Execution Report: Robert Ramos

Robert Moreno Ramos, 64, was executed by lethal injection on 14 November 2018 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of his wife and two children in their home.

Ramos lived in Progreso, a town on the U.S.-Mexico border in Hidalgo County in south Texas, with his wife, Leticia, and their two children, Abigail and Jonathan. In November 1991, he began having an extramarital affair with Marisa Robledo, who he met during a visit to Austin. Robledo was visiting Austin from Brownsville. In January 1992, they made plans to marry on 10 February.

On Friday, 7 February, a neighbor heard a woman's scream and vulgar language coming from the Ramoses' house.

Over the next few days, members of the Ramoses' church visited their residence. Ramos, then 37, told them that the family was moving to California to handle the affairs of his recently deceased mother and that they were too busy to say goodbye.

Ramos married Robledo on 10 February and moved her into his house.

On 4 March, Ramos's cousin asked him where his family was. He replied that they had died in a car accident in Mexico and the bodies had been cremated. He was unable to provide specifics when pressed.

After nearly two months of hearing conflicting explanations about the family's whereabouts, Leticia Ramos's sister reported them as missing to the police. On 30 March, the police arrived at Ramos's home to question him. In a 20-minute interview, Ramos gave the police several contradictory accounts of his family's whereabouts, including that they were in Austin, San Antonio, and Mexico. He voluntarily accompanied officers to the police station, where he was arrested on outstanding warrants for traffic tickets.

On 6 April, officers searched the Ramoses' home. They found extensive blood evidence throughout the house, most notably in the bedroom, hallway, and bathroom. All of the family's clothes and the children's toys had been secreted away in the attic. Ramos told officers that he returned home in February after a day of job seeking and found his wife and children dead. He dug a hole in the bathroom floor and buried them.

A few days later, Ramos changed his story, saying that he found his children dead and his wife mortally wounded from an apparently self-inflicted wound. He then delivered a fatal blow to her head with a hammer.

Returning with a search warrant, officers exhumed the bodies of Leticia, 42, Abigail, 7, and Jonathan, 3, from underneath the newly-tiled floor of Ramos's bathroom. All three victims died from head injuries with a blunt object, such as a hammer. A forensic pathologist subsequently testified that it was very unlikely that Leticia's injuries were self-inflicted and that the victims were buried within 12 to 24 hours of their deaths.

A small, blood-stained sledge hammer was subsequently recovered from Ramos's residence in Mexico.^*

At Ramos's sentencing hearing, his 19-year-old son testified against him, providing a detailed account of growing up under his father's physical and verbal abuse. A woman testified that Ramos married her daughter in 1988 in Reynosa and then she disappeared a year later.

^*This is according to a court document. According to a news report in the Brownsville Herald, "after killing his wife and two kids, he had fled the state to Arkansas where he disposed of the murder weapon, which was never recovered."

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