2023-10-14 07:48:09
“He tells in detail what he did to my brother. It’s something impressive, I knew how he lived, where, I had seen him on the streets of Buga, I knew that he sold tickets and that he had problems at home. He tells how he made the decision to deceive him by telling him to help him with something and tricked him into the cane field. He gagged him, raped him and left him lying there, dead,” says Karina, sister of one of the more than 200 children raped and murdered by Luis Alfredo Garavito, the Beast, who died this week in a hospital in Valledupar.
Karina was 10 years old when her brother, 12, fell victim to the Beast. The tragedy that the death of her brother meant did not stop there, she took her mother away. “What she told us is that she searched for him high and low until she went into depression and fell into drugs. It was following 20 years that she became a Christian and she recovered when she learned that she was one of Garavito’s victims.”
Today the woman says that she feels relief with the death of the Beast on October 12, as they called this criminal, following serving 24 of the 40 years in prison to which he was sentenced. “The truth is, it’s like a break. Even though one knows that he was in prison, it gives peace of mind to know that the person who caused so much harm to so many families can no longer be free,” says Karina.
Garavito was born in Génova, Quindío, in January 1957 and his first crime was committed in 1992 in Jamundí, Valle del Cauca. After this he did not stop until his capture on April 22, 1999. At that time he coldly confessed how he committed the aberrant crimes.
Garavito was a serial killer. | Photo: COLPRENSA
Those who knew Garavito testified that he was an angry, aggressive and drunk man. Karina was forever marked by Garavito’s confession in which she gave details of the rape, torture and murder of her brother.
The beast had hundreds of cases of minors that it victimized.
“His statements, remembering everything, how he did it, at least in the case of my brother, how he courted him, how he deceived him, how he killed him. He is a person that I say: My God, with what mind did he do it? How is he able to remember? When they gave us what he told, he remembered that they called my brother Panqueso and all his characteristics, the scar he had, that shocked me,” says Karina.
Garavito studied his victims in detail. He would stand in front of schools, in market squares, at bus terminals. He was looking for children between 8 and 16 years old, of small stature, from humble homes and who were alone.
The modus operandi was always the same, he appeared harmless and friendly, offered them sweets, money or gifts and asked them to accompany him on a walk. Then, he would go with them into ravines, into wooded areas or pastures, and there, in broad daylight, because he paradoxically feared the dark, he would transform into the Beast.
Garavito was known as the ‘Beast’.
Once he had the children intimidated or tied hands and feet in the place he had previously chosen, Garavito took a sip from a bottle of cheap brandy and began to sexually abuse them, while inflicting blows and wounds on them with a sharp knife, screwdrivers or with Minora blades, which he put between his fingers. Once he was satisfied, he cut their throats and abandoned their bodies.
“In Pereira I took them both together. I contacted them because they were going by a school, I told them the same thing, that I had a cane to cut, I took them into the cane fields. I killed them with a knife, they screamed and I was scared that they were going to catch me. So, I tied one up first, left him there, and picked up the other. The boy saw what I was doing to the other and, then, I killed him. Then I killed the other child,” was one of Garavito’s crude and aberrant confessions.
After committing the crimes, he collected the newspaper clippings in which the events were recorded, as if they were small trophies.
The year 1997 was ending when the authorities made a macabre discovery that began the investigations. These were the skeletal remains of three children, ages 9, 12 and 13, on a farm in Génova, Quindío. The three were in similar conditions: tied up and with their throats cut. At first it was thought that it was some satanic sect.
Luis Alfredo Garavito, known as ‘The Beast’, was serving a 40-year prison sentence. | Photo: Colprensa
Investigators found a note with an address near the scene and when they got there there was a woman who knew him. At the scene, Garavito had left several bags with his belongings, including images of children, a diary in which he recorded the crimes, and press clippings related to the homicides.
The authorities discovered that he moved regions, that he used other names, that he had gone to Alcoholics Anonymous. He posed as a priest, he had a venereal disease, he visited the Pentecostal Church, he was fond of bars and they called him the Fool, Tribilin and Conflicto.
Reports of more missing children began to arrive in various regions of the country and at the same time new discoveries of more bones with the same characteristics were made. It was already clear to the authorities that they were on the trail of a serial killer and rapist. It was then that his arrest was ordered for the murder of a child in Tunja.
Garavito managed to sneak past the authorities by wearing disguises and traveling from one place to another. It took a year for his capture, but he had already left his macabre mark in Quindío, Risaralda, Caldas, Antioquia, Cundinamarca, Valle, Cauca, Nariño, Putumayo, Boyacá, Meta, Casanare, Guaviare, Bogotá and even in Ecuador and Venezuela.
On April 22, 1999, Garavito was in a rural area of Villavicencio. He had another of his victims subdued. The boy, sensing what was regarding to happen to him, began to scream and his call for help was heard by a street dweller who began to throw stones at him.
The Beast tried to defend himself with the same dagger with which he intended to kill the minor who already had his hands and feet tied, but he did not succeed and, like a frightened animal, he went into the undergrowth, but was finally captured.
Garavito began to recount gruesome details of his actions. He knew perfectly the day, place, and time of each crime and remembered the characteristics of each of his victims. While he continued with the terrible story, he asked that they give him a sheet of kraft paper on which the years appeared, the initials of the cities where he had been and the number of his victims. The paper was one of the evidence found among his belongings. “This paper is for the children who have died, there were 11 children in ’93.”
“I am responsible for the death of 140 children,” said Garavito, although it is still believed that there might have been more than 200. Precisely, the exact number of children he raped and murdered, as well as the location of many of the remains of his victims, were the secrets that Garavito took to the grave. Now, the families of the children who died at his hands only hope that there will be divine justice.
Karina, almost two decades following the death of her brother, barely two years older than her, only dares to say: “I don’t feel hate, because that is left to God, but it is somewhat frustrating to see that justice is not served.” “he gave despite so much damage he did.”
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