Luis Garavito

Serial rapist and murderer

• Born: January 25, 1957
• Place of Birth: Place of birth: Genova, Quindio, Columbia
• Died: October 12, 2023
• Place of Death: Valledupar, Colombia

Significance: Luis Garavito was a serial rapist and murderer who admitted to killing at least 140 young boys in his native Colombia between 1992 and 1999. He died in prison in his homeland in 2023.

Background

Luis Garavito was born on January 25, 1957, in the town of Genova in the Quindio region of Bogota, Colombia. He was the oldest of seven sons born to a poor family in an area populated with farmers and manual laborers. Because of a decade-long clash between members of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, Colombia was rife with violence at the time of Garavito’s birth. The violence forced many to move, including Garavito’s family, who fled to Ceylon in Valle de Cauca when Garavito was a young child.

Violence also permeated Garavito’s childhood in other ways. During his testimony at his trial, Garavito claimed to have been sexually assaulted by neighbors twice during his youth. Garavito said he did not tell his parents about the assaults because his father was a physically violent man prone to attacking both Garavito and his mother. Neighbors backed up his accounts of the molestation.

Garavito was a teenager when he began to sexually assault young boys; his first known victims were his younger brothers, whom he molested in their sleep. After he was arrested for assaulting a boy at a train station, Garavito was thrown out of his family’s home.

Predatory Activities

Once on his own, Garavito became an alcoholic and moved from job to job. He also gave in to his desire for young boys. He began luring them from public sight with money or food and then assaulting them. His victims were all between the ages of six and sixteen, and most had light skin and blue eyes. While Garavito had not yet begun to murder his victims, he often bit or burned them before raping them.

Garavito sought psychiatric care and was temporarily hospitalized for depression. However, he did not reveal his growing obsession for sodomy with children then or when he was jailed briefly for theft. He had been attacking boys at the rate of at least one a month and recording the details in a small notebook for more than eight years before he was caught in the act on October 4, 1992. Garavito was set free, reportedly because he bribed the arresting officer, and he resumed his predatory actions.

Prior to his arrest, Garavito had become fascinated with serial killers. He later told investigators that the devil told him to kill. Garavito continued to use money or food to lure boys away from populated areas and began murdering them. The boys were almost always street children or children from poor families who would not be missed for at least a few hours. Garavito tied them up and then raped and tortured them before killing them. He was known to cut out the child’s internal organs while a boy was still alive and then cut his throat. The mutilation often included cutting off the child’s fingers and toes to cast blame on local satanic cults.

Garavito was able to evade capture because he killed in isolated areas and chose children who would not be missed. He further escaped detection because of a lack of coordinated efforts between police departments in different parts of the country. Even when Garavito came under suspicion, which happened several times during the six years of his killing spree, he was often able to talk his way out of accountability and persuade authorities to release him. His name remained in their files, however, and this would eventually lead to him being charged with crimes that he committed years before his capture.

Garavito had a few rituals that eventually led to his downfall. He stored souvenirs of his kills, including bus tickets and other items that pinned down times and locations, in black duffle bags at his sister’s house. This practice allowed investigators to tie him to dozens of crimes when he was caught. He also lingered near his victims after they were dead, often propping them up while he drank himself into a stupor. After murdering a boy near the town of Buga in 1998, Garavito drank and fell asleep while smoking; he set himself and the area around him on fire. He managed to flee the scene but left incriminating evidence that helped authorities connect this child’s death to another who was killed in 1996 in Tunja. When his sister was questioned, she turned over the bags of souvenirs he had left behind.

Police began searching for Garavito. He was finally caught in April 1999 when a young boy he was attempting to assault called out for help to another older boy, who threw rocks at Garavito. Both boys escaped and alerted authorities. Garavito was caught but used an assumed name, Bonifacio Morera. Authorities comparing records discovered the connections between the crimes and his true identity. He was charged on October 2, 1999. Once authorities revealed they knew his real name, Garavito confessed and led them to many of the sites, including some mass graves, where he had left the remains of his victims.

Garavito was charged with 138 deaths. On December 13, 1999, he was sentenced to more than 1,853 years in prison. However, the Colombian constitution, which does not allow the death penalty, requires all sentences to be concurrent, not consecutive. At the time of his sentencing, the maximum sentence was thirty years. In 2006, the courts reduced Garavito’s sentence to twenty-two years because he pled guilty.

Garavito died in a hospital in Valledupar, northern Colombia.

Impact

Some authorities believe he may have killed as many as four hundred boys. He was suspected of murders in Ecuador as well. The 2023 four-episode documentary Garavito: The Serial Beast chronicles the search for the killer.

Bibliography

Benecke, M. and Rodriguez y Rowinski M. "Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos: criminal and legal aspects of serial homicide with over 200 victims." Arch Krimino, Sept.-Oct. 2002. Web. 6 July 2016.

"Colombian Child Killer Confesses." BBC World News, Oct. 1999. Web. 6 July 2016.

"Colombian Serial Killer Who Confessed to Murdering More than 190 Children Dies in Hospital." Associated Press, 12 Oct. 2023, apnews.com/article/colombian-serial-killer-garavito-death-5290ce76e367c49529ecdebc51d71074. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.

McQueen, Victor. The 10 Worst Serial Killers: Monsters Whose Crimes Shocked the World. London: Arcturus Publishing, 2015. Print.

Rother, Larry. "Behind a Grisly Confession, the Torn Lives of Colombian Children." The New York Times, Nov. 2009. Web. 16 June 2016.

Shaw, Anna. "The Monster of the Andes, the Meanest Man in America, and Seven other Prolific Serial Killers." Mental Floss, Nov. 2007. Web. 6 July 2016.