things that call her credibility into question because she, for example, the nonprofit she called and made up claims that he was embezzling from his nonprofit, and they did investigate that

and said there was nothing wrong with the nonprofit. He was actually doing good things. So that's one where I'm like, Okay, were you trying to undermine this guy's life and destroy him so you could take all his money? I have to say, as someone who runs a nonprofit, little mad at these sponsors were not asking. Because nonprofit records are public, you can go look at that ship if you feel confused.

I don't know. Again, I don't know she even provided evidence, or if they really just took her word for it because that was his wife and they were like, okay, she would know. I don't know, yeah, or if it's just it was just like, well, there's claims out there. This is getting messy. We got to back off of our sponsorship for a minute. Yeah, which I could see too. I get maybe if you're working with gang members, that's

already kind of dicey. I don't know. Yeah. And the other side of it too, is that it's also possible that she made up stories about him and bezzling from his own nonprofit, and also he was abusing her physically. Yeah. Absolutely mean those things could both be true too, So I could just have been like, I need to say what people will care about. It's hard to I mean not fortunately I don't have to make a judgment on this case, but it's it's hard to judge for myself. Now.

Mundo gave his interview to ESPN and said, quote, I really appreciate this opportunity because nobody, nobody ever had asked me how you know, how do you feel? He said? Everyone involved got quote broken in a certain way, not just Ramon, but him and Lulu as well well. Then a local TV show made everything a million times worse for Mundo by showing his face on TV and using his real name. So, you know, we talked about how going to the police was a huge risk for Mundo.

So now the gang knew what he had been up to. He was in danger now, so the police got involved. They had to pull the story from the internet, but Mundo was soon getting threats against his life and the lives of his wife and children. Mundo wrote a semi autobiographical novel called My Son Mundo, about a man quote forced to make a final decision after he's drawn back into conflict with the law due to a threat to

his mentor and boxing trainer. Right, what you know, some of this, of course really happened, but a lot of it is made up, he says. But what he earned from the book managed to get him safely out of Houston. Lieutenant Atkins gave Mundo his direct line and said, you know, call me any time, but he said he never heard from Undo again. Mundo says that he never got the full protections he was promised, and says that someone said he would pay to upgrade his security, but that never happened.

ESPN asked him if by someone he meant Ramone, and Mundo simply replied, quote, if somebody helps you and saves your life, you shouldn't leave them out to dry. Yeah, okay, thrown a little shade in the ESPN article, But ram Ome says that Mundo doesn't understand that Lulu left him with a lot of debt. Um He's like, I don't have anything to give you. He declared bankruptcy. He sold the second gym and their two story house that hopefully had a mural of PoCA outside. It's got a mural

of Benjamin Bratt. Benjamin Brat yural no, but he says Mundo is still a top priority for him, and as of Ramon was living in a small Houston apartment, and he keeps a lot of his and Lulu's possessions in storage, saying, quote, maybe I'll have a bonfire one day, you know, just burn everything. Um, He says he spends a lot of his time alone now he still gets nightmares. Living with Lulu for those weeks when he knew that she wanted

him dead was extremely traumatizing. And then lying in a ditch and seeing pictures of his own dead body just shook him further. Yeah, I don't even know how I would react in that situation. I can't even put myself there. Now. Lulu had told Paco to make sure to take Ramone's watch after he was dead, and now Ramon never takes that watch off, like a superstition. Night Yeah, it's just a yeah, just to remember, like this is what she's

trying to take from me. This would have this. Yeah, if I took this off, it means I've died, right, Yeah? Maybe so? Yeah. I mean I was in a short film my friend Michael Paula directed one time, many many years ago, and I and I died in it. And I'm like in a front seat of a car and it was black and white so he used chocolate syrup works great for blood in a black and white movie. By the way, her syrup. Yeah, um, so I've got that all over my head. It's in my profile pictures somewhere.

But it's uh, it's spooky. Look at too. Yeah, it's weird. I wanted that sometimes about like Sean Bean, how many times have you seen yourself die? And is it right? Does it feel weird? It must? And Lieutenant Atkins calls Mundo the real hero here for quote having the moral courage to come in and do what's right. But Mundo says he quote appreciates the lieutenant's point of view, but it doesn't matter. People will still see him as a rat. He says, quote I saved my friend's life. That's all

that matters. And his feelings about Lulu are equally complicated. CBS forty eight Hours asks him if he had anything to say to Lulu if she was watching the show, and he said, quote, redeem yourself. You don't have to be what everybody tells you you are. You know, everybody used to tell me I was something else. I proved

everybody wrong, so you could do the same. So that's I mean, just like clearly at the center of this story, poor Mundo, right, Like I really see him just literally spinning plates in the air, trying to trying to save everybody's life here as best he can, and trying so hard to convince her like, girls, it's not a several times, be sure you don't want You're sure you want to go through it this And she's very stubborn. Yeah, she's

like right, I mean she's toughty special. Was totally free on the CBS website and it's like forty minutes long. You could see the whole documentary. Uh. The ESPN article is very thorough, but the forty eight everything has a lot of footage of you know, of recordings from their conversations between Lulu and Mundo. It's got footage from when they showed her the picture of her own in the car and she laughed, and like there is a real coldness. Uh. It is a little bone chilling, as Atkins called it.

Um she scares me. Is she definitely had murder in her heart and wanted this guy dead. I cannot say how I feel about whether or not that is because Ramon abused her, Because it really might be. I'm not going to discount that. I have to wonder because if Ramona is telling the truth that he offered her an even split divorce, she would have been way better. Rob she's over, she's done with the dude, she's got half

of whatever, and then she's on with her life. Now she's twenty years in prison and she had to give him the house in the gym. She has nothing. So it's like, well, who would risk that to kill someone? Unless he's lying and he did not offer her that. I was just gonna say he says he offered her a split diffright, Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what

I'm trying to get to. I guess is I'm like, well, again, unfortunately we only have his side, because what if he was like, I'll never leave, you know, I'll never let you leave. There's a lot of ways to abuse someone.

That's the other thing is that I'm like, if she's like faked up, these scratched pictures, these pictures of scratches on herself, Um, I can even see that as her being like, well, I you know, he abuses me, I feel abused, and emotionally I'm screamed dad, or he really scares me, is like hitting the wall when he's mad, and it makes me feel really threatened, But no one will care about that because it's not physically. There's nothing physically happening to me. So I'll make it look like

something physically is happening and then someone will care. Maybe or it was just was this just ambition on her part, you know, like I I, yeah, I'm gonna sacrifice this split divorce in favor of I'm going all in. I'm going for the full thing. I'm going to get him one way or another. And you know, her first plan was embezzlement. Can I get him arrested for something illegal? Can I frame him for embezzling? Uh? And then when that didn't work out, she's like, I wish I could

just kill this guy. And Mundo, you know, overheard that and went to her and largely and mostly on Mundo's side in this whole story at the end of it. But there are some things we only got his side of the story on two you know, I mean the way he frames it, she was gonna hire a hit man one way or the other, and he stepped in

to stop her. But I have wonder if he just like walked away that night if it would have just been a fleeing idea, and you know, she never would have seriously pursued it until he walked up to her and said, hey, I know a guy. Right of course, that's sort of like, oh, this is real now. Yeah, And I so wonder I wish I had gone to trial In a lot of ways too. I wouldn't want her to get a life sentence for this. That seems

crazy because nobody was hurt. But I don't think she's she would like, she's going to be prone to hiring assassins now, like you know what I mean, Like, I don't think this would happen again. But um, in a trial, I wonder if those kinds of things would come up where, you know, I imagine her defense would say, like, y'all led her into this, You convinced her to do this, mundo. Yeah. In in in some ways it kind of feels like it.

It's tricky too, because the other side is that every newspiece out there about this story is about the man who escaped death from the crazy lady who wanted to kill it, you know what I mean, Because again, they only have his side of the story done. Some tours and and you know, spoke about it a lot in different places, and it's a thrilling, gripping story. And he might be completely accurate about it, might be totally truthful form from Ramon's side, but it's weird because everything is

very slanted towards like, but that was bullshit. He didn't hurt her, she tried to kill him. Yeah. Well, and and to your point, it makes more sense if she's feeling vindictive about him, like he's hurting me, so I'm gonna get him arrested for embezzlement. Oh that didn't work. I'm gonna try all these things to hurt him. It's not even about the money anymore, right, it's I want him hurt, see him hurt well. And beyond that, Ramon

maintains that their entire marriage was a set up. He at this point, he said, when he was lying in the ditch, he decided she never loved me. And he even suggests that her stepping on his foot was a set up. He was a local celebrity, he was well known. You know, he's probably throwing money around this club and you're the wolf that's an Atlantic that she was like, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna snag this guy, and

I'm going to take him for all these worth. That's kind of what Ramon thought her long term plan was looking back at it. So to him, it wasn't about like, oh, I did something to make her want to do this. She always wanted to do this eventually. What a different character she has depending on how you look at it.

That'sn't just again, really wish she'd talk, because at least you have some kind of notion, you know, about who who she is a person, because all we have is like this cold, very cold hearted kind of woman who on her side is like, I'm trying to escape an abusive man and I thought that if I left him, I wouldn't have any money. And that's a common story too. So I don't know, I I'm and I'd like to

judge someone right away. Ramon also says that Lulu was using her marriage to him to get citizenship for her mother and two kids, and so he said that as soon as that happened, Oh, how convenient that that's when our marriage started to fall apart. Okay, I mean, but hey, very similarly, how difficult is that for her to get citizenship for her mom, who doesn't live in the States and her and her to teenage kids. I don't know.

It's one of those things too where I'm like, I'm not saying that she deliberately married this guy just for that purpose, but you can look back at it and say she did, when in fact it's just she was just like, had no other path before her. Mm hmm. This is reminding me a lot of John and the Rain Now, Bobbit, and it feels like it should have ended where they were, kind of like you both really fucked up and let's just wash our hands of this to move on with your lives. Secondly, UM, I don't

know it. Twenty years is a long time, but I mean to try to kill someone that seems accurate. On the other hand, I feel frustrated. I think of, of course, many a case has come to my mind where somebody got nothing very lights lap for much worse, doing much worse to someone chantizing people much further, and they get three months six months a year. So it's like twenty years. It feels like kind of overkill. But I guess she

does an opportunity every year. Opportunity every year. Um. You know again, I can't imagine these only news stories out there about these people don't kind of color people's opinions about her too, you know. And I mean again, I watched the footage of her, and yeah, she comes off as cold and uncaring and a little crazy when she laughs about him being dead and stuff. But you know, we watched him many movies and we see people, no seriously, we we see people behaving certain ways and we think

that's something about their character. But I have spoken to people who seem cold and uncaring and they're not mean, they're not killers. That's just they just have a personality like that, like they've Lulu has never had everything hated her. She is a beautiful person, um, so she's had that privilege to a degree, but she's also had to work really hard and probably yeah, has had to lie just to get safely into a place where she felt comfortable in the past. And she doesn't know anybody being real

friendly and smiley all the time. No, very true. So it's just so tough, and laughter can be a trauma response. You heard the laugh, So I don't know, but I know that it it's weird to just be like, well, she laughed, so that must mean And it's like sometimes you laugh because that's the catharsist that happened, you know, it's not something you choose. She was glad he was dead when she laughed. I mean, that was clear. And

but also again that's another thing too. She told she thought she was in the car with two hit men, and she told them, oh, yeah, this guy beat me and that's why I had you kill him. Why would she lie to them? They don't need to know that, Why would they care? Why would they care? But he's but she heard, you know, he said sorry, but you know, Paco said, oh yeah. The guy wondered why this was happening, and she laughed and said, because he's stupid, idiot. It's

because you punched me. That's why. Why couldn't you Why can't you see that? Like? Who's she lying too? At that point? And then part of me wants to say, well, yeah, but if she really felt like he abused her and that she had some evidence for it, why did she take the plea deal? Why didn't she fighting court? But come on, that's also a stupid question to ask, because of course, why didn't she fighting court? Whose side does

the court always take in these cases? Virtually always? You know, a woman who like says he hit me, he roped me, or the guy who's like, no, everybody says, I'm a good guy, a great guy I want to talk about. I don't know. She might have felt like I'm going to get sentenced to life if i take this to trial, so yeah, I'll take the twenty years, right, or her lawyer or the cops were able to convince her of

that and that she took it too. There's a lot of stories of that too, people taking plea deals they never should have taken because they could have, you know, but somebody told him and they took that advice. This is a toughie. I'm going to officially stamped this one undecided for myself, an official undecided stamp. Why do we get that made a real waste of money. This case is officially still wide open. I'm sure we could go back and forth on it all day. But I think

the point is this is an insane story. I mean, this man had just a line of ditch plan a law and ordered dead body. No thank you. If you ever hire someone to kill me, they're gonna do it. Damn it. I'm not lying in a ditch covering makeup Wow, we've gone from low bollom to give them everything you have to do. If they're gonna do it, they can't

fake it. I want to really die for sure. I just want to put on the record here that Diana tells me all the time that she's going to be the one to kill me one day from old age. Old age so fun without torturing your your whole life with your presents. But you do you know how much I've aged since we got together. You have not yet begun to age. So um, reach out and help because I blam to rest right now. Uh so please let us know if you can help me. But I check

the email too, so be careful. Yeah. In fact, DM me on Instagram. Uh if you want to listen email it's predick Romance at gmail dot com. I'm a little afraid to give my details now because you might go to the cops. They've got him. But it's a Twitter and Instagram. It's at Dynamite Boom and I if you, if you for some reason want to message me independently, am at Oh great, it's Eli and the show is at ridic Romance and I do read those messages. Be careful writing code for Eli, Thank you so much for

tuning in. We'd love to hear your thoughts and we would love to catch you the next episode. Love you bye, so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends name's uncle Sindez to listen to a show ridiculous. Well n