Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
The story of Colombian serial killer and rapist Daniel Camargo Barbosa is one of the most horrific and gruesome tales imaginable. A man whose life was marked by suffering and darkness from the very beginning, he became one of the most cruel killers in Colombian history. His horrific deeds and the countless lives he destroyed paint a terrifying picture of human perversion and dehumanization. Daniel Camargo Barbosa was born on January 22, 1930, in Colombia. His life began with a tragic loss when his mother died before he was a year old. His father, arrogant and emotionally distant, soon remarried a woman named Dioselina Fernandez. But this new stepmother would make young Daniel’s already difficult life even worse. Dioselina was not only aggressive, but also creative in her cruelty. She forced Daniel to dress like a girl and go to school that way. The humiliation he suffered at the hands of his classmates left a deep impression on him. Despite this abuse, Daniel excelled as a brilliant student with an impressive IQ of 116. But his chances of higher education were abruptly ended when he had to leave school to support his family financially. This early and brutal uprooting of his dreams and hopes laid the foundation for the hatred that would later dominate his life. In 1958, Camargo was arrested for the first time for petty theft in Bogotá. In 1960, he married Alcira Castillo, with whom he had two children. But he soon fell in love with a young woman named Esperanza. However, when he learned that she was no longer a virgin, this discovery plunged him into a deep obsession. He and Esperanza made a sinister pact: she would help him find innocent young girls whom he wanted to rape. In return, he would stay with her. Their plan was perfidious and sophisticated. Esperanza lured girls to her apartment with false promises, where she drugged them with sleeping pills. Camargo abused the unconscious victims without killing them. But with the fifth victim, their plan went awry and the girl escaped to alert the police. This led to the arrest of Camargo and Esperanza, who were sentenced to separate prison terms. Camargo was eventually sentenced to 8 years in prison on April 10, 1964. After his release from prison in 1973, Camargo returned to Colombia, where his crimes took an even more gruesome turn. Camargo made a living selling televisions on the streets of Barranquilla. One day, he passed by a school where he abducted, raped, and murdered a nine-year-old girl to ensure she could not go to the police. This was the beginning of a series of murders that would boggle the imagination of even the most seasoned investigators. Camargo was arrested for the girl’s murder in 1974 after returning to the scene of the crime to retrieve the television he had left behind. Despite suspicions that he may have raped and murdered over 80 girls in Colombia, he was only convicted of one murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison, where he was incarcerated on Gorgona Island, known as the “Colombian Alcatraz,” in December 1977. In 1984, Camargo made a breathtaking escape from prison across the sea in a primitive boat. The authorities assumed that he had died during his escape, but the monster lived on. He continued his series of murders in Ecuador, committing incredibly brutal crimes between 1984 and 1986. His victims were young, unemployed girls from lower social classes, whom he lured into enchanted forests with lies and false promises. Camargo’s modus operandi was as simple as it was effective. He pretended to be a stranger looking for a pastor in a remote church and offered the girls a reward if they showed him the way. If they became suspicious, he let them go—but most did not. They followed him to remote areas where he raped and brutally murdered them. He often mutilated his victims’ bodies in a gruesome manner with a machete. On February 26, 1986, Camargo’s bloody trail came to an end. Two police officers in Quito noticed his suspicious behavior and stopped him. In his bag, they found bloody clothes and the mutilated genitals of his latest victim, as well as a copy of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” Despite his attempts to get away under the false name of Manuel Bulgarin Solis, he was identified and arrested by a rape victim who had survived. Camargo cold-bloodedly confessed to raping and murdering 72 girls in Ecuador. Without remorse, he led the authorities to the hidden bodies of his victims. He justified his choice of virgins by saying that their crying gave him great satisfaction. In 1989, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, the maximum sentence in Ecuador at the time. On November 13, 1994, the heinous life of Daniel Camargo Barbosa came to a violent end. In the Garcia Moreno de Quito prison, he was brutally stabbed to death by Geovanny Noguera, the nephew of one of his victims. The monster who had destroyed so many lives finally found his own punishment in death. Barbosa’s story remains a dark chapter in criminal history and serves as a terrifying reminder of the depths to which humans are capable of sinking. May the memory of his victims rest in peace, while the world is protected from such nightmares.
