Daniel Camargo Barbosa

692
Daniel Camargo Barbosa bigraphy, stories - Criminals

Daniel Camargo Barbosa : biography

January 22, 1930 – November 13, 1994

Daniel Camargo Barbosa (born 22 January 1936) was a Colombian psychopathic serial killer. It is believed that he raped and killed over 150 young girls in Colombia and Ecuador during the 1970s and 1980s.

Crimes and imprisonment

He was first arrested in Bogotá on May 24, 1958 for petty theft.

Camargo had a de facto union with a woman named Alcira and had two children with her. He fell in love with another woman, Esperanza (age 28), whom he planned to marry, but then found out that she was not a virgin. This became the root of Camargo’s fixations. He and Esperanza formed an agreement that he would stay with her if she aided him in finding other virgin girls to have sex with. This began a period of their partnership in crime. Esperanza was Camargo’s accomplice, luring young girls to an apartment under false pretenses and then drugging them with sodium seconal sleeping pills so that Camargo could rape them. Camargo committed five rapes in this way, but did not kill any of the girls. The fifth child that they abused in this way reported the crime, and both Camargo and Esperanza were arrested and taken to separate prisons. Camargo was convicted of sexual assault in Colombia on April 10, 1964.

A judge sentenced Camargo to three years in prison, and Camargo was initially grateful for the perceived leniency of the judge, swearing to repent and mend his ways. However, a new judge was given precedence over the case and Camargo was sentenced to eight years in prison. This provoked Camargo to rebellious anger. He served his full sentence, and was released.

In 1973 he was arrested in Brazil for being undocumented. Due to a delay in sending Camargo’s criminal records from Colombia, he was deported and released with his false identity. When he returned to Colombia, he took up a job as a street vendor in Barranquilla selling television monitors. One day when passing by a school he kidnapped a nine-year-old girl, raping her and murdering her so that she could not inform the police as his previous victim had. This was his first assault involving murder.

Camargo was arrested on May 3, 1974 in Barranquilla, Colombia when he returned to the scene of the crime to recover the television screens that he had forgotten beside the victim. Even though it is believed that he raped and killed more than 80 girls in Colombia, Camargo was imprisoned in Colombia after being convicted of raping and killing a nine-year-old girl. He was initially sentenced to 30 years in prison, but this sentence was reduced to 25 years, and he was interned in the prison on the island of Gorgona, Colombia on December 24, 1977.

Early life

Camargo’s mother died when he was a little boy and his father was overbearing and emotionally distant. He was raised by an abusive stepmother, who punished him and sometimes dressed him in girls’ clothing, making him a victim of ridicule in front of his peers.

Escape from Colombia to Ecuador

In November 1984 Camargo escaped from Gorgona prison (known as the Colombian Alcatraz) in a primitive boat after having carefully studied the ocean currents. The authorities assumed that he died at sea and the press reported that he had been eaten by sharks. He eventually arrived in Quito, Ecuador. He then traveled by bus to Guayaquil on the 5th or 6th December 1984. On December 18th he abducted a nine-year-old girl from the city of Quevedo, in the province of Los Ríos, Ecuador. The next day a 10-year-old girl also disappeared.

From 1984 to 1986 Carmago committed a series of at least 54 rapes and murders in Guayaquil. The police at first believed that all the deaths were the work of a gang, not understanding that one man could have killed so many. Camargo slept on the streets, and lived off of the money he could gain by reselling ballpoint pens in the streets. Occasionally he supplemented his income by selling clothing or small valuables belonging to his victims.

Sentence

Camargo was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence available in Ecuador. While serving his sentence in the Garcia Moreno de Quito jail, he claimed to have converted to Christianity. In this penitentiary he was imprisoned with Pedro Alonso Lopez ("the Monster of the Andes"), who is believed to have raped and killed more than 300 girls in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.