“I met Jonathan Torres between 2008 and 2009. We belonged to a group called Police Carabinieri Mobile Squad (Emcar) which is a counter-guerrilla in the department of Cauca. I had arrived a year earlier.”
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It was impossible not to end up meeting many personalities. We slept, we ate together, we were very close
*Pedro says that some policemen who had done something wrong arrived at that place. Something like a kind of punishment. “Many bad guys ended up there, he understands me and Jonathan came that way, grounded, but I don’t know where he came from. They knew regarding him that he was originally from the Llano, as was his entire family.
In that place, every day, regarding 30 policemen lived 24 hours a day for 50 days, they only rested ten and once once more they returned to their routine. “It was impossible not to end up meeting many personalities. We slept, we ate together, we were very close. Therefore, without being a doctor, I can tell you that Torres had a serious psychological problem: he was a mythomaniac.”
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That was his fame. His classmates began to realize that he was telling lies all the time. It was one story following another that they listened to him tell until they ended up humoring him like someone who has patience with a sick person. He was even involved in robbery issues from his companions.
There were many but the worst was when said his son had died in an accident of transit in the Llano. “I remember he started crying like crazy. The truth is that we doubt his version a lot, but in the end we were moved to see him so badly and we even raised money for him to travel. We mightn’t be so cruel.”
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Rather, he entangled them and tricked them
However, doubt was in the air. “Although the eldest gave him permission, he also began to find out with the Traffic Police of the department where Torres said that everything had happened. That’s when he found out that That accident had never happened. His colleagues say that he had a disciplinary problem, that an investigation was opened but that they never knew how it ended.
Jonathan, his friends say, was very fond of money. “We found out because we used to go to Popayan. The plan there was with old women. Even over there he ended up messing with a superintendent who had a husband. That was a complication because he pretended that she had money, but at the point of lies.
They say that he made women fall in love because he had the “speak” to convince them, to propose business. “Better said, he entangled them and tricked them”, said Pedro, who also recalled once that he convinced some people in Popayán to let him test drive a car with the promise that he would buy it as soon as they disbursed him a loan. He “had to file a complaint because he took the car to the Llano and never returned it.”
Those who knew him say that seemed to have an inferiority problem as if telling lies was the only thing that made him feel important, taken into account. “Sometimes you saw him alone, apart.”
“I threw a madrazo and thought: that man is capable of doing that for money.”
Pedro contradicts what was said by Torres’ lawyer, Jimmy Pepinoza. He assures that he was not a sniper and that he did not kill guerrillas either, but that they did participate in confrontations where the wounded were almost always by bullets fired from helicopters. “When I was there he was part of a training program for dogs to detect explosives and when he arrived he said that he was a canine handler and he did have some basic knowledge. It must be that he invented all those lies to the lawyer who now defends him. He is like that”. Of course, Torres, according to his partnerhe did take a basic course in explosives.
Another striking aspect of Torres’s personality at that time was his irritable personality. “He was one of the types that when he left the chiros he would punch the walls. That is why we were always very alert so that he would not pick up the rifle at that time. Many times we asked the lieutenant to change it. He looked unbalanced and scared us.”
He also says that he was always in debt, that his salary was never enough, that he borrowed money to do business. He “he bought something on credit, then sold it and never paid the owner. Things like that. He also bought gold things to show that he was wealthy, that’s how he also entangled women, he invented businesses for them “.
When Pedro was transferred to Cali, he never heard from him once more until this year he stopped to see the news regarding the disappearance of Adriana Pinzón and realized that it was the same man he had met in Arauca. “I threw a madrazo and thought: that man is capable of doing that for money.”
CAROL MALAVER
DEPUTY EDITOR BOGOTÁ
Write to us at carmal@eltiempo.com
