GUILTY TX - Bridget Townsend, 18, Bandera County, 15 January 2001

Patricia Townsend's anguish over her daughter's disappearance nearly five years ago is measured in hugs missed, grandchildren denied and justice delayed.

Hopeful uncertainty about why Bridget Townsend vanished on Jan. 15, 2001, turned to chronic heartache after her remains were found 21 months later.

"The hard part was not knowing where she was," Patricia Townsend, 58, recalled of the vibrant 18-year-old she calls "my baby."

Investigators had no leads about Bridget Townsend's fate until Ramiro F. Gonzales, whom she'd known since middle school, told police in October 2002 that he'd slain her.

Gonzales, then 19, led police to Townsend's skeleton just days after he had been sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping and sexual assault of another Bandera woman, who had escaped and helped police find him.

Abandoned at birth and raised primarily by a grandmother, Gonzales was sexually abused by a male relative as a child and corrupted with alcohol and drugs by age 12, Emmett Harris, a court-appointed defense attorney, said last week.

Gonzales told mental health officials he was "obsessed" with dead bodies, the records show.

As a youth, the records state, Gonzales "on numerous occasions shot animals and then watched their bodies decay over time."

They also state that he repeatedly went to the ranch where Townsend's body was dumped to look at it after her death.

That sort of graphic testimony is upsetting to Patricia Townsend, who repeatedly left a recent pretrial hearing after being consumed with tears.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA122605.5B.bandera.limbo.8053818.html
I hope they did a real good search of that ranch. If he wasn't a serial yet, he was well on his way.

My gosh! This is just horrible. This man is one sick person. I'm sorry that he had such a horrible life growing up but it just isn't an excuse for the horrible things that he has done.

I wonder what the heck kind of a person his grandmother was? He was sexually abused by a relative and given drugs and alcohol...hooked by the time he was 12 yrs old! I don't think the state did that child any favors by allowing his grandmother to raise him.

I wonder if they will go for an insanity plea? He is not right in the head. Who in their right mind would keep going back to look at that poor girl's decaying body! That is just horrible to even think about. And he had known this girl since they were young. She probably trusted him.

My heart goes out to this mother.

From June 2009:

http://www.palestineherald.com/news...cle_84f09d8b-9a6c-547d-9370-74c0d397de29.html

A man condemned for the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old woman whose remains were found west of San Antonio almost two years after she vanished lost an appeal of his conviction and death sentence at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals...

He told a Texas Ranger details that were consistent with the evidence gathered during the investigation, that he went to his drug supplier’s house to steal cocaine because he knew the man’s girlfriend, Townsend, was there alone at the time. He said he abducted Townsend after taking some money and drugs from the house and, after she tried to call her boyfriend, drove her to his family’s ranch, retrieved a high-caliber deer rifle and drove her to the spot where her remains were found.

Click to expand...

Per the TDCJ, Ramiro Felix Gonzales has an execution date of 10 August 2016

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_scheduled_executions.html