To Hell and Back

by Robert A. Waters

On April 20, 1999, the “To Hell and Back” tour began. El Torito, the
Little Bull, was back in business. He’d been away for sixteen years, and
many inside and outside the boxing ring were safer for it.

In 1983, Ayala had been poised for a million dollar fight. As the number
one challenger for the middleweight title, world champion Roberto
Duran was in his sights. Ayala, a vicious puncher with nineteen
knockouts in his twenty-two wins, was in New Jersey training for a
tune-up fight while awaiting the bout with Duran. Lucrative fights with
Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler were also being discussed. Win,
lose, or draw, Tony Ayala was on the verge of becoming a wealthy man.
But demons from the past were festering in his soul.

At midnight, on New Year’s day, El Torito broke into an apartment
located near his training camp in West Paterson, New Jersey. The
resident, a school teacher, awoke to find him standing over her. Ayala
pulled a knife, blindfolded the woman, and spent four hours raping and
sodomizing her.

He was caught the next day and later convicted. A judge sentenced him to
thirty-five years in prison. But in the criminal justice system, nothing
is ever what it seems to be. The rapist served only fifteen years before
being released. On the day he left prison, the “To Hell and Back” tour,
as his handlers named it, began.

Brian Raditz, a psychiatrist turned fight manager, claimed Ayala was a
changed man. But although he won four out of five fights on his comeback
tour, his training regimen was suspect. Rumor had it that the fighter
and his entourage were seen drinking and carousing at more than one
topless bar in his hometown of San Antonio.

But, as had happened in the past, local authorities chose to enable his
predatory behavior by ignoring the fact that a registered sex offender
was flaunting the law by going to topless clubs.

Years before, in 1978, while still a teenager, Ayala had nearly killed a
woman. He followed her into the ladies rest room at a San Antonio
drive-in theater and beat her so badly that her bladder was ruptured and
her kidneys bruised.
Then he raped her. Prosecutors allowed Ayala to plead guilty to a lesser
charge of aggravated assault rather than aggravated rape. This allowed
him to be placed on probation instead of serving a prison term.

Two years later, he broke into a San Antonio woman’s house. Police filed
attempted rape charges, but again the charges were dropped.
Just weeks later, Ayala was in New Jersey when he spotted the school
teacher, broke into her house, and raped her.

Nancy Gomez, an eighteen-year-old high school senior, had also been to
hell and back.

A year before, she’d been the victim of a brutal rape. It so traumatized
her that the pretty teenager swore it would never happen again. In an
attempt to pick up the pieces of her life, she moved in with friends,
John Hogan, his girlfriend, and their two children.

On December 11, 1999, while Hogan was at work, Gomez slept on the couch.
At 3:45 a.m., she drifted awake and saw a shadow standing over her. The
teenager jumped up, startling the man and causing him to flee into the
kitchen. She recognized him as Tony Ayala, the boxer who sometimes
trained at the same gym where she worked out.

Gomez ran into the bedroom.

“Get the gun,” she called to her friend, who was also asleep. “There’s
someone in the house.”

The two women reached under the mattress and retrieved a .45-caliber
semiautomatic handgun. Gomez took the gun while her friend gathered up
her children and called 911.

The teenager cautiously made her way into the kitchen and confronted the
intruder.

“I just came here to see you,” Ayala said, lacing his words with
expletives. “I can’t believe you’re holding a gun on me.”

“I can’t believe you broke into my house,” Gomez responded, no doubt
remembering his history of violent assaults on women.

Ayala stepped forward, but the teenager held her ground.

“One more step and I’ll shoot,” she said.

When Ayala moved toward her again, she fired. The bullet hit him in the
left shoulder, knocking him backward.

Soon afterward, the police arrived and arrested Ayala on a charge of
burglary of a habitation with intent to commit assault.

Gomez was not charged. A San Antonio Police Department spokesman said,
“We feel she was right and justified in what she did.”

A few hours later, Ayala’s team began a media campaign to spin public
opinion in his favor. It was a tough sell, but they kept at it. “He knew
her,” Raditz said. “They were friends. She’d eaten at his house with
Tony and his wife. Tony parked his car in front of her house rather than
behind it when he went in.” Raditz was obviously desperate–he saw his
fantasies of becoming a wealthy celebrity boxing manager withering on
the vine.

Gomez denied being friends with Ayala. She’d met him at the gym, she
said, but had never dated him, had no interest in seeing him, and had
never even met his wife. Besides, she said, he broke into her house with
the intent to rape her.

This case won’t have a pretty ending. Ayala has enough money to hire the
best attorney available. There’s no doubt that when the case comes to
trial, Gomez will be savaged like Ayala’s opponents in the ring. But if
there’s any justice in this world, he’ll be taken off the streets for
the rest of his life.

Marilyn Zdobinski, the New Jersey prosecutor who sent Ayala to prison,
had been opposed to his release. When contacted by a Texas newspaper
reporter and informed that the boxer had been shot by his intended
victim, she expressed relief. “He’s an incorrigible animal,” she said.
“There was something about him that you knew the violence was never
going to end.”
The violence finally did end, because one of Ayala’s victims had a gun.
Had any of the other women Tony Ayala attacked been armed, maybe the
violence would have ended years ago.

Robert A. Waters is author of The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended
Victims Who Defended Themselves with a Firearm, Cumberland House
Publishing, Inc., 1998.