Texas executes Ramiro Gonzales on the birthday of his raped and murdered victim

“I cannot express in words the pain I have caused you, the pain I have taken from you and which I cannot return. I hope this apology is enough,” the prisoner said to the family.

“I never stopped praying that you would forgive me and that one day I would have the opportunity to apologize. I owe my life to all of you and I hope that one day you will forgive me,” he added, just before a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began to flow.

As the drug began to take effect, he took seven deep breaths and then began making noises like snoring. Within less than a minute, he stopped moving. Authorities said his death occurred 24 minutes after the injection began.

Gonzales kidnapped Townsend from a rural home in Bandera County, northwest of San Antonio. He later took her to his family’s ranch in neighboring Medina County, where he sexually abused and eventually killed her. Her body was not found until October 2002, when Gonzales led authorities to her remains in southwest Texas after being sentenced to two life sentences for kidnapping and raping another woman.

About an hour and a half before the execution was scheduled to begin, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a defense motion to intervene. The court rejected arguments by Gonzales’s lawyers that he had accepted responsibility for his actions and that a prosecution expert now claims he was mistaken when he testified that Gonzales would pose a danger to society in the future, a legal finding required to impose a death sentence.

“He has devoted himself seriously to self-improvement, contemplation and prayer and has grown into a mature, peaceful, kind, loving and deeply religious adult. He acknowledges his responsibility for his crimes and has attempted to atone for them and seek redress through his actions,” Gonzales’ lawyers wrote Monday in their unsuccessful request to the Supreme Court for a stay of execution. After reevaluating Gonzales in 2022, Gripon said his prediction was wrong.

Earlier this month, a group of 11 evangelical leaders from Texas and across the country asked the parole board and Gov. Greg Abbott to stop the execution and grant clemency, saying Gonzalez was helping other death row inmates through a religious program.

In a video he submitted to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole as part of his clemency request, Gonzales confessed to the crime.

“I just want (Townsend’s mother) to know how truly sorry I am. I took everything that was precious from a mother,” said Gonzales, who was 18 at the time. “So it’s a constant task every day to do everything I can to feel that responsibility for the life that I took.”

The victim’s brother was not convinced. In several petitions and posts on Change.org, David Townsend criticized attempts to portray Gonzales as anything other than a convicted murderer who committed “unforgivable acts.”

“Our family seeks not vengeance, but closure and some measure of peace after years of grief – a pursuit that is hindered, not facilitated, by decisions that allow the perpetrator of our pain to remain in the public eye,” he wrote.

On Monday, the parole board voted 7-0 against commuting Gonzales’ death sentence to a lesser sentence. Members also declined to grant him a six-month reprieve.

Prosecutors called Gonzales a sex offender and accused police of ignoring Townsend’s pleas to spare her life. They argued the jury made the right decision in imposing a death sentence.

“The punishment for the state was overwhelming,” the Texas Attorney General’s office said. “Even if Dr. Gripon’s testimony had been struck from the criminal docket, it would not have made a difference.”

Gonzales’ execution was the second in Texas this year and the eighth in the United States. On Thursday, Richard Rojem is scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in 1984.