Rafiel Torre is a name you may not have heard of since he was mostly active during the early 2000s and got convicted for the murder of Bryan Richards in 2005. Not only this, but the real name of Rafiel Torre is Ralph Bartel, adding some further confusion to the story. For simplicity, we will refer to him as Rafiel Torre.
Funnily enough, Joe Rogan and Eddie Bravo both knew Torre, with Bravo actually training with him. It was Eddie Bravo who confronted Torre on the phone after he became suspicious of his abilities. During the questioning, Torre hesitated and would not answer if he was indeed a fake BJJ black belt and Eddie Bravo hung up the phone.
It was one of Eddie Bravo’s students named Gerald Strebendt who eventually told the police he had been approached by Torre to murder Bryan Richards, with the offer of $10 000. It is thought that the motive behind this was that Bryan Richards had a large life insurance policy and his wife was having an affair with Rafiel Torre.
Torre told numerous amounts of lies, most of which have just been spread by word of mouth since the internet was not too popular during the early 2000s compared to modern day. Some of his basic lies about his life were that his father was a Brazilian who taught him BJJ (hence his fake name Rafiel Torre) and that he also used to be a navy seal.
Joe Rogan speaks about this on his podcast JRE in some detail where he explains how the police had contacted him for information about Torre due to his past run-ins with both Strebendt and the murderer himself. The clip below is timestamped to the relevant discussion.
The Lies Become More Weird
Rogan goes on to tell the story about the infamous “Kumite in the woods” story. If you do not watch the video, the crux of it is that he was invited to a Karate tournament in California which was both secret and in a wooded area. He took with him a duffle bag and when returning, this duffle bag had a large trophy inside it.
It gets even stranger when Torre has an MMA fight at Cage Rage Wet & Wild event. Unfortunately, the video seems to have disappeared from the internet but he pretended to have a beef with a former student. During this fight, there were minimal punches thrown with Torre eventually getting a choreographed and sloppy kneebar on his “opponent”. It is a real shame the video has disappeared since it is quite obvious in modern day just how bad this kneebar was.
In the interview after the fight, Torre had a smug look on his face and hinted that he would not fight again due to his age and that the “beef” was now settled.
Even more shockingly Torre was invited to ADCC 2001 where he fought in the 88kg category. He was submitted by Beau Hershberg in the 1st round in less than 1 minute. How he was ever invited I don’t know, but surely some people were beginning to question his credentials after they saw this.
After this event, allegedly he also bragged online that he was a 14-0 fighter. The only records we have found are that he had one single fight which is mentioned above. Add into the mix that he fought a Kumite in the woods and is a fake BJJ black belt, we now are getting a picture of what kind of man Torre really is.
The Actual Murder
Not too much is known about the murder since there are no videos of the trial available on the internet. Torre is said to have lured the victim Richards to train with him at the gym, got him in a rear naked choke and didn’t let go. He had asked Strebendt (who he had earlier approached about murder for hire) to give him an alibi, in which he refused and told the police.
Richard’s wife who was having an affair with Torre was later taken to court by the National Life Insurance Company to make sure she could not claim his policy from them, in which they succeeded.
During the testimony, Strebendt states that Torre confessed the murder to him and also mentions he was approached to murder Richards himself as discussed earlier.
We do know that Torre eventually admitted killing Richards during the trial but claimed that the two men were in a fight and that the choke was self defence. A lie that was not accepted by the jury and got Rafiel Torre sentenced to life in prison.
