Months Before Six – Part Nine

John Henry Ramirez aka “Rambo” (Executed: October 5^th, 2022)

Dear Rambo,

What’s up, fat boy? Are you enjoying your new body up there? Nice and slim, huh? HA! You and I talked extensively about my farewell project (you even did an online review of it). You know how much I hate to actually start working on a farewell – especially for someone I’d gotten to know particularly well. (God knows you and I got to know each other well.) I’ve put off starting your farewell almost a month now… It’s time to say goodbye though and really face it that your chunky butt is gone.

I told you all about this already, big homie, but I want to share it with everyone else. So, don’t interrupt, okay? Before you and I had ever even seen or spoken to each other, you sent word to me through Joseph Garcia prior to his execution, asking me if I’d like to receive minister visits once every month or two from your pastor, Dana. I let you know (at the time) I wasn’t religious, but if that wasn’t a problem, I’d enjoy visiting with someone who genuinely cares about us guys on Death Row.

A few months later, I was at my second visit with Pastor Dana – having a good conversation – when an inmate I didn’t see was put into the visiting cage on my right. (The cages have thin metal walls and the door is an iron frame covered with a wire mesh. The space inside the cage is so tight that the door closes up against the stool sunk into the floor. We sit on the stool as we speak to our visitors through a thick sheet of glass on a plastic phone. On the visitor’s side are metal dividers separating the visitors. The dividers also block the inmates from seeing their neighbors’ visitors. Due to the open air nature of the cage doors, we inmates generally speak quietly to our visitors so our fellow inmates can hear their visitors through the phone.) When this fella sat down in the cage next to me, he picked up the phone and began YELL-talking to whoever he was seeing in a voice that fluctuated from a booming bass to extremely high. As Pastor Dana spoke to me, I could hardly hear a word he said. I was relying on reading his lips to follow what he was saying. As he spoke, I was getting madder and madder at the guy next to me and trying hard not to create a scene – which I especially didn’t want to do in front of a minister!

Finally, the dude next to me took a breath and let his visitor get in a word. In the silence, I was able to calm down. About ten minutes later, the visitor seeing the loud guy bought him some food from the vending machines. I thought, Good. With a mouthful of food he will be quite! Wishful thinking. When the food was delivered, the dude didn’t pause in his yell-talking as he began ripping one package open after another. Then I heard him CHOMPING on his food. Every bite he took I could hear clearly. And he never stopped yell-talking. How he could eat, talk and breathe all at once was amazing. I started to think he was a talking goat. He was so obnoxious it would have been hilarious in most other settings. Just not in my current one, where my visit was being ruined due to someone’s clueless social skills. About this time, Pastor Dana asked me what I wanted from the vending machines. I told him and he stood up and took two steps toward the machines when Mr. Goat shouted in a high-pitched, obviously excited voice… “That’s Pastor Dana! Look, mijo (son). There’s Pastor Dana! Go say “hi” to him! He must be seeing Billy…”

At this point, I figured out the goat man was Rambo – YOU. The same guy who set up this visit for me. As that was sinking in I heard: “Hey, Billy!” as you banged LOUDLY on the metal wall separating us. “It’s me, Rambo! What’s up? How do you like Pastor Dana?”

I had to pause a second before responding to ensure I held my temper in check and figured out how not to be confrontational – especially since it was your kindness that had me visiting with this awesome pastor to begin with. In that brief pause, I was having to reevaluate all of the assumptions I’d made about the “stranger’s” character for being so rude and mix in the “stranger” being someone with enough love and compassion to help out a complete stranger and trust them with someone they so obviously adored. I decided intuitively to just shut up about you being obnoxious and said: “So, you’re Rambo… thanks for connecting me with Pastor Dana.”

“You like him? He’s a great man, right?”

“I like him a lot. Enjoy your visit with your people.”

Man, big boy, was that first meeting ever a bad impression. I would have decided to keep my distance from you normally, but I was conflicted because you’d been so gracious connecting me with Pastor Dana. How could I accept that gift and then reject you?

A couple of months later, you were given one of several more to come execution dates and were moved over to Death Watch (where I am perpetually housed without an execution date). You consistently sought me out by initiating conversations, and I chose to stand by my decision to interact with you. OOOOO WEEEEE, fat man, every time we talked it was a conflict. You were constantly picking at and challenging everything I said in your aggressive way. You brought out my prehistoric side. Did we ever have some knock down drag out verbal battles! You gave as good as you got, and even won one round – ONCE. I even gave you a cookie for it. 

Somewhere in all of that constant sparring and conflict I began to see past your hyper-aggressive side to the real John Henry Ramirez. Underneath all of the huff and puff was a decent human being. No, a GOOD human being. It seemed to me, looking back, that once you saw I wasn’t someone who’d run away from you, or maybe, someone you couldn’t push away, you started to really open up and I saw a whole other side of you – a vulnerable side that was beautiful. I learned about your childhood and in particular about your mother. Man, she was one rough and mean chick. You told me she once stabbed you and routinely beat you. One thing stood out the most that I found horrible was how your mother singled you out from your younger siblings and abused you while rarely ever harming them. You were proudthat you took the abuse and protected your siblings from the bulk of it. But being singled out like that also put a major dent in your feelings of self-worth and ability to fully trust others. You said it made you paranoid and you always expected those closest to you to betray you sooner or later. Yet, you still loved her… even when you didn’t want to any more.

You and I had some deeply personal conversations about who you were prior to your arrest and who you wanted to become. I will never forget the story you told me that convinced me underneath your rough outer covering was a deeply good person trying to claw their way out past all of the pain that caused you to bury that part of yourself to keep yourself safe. You told me that after you killed Pablo Castro (R.I.P.) and ran to Mexico, you saw his son Aaron on TV discussing his father’s death and expressing how angry he was, how hurt, how devastated – and how deeply his pain affected you. It bothered you enormously that your callous act had introduced such pain into Aaron’s life, who was only a young teen at the time. You expressed feeling like such trash for altering that boy’s heart in such a profoundly negative way. You were concerned that what you did was going to lead to the cycle of violence continuing – or just to Aaron never letting go of his anger and that messing his life up. Just like your anger had so messed up your life – and others.

I really loved it when you got to talking about your son. Your little “mini me” as you often called him. You were so proud of Israel… What was heartbreaking was that you were so proud that he looked like you, but didn’t act like you. You were so happy that he has all of the good qualities on the outside that you all too often keep on the inside. And just so you know, our friend Dina loved Israel. She was so impressed by what a kind, respectful and smart young man he is.

The very last time I saw you was one of the most beautifully human interactions I’ve seen in my life. On your last day on earth, the two Death Row Field Ministers, Troop and Solley, who were close friends of yours, came to spend time with you early in the morning before you would be taken to your last visit with your family and friends. They stood in front of your door for about an hour, talking to you, letting you know you were loved. Close to 8:00AM, two of TDCJ’s finest showed up to escort you to your visit. Troop and Solley stepped away while you were strip-searched. They stood ten feet in front of my cells and kept a keen eye in the direction of your cell until you came out handcuffed behind your back with a guard on either side of you. As you were being escorted past Troop and Solley, you stopped and asked them for a hug. The guards agreed and stepped back to allow it. Your back was to me, so I couldn’t gauge your emotional state until Solley wrapped you in a hug and you leaned your head against his shoulder like a little boy seeking comfort from a loved one. Your whole body relaxed. The tension went out of your neck first and like a wave rode down the rest of your body. As I saw your neck relax and then your posture soften, I realized how stressed and tense you’d been. Then Troop hugged you, and again you leaned your chubby, gleaming bald head into his shoulder and even more tension dissipated from your big frame. Seeing you so vulnerable… Seeing your body relax as you sought love through human contact you’d been without for so long was heart ripping. That was the John Henry Ramirez I’d come to love.

Rest in peace.

Always,

Billy

To read additional Farewells written by the loved ones of John Ramirez, click here

Tracy Beatty aka “Trey” (Executed: November 9^th, 2022)

Trey had one of the all-time best personalities of anyone I’ve ever met. A little bit gruff, a little bit tough, a little bit nuts, a whole lot paranoid, and endlessly funny and generous. He only stood about five-foot-six, but he had a big presence that made him seem to take up more space than he really did. He had long, wavy, balding, snowy white hair that would stick up everywhere and added to his amusing character. He was infamous for his, at times, almost-neon-red skin from a disorder he had. When it flared up in the winter and turned his torso bright red, guards who didn’t know better would ask him how he’d gotten sun burned. Before cataracts nearly blinded him, for two years he wore big, solid plastic glasses that magnified his eyes. All of these things, combined with his extreme country accent and deep, rough, masculine voice, created an unforgettable person; a person I watched evolve from someone in enormous emotional pain – an emotional pain so consuming many worried if he’d survive it – into a man who was made whole again by the power of love and faith.

My farewell for him consists of stories I feel express who he was and who he became. And, most importantly, his humanity.

The first story occurred in 2020, just days before Trey was scheduled to die. He received a stay of execution shortly after this and I did not see him again until he received his final execution date two years later.

Standing at the dayroom bars, his meaty forearms resting on the crossbar and his thick hands clasped together and extending onto the run, he was immersed in a conversation with a female Death Row guard. I’d just walked to my cell door to speak to another inmate on One Row when I noticed the conversation taking place just ten feet away. I’d had my headphones on and hadn’t realized anyone was talking. Not wanting to talk over them, I was about to step away from the door when I heard the lady say to Trey in a kind voice, “Beatty, I am praying for you to live.” She then reached out and patted his hands with both of hers.

This act of random kindness had a profound impact on Trey. At first, he seemed stunned that she had touched him at all, but especially in kindness. Guards are trained not to initiate any personal physical contact with us. There is even a bright yellow line painted on the concrete two feet in front of the dayroom bars to remind the guards of the “safe” distance they need to maintain from us at all times. Then, with Trey’s bright red skin, I think that would make him feel that many wouldn’t want to touch him. That lady’s touch was something he had not experienced in his decade-plus in solitary confinement. He looked so utterly emotionally touched that I thought that he was going to cry. But he regained his composure before a tear rolled down his weathered cheeks.

To an observer unfamiliar with the confined existence Death Row men endure, they’d find it impossible to understand why that small sign of compassion from one human to another had such a profound effect on Trey. I struggled for days trying to think of an analogy powerful enough to express how something so tiny can help restore someone’s feelings of humanity and dignity in an otherwise inhumane environment. Then I read a story that epitomizes the restorative power of kindness.

In April 1945, the Brits liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. When they stormed the camp, they were horrified to find 40,000 skeletal, near death, Jews, with another 10,000 dead scattered amongst the living.

Every Jewish woman in the camp was bald, starved into sticks, and wearing rags. All vestiges of outer femininity had been eradicated from these captives by their persecutors.

As the British Red Cross worked tirelessly to rehabilitate the near-dead patients, a consignment was sent to the camp that included a large supply of lipstick a female volunteer had the foresight to include.

The women were all thrilled to be able to wear lipstick and have a piece of femininity returned amongst the horror. Some women had no clothes to wear and wore blankets around bony shoulders, but had lipstick on. One woman lay dead on a post-mortem table with bright red lips and a small piece of lipstick in her hand.

The lipstick made them feel like individuals again. It was the beginning piece of restoring their humanity.

As lipstick helped repair a piece of those women’s hearts and souls, so too did that guard’s kindness help begin the healing process of something long hurt within Trey.

“Sergeant on the pod” someone shouted over the din of my neighbor in 2-Cell. Trey was screaming at someone who lived two sections away who he felt was talking about him.

I was due to go to outside recreation, so I assumed the sergeant was coming for me. I approached my door right as the huge six-foot-seven-inch-tall Sgt. Swarze stopped at my cell and asked loudly over the still irate Trey, “Going to rec?”

“Yeah,” I replied and began the strip-search process required of all Death Row men every time we leave our cells. I was then put in shackles and two sets of handcuffs behind my back to be escorted the twenty feet to the outside yard. As the restraints were removed, and as Trey’s screams echoed around the stark concrete enclosure, Sgt. Swarze said, “I bet you’re pissed that you have him as your new neighbor. “

“No,” I replied honestly. “Believe it or not, I like Trey. Other than the screaming thing he does, he’s a good dude. Besides that, I see it as an opportunity to help him.”

“What you want to save him for? Jesus?” he asked, with a bit of condescension and a ton of disbelief coloring his deep voice.

“I sure can’t save him, but Jesus can. I already talked to Trey’s other neighbor, Blue, and he agreed to help me help Trey as much as we can,” I replied.

“What is he screaming about anyway?” Sgt. Swarze asked, as Trey hadn’t ceased his rant for a second.

“You’d have to ask him, but I think part of the problem right now has more to do with him being frustrated that he’s had cataracts for two years and can barely see. He can’t even read his own mail. Blue and I take turns reading it to him. He can’t do anything but sit in that little cell and do next to nothing. I’d be pissed too,” I said.

“Why doesn’t he go to John Sealy (the prison hospital) to get them removed?” Sgt. Swarze asked.

“Hell, for over a year his appointments have repeatedly been canceled. He can’t even get there to be treated,” I replied.

As Trey continued yelling at his unseen adversary, Sgt. Swarze paused and then said, “You really think Jesus can help him?”

Over the next thirty minutes, Sgt. Swarze and I discussed his lack of faith and my new faith – all the while Trey never paused in his vociferous diatribe. At the end, Sgt. Swarze said something along the lines of, “Good luck, but I think you’re wasting your time with him.”

“What will you have to say if he’s saved and finds peace?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I’d love to see it,” he stated.

When I think back to Sgt. Swarze’s comment that Trey was a waste of time, I can’t help but smile. Through Trey, I came to understand more than I ever could have without the power of love and faith. For faith is love, and with faith miracles can occur.

A couple of weeks later the following took place.

“Trey!” Blue shouted from his cell next to Trey’s. “Trey!” he shouted again before Trey stopped yelling and answered.

“Yeah?”

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.

“I’m supposed to go to John Sealy today to get my cataracts removed, and it’s past eight now, the chain is gone! They done jacked me again for my appointment!” he shouted.

“Trey, you’re not alone anymore. Billy and I will help you. Just give us a chance,” he said.

“Okay,” he said and stopped yelling.

Over the next few days, Blue and I went through various levels of rank until we found out what had been occurring with Trey’s appointment to get cataract surgery. Due to COVID-19, this prison’s rank had been prioritizing who went to the hospital by how severe their issue was. Due to that, Trey kept getting bumped. The Death Row Captain had been unaware Trey could barely see at all and assured us he’d be taken to his next appointment.

In the meantime, Blue came up with the idea to ask the Chaplain to get Trey an audio Bible and to ask medical to provide him with a talking watch. Shortly after, he had both items and we could hear him regularly listening to his Bible and messing with his watch. These two immensely kind things went a long way to help Trey deal with his vision impairment and to not feel so hopeless and angry.

A month after his appointment had been canceled, he was finally taken to John Sealy to have one cataract removed. Not long afterwards, the second cataract was also removed, which finally enabled Trey to see normally and to read his own mail. Much as I wanted to help Trey, reading him his mail did create some awkward moments:

“Dear Tracy,” I said loudly one quite morning. “You are the most amazing, handsome, wonderful husband in the whole world. You have the best smile, the most amazing blue eyes. You are my sexy tiger. I love you more every day.”

As I was talking, I heard the section gate pop and a guard enter. I paid no real notice and continued. “I love you more than life itself. You are my handsome snuggle bunny and the most special husband there has ever been…”

Heavy footsteps paused at my door and a deep bass voice interrupted me. “Billy Tracy!” he said in a stunned voice. “I… I… I had no idea!”

Knowing what he was thinking and not caring, I replied, “Bust your feet, I’m talking to my snuggle bunny right now.”

Without missing a beat, Trey piped in, “Yeah, bump it on down.”

Not until the guard was in the next section did Trey and I let our laughter loose.

In the midst of Trey receiving his last execution date, and struggling with visual impairment, he’d met an Israeli lady he fell in love with and married not long before his execution.

Almost all of the mail I read him was from his eventual wife. Due to this, I was able to witness, at a very intimate level, their relationship grow stronger and deeper.

She wrote Trey, her snuggle bunny, every single day, sent him endless amounts of picture books to look at since these were the only thing he was capable of seeing at all (that she thought of this shows how much she wanted to make his life better), made sure he had plenty of money on his trust fund account to buy whatever he wanted to eat from the prison commissary, and most of all she traveled to Texas from Israel and spent his last four months alive visiting him every week.

That kind of love and loyalty was beautiful to be a witness to. And to watch how that love helped Trey continue to heal was breathtaking.

“Trey,” I called one day a couple of weeks before his execution.

“Yeah?” he replied.

“When you were on Death Watch over two years ago, and when you first got this new execution date and came back over here, you were angry… cussing out people and all of that. But over the last few months, you haven’t ranted one time. I don’t even hear you muttering to yourself anymore. You hardly even cuss, and you seem like a different person. What happened? What the hell caused you to change so drastically?”

The pause was so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. I was just about to walk away from my door when he spoke. “Kinda don’t know where to start…” he said before trailing off in another long pause. “Since I killed my mother, I’ve hated myself and…” another long pause before he continued on another track. “Blue and I talked on the rec yard and I told him a lot of crap I’ve kept inside all these years… that helped a lot…” Another long pause. “Then my wife has shown me love I didn’t know existed and that, and that…” He choked up a little before continuing. “She helped me feel…” He paused again and changed course once more. “And then, God. I was baptized as a kid but I did it ‘cause others wanted me to. I didn’t know God. Now I do. It changes everything.”

“Yeah. It does my friend. Yeah it does. ‘Nough said.”

The weekend before Trey was executed, he was baptized in the outside recreation yard, where a few months previously his angry screams echoed. He was baptized just feet from where Sgt. Swarze expressed his doubt.

I’ll never forget the moment Trey came back inside dripping wet from his baptism. As he walked toward his cell, Blue and I cheered in happiness for our brother and he smiled. That smile on this sixty-plus-year-old’s face was the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen on a man’s face. It was peace, joy, hope and love all wrapped together in a moment of purity. At that moment, Trey seemed both a boy and a man. He seemed the very image of love.

And last of all, my favorite memory of my brother:

On the day of his execution, Trey was put in our dayroom until he was taken to his last visit at 8:00AM. Shortly before he was to leave, he sang “Amazing Grace”.

As he started singing in his remarkably strong and beautiful voice, there was a spattering of noise throughout the wing. As he sang, every bit of random background noise ceased as every condemned ear strained to catch every clear note that rang through the still air.

“I once was lost, but now I’m found,

I was blind, but now I see.”

As the last words to the song faded away, there was a brief silence. It was as if we were all collectively pausing to savor this unexpected special moment. Then, there was a heartfelt eruption of applause and cheering that was loud and long.

Moments later, he was gone. 

But never truly.

Rest in peace, snuggle bunny.

Always,

Billy

Life Watch Update: January 1^st, 2023

Since my last post, the State of Texas has executed four more of its citizens; four more friends of mine who shared so much of themselves with me over the final months of their lives and with who I, in turn, shared so much of myself with. Four more friends… gone. Four more friends executed by a killing shot, administered by a killing state of death. Despite there being four executions, this post only contains two farewells. First, my friend Kosoul Chanthakoummane was a very private person and asked that I not write about his last moments which he found to be a personal period of his life that he wasn’t comfortable sharing with everyone. Secondly, after writing Tracy Beatty’s farewell, I was so emotionally exhausted I decided not to continue writing a farewell for every person who is killed. As the years have passed, and the executions have rolled on and on and on, writing these farewells has become harder and harder to endure. I’ve almost ended this project numerous times due to the emotional toll it’s taken, but have managed to continue. I will not abandon this project entirely, but I will only write farewells now when I feel especially called to tell someone’s story. The two farewells in this post are for two men I love and who I learned valuable life lessons from. 

Always, 

Billy