A brief look online will tell you how Richard’s parents forced him to take steroids, that he grew up in a house with no toys, that he wasn’t allowed outside and that his dad would cruelly sit in front of him eating pizza, while the young bodybuilder was only allowed a head of lettuces.
Little Hercules’ story has been clouded by mythology and untruths, and when Metro contacted him last year to set the record straight, he was in the throes of alcoholism, drinking a minimum of a bottle of tequila a day.
At the age of five he was working out all day every day, and by the time he turned eight, he had rock hard abs, chiselled pecs and was able to bench press three times his own body weight.
Richard was roundly misused and abused, deprived of a normal childhood and forced to train against his will, he tells Metro.
Homeschooled and with no friends, from an early age the little boy was deprived of many of the normal treats and experiences most children of the nineties enjoyed.
