For them, days are torture, full of memories that are still raw, and may always be that way.
One mother remembers
Maria Ema Suarez, 65, only has photographs to reminder of her son, Louis, whose body was discovered on February, 6, 1994.
“How great it would be if he were still alive, to eat cakes on his birthday, to talk,” the dressmaker said.
When she looks outside, she grows tearful when she sees children working in the street, knowing that her son might not have been a victim had he not been forced to sell items on the streets to help support his family.
And while she still suffers the loss of her son, she worries about her grandchildren and those children outside her window, “because if that guy comes back, I know what can happen to them.”
Grandmother’s memories haunt
Maria Elvia Guapacha remembers dancing around the room with her grandsons during the holidays, a tradition that has long since degraded into sad memories tinged with rage at the man who killed the boys in April of 1995.
“They were very happy,” she said.
“This evil he did to my grandchildren,” said Guapacha’s husband Luis Carlos Largo, should lead him to the electric chair. “But as they say, ‘the law is only for the poor.’ And now it’s what the law does.”
One of the boy’s sisters struggles with her faith in the wake of Garavito’s heinous acts.
“I do not know whether to forgive him. He would have to stand in front of me and tell me, ‘I killed your brothers,’ for me to realize what I feel in my heart.”
A loss leads to further tragedy
One day in 1994, Gustavo Andres, born December 31, 1983, went to the Buga, Colombia, town square to sell raffle tickets, a job he did to help support his mother Nohemi and his sister Karina, who at the time was just two years old.
The 11-year-old boy never came home.
Desperate, his mother spend that night, the next day and several more days after looking in schools, in the park, throughout the city’s downtown, in search of her son.
It was as though her son had disappeared off the face of the earth.
In the wake of her son’s disappearance, his mother could not sleep, did not eat and she could not even return to work. She turned to alcohol and cigarettes as an escape for her despair.
Her world continued to fall apart.
One of Gustavo’s older brothers took his toddler sister to his home in El Bordo, Cauca, where she would not be neglected.
Within three months, Nohemi was homeless, walking the streets of Buga, smoking, drinking and doing as many drugs as possible to erase the memories of her son.
“It was to avoid thinking, ‘Where was Gustavo? What happened to him? If he had wanted to leave home he would have taken his things, his clothes. But no.”
She wondered if he had been abducted into the sex trade, a horrible thought that also brought with it a ray of hope.
“If he was taken to another country, then he should remember me, he might come looking for me,” she said.
But she tries not to think of him, even know, when she has remarried and struggles with the terrible symptoms of tuberculosis. But that is impossible.
“How would I be now? What would have become of him?” she wonders. It is something she will never know.
And all she is left with is a single photo, the only one of her son she could afford during his life cut short.
Gustavo had plans to be a dentist or maybe a lawyer, and had plans to buy a house for his mother and sister.
He liked boxing, after seeing a match on TV at a neighbor’s house, and soon was the neighborhood knockout.
It’s not enough for his mother to hold onto, but sadly, it will have to be.
Chapter 8: Garavito behind bars
Garavito apparently only ever leaves his cell to study and never receives visitors. In a psychological report obtained by El Tiempo, “The Beast” was asked about his actions, to which he replied,
“So I was born, I do not know why. I felt pleasure, even though when I had killed the guilt came over me.”
Garavito is afraid that he will be killed behind bars.
His biggest fear is getting poisoned, so he only accepts food or beverages from certain guards that he has grown to trust.
He is separate from other prisoners, so he is unlikely to find himself in a position where a fellow inmate takes retribution and kills him.
Interview calls attention to case
In 2006, South American celebrity interviewer Pirry secured a hugely controversial interview with Garavito. Before the interview, Pirry took classes with criminal profilers in Miami to learn more about the mind of a serial killer. His research ended up earning him an Emmy award nomination.
The interview ran in June, and included commentary from Pirry, who talked about Garavito’s plans after prison to enter politics in order to help abused children.
Garavito’s plans drew outrage, and later that year, a judicial review determined that his sentence could be suspended due to crimes committed outside Colombia.
Mental illness evident in later interviews
During a visit to Garavito in prison, author Lara Johnson found Garavito to suffer from some form of attention deficit disorder, and said he was unable to stay focused during their interview.
“Garavito cannot restrict his train of thoughts,” said Johnson in her book “Serial Killers.”
“He will jump from one topic to the other, and even if he starts a conversation on a topic that he feels is interesting (plane crash, etc.), he will switch to a different topic only seconds, or minutes later. Because of the complete absence of any psychological treatment, he is not used to talking about personal matters, even if it would aid his cause. For example, one of the first things he talked to us about was an article from a popular science magazine that he found very interesting; he had written down notes next to the article. The article was dealing with children abused by their parents. When we asked why this caught his attention, he would absolutely not comment on this issue and switched the topic as if he had not heard the question. This is remarkable because it is the opinion of the police that Garavito was maltreated as a child.”
He later complained to Johnson in a letter that the gifts they brought him, T-shirts and other odds and ends, were too cheap to be equal to the time he spent talking to them.
A nation in fear
Now, Columbian residents are left to fear the release of one of their nation’s most terrifying killers.
“I live in Colombia, I’ve been knowing this guy all my life,” said Andrea Montoya on a Facebook page dedicated to keeping The Beast behind bars. “I must say this guy is one of the worst beasts I know about! He doesn’t feel any remorseless about all these children he raped, tortured and killed. He even thinks he will use the pain of those boys’ families to get out of jail. He can be free in seven years and he says he will collaborate finding the rest of these kids if he gets out earlier. I just think he is one of the psychopaths that frighten me the most.”
She should rest easy, however. The director of Colombia’s prison authority INPEC has said that it’s not likely that one of the world’s worst serial killers, dubbed “The Beast,” will be released from prison any time soon, even with time off for work or study.
INPEC Director Gustavo Adolfo Ricaurte said that even with study hours, inmates at best could only earn four months of time off for each year spent either studying or working.
“The average inmate that studies or works, for each year, can redeem four months,” said Ricaurte.
The aftermath
In 2011, a Colombian judge denied Garavito early release from prison after the man considered one of the world’s most prolific serial killers served 12 of his reduced 24-year sentence.
Garavito’s defense team did not apply for an early release, and according to the Colombia newspaper E Espectador, the issue of the madman’s release in not expected to come up “for a long time.”
&n
bsp; If he is released, it is likely that he will be extradited to neighboring Ecuador, where he has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for murders he committed in the border nation.
“Garavito is serving a sentence for more than 168 crimes committed against children in Colombia. Garavito has to pay in Colombia what he did to those kids. I hope he pays in Ecuador for the atrocities he committed against Ecuadorian children,” said Bogotá Senator Gilma Jimenez.
Daniel Camargo Barbosa
It’s not really a surprise that Daniel Camargo Barbosa, who earned the nickname “The Sadist of El Charquito,” turned into a serial killer.
His mother died when he was just a year old, and his father’s younger new wife was unable to have children.
Unfortunately for Camargo, the woman had apparently always dreamed of having a daughter, so she dressed the boy in girl’s clothing, sending him out into the world to face endless ridicule from the other children in their neighborhood.
“My stepmother did not like children, but she loved girls,” he later said. “When she dressed me as a girl, I think she was trying to make me a girl. She could not love me as a child.”
As he grew older, he overcame the childhood trauma and was one of the smartest students at his Bogotá high school. His father and stepmother were looking to him to help boost the family income, though, so he was pressured to leave school and land a job, a move that erased his chances of using education as a tool to escape from poverty.
Instead, he would become one of Colombia’s most renowned serial killers, suspected of raping and killing at least 150 virgins and convicted of 72 during the 1970s and ‘80s.
Chapter 1 – A relationship made in hell
When he was 30 years old, Camargo established a relationship with Alcira Catillo, and the two lived together in what would eventually be considered a common-law marriage.
The relationship resulted in two children, but Camargo never felt the urge to get married until he met 28-year-old Hope Esperanza.
Camargo was all set to propose to Esperanza when he learned that she was no longer a virgin.
That was a deal breaker for Camargo, who had a thing for virginal, untouched partners, and found himself consumed with rage over what he saw as an unforgivable betrayal.
But despite this, he felt overwhelming love for his nonvirginal girlfriend.
“I was unable to leave because I was madly in love,” he said.
While he oftentimes felt a compulsion to leave to satisfy his desire for a virgin – “I had no experience with virgins, but I dreaded venereal disease and its ravages. I wanted pure, pristine women,” he said – he could not bring himself to leave her.
An agreement straight from hell
Instead, he worked out a sick deal with his new lady love. He would stay with Esperanza if she would help procure for him his desired virgins, the younger the better.
“I accepted it as the right thing that she brought for me girls who were virgins,” he said.
Esperanza agreed, and over the next few years she lured five girls to their apartment, where she drugged them with the barbiturate Seconal, a drug that became a household word after the release of Jacqueline Susann’s pop classic “Valley of the Dolls” in 1966, and then left them alone with Camargo so he could do with them as he wished.
The arrangement likely would have gone on longer if the fifth girl hadn’t reported them to police after she was released.
The couple was arrested, and on April 10, 1964, Camargo was sentenced to three years in prison for sexual assault.
When a new judge was assigned the case, five years were added to Camargo’s sentence, and he ultimately served eight years for robbing five girls of their innocence.
Serving those last five years, however, consumed him with rage, and by the time he was released, he had turned all of his anger on women.
As far as Camargo was concerned, someone would pay for his time behind bars.
Chapter 2: A new modus operandi
Camargo, thin and tall with dark hair and a receding hairline, was released in 1972, and he headed to Brazil to start a new life as an illegal immigrant.
He was arrested a year later, and Brazilian authorities held him while waiting for his criminal records. Those records failed to show in a timely manner, so Camargo was deported back to Colombia, where he got a job as a street vendor selling television monitors.
This particular job gave him easy access to young victims who wandered the streets in desperate search for money or food, and he was able to kidnap a nine-year-old girl while working near a neighborhood school.
He later told authorities he “fell in love” with the girl, but to show his affection, he raped her, oblivious to her tears, then murdered the girl so she would be unable to report the crime to police.
He had learned his lesson with his previous victims, and his time in prison had only served to escalate his anger.
Camargo freedom was short-lived
But his anger had made Camargo careless, and it didn’t take long for police to arrest him again.
He had abandoned the television monitors that he sold next to his victim’s body and went back to get them, thereby breaking one of the most critical rules of thumb to escape capture after illegal activity – don’t return to the scene of the crime.
Camargo was arrested on May 3, 1974, and on December 24, 1977, was sentenced to 30 years in prison at La Isla De La Gorgona Prison, an incarceration facility nicknamed Colombian Alcatraz for its remote location on the island of Gorgona, Colombia.
His sentence was later reduced to 25 years.
While inside, he made sure that the other prisoners stayed away from him by saying that he, like the famed Robert Johnson who stood at the crossroads, desperate to play guitar, made a deal with the devil.
Escape artist
Because Colombian officials saw the island as inhospitable due to its remoteness, there was little surveillance on the prisoners.
Camargo learned to play ping pong and how to dive, as prisoners were allowed to swim in the waters surrounded the prison island. They were also allowed to walk about freely, and one day during his walks around the island, he saw a small, apparently abandoned boat.
He immediately rowed for freedom. It was about 10 years into his 25-year sentence.
When officials realized he was gone, they began searching for Camargo, but after several days of searching, there was no sign of Camargo, so prison officials reported that he died at sea. Media accounts reported that the prison warden said, “He had been eaten by sharks while swimming.”
The truth was much more terrible.
After three days without food or water, Camargo and his makeshift boat landed on the shores of Brazil.
“His appearance and his state of mind implied that his days were numbered,” said Spanish journalist Juan Antonio Cebrian. “But Daniel Camargo was smart, and he had the ability to generate resources.”
From Brazil – which he found to be much too hot - he was able to make his way to Ecuador, and shortly thereafter, young girls begin to disappear.
Chapter 3: Four years of terror
From 1984 to 1986, Camargo raped and killed at least 54 young girls in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the surrounding area, but the sheer volume of deaths led police to believe that it was the atrocious work of a local gang, and they never imagined that one man was responsible.
While he was on his spree of rape and murder, Camargo earned money selling ballpoint pens and more grotesquely, items that he took from his victims.
Instead of working with an accomplice, Camargo lured his victims by pretending to be lost and in need of directions, promising a reward or a job if the young girls he preyed upon would help him find his way.
Tricks of a deadly trade
He sought young girls who were lower class, and desperate for any kind of work to provide them and their families with food. He also used cruel ruses, saying he needed help finding a pastor located on the other side of town, and wou
ld pay the girls money if they would take him there, and maybe help them find a job.
The overwhelming desire to have work, combined with the comfort that came with the idea of going somewhere as safe as to a priest, made the girls easy prey.
Once in his snare of lies, he would tell his victims that they should cut through the woods as a shortcut. If his chosen target left, he allowed it without giving chase in order to draw less attention to himself. If they stayed, he would rape and strangle them in the woods, then use his machete to cut them open to make their corpses more enticing to wild animals so they would catch their scent and take care of the disposal for him.
It was a terrible time for the residents of the region, who were terrified that they might end up an unknown assailant’s next victim.
“There was a commotion throughout the city and country, and of ten night school classes, nine had closed," recalls Edgar Salazar Vera, the judge who prosecuted Camargo for the crimes of kidnapping, rape and murder.
Another lesson in never taking candy from strangers
He also offered candy, police learned, when they discovered the body of 12-year-old Gloria Andino, whose hand was still clutching a candy wrapper when she died.
“I opted for persuasion rather than by threat,” he said. “I killed without a trace. I always wore a shirt over, and when my hands were stained with blood, I cleaned them by urinating on them.”
Unfortunately for Camargo, who also began disemboweling his victims in hopes of leaving as little evidence behind as possible, a single fingerprint not belonging to Gloria was found on the wrapper, and after searching through thousands of fingerprint files, the authorities got their match.
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology) Page 43