Murder of Bridget Townsend

Bridget Townsend
Bridget Townsend, who was 17 when she was abducted, raped and murdered.
Born	Bridget Fay Townsend (1983-06-26)June 26, 1983 Houston, Texas, U.S.
Died	January 15, 2001(2001-01-15) (aged 17) Medina County, Texas, U.S.
Cause of death	Fatal gunshot wounds
Known for	Murder victim
Mother	Patricia Townsend
Family	David Townsend (brother)

On January 15, 2001, 17-year-old Bridget Townsend (June 26, 1983 – January 15, 2001), the girlfriend of a local drug dealer, disappeared from her boyfriend's home in Bandera County, San Antonio, Texas.

Townsend was missing for more than a year before a prisoner named Ramiro Felix Gonzales (November 5, 1982 – June 26, 2024), who was serving two consecutive life terms for a September 2001 abduction-rape case, confessed that he was responsible for murdering Townsend after he kidnapped and raped her at his family ranch in Texas, where he fatally shot the girl.

Townsend's body was found in October 2002 at a field in Southwest Texas. Gonzales, who was 18 at the time of the murder, was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to death in 2006. After spending close to 18 years on death row, Gonzales was put to death by lethal injection on June 26, 2024, despite calls for clemency and a medical expert's recant of his original testimony that Gonzales was a great danger to society.

Disappearance and murder

On January 15, 2001, 17-year-old Bridget Townsend was abducted, raped and murdered by a man who was the customer of her drug dealer boyfriend.

On that fateful day, at a rural part of Bandera County in San Antonio, Texas, Townsend was alone at the home of her boyfriend Joe Leal when an 18-year-old youth intruded the house, with hopes of stealing cocaine from Leal's house. The 18-year-old youth, Ramiro Felix Gonzales, stumbled upon Townsend after entering the house, and he thus overpowered her, tied her up and stole whatever cash he could find, but failed to yield any drugs.

After ransacking the house, Gonzales forced Townsend into his truck and drove away from Leal's house, and returned to his grandfather's ranch in neighboring Medina County, Texas. Even though she asked for mercy, Townsend was raped by Gonzales, who subsequently brandished a hunting rifle and fatally shot her. After murdering Townsend, Gonzales abandoned her body at a field in Southwest Texas, situated close to a small Texas town of Bandera.

Townsend, who was reported missing, was not found for more than a year. Gonzales managed to evade capture for eight months before he was arrested for the unrelated kidnapping and rape of a woman named Florence Teich in September 2001. Gonzales was later convicted and given two consecutive life sentences for the crime.

A year later while serving his sentence, Gonzales asked to speak with the sheriff, James MacMilliam, and he admitted to MacMilliam that he knew the fate of Townsend. Although MacMilliam did not initially believe Gonzales's story, he was later convinced that Gonzales was involved in Townsend's disappearance after he gave further details on where the girl's body could be found. In October 2002, the authorities discovered Townsend's skeletal remains after Gonzales led them to where he abandoned the body.

Although Gonzales cooked up stories to pin the blame on other people (including Townsend's boyfriend and a fictitious Mexican gang) and stated he only helped dispose of the body or received orders to kill Townsend, he eventually came clean and claimed sole responsibility for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Bridget Townsend.

Murder trial

Background of Ramiro Gonzales

Ramiro Felix Gonzales
2024 mugshot of Ramiro Gonzales
Born	(1982-11-05)November 5, 1982 Texas, U.S.
Died	June 26, 2024(2024-06-26) (aged 41) Huntsville Unit, Texas, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by lethal injection
Conviction(s)	2002 Kidnapping Rape 2006 Capital murder
Criminal penalty	2002 Two consecutive terms of life imprisonment (kidnapping and rape) 2006 Death (murder)
Details
Victims	Bridget Townsend, 17
Date	Medina County, Texas
Imprisoned at	Huntsville Unit

Born in Texas on November 5, 1982, Ramiro Felix Gonzales was raised by his grandparents due to the negligence of his mother. According to sources, Gonzales never met his father until he was 19 and incarcerated at the same prison as his father, and Gonzales's mother, who was 17 when giving birth to her son, struggled with severe drug addiction and alcoholism, and continued to do so while pregnant with Gonzales; she even tried to overdose on drugs to get a miscarriage. Gonzales formerly worked as a fence builder and welder before his arrest for murder.

Acvording to court records, Gonzales was allegedly a victim of sexual abuse by his cousin at age four or six, and similarly fell victim to sexual assault by an older woman at age 12 or 13. Gonzales reportedly did not perform well in school and despite being certified to have a normal brain, his school records assessed him to be "developmentally delayed". Gonzales eventually gone astray and when he was merely 11 years old, he began to pick up harmful habits of underage drinking and drug consumption.

Murder conviction and death penalty

After his confession, Gonzales was arrested and charged with capital murder, an offence that warrants the death penalty under Texas state law upon conviction.

Gonzales stood trial before a Medina County jury in August 2006 for the murder of Bridget Townsend. He was found guilty of capital murder that same month. The defence, in their request for life imprisonment, brought up Gonzales's family history and sought mercy on humanitarian grounds, and additionally raised that Gonzales was suffering from brain damage because of his mother's consumption of drugs and alcohol while pregnant with Gonzales. However, the prosecution called up experts who refuted that Gonzales had neither any major mental health issues nor brain damage, and state psychiatric experts even submitted that based on their assessments, Gonzales showed a strong propensity to re-offend and based on this, the prosecution sought the death penalty for Gonzales.

In the end, the jury returned with their verdict, unanimously sentencing Gonzales to death for the murder of Bridget Townsend.

Appeals and execution attempts

On June 17, 2009, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Ramiro Gonzales'direct appeal against his death sentence and murder conviction.

On February 1, 2012, Gonzales's second appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was dismissed, but the matter was remanded to the lower courts for re-hearing of some grounds of appeal in Gonzales's case.

On April 10, 2015, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Gonzales's appeal against his death sentence.

In December 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Gonzales's final appeal and afterwards, a death warrant was issued on May 3, 2016, with Gonzales set to be executed on August 10, 2016. However, it was delayed for legal reasons.

On September 17, 2019, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected another appeal from Gonzales.

Eventually, Gonzales's execution was rescheduled to occur on July 13, 2022. However, the execution date was staved off a second time, after he was granted a stay of execution pending an appeal. Gonzales had submitted that he wished to donate a kidney as an "altruistic donor" without a known recipient, purportedly to atone for having murdered Townsend back in 2001.

Furthermore, one state medical expert had testified that after some re-assessment, he decided that his initial conclusion that Gonzales was a future risk to society was wrong in light of Gonzales's rehabilitation process and clean prison behavioural record, which was a ground of appeal pursued by Gonzales's lawyers to seek clemency or a reprieve from the death penalty. Another ground of appeal was that Gonzales accused the prison authorities for violating his religious freedom due to them not allowing his spiritual adviser to hold his hands during the execution procedure.

2024 death warrant and execution

Two years after his execution was stayed, in 2024, a third death warrant was issued for Ramiro Gonzales, scheduling his execution to take place on June 26, 2024. Coincidentally, the date itself was the 41st birthday of the victim Bridget Townsend.

As a final recourse to avoid execution, Gonzales appealed for clemency, and during a hearing before the state's parole board, his lawyers brought up Gonzales's tragic childhood and stated that their client was remorseful of his crimes back in 2001 and that he had found God in prison. It was further raised that Gonzales tried reaching out to Townsend's family, writing letters to them and apologise for what he had done. Similarly, Gonzales made a tearful plea in his clemency video appeal for forgiveness from the victim's family. Unanimously, the seven-member panel of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected the clemency plea of Gonzales on June 24, 2024, and additionally rejected granting him a six-month reprieve.

On June 26, 2024, 41-year-old Ramiro Felix Gonzales was put to death via lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit. Gonzales was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. after he was administered with a single dose of pentobarbital. In his final words, Gonzales asked for forgiveness and reiterated that he regretted killing Townsend and hope for the family of Townsend to heal and find closure. Gonzales's execution was carried out less than two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-minute appeal, in which Gonzales's lawyers reiterated that based on a trial medical expert's re-assessment that Gonzales was no longer a menace to society, which would have precluded him from the death penalty.

In response to the execution of Gonzales, Townsend's brother David told the press that they had finally witnessed justice being served and that the execution of his sister's murderer marked the "end of a long and painful journey", and he had long criticised the sympathetic portrayal of Gonzales as a changed man, as he believed the death penalty should be carried out on account that Gonzales had done an unforgivable act of raping and murdering his sister. Prior to the execution, Townsend's mother Patricia told the press that the state's decision to execute Gonzales on the date of her daughter's 41st birthday was a comforting gesture as Gonzales "was set to leave the world the same day Bridget came into it", and refused to accept Gonzales's apology, claiming that there were many people with difficult childhoods and Gonzales made the heinous choice of murdering her daughter, whom Patricia described as a beautiful person, and he did not deserve mercy.

On the other hand, Gonzales's lawyers, Thea Posel and Raoul Schonemann, released a statement and stated that their client was no longer the same person who cruelly murdered a girl in cold blood 23 years ago, but an individual with love as his driving force and someone who was "a deeply spiritual, generous, patient, and intentional" person filled with remorse for his sins.

Gonzales was the second condemned person from Texas, and also the 8th person to be executed in the U.S. during the year 2024. Less than 24 hours after the execution of Gonzales, the Oklahoma state authorities carried out the execution of Richard Rojem Jr., who was convicted of the 1984 rape and murder of his ex-stepdaughter Layla Cummings.

In the aftermath of the murder and execution, a book titled The Murder Of Bridget Townsend: A Comprehensive Account of a Small Town's Tragedy and the Long Journey to Justice, which covered the murder, was published in 2024.

See also

• List of kidnappings
• Capital punishment in Texas
• List of people executed in Texas, 2020–present
• List of people executed in the United States in 2024