Animal Cruelty Suspect Also A South Florida Porn Legend
MIAMI (CBS4) - Raul Armenteros should be a Carl Hiaasen character.
Arrested last week on 22 counts of animal cruelty, the 46-year-old Armenteros was taken into custody after police discovered nearly two dozen animals – four goats, eight roosters, four hens, four pigeons and a duck – in a van baking in the mid day Miami sun.
As Miami police officer Andres Dominguez waited for animal control to arrive, Armenteros and another man, James Arroyo, walked up and said the animals belonged to them.
And why did the men have small petting zoo in their van?
"They said they were going to do an offering," Dominguez told CBS4's Jim DeFede.
The men admitted to being Santeros, practitioners of Santeria, where animal sacrifices are a part of their religious beliefs.
But that still is not the strangest part of the story.
Turns out Armenteros is also Miami biggest – and we mean biggest – porn star. Known by the stage name "Ramon" and "The Monster," Armenteros has spent most of the last decade making adult films in South Florida for the region's bevy of internet porn sites, including the "World Famous Bang Bros."
Ironically, the Cuban-born Armenteros first made a name for himself as one of the early stars of the so-called Bang Bus movies, in which Armenteros and an array of women would be filmed having sex in the back of a van while being driven around Miami. As Armenteros and the different women would engage in a spirited variety of sex acts, glimpses of Miami landmarks would pass by the van's tinted windows.
Now it is the activities in another van that have earned Armenteros a new form of notoriety.
According to the Miami police officer Dominguez, on July 11 police received a report of a baby possibly locked inside a van in a parking lot on the corner of Seventh Street and NW 37th Avenue. The caller reported hearing what sounded like a child crying.
When Dominguez arrived shortly after noon, he found the van.
"You heard the cries," he recalled. "It really sounded like a baby crying. The door was open and when I opened it up, I saw it was goats inside plastic bags."
The four goats were tied up and their heads were barely visible outside the bags. It was well over 90 degrees outside, Dominguez recalled, and inside the van the temperatures were stifling.
"One of them was on its last legs," Dominguez said of the animal. "I gave it some water but it just died in my arms."
Also inside the van were the roosters, hens, pigeons and duck.
"It was sad to see the animals the way they were, it was very sad," Dominguez told DeFede.
Dominguez said it was obvious both Armenteros and Arroyo were surprised when they returned to the van and found the police there.
"They were sad that one of the animals had died," Dominguez noted. "But at that time it was time to take some action."
Both men were arrested on 22 counts of animal cruelty.
When word of the arrests first became public there was no mention of Armenteros' career as an adult film star. But because the stories included a mug shot of Armenteros, it didn't take long for his legion of fans to recognize him and begin posting comments on different websites saying "Ramon" had been busted.
Other websites, including TMZ soon picked up the story, and by this week Bang Bros was fielding calls from a variety of reporters.
The company issued the following statement to CBS4 News: "The allegations against Mr. Armenteros have nothing to do with his contract work for Bang Bros., and therefore the company has no specific comment on the arrest. Bang Bros is known as an ethical, philanthropic company, and opposes cruelty to animals in any form."
The surviving animals were taken to the county's Animal Services headquarters in West Dade. A judge will ultimately decide if the menagerie will be returned to Armenteros and Arroyo or if the county will be allowed to find homes for the animals.
Despite being one of the Internet's most prolific porn actors, Armenteros asked for a public defender saying he did not have the money to hire an attorney. On Thursday, July 21, his attorney will go to court to ask a judge to reduce his bond.
In the meantime he remains in the Metro West Detention Center, not far from where he made the February 2009 classic, "Monster in the Everglades" – the ribald tale of a man whose chance encounter with a young female wildlife enthusiast leads to an outdoor romp. Shot very much in the spirit of the great filmmaker John Ford, the action takes place against the lush green backdrop of South Florida's famed river of grass.
Or at least that's what we've been told.
