Death of a Sinner

Pablo Castro, father of nine and convenience-store worker of 14 years in Corpus Christi, Texas, was beaten and stabbed to death for $1.25 on the night of July 14, 2004. His killer was John Henry Ramirez, a 20-year-old ex-Marine who had begun using drugs at 12 and was, by the time he happened to spot Castro taking out the garbage that night, at the tail end of a multiday alcohol, Xanax, and cocaine binge that he was fighting desperately to prolong.

After he murdered Castro, Ramirez fled to Mexico, where he evaded the law for a few years until agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation captured him near Brownsville, Texas, along the U.S. border. His two female accomplices, who had assisted Ramirez in two other double robberies the same evening Ramirez murdered Castro, were each arrested the night of the killing and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their roles in the crime spree. The state sought the death penalty in Ramirez’s case, and thus began a years-long process of Ramirez countering Texas’s efforts to end