The little boy in this photograph grew up to be one of the most evil men in the world.
Born on February 29, 1960, in El Paso, Texas, this boy was the youngest of five children in a Mexican immigrant family.
His father worked as a railway laborer, and the family practiced Catholicism.
From the outside, it seemed like a typical working-class upbringing in the American Southwest.
But behind closed doors, this child’s world was far from ordinary.
His father was a violent alcoholic prone to fits of rage that resulted in frequent physical abuse.
The boy suffered multiple head injuries before the age of six, knocked unconscious so many times that he later developed temporal lobe epilepsy.
As punishment, his father would sometimes tie him to a crucifix in a cemetery overnight, leaving the frightened child alone in the darkness among the tombstones.
By age 10, he had already begun smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol, searching for any escape from the violence at home.