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trigger with his other hand. Joey claims he never robbed the safe (which the transcripts seem to support) and instructed Ramirez to call 911 before taking a taxi to the airport and flew to Miami, then a Greyhound to New York City.
    The facts diverge here in numerous ways from the way Joey tells it. Pamela Frohreich, the Los Angeles prosecutor investigating Joey’s case dug into the meat and potatoes of his story.
    â€œA lot of prominent people believed Joey, but nobody bothered to check the facts,” said Frohreich. “That includes Joey himself, because I believe he has convinced himself of his story. He used that story to talk himself into two years of freedom.”
    Joey actually fled to New Orleans after the shooting butwas found by the police when he returned to Los Angles two weeks later. The man he was charged with murdering seemed to have no apparent links to boxing and was 21-year-old Armando Cardenas Jasso. The gun used to kill Jasso was reportedly a .25 cal that was sold or loaned (accounts differ) to Joey under the name “Boxer” by people who claimed he was living with them at the time.
    The scene of the murder is also notably different. Jasso was a lone night time gas station attendent. In a somewhat cartoonish scenario, drivers refueling at that Texaco station on Florence Avenue in Downey couldn’t believe their good fortune. There was not an attendant in sight and so, on June 18, 1979, they drove off, one by one, into the night without paying for their gas.
    For more confusion, Jose Ramírez is the name of a Lightweight division amateur boxer who wasn’t born until 1992. It seems almost as probable that Joey would borrow this name through his routine interest in following his favorite sport.
    The curious thing is that Joey’s story is different in almost every fundamental detail, even ones that wouldn’t point to his innocence or absolve him of the crime. In one interview he uses the passive verb, “the gun went off,” as if it was merely a disassociated event unrelated to the actions of any person. For further head scratching, while robbery was listed as the motive for the murder, as Joey asserts, the police documents say that the safe was never opened. Other reports say it was opened and that Joey stole $335. So what actually took place? Was Jasso the real name of Ramirez? Has Joey merely created an elaborate fiction over the years and convinced himself of its truth?

6
    June 25, 1979—A freshly nineteen year old Joey worried about what would become of him. He says he called an old friend who informed him that the murder was all over the T.V. and Ramirez had died, but that the police were looking for a six foot black man, so he should come back to LA.
    Joey’s “friend,” Edward Santana, and his wife picked him up at the LA bus depot, and they changed for a party at the Paladium. “Mr. Ralph,” a security guard, told Joey to get rid of his gun if he’s packing because the place was surrounded and to head for the back entrance. Joey says he walked off the dance floor and opened a door to find guns drawn on him.
    It turns out Santana had been brought in by the police earlier that night on an unrelated crime. He confessed to loaning Joey a .25 caliber automatic like the one used in the gas station murder. Santana told the police that Joey had confessed to the deed and even said, “I hope the fucker dies.”
    Joey was returned to LA County Jail, where he says he received a visit from the FBI and the task force who had just arrested Luigi in Yuma, AZ; supposedly, according to what sounds like Joey’s wild imagination, driving a gas tanker full of weed and cocaine. Joey claims the FBI were tipped off by Ramirez.
    Joey says the FBI brought up Uncle Frank Fratianno, 18 th St., and everything people had given them to get reduced sentences. Joey claims he refused a deal and was charged with murder one, looking at the death penalty or