Rotten Mango - #313: The Beast Of Colombia - Serial Killer That Literally Sold His Soul To The Devil & Sacrificed 221 Children

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

He had sold his soul and now to keep the devil happy he needed to make sacrifices with dead bodies & his Ouija board. 200+ bodies were found in Colombia brutally assaulted, tortured, and dismembered.�� Some were certain the serial killer was a priest that participated in satanic activities at night.  Others stated it was a local crazy man that had gone criminal.  Some even believed that it was a local witch that was going around killing to make sacrifices….  Whoever it was - they would be known as the Beast Of Colombia. The world’s deadliest serial killer… that was set to be released this year in 2023.  Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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visit mx.ca slash business platinum. Better being better blue. In Colombia, there are these insane cathedrals and churches from like the 1600s. They are as beautiful as you would imagine. Once you walk in there, there's vaulted ceilings. I mean they look three stories tall, domed archways, pillars with these intricate gold detailing, stained glass windows,

just reflecting all this colorful light off of these wooden pews. And of course you cannot forget the beautiful altars with these dripping melting candles and these complicated ornate statues at the front. And during the day, it is a place of gathering. Reflection faith, you know? But at night, I think like any building, the last thing you want to hear is someone weeping from inside of one of these cathedrals. In a small town in Columbia, at one of these old, old churches. There was a man weeping. It's nighttime, the lights are off, he's kneeling on the cold stone floor, he's looking up at the altar, and there's just tears

streaming down this guy's face. His face is all scrunched up as if he had just seen something so utterly terrifying, and he's grabbing his fist, and he starts banging it on his own chest. And he keeps weeping. Male culpa, male culpa, which means my fault, my fault, in Latin. He starts pulling at his hair, he's hitting his head with his fist, obsessively reciting verses from the book of Psalms. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt, their deeds are vile, vile, vile.

There is no one who is good, no one who does good. Their deeds are vile. Two passurbites peek their head in through the door when they hear this weeping, and they're like, who is that? What is going on? Why is this man just weeping in this cathedral? This doesn't make any sense.

And the other passurbite says, oh, I think that's the new priest in town. This man was the beast of Columbia. The man who performed satanic rituals with dead bodies and Ouija boards. He was the man who sold his soul to the devil, not even figuratively, but he admitted to a transaction. He also kept a little blue book of 221 names, all of the names of the little boys he killed. That is the low end of the figure. The monster of Genova, otherwise known as the Beast of Columbia, is the serial killer with the most victims. It is estimated that he has at least 221 victims and potentially into the 400s. And this is how he was set to be released from prison this year, 2023.

That's always full show notes available at rottonminglepodcast.com with that being said. We did have the assistance from our wonderful Spanish speaking researchers to help gather even more data for this case. with that being said, we did have the assistance from our wonderful Spanish speaking researchers to help gather even more data for this case. But as always with foreign cases, if there's anything lost in translation, something we didn't cover or you've got some interesting information on this case, please let us know in the comments.

And let's get started. Eight boys in a small town in Colombia had lost a finger in a game of hide and seek. None of the eight boys knew each other. None of them played hide and seek with each other, but they all had matching missing thumbs. But that's not all that's changed about them. It's not like they played one round of hide and seek came back with a missing thumb and went about their lives. They all walked around town now, like the ghosts of the town.

Before these are kids that were full of energy, full of hope, just bouncing off the walls their parents could not keep them still. And now they're flimching at every little noise, every little sound. I mean, they're sticking so close to their parents and all the color looked like it had been just drained from their faces. People are wondering, what kind of games are these boys playing these days? You think maybe if their finger got stuck in something, was it a machinery defect somewhere?

Some towns people started whispering, it was not an accident. Someone's going around, chopping off boys' thumbs. And the boys are now too scared to talk about it. They don't wanna tell you who. But why? And who would even do something like that?

That's very random to just go around chopping off people's thumbs Some neighbors heard I think it's that new guy that moved into town What did they say he was like a beggar right the local crazy man or no someone said he was like a priest Other people said no, they said he was a witch Whatever he was he was just getting started They said he was a witch. Whatever he was, he was just getting started. Police get called out into the woods where a mass grave of 36 tiny bodies were found.

Children. I mean, it's clear something or someone had killed these children. This is not some sort of self-doing. You don't just have a mass grave of 36 kids. This is not an accident. This also wasn't a bus crash or a plane that crashed into the woods and they start thinking the investigators they're putting their heads together. They've got like no clues to go off of and the first thought is Pablo Escobar's cartel. They were active in the area.

It's a Colombian cartel and probably one of the most ruthless cartels in all of history. If anyone was capable of doing the unthinkable and killing 36 children, it would be Pablo Escobar's cartel. At the height of the Medellin cartel, they were bringing in over, I mean, this figure is insane. I had to triple-check because I'm like, there's no way. They're bringing in $200 million a day in profits. The King of Cocaine Pablo Escobar was said at his height to be making $2 billion a year in personal income. Of course, tax-free.

At their height, they were supplying 96% of the US's cocaine consumption and controlled 90% of the global cocaine market. They basically ruled Colombia if not the world. Side note, they were also very creative people. Okay, I don't know if they found it this technique, but they definitely made a killing from it. They would soak denim jeans that you wear in liquid cocaine. I don't even know it came in liquid, okay?

They would soak it in liquid cocaine. Dry off the jeans. Export them legally through shipping containers into the US where they had a special chemist that would work with them, that would get the jeans, simply wash them with a special liquid compound that would pull out the liquid cocaine and separate it from the rest of the liquid and then they would dry it into powder cocaine. The cartel learned how to train carrier pigeons

to deliver secretive mail to one another as a way to communicate. They had a ton of pigeons around. And it's estimated that they murdered at the very least 4,000 people during their reign as the kings of Colombia. Many of them were innocent people. So what is another 36 to them? Pablo Escobar.

He said, he kept every single threatening note that he ever received from his competitors in a tiny little scrapbook. Because what are these sweet memories if you don't look back at them? He kept them all like love letters. But the Medellin cartel was ruled out because within the local cities Pablo Escobar was notorious for being one of the locals' biggest philanthropist, if you will. His favorite cause to donate to was to help children in need. Really? Yeah, I mean, he was more generous around Medellin, which is the town he's from, but he does seem to be a bit generous to Colombian children. So it's a mass grave of children.

They think it can't be the Medellin cartel, then could it be the Cali cartel? Another big cartel from Colombia. They operated a bit more secretively than the Medellin cartel. But that didn't make sense because they were known to be a tad bit nicer than the Medellin cartel, like a tad bit. So Pablo Escobar was known as one of the most ruthless men probably alive. I mean, he's dead now, but when he was alive, this guy was cut throughout. He killed anyone that he even suspected of being

against him, even just a stranger on the street. But Cali Cartel ran like a business, a billion dollar cocaine business. They had a Boeing 727 that they would use to fly drugs from Mexico to the United States. They would sell the drugs in the US, load up cash into the plane, fly that plane to Colombia where they would take the money. They made alliances with important people in the transportation industry to be able to pull all of this off. I mean, not only that, they had investors, bankers, lawyers, logistics, exporters, importers,

chemists, wholesalers, retailers. They ran their business like a Fortune 500 company. But there were groups of the Cali Cartel. There were subgroups where they allegedly believed in social cleansing of discardables. That's what they called them. Disgardables were sex workers, street children, petty thieves, gay people, and people without homes, and a subgroup

of the Cali Cartel believed they needed to die. And so when they were not busy drugging up the whole world, they would go around social cleansing. They believed that these people were ruining their beautiful city of Cali, Colombia, and I don't know if it was a leadership thing, but subgroups would go around killing these people. They would drive around with signs that read clean cally, beautiful cally. They would toss these bodies into a river nearby that was now dubbed the River of Death. And they really hated Pablo Escobar's side note.

And when Pablo Escobar was finally in prison, they wanted to fly an A37 Dragonfly, which is an attack aircraft that's produced for the US Air Force. I don't know how they got their hands on one, but they plan to drop a bomb on the whole prison to finally eliminate Pablo Escobar once and for all. And you're like, that's a crazy plan. It's just a plan though, right? They got as far as to trying to load the bombs onto the jet, but there was a crowd forming.

So they had to leave. But they got the bombs. They got the jet. They got the bombs and they were ready to there was a crowd forming. So they had to leave. But they got the bombs. They got the jet. They got the bombs, and they were ready to go bomb a whole prison for Pablo Escobar. But the mass grave was not in Cali, Colombia. So the detectives they're thinking, this doesn't make sense. Even the social cleansings that the subgroup

of the Cali cartel would do, they were never at the scale. They were never mass grave levels, and they were never really outside of the city of Cali. And cartels, they typically don't just go out and kill a group of children. Typically, if they do target an innocent child, it's done because they're targeting their adult family members. Then the next assumption was,

if it's not drug trafficking, it could be organ trafficking. Columbia has become one of the biggest markets for black market organ transplants, causing what they call now to be organ tourism. So it's where desperate foreign patients come to Columbia for an organ transplant that would be considered impossible if not illegal in their home country. To give context recently, a six-year-old girl had been kidnapped and sold to organ traffickers for $16,000. The World Health Organization believes that about 10,000 kidneys are traded on the black

market worldwide annually. That's about one black market kidney sold every single hour. And there's estimates. Kidneys can go anywhere between 20 to $60,000 a kidney, and that's just for the kidney itself. That does not include the operation. Terrifyingly, they will sell corneas. They will sell eyes for $30,000. Livers go for up to $50,000 to $100,000,

and hearts and lungs go for about $150,000. Now, most of the time, the traffickers, or they call themselves brokers, they make all the money. There are some markets where victims willingly give up their kidneys for money, but they only get $2,000 for their kidneys while the brokers are taking home $18,000 to $58,000. For the other organs like the heart, the lungs, the parts that victims need to survive, they're either doing this because they have no choice, they've been kidnapped, or potentially their death is the only way that their loved ones can live.

But they're not even getting $150,000 out of that. They'll get a tiny percentage, it'll probably be closer to like $15,000 to die. It's estimated that the illegal organ trade generates about $1.7 billion a year. So investigators are thinking that makes sense. 36 kids and you know, children's organs, they could be more valuable on the market. But a lot of the victims in the mass grave, they had cuts on their stomach and their private parts, they were missing.

So okay, maybe it could be organ trafficking, but no. Once they looked closer, they realized that all these cuts were made incredibly messy. Oregon traffickers, they are precise with their cuts. Nobody wants a tainted organ. So that doesn't really make any sense now. The authorities then move on to the theory that answers any and all questions that they have. Maybe it's Satanism, they say. Maybe it's people who practice witchcraft. That would be the only thing that makes sense. Nothing else makes sense at this point. There was clear evidence of torture. Many of the victims were decapitated and had their right foot chopped off. Why would they have their right feet dismembered,

would still left behind at the scene. That doesn't make sense to investigators. Only right foot. Only right foot. And it's still there. Yeah, they don't take it with them. They just leave them. It doesn't make any sense. Does it? Lewis hated when people had what he couldn't have. It was like a thing. He always had been like that.

Even when he was a kid, I mean, he was the oldest of seven kids. And he hated any single person in a school that had a normal family. Genuinely despised them with this burning hatred. So Lewis had grown up in a small town called Genova Columbia. Our researchers tell us it's a very machismo town. Our researchers said that there's not really an English translation for machismo. It could roughly translate into masculine but not really. It's more in line with very, very, very, very strong patriarchal values.

So if you go to a family gathering in Genoa, Colombia, you'll probably see the woman scrambling in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning the house, setting the table, and the men are holding a beer on the couch watching sports. That is like the definition of machismo. A mom will let her sons go out with friends, no questions asked. But if her daughter wants to go out,

it's, did you clean your room? Which time are you gonna be back? What about the other chores you were supposed to do? Why don't you ever do the dishes? What are you going to wear? Which friends are you meeting? And Lewis' dad was like that. He's very much men rule the world,

but more importantly, only I rule the world. That's his thinking. So it doesn't matter if it's his son or his daughter, none of them are allowed to go out, none of them are allowed to talk unless he permitted them to. He was an alcoholic that spent all day at the bar spending up the family's money, and when he comes home,

his whole family would hide under their beds. That's not even an exaggeration. They would hide under their beds because Lewis' dad had a temper. Whenever someone got on his way, physically, he would blow up, and they've got a really small house with nine people. Everyone is always in everyone's way.

His way of saying, excuse me, could you please scoot over? Was just taking off his belt and whipping you. Yeah. So, if Lewis's mom didn't have dinner ready on time, which this guy never comes home at the same time, so I don't know how she's expected to predict that he's going to be home at certain points. But if she doesn't have his meal hot and ready for him, she would get beat. And as the eldest son, Lewis would try to stop his dad

from beating his mom. But he tried a few times. The punishments were really bad. Lewis's dad would strap him up to a tree trunk and he would beat him with a machete. How do you do that? Listen. Okay, so like a stick maybe.

No, it was a machete. Like, here it was a machete. I don't know how he would hit him with the back of the machete or if he's just kind of beating him like on the side with the machete or if he's practicing small shallow cuts with the machete, it's very unclear, but it was a machete.

Eventually, Lewis would stop trying to protect his mom. Because at one point he felt like, well, mom's never gonna leave, and I keep getting beat for no reason. And that's just how it was. At one point, Lewis's dad did attack his own wife with a knife. She ended up staying, probably not because she wants to, but a socio economic standpoint she would be destitute and her kids would be in danger. So she stayed. And Lewis stops protecting her. When Lewis would get beaten up, he would show up to school the next day with these massive red welts on his bottom, on his butt.

He would be unable to even sit down because of this pain and he would look at all the other kids that could sit down. They were so excited to go home after school because their parents loved them and he hated them. He genuinely despised them for having what he didn't have. So he kind of tried to bully them. He wasn't really that successful. Okay, so do you know what a procedural memory is? There are procedures that the brain has learned and can be activated without conscious thought. If someone hands you a piping hot cup of tea without even thinking about what you're doing, you might grab the cup.

You might blow on the tea so it cools down. You might take a sip without consciously deciding I'm gonna blow on the cup and I'm going to take a sip. So it's a memory, body memory. Yes, like muscle memory and usually it's reserved for things like driving, riding a bike, but Lewis, all of his procedural memories were dedicated to, okay, if somebody pisses me off, I'm going to pummel them with my two fists.

Like any emotion he felt, it was almost like a trigger response. Emotion, two fists up in the air, swinging. I mean, I guess he saw his dad do it so often he felt like this is just what happens. Emotion A leads to action B. He would beat up his classmates for something as little as accidentally using his pencil. So you think okay Lewis is the biggest baddest boy in class. But he wasn't. He would actually get bullied more than he was the bully. He wore glasses and he got bullied for that. And his last name is Garavito, which sounds like Garabato. Because the V and the B in Spanish, our researchers were telling me don't really sound different.

So it's more like Garabato, Garabito. Okay. Garabato means doodle. Yeah. The soon-to-be-world's deadliest hero killer, Luis, in his grade school was bullied for being Lewis the doodle boy. So very, yeah, it's a very interesting bullying. The doodle doesn't sound that bad, does it? I don't think so.

I think it's more like chicken scratch, scribble, squiggle. I see you. Okay, I see you. Okay. So he's jealous of the kids at school because they have normal families, normal dads and normal last names and then Lewis's dad touched him

Lewis said one night his dad forced him to be bathed by him which at this point He's no longer a toddler that needs to be bathed by his parents He is more than old enough and capable enough to bathe himself But his dad is insisting and it's either this or the belt So Lewis sat there uncomfortably in the bath while his father bathed every inch of his body. He said nothing else happened, but that memory is just so crystal clear for him. And then it happened again, but this time with Lewis's dad's friend.

He came over to the family house pretending to hang out with Lewis's dad, but he would get Lewis alone, tie him up, brutally assault him. So now he's getting essayed. Afterwards, and this is very specific, but this family friend would go get a candle. He would use the flame of the candle to burn the very sensitive parts of Lewis, including the hairs on his private parts.

And usually it didn't just stop there. The family friend would then use his mouth to bite Lewis where he was the most sensitive. And these are not nibbles. They're full on chomps. He would bite down and watch Lewis cry out in pain while he would simultaneously satisfy himself. This happened over and over again for two years. Thankfully, the family moved away so the family friend was no longer in their lives, but they made a new family friend. And this time he was a priest. Clearly, Lewis is being traumatized from the abuse, but more than anything, he was just so angry and jealous that his assaulters had what he didn't have, which was power.

You know that saying two birds, one stone. Lewis took it so literally. When he was done being assaulted by his dad's family friend, he grabbed two birds. I don't know how he caught them. He grabbed a stone and pummeled them. He said that he, quote, tore them apart, ripped them apart, completely mangled these two birds. And that made him feel very, very good.

There are seven stages. A killer goes through to become a serial killer. And these phases are typically very different, and they're used to profile serial killers versus murders, because most murders, they will kill from emotions that probably you and I not understand, because it's not like we're justifying their actions, but these are emotions that most people feel. Just not to the point of being homicidal. You feel angry at times.

You feel jealous, fear, you know, these types of things. But for serial killers, they kill for the thrill. And there's just no way that we can even try to grasp that, like try to wrap our heads around something like that. They live their lives so that they can take lives. That's it. The first phase is the aura phase. This is when the killer starts to create this aura around him.

This almost border, distance themselves from social relationships and people. They start pulling away from family and friends. They retreat into their own little fantasy world where they start having in most cases Very violent sexual thoughts and there's nobody around them for them to confide in to tell them, hey, you think this is weird? No one they're alone Lewis was never allowed to have friends so that wasn't really a thing He was never close with his family and after his continuous assaults by family friends and priests He's already fantasizing about turning the tables and returning the pain that he felt to a random innocent boy. That is his fantasy

The second phase is the trolling phase That's what it's called and it usually consists of the killer kind of toying with the idea of killing a little bit more Instead of just having fantasies. They start thinking of, what would the process look like? And who would it be? And how would I really go about it? They're not sitting there taking notes and coming up with a full plan, not yet. That's a different phase.

But they're kind of thinking a little bit more realistic. How am I gonna implement this into my life? Lewis was the oldest of seven kids and one day like a drill sergeant, he's lining up his little siblings, he yelling get in line get in line males and female siblings okay they're really young Lewis himself is only 15 years old he forces them to line up strip down of all their clothes and from there he goes one by one slowly caressing them he describes it as a night quote, a light smooth touch, just like tracing his hands on them.

He claimed that's all he did. Other sources claimed he would take it a step further and force his siblings to sleep unclosed in the same bed as him and when they were asleep he would touch them. But we are unsure. Now we enter into the third phase. This is kind of the flirting phase. There's a slight difference between the tro we enter into the third phase. This is kind of the flirting phase. There's a slight difference between the trolling phase and the flirting phase.

You know, I don't think the flirting phase is a great way to label it, but I'm not the one that came up with these labels. It's when a serial killer is in this hyper-focused mode of trying to find the perfect victim. Trying to kind of flirt with the victim, gain their trust, toy with the idea of how and where to kill that particular victim. So they're narrowing it down to a group of people that they want to target. More concrete plans are being

made in this space. They're literally flirting with the idea of killing, which is terrifying to think about. Who came up with these seven steps? A bunch of profilers. Yeah. But you know what's interesting? A lot of different serial killer profilers have different Methods. Yeah, there's like a couple of things that they all go by I saw that some people don't use these seven stages Some people do so I guess it really depends right now Lewis is in his 20s and You would never in a million years think that this man is flirting with the idea of becoming a serial killer if you met him He's working at a bakery. He's baking loaves of bread

He goes to church every single Sunday He even attended AA meetings to address his relationship with alcohol middle-aged women would come down into the bakery Biolo for bread and chef pictures of their daughter in Lewis's face and I mean Yeah, they knew that he was an alcoholic But a lot of men in this town were. At least Lewis is working on it. He acknowledged it and he looks kind of cute. He wears those 80-style big eyeglasses.

And I'm not saying that to compliment him. I'm saying, you know, this is the older lady's perspective. He's baking cakes for a living. He goes to church on the weekends. He does occasionally get very angry with the bakery owners. So his bosses and he would occasionally punch them in the face a couple of times. But other than that, he was a complete catch. A lot of these moms, I'm sure they didn't see him punch his bosses.

The moms, they would already have two loaves of bread at home, but they were just stopping by to buy another loaf Begging Lewis. Hey, my daughter is single Lewis would politely decline and he said you know maybe later I've got a lot on my mind right now Lewis had started assaulting little boys in the park Now he would hide in the bushes with his machete and if he saw a little kid walk by alone He would jump out and yell don't say anything or I'll kill you little kid walk by alone. He would jump out and yell, don't say anything or I'll kill you.

One of his earlier victims, William Trujillo, he said that Lewis forced him out of his clothes and did did everything to him, everything including torture, biting him painfully all over. But he said the worst part was that he was so silent doing everything. Like completely silent. Is terrifying and disturbing. And his stanch, William said, do you know what a farm worker smells like after a day of work? That's what he smelled like. William was tortured and held captive in that park for 12 hours. And even in his earlier crimes, it's clear Lewis likes the mental torture aspect of

all of this, because William remembers finally gaining the courage to talk and he asked, Sir, when will you be letting me go home? There was silence, and finally Lewis spoke and said, When the bells ring. The church bells ring at five in the morning. He had already been there for like 10 hours. William had to wait for what feels like an eternity and he didn't even know if the man was telling him the truth or he was lying to him and Right at five the church bells go off Lewis slowly releases his grip and says Go ahead and William books that he runs off The fourth phase that zero killers typically take is the capturing phase And Lewis was capturing a ton of children.

About 200 children were captured by Lewis, brutally assaulted, and ultimately released. So these 200 children are not even his murder victims. So just think about the sheer amount of victims that he has in his lifetime. Now, quick disclaimer, I don't feel like we need to, because everyone here are reasonable intelligent people, but Lewis is a male killer who targeted boys.

And if that makes anyone think that there is a link between being gay or bisexual and being a serial killer, there should be some, I don't know, critical thinking comprehension glasses out there that should probably urgently be looked into. So this has nothing to do with sexuality. I do see a lot of people kind of point out the link between the extreme Catholicism that he was raised in, where homosexuality was like a cardinal sin, and then him being assaulted as a kid and then developing these attractions towards a certain gender. I don't know. I feel like I feel like a killer is

a killer, you know? And we can kind of argue these things, but at one point is it just, now Lewis would go to the park with candy, drinks, toys, whatever he thought he could entice little boys with, and he would wait for these boys to walk by. Sometimes he would use candy to be like, come here. You want some candy?

Literally. That's what he would do. He would lure them with candy. He would then string them along to a secluded area of the park, tie them up, and torture them. A lot of experts believe that he was experimenting with torture since his essays as a kid

involved a lot of physical pain. So he started cutting victims with razors, shallow cuts, all over their bodies. Then he tried deeper cuts, but he didn't really like that, so he just did shallow cuts. So this would go on for 12 hours at a time. He very quickly learned he had to be mindful that his torture tactics didn't kill the victims because he wanted his victims alive because that's the whole fun of it. He brought candles into the park.

He would light them on fire to burn his victims. Just like he had been burned as a kid. He would bite the victims all over their bodies, beat them, and I'm talking, I mean, he would pummel his victims, a full grown adult targeting five-year-olds. And he would assault them. Lewis was disorganized, yet organized. He was very disorganized in almost all other aspects of the crime,

but when it came to the torture, he was very methodical. The torture almost always happened in the same order every single time. It's like he had created the perfect cycle to maximize his sick pleasure. And when he was done, he would let them go, rush home to write their names down in this little blue book of his. And this is the part that just really makes this case and anomaly. But for 12 years, Lewis was in this phase, toying with the idea of murdering for 12 years, as saying hundreds, hundreds of kids,

torturing them, hundreds of them. And I say anomaly, not just because he was in this phase for 12 years, but also the fact that he wasn't put behind bars before he committed his first murder when he is out there, committing some of the most atrocious crimes that we've researched is just crazy. I mean, I don't know how else to put it.

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That's 20% off anything you order when you shop better hydration today using promo code RottenMango at LiquidIV.com. I also do really want to disclaim we really wish that we could share more of who the victims were, what they were like, but unfortunately there just aren't that many stories of Lewis's victims out there. I was provided some contacts by researchers and they stated, when a boy went missing in Columbia at the time, the most likely reason was either being a victim of a gang, drug cartel,

or a parent military group, or maybe they left home due to extreme domestic violence from the parents. Most parents did not file missing persons reports, because a lot of them were just straight up scared. If we went to the police and most police forces are run by cartels, in the cartel took our kid, we reported to the police who the cartel controls that our child would be in even more danger. What if they think that our child snitched or were causing too much trouble to keep the child alive? As for Lewis's assault victims, even if they came home and told their parents what had happened, parents felt like going to the authorities was just not an option.

Not only was justice rarely ever served for cases like this, their child is now going to be subject to life-threatening social shame. was just not an option. Not only was justice rarely ever served for cases like this, their child is now going to be subject to life-threatening social shame. And all for what? To not get justice? And just victimize their kid even further? A lot of Lewis' victims are still not identified to this day. And now that's both his assault victims and later his murder victims. After 12 years, he would escalate into phase 5. Murder. Mind you, he already has 200 victims in his little blue notebook. This is before killing.

Before he starts killing, he's got 200 victims. And his first kill was almost on a whim. He said that he was drunk, left a bar and decided, you know what, today is the day. He went, bought a pack of cigarettes, accord, a knife, and a cheap bottle of brandy. He stumbled into the park, waited for a boy to be lured in. He kept holding out change in his hand to see if any boy that passed, he'd be like, hey, do you want some money? This is an area where a lot of children go out and they try to work, because they need

to bring food home for the family. Of course they want money. Typically they would ask, what kind of job are you offering? Do you want me to shine your shoes? Do you want me to sell candy on your behalf? Run errands? Lewis would tell the boy, no, you can just take a walk with me. Lewis grabbed his hand and let him into the wooded area of the park. And this park connects to a huge mountainous area that surrounds

the city. And once it was secluded enough, Lewis tied the boy up like the 200 victims before him. He bit him everywhere. And then assaults at him. But he said that he just felt this anger. He said it was the strongest impulse of his entire life. And it was the impulse to punch this boy. So he sat on this boy and quite literally beat this boy to death with his bare hands. He walked. He sat on the boy.

Yeah. So the boy cannot get up. And then he walked off covered in blood. Nobody stopped him, whether nobody saw him or they minded their own business. I don't know. But he went home, took a shower, grabbed his little notebook to write down another name. But this time in a new section. Phase 6 is a phase that sets zero killers and murderers apart, which is zero killers typically take trophies. So unlike killers who

kill for life insurance, love, greed, revenge, they usually want to get rid of anything that ties them to the crime. Cereokillers, they want that connection open, they want to go back and reminisce about that moment, they want to relive it. Lewis had his little blue notebook, but later he would rummage through the victim's pockets, he's typically looking for some sort of student ID, and if he found it, he would sit there and cut out just the pictures of the boy, so he would never bring home the full student ID, just the picture part. If he didn't find a student ID, he would just take their underwear.

Later, they would all be found folded up in his drawer right next to his own underwear. He would also sit there in his house, clipping any newspaper headlines about his crimes. I mean, he really loved his trophies. And then the last phase is the depression phase. Once Lewis was done with his first kill, like most serial killers he fell into a state of depression.

For some serial killers, this includes the feeling of guilt. Lewis said he was so disappointed in himself, which is honestly such a weird way to describe it. Like, I get disappointed in myself all the time, but for small mistakes. He's disappointed in himself because he killed someone. I don't, it feels like such a light word to use. But he said he was so disappointed in himself. He walked himself into church, weaped in front of the statue of Jesus, and he just cried. If I'm being honest with you, I don't think that this man really felt guilty. So what exactly does that mean when he say he feel depressed and cried and go to church? I think it's a procedural memory. So he was raised

devout Catholic family and anything that he did wrong or he perceived as wrong, he was forced to confess, he was forced to cry. That's how you get rid of your sins. So if there was a part of him that still had any of that faith that he needed to be saved, this was purely for that I believe. It was narcissistic, it's I want to be saved, I want to go to heaven so I need to confess to my sins. I don't think to heaven So I need to confess to my sins I don't think there was genuine remorse because I it's hard to imagine he feels even a little bit guilty But still went on to kill 220 more times

So he did that and then he continued and so it's like go back and forth Yes Every time after kill at least for the first I don't know dozens He said that he would go to church and just cry because he was so remorseful. I truly don't believe he was remorseful at all. You know, I think that these outbursts of emotions are just procedural memory that part of his brain that's lighting up again. Or I think that it's just some sort of narcissistic tendency to make this whole fantasy feel even more real and complicated. This is purely speculation. A lot of serial killers have some sort of personality disorder

that makes them unable to feel human emotions or empathy. I mean, they feel human emotions such as anger, but they don't feel empathy. So a lot of them will mirror people. And I wonder if this is him mirroring what he thinks is expected after something like this. Because I genuinely don't think that he's sorry, at all. Yeah. When he was 23 years old, he did end up going to a psychiatrist. And this is why I think that he's a little bit dramatic.

Wait, he's only 23 right now? Yeah. Wait, you say it's been 12 years. Yeah. Oh, he started when he was, wow. Okay. And he would go on for like another, geez, like two decades

this part I don't know how else to describe it So I'm just gonna try to describe it the way that I think people will understand the message the best I'm not trying to like trivialize it But I feel like he is kind of dramatic in the sense that he wants these main character moments I think that's part of his weeping at church after the kills. Because listen to this, he goes to a psychiatrist in his 20s and he gets diagnosed with reactive depression, which typically indicates that someone has significant distress that is oftentimes

out of proportion to the severity or the intensity of the external stressor. So this type of depression is triggered by something that happens in their life. It's reactive. They have a big life event, and now this person does not feel like they can handle the stressors of life, so they feel depressed. So if someone steps on another person's foot

by accident and this person has reactive depression, a normal reaction would be feel physical pain and potentially a little annoyance. In Lewis's case, his mind would send him off the rocker. Reactive depression is usually temporary, meaning once the situation that the patient lives in, this external situation improves. The reactive depression also improves. Or if the external circumstances persist, the patient does not develop a way to cope, then

it develops into chronic depression. And this is not to say that reactive depression isn't very painful and very real and potentially life-threatening because it can develop into chronic depression, which can end someone's life, but reactive depression is typically not classified as a high-risk diagnosis. But of course, it's case-by-case, and it could very quickly evolve into something that's more high-risk. Lewis gets told that he is reactive depression. He claimed he wanted to end it right then and there. But then he never would, you know, and he just like kept telling people in interviews later on that it just made him really depressed to have reactive depression. Yeah, and like, I mean, it's very interesting, because later, his reactive depression,

some psychologist stated, did evolve into clinical depression or chronic depression, right? So, he's claiming he's very depressed, he would go down to his therapist, feel even more depressed, because his therapist is like, you're depressed,

then he would go to AA meetings, feel extra down because he's an alcoholic, and then that night Then he would go to AA meetings, feel extra down because he's an alcoholic. And then that night, he would go to a bar, get drunk, and then try to kill someone afterwards. Yeah. And he just kept using the excuse that he was sad and depressed. Like, I say this was such not really much sympathy because I feel like so many of us are sad and depressed and none of us go out there and commit heinous acts of violence. So I don't even know if that's really what he claims he's doing this because he's all sad.

Yeah. He's sad. And then he kills. And then he goes to church because he's so, so sorry. Do you get what I'm saying? Like none of this is making any sense. And then he said he would feel sad after kill. And he would start thinking back to the last time he felt any sort of happiness, and that was while he was committing his crimes. He stated that he would start flipping through his little blue notebook and pleasuring himself

at the memory of his crimes, and he realized in order to feel happy again, he would have to kill again. And these kills would only get more gruesome, so he would punch the victims all over, he specifically would target their hands, which this part, I mean, if you've been around younger ones, you know how their hands are so small. It feels like a natural universal feeling to see a child's hand and want to protect them. Luis would specifically target these hands.

He would punch them until he shattered the bones in the hands. He would punch and slice them on their bottoms as well. He would try to lightly stab into their kidneys. He said that he chose to stab near the kidneys specifically because he realized that there's not a lot of he thought major arteries in that area. So victims would typically not bleed to death before he was done with them, because he wanted them alive

for very, very long time. The final acts of torture included him slitting their throats while actively assaulting them. And then when he was done, he would decapitate them. He would cut off their private parts and place their private parts into their mouths of the decapitated heads. This was almost his signature, and I'm not saying that as a figure of speech, zero killers typically have something called an MO. Now an MO is how they operate.

This is how they find victims, trap victims, kill victims, and then dispose of their bodies. A signature, these are words profilers use, I'm not calling it a signature, is something that is almost unchangeable for each zero killer. It's an action or something that is done during the kill that indicates This is why they're committing these crimes in the first place This might be the ultimate action. It's not the kill itself. This could be where we need to look into It's a signature for a reason. So M.O.s They typically evolve they change zero killers adapt. They find new techniques a signature usually stays the same

It reflects a deeper psychological reasoning behind these kills curaculars adapt, they find new techniques. A signature usually stays the same. It reflects a deeper psychological reasoning behind these kills. And him placing the victim's private parts into their own mouths was a bit of a signature for Lewis. Hmm, so that's not an ammo. No, later his ammo would evolve and he would add a lot more steps to this process before his victims were dead. He would take a screwdriver to gouge out their eyes and their ears.

Sometimes he would use a knife or tool to detach the fingers from their hands. He would use tools to detach their right feet from their legs. Then after the torture, he would cut open their stomachs while they were still alive. Open and remove all of their intestines and place them next to their face on the ground. The victims would be alive to see their intestines laying in the grass next to them, which is something that is technically medically possible. If someone's vital organs like their heart and lungs remain untouched and the laceration

cuts on the stomach do not hit any major blood vessels. It's said that someone who is disemboweled can actually remain alive for several hours in immense shock and pain. Then once he was done with that, he would finally decapitate them and move on to commit his signature. And this whole process would take hours if not half a day to a full day.

Lewis was also a chain smoker, and he would take smoking breaks in between the acts of torture. It stated that sometimes he smoked an entire pack of cigarettes during his kills. Back then, cigarettes in Colombia were exclusively sold in packs of 20. And on average, it takes six minutes to smoke a cigarette.

So that's at least two hours of him just pausing to smoke. Two hours of extra torture that the victims would have to endure. Lewis tried not to kill too late at night, mainly because he said he was scared of the dark. But sometimes it was unavoidable, and that was fine for him.

There was another thing that Lewis was starting to get scared of. And it was the idea of getting caught. He had been an active serial killer in the area for years now, potentially even a decade at this point. And only just recently, people started noticing. People started hearing the whispers around town. Mothers would be pulling their kids closer to that while they were running errands. And then there was that incident.

He had just finished murdering another victim when someone had apparently seen him attacking the kid in the woods. He hears the police coming, the victim wasn't dead yet, he quickly finishes does what he does, flees as fast as possible and breaks his leg in the escape. The witness did not see what Lewis looked like, so he had a close call, but he would get off without a charge. And the only thing that angered him was that now because he broke his leg he had a limp on his right foot? That right foot

would never be the same. And he hated seeing people with perfectly healthy right feet. Hmm, so that's why he chopped, wow. A lot of people speculate that he started gouging out the victim's eyeballs because his eyesight was deteriorating. He was having problems with his eyes. Now this added a little bit of anxiety to Lewis' life, and there was the situation of the eight boys with the missing thumbs. He went from assaulting boys torturing them, letting them go, and then into killing boys. But during his kill phase, he actually let eight of his victims go. And that would haunt him forever.

And it's not because he messed up. It's not because he thought, oh, let me just let these kids go because they said something that I liked, they did something that I liked. He felt sympathy. It wasn't that. He thought it would be more fun. He was experimenting. So he chopped off each of their thumbs, cut the cords off of them,

and let them free. After hours and hours of torture, and he said, I'm going to count to a random number in my head. If you make it back to your family alive before I catch you, then you get to live. At this point, the boys are already running. He never even chased them. He just set them free. Now, there are theories about why he would do this, and it's not because he had remorse for these eight boys, but the general theory is that, well, he was trying to see if it was going to give him some sort of sick satisfaction to know that these boys would never live a single day without thinking about him, and they would live the rest of their lives in utter terror. And that itself is a very strong form of torture. He did this to eight little boys, so eight little boys in Colombia

were traumatized by him and forever mutilated with missing thumbs. Why the thumb? I guess he was trying to start another signature for this part. Is it because he can see which one is his victims? Yeah, it's pretty easy to see, I guess. Yeah. And that could be very, very true because he only operated in like 10 to 15 towns, pretty small towns too. But now these eight boys were keeping him up at night. They had seen his face for hours. They had heard his voice for hours. They knew what he looked like. They knew what he smelled like everything. Like, what if they went to the police? He was annoyed with himself and he vowed never to let another one go ever again. And he made adjustments to his MO as insurance policies.

He always wore shoes that were one size too big, and he made sure that no boy could get away now. There would be no ninth boy without a thumb, alive to tell the tale. But he was also tweaking his method to make it more efficient, efficient in terms of how to make the torture last longer for him so that he can get the pleasure but not waste his energy on other things. So he came up with this method where before the torture and before the attack he would chain up his victims with some sort of rope or cord and he would force them to walk around in circles while he held out a machete near their necks. They were

made to walk in circles until their legs shook. This part of the process took hours, in some cases. Wait, what does that mean? They're like, like, shook. They're walking in circles nonstop for hours until their legs are shaking because they're so tired. Oh. The whole time he's yelling at them

about how he's gonna kill them, they're all dead meat, he's gonna bite their privates off. He's detailing every single active visceral torture that he's about to commit on them, and this was two birds one stone for him. It was pleasurable for him to see his victim shake and fear, but it was also to tire them out so they had no chance of fighting back. They were genuinely so out of energy, not that they even had a strong chance of escaping before this, because it's a full-grown man against seven year olds, but this was his insurance policy.

Lewis did satanic rituals with the bodies. There's not much credible information on what the rituals consisted of, but we do know that he used Ouija board with the dead bodies and he was very excited to make a deal with the devil each time he killed. This is why I think that the whole church thing is nonsense. Like I think it's nonsense. I don't think he's religious. I don't think he's religious. I don't think he's remorseful. He said the first time he sold his soul to the devil. It was a feeling he would never forget.

He said it turned out that when I made a pact with the devil a voice moved the curtain. My hair stood up on the ends and I entered into a psychotic state where I heard a voice tell me that it loved me. I said, I wanted power, and it said, it wanted to serve me. It said, I want to serve you, sir. I sold my soul to the devil, and that's how it went. He would think about that joyous moment as he made his victims walk in circles. Detective Mark Durin was assigned to this case, and he was walking in circles with his team.

They knew way too late that they had a serial killer on their hands, even the mass grave. Duran was assigned to this case and he was walking in circles with his team. They knew way too late that they had a serial killer on their hands. Even the mass grave, they genuinely weren't even thinking of a serial killer. Because remember they're thinking of a cartel, a different cartel, organ trafficking, satanic cult. Serial killer, they not even on their minds. And now, now they're too late. Now they're trying to track the killer's movements, but it's all over the place.

They're literally going in circles. New neighbouring cities, new new towns just when they thought they were gone or dead the serial killer a new body would turn up every person he asked saw something town goers were saying no he was a priest you have to look at the churches he was a priest other said no he was a beggar there was this suspicious guy i think he's the killer and he was a beggar but he left town Everyone knew it's him a lot of people knew what he looked like, but they couldn't really pinpoint him Oh, okay, I mean he jumped from towns So it's not like he was staying in one town and mark is like oh, let me go find this guy

You know, it's like now we don't know where he went and the towns people are telling me oh he was like a beggar We don't know a name. We don't know anything This is kind of what he looked like. No, he looked like this and people are like no, that's the different beggar. We don't know a name, we don't know anything, this is kind of what he looked like. No, he looked like this and people are like, no, that's the different beggar. It was just so many different sources. People are like, yeah, go, go look for people without homes. He's a beggar on the street. They're like, actually, he's a monk. You gotta go to the temples and that's where you're gonna find him. Or people are saying, no, you're not gonna find him at all. He works with dark magic and he's a witch. It was clear to Detective Mark that the killer assumed a new identity with every town that they went

to and maybe even with every person that they met, who's to say that they only had one identity each time they went to a new town. I mean, that's the interesting thing though that Detective Mark realized were the types of personas he would take on. Priest, a generally respected position. You are in a position of authority, but then the next town over he'd be a beggar, a generally looked down upon position, not my personal feeling, but the harsh reality of society, you're in a position of vulnerability. You are likely ignored, discarded, people don't want to look at you. They don't want to make

eye contact with you. The local crazy man was another persona he took on. Generally again, another look down person in society. And then a practitioner of witchcraft. This one is a mixed position. Either people will look at you with respect, fear, or they will look down on you. I mean, I guess depending on their own personal beliefs. One would imagine that this type of guy wants to be in a position to be revered and respected. That's what serial killers want, right? To have that immediate authority over people. But no, he chose all sorts of random personas.

And Mark's team initially were very confused about it, but Mark wasn't. He knew what the killer was doing. All these personas have a few things in common. Can you guess? Beggar and the priest. Ah, people don't want to talk to them. Is that right? They are held at a distance by general society. As much as you might respect a priest or practitioner of witchcraft, you might not want to ask about their lives. You might not ask questions, you might

not want to be too close to them. They might be judgmental. They're a little scary. Beggars, you also don't really want to hang out with them, right? Typically society doesn't, I'm not saying like you don't, right? Same with the local crazy man. They're always held at some sort of distance by society.

You don't really ask them, hey, what are you doing here today? Where are you from? Who are you seeing? It's a position in society where a little mystery is expected. And, you know, these are positions where I don't think a lot of people would question if they're talking to kids. The priest, of course, is talking to children. It's a beggar.

He's probably trying to hustle that kid. That's a mad man. He's got nobody else that listens so he's talking to the kids. The practitioner of witchcraft. I mean, we never know what they've got brewing, right? Also it was later discovered that when he wasn't using these random personas to go around and murder children, he was fronting as a nonprofit employee gathering donations that he would pocket. Yeah. And at this point, a serial killer had gone from 10 to 15 towns following

the same ritual to kill hundreds of little boys, and I'm not the head of the police force, but I don't think it takes a professional to realize, hey, something is going on! But they didn't really put a lot of resources into this. It took the constant pleading of Detective Mark Durham for the higher ups to even consider categorizing these murders as the work of a serial killer. Detective Mark had nothing but a bunch of guesses and leads. I mean, there was no way to narrow it down and it seemed like nobody else on the police

force even cared. So it's up to Mark to learn everything about serial killers, sexually motivated serial killers, and really any other category this monster would fit into. There would be times where parents were getting fed up finally with the amount of missing children in their town. They would gather outside the police station with all the missing kids' families. There were 50 families gathered in one night.

And the police would still look at Mark and say, you know, it's concerning, but we should just keep an eye on it. The town's people were not feeling like that. They were beyond the point of just being concerned. They had dubbed the serial killer the beast of Columbia. Later he'd be dubbed the monster of Genova. And it's wild to me when people know first that something is really wrong before the police know because technically it's their job, right?

But I digress. Now to add some context, the cops aren't just bad people. I mean, you could argue that they were, I guess, right? But there's a lot more nuance to the whole situation. The Colombian police department as a whole at this point and probably still now is criminally underfunded and the organizational power at the time in Colombia were the cartels. They had considerable interest to keep the police powerless. Each town's police force had a plethora of murder cases on their hands. They didn't have the resources for outside help, zero killer profalers.

They didn't even have enough to really fund any evidence or DNA being tested. They just had at least 100 similar murder cases around 8 different towns, so many bodies, and the detectives are walking in circles. They had more than a thousand names on their suspect list, and not enough resources to narrow that list down or to even start investigating any of them. Until the night of the corn stalk. The corn stalks caught on fire. The serial killer had been in a corn field, assaulting and killing another victim when he lit a cigarette and put it out on the ground.

It wasn't fully out. The corn stalks around him burst into flames. When the police arrive at the scene, they put the fire out and they see the body of a victim and they know that this is the same serial killer. The M.O. the signature, everything is there. And this is clearly a recent crime. And they've got a few pieces of evidence, a pair of shoes and a pair of eye glasses. Did he rush away?

Yes. How much information do you think you can get from two pieces of evidence like that? Besides the obvious, what their shoe size is and their eye prescription. Shoes and eye glasses. Like if a police officer had your shoes, your eye glasses, what do you think that they can tell about you, other than, you know, the generic his shoe size is this. Does that mean like he doesn't need eyeglasses to see the world? So he doesn't wear eyeglasses usually.

There's a prescription there. Oh there is, okay. We have a gun here, I have a one. Hey, I'm on highway 255 and I'm going to see the female in the graph and I don't know if she's unconscious but they're in blood all over the graph, okay? It could have been a border crosser which is a very common occurrence in that part of the county. But as a patrolman looked further into it, we knew that we weren't dealing with that. You know what this means? We may have a serial killer on our hands.

Welcome back to Gone South. I'm Jed Lapinsky and this is season three, the Sign Cutter. Turn around, please! Turn around! Binge the entire season of Gone South, an Odyssey original podcast, now only on the free Odyssey app, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. I just got this feeling that maybe he was the one. He was the one that what? That had been murdering. Let's start with the glasses. Obviously the suspect wore glasses for poor eyesight.

They did have prescriptions in there, but what else can they gather? The style of the glasses suggests that the individual had a liking for older, more classic styles. These styles were probably more popular 10 years ago. So they're thinking he was probably in more popular 10 years ago. So they're thinking he was probably in his prime 10 years ago. So that means he's either in his 20s or typically for men, they consider the 30s the prime. And that was about 10 years ago. So he's in his 40s more likely. Because you know, you typically have a peak, they call it in your lifetime and you almost

hang on to your style when you feel like you're at your peak because you're almost clinging onto that youth, that feeling that you had by clinging onto these styles and designs. So now they believe that the suspect is anywhere between 40 to 45 years old. They could actually tell a lot more with the shoes. Just like the glasses, the shoes can point towards a more accurate picture of the suspect's style, their attire, potentially even profession because, you know, most people don't generally wear work boots unless it's for work-related things.

I don't know a lot of random people that own steel-toed boots for fun. And it's a very specific person that wears very specific types of shoes. So those are given, but they can actually tell more than that with your pairs of shoes. Firstly, Lewis was fooling no one. shoes. So those are given, but they can actually tell more than that with your pairs of shoes. Firstly, Lewis was fooling no one. The detectives immediately knew that the killer was wearing a size tube of a shoe to throw them off. His feet and prints were right there. They were much smaller than the shoe. The divots set his feet made inside. So they took his actual shoe size and they started measurements. Shoe size can more or less estimate height. He was about 5'3 to 5'4", which

narrows down the search more. Because the average man in Colombia is about 5 feet 6. So now we have height and shoe size. Shoes actually tell profilers a lot about someone. So my mom and I have the same exact pair of sneakers and we wear the same exact shoe size. But I can tell when I accidentally slip on my mom's, it's not because they look different or they're more worn or less worn, but the sneakers have molded to my feet, and so have the soles. And you would be surprised at how much your feet

can tell about you. When people distribute their weight differently, that can tell what your posture is like, that can tell profilers what you look like, how much you weigh potentially, what kind of styles you would wear, and they can even tell if you have anxious personalities at some points, because anxious people

tend to kind of rock back and forth, and there could be signs of that on their shoe soles. It's very interesting. They analyze the shoes, and they realize that the soles at the bottom of the shoes, they're uneven. The left sole looks more worn, which meant this person must walk with a slight irregular rotation of the foot and puts a lot more weight on his left leg.

And it's a lot more. So if it was slight, they could wonder if maybe their body proportions lean just more to the left, or if it's become a habitual thing, but because it was such a difference in the souls of the shoes, they're thinking this person must have a noticeable limp. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow.

And with that, they can kind of guesstimate how he walks. These days, okay, so this was not happening in this case, but in 2023, there is actually a podiatrist who work with the police forces. And let's say you have a killer's shoes, they can tell you what the gate is like, they can tell you how they walk and judging from CCTV, they can match the gate with the shoes gate meaning how you walk. Because the wear of the shoes can determine how you walk and they're really good at analyzing how you walk. So even if the killer's face is not on camera, they can say, these shoes belong to this person based on the way that they walk. Yeah.

So they know that he has a noticeable limp. The suspect also fled the scene fast in such a hurry that he left his glasses in his shoes, meaning that he must have been surprised by the fire. But in what situation would he have been surprised by the flames and have his shoes and his glasses off? Shoes are maybe a bit more explainable, but his glasses? They guess accurately that the suspect was taking a nap. He's the type to smoke cigarettes while torturing his victims. He should also be the type to lay down next to a dead victim's body and go to sleep. There is no further explanation on why his glasses would have been off in the first place.

Then the fire started while he's napping. He had to flee so quickly that he left issues in his glasses, which would likely mean that he's got second degree burns to his body. And this is when the police put together that the killer has a bad right foot and had been dismembering the right feet of his victims. They also check his prescription. He is pretty bad eyesight and he was now

tending to gauge out the victim's eyeballs. And the killer's signature, he places the victim's private parts into their own mouths. Likely, the killer had been a victim of some sort of sexual abuse or trauma growing up. So now they have a lot more to work with. They thought this killer has to be on the sex offender list because that just doesn't make sense. Like you're committing these level of crimes. There's no way. But that registered offender list

consists of more than 5,200 names. So that's more than 1,000. Their suspect list was originally 1,000. They eliminate all the names that had been charged with assaulting girls because the victims are all boys That's 1,600 names left then they took off anyone younger than 40 that's now 95 names Then they eliminated anyone that was shorter or taller than 5354 and now they had a list of 25 names and they believed one of these 25 people were going to seek medical attention soon for their burns

They were right. Wow, they got so good all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah They were right Lewis had burns all of her body He forced himself to run on foot for six hours despite his burns Which I don't say that sympathetically. I'm saying that to emphasize this guy really really did not want to get caught which I don't say that sympathetically. I'm saying that to emphasize this guy really, really did not want to get caught. When he stops running, he realizes, I've got second to third degree burns all over my body. Second degree burns, they look a little bit blistered. Third degree burns, they look like charred wood, or they looked really white, like cooked white meat.

And it's not as painful in the immediate time. It'll later probably feel like hell, but the nerve endings are typically destroyed initially for their degree burns. Where was he burned? All over his leg and like kind of the left side of his body. Yes, you know, Lewis, like all other serial killers that we talked about, he had a very strong self-preservation mindset. He knew that he couldn't go to the hospital for his burns, but he had to get something. He went to a vet, a vet clinic, and Lied said that he couldn't go to the hospital for his burns, but he had to get something. He went to a vet, a vet clinic, and lied, said that he had gotten into an accident in his fireplace, gave this very elaborate story, offered to pay for treatment.

They did not ask questions. They treated his burns. December of that year, every single newspaper had the same explosive headline plastered all over it. The beast of Columbia caught. The killer's face and name were front page on every major publication in town, and the shameless killer had the audacity to deny all the crimes that led to him. He had an injury on his right leg that caused him to limp.

The shoe quite literally fit, and he was exactly 5'4", tall. He had a history of abusing minors. He loves cheap brandy, and he's sitting there, and he's like, I'm not the beast of Colombia. And they're like, you are despicable, dude. The beast who had, on average, killed two to three kids a month for almost a decade, and now, now he's sitting there looking cops in the eye saying,

hmm, that wasn't me. What? While the beast was in custody, Detective Mark received a phone call. Four more bodies were found. And they were recent. They were killed in the same way, same ammo, same signature, as the beast of Columbia. The person sitting in prison about to be tried for the serial killings was not their beast. Don't get me wrong, he was a rapist, and he should be behind bars, but this was not Louis Gerrbito. They took him off the list and went back now

to a list of 24 names. Detective Mark went to talk to each of the 24 families of the suspects. One of the sisters of the suspects did notice something strange recently. She said, you know what, my brother did stop by a few days ago and he told me to hold on to his little bag and not look into it And I haven't looked into it. They look into it. It's newspaper clippings of the crimes

That's how they caught him. Yeah Lewis Garibito mark looks into this guy at 15. He was arrested for the first time for trying to Assault essay a seven-year-old at a train station He was caught and let go. He had actually been brought in years before for murder, torture, assault, and beheading of a kid, but they said that they didn't have any other evidence, so they just let him go. And you would think that since he had already been brought in for such a similar crime

that once the serial killer investigation started taking place, people would be like, oh my goodness, that's the guy,? They didn't he was not outside of the crimes he managed to live a normal appearing life He had a few girlfriends never had children of his own But his girlfriends who lived with him had children from previous relationships They never noticed anything odd about him. They said they said that he was really good with kids actually and even after breaking up Sometimes he would still send money. He's very nice they said. As Detective Mark is investigating a call is made to his unit. A boy had been discovered in town completely shaken up and he said that a man tried to assault him. He rushes

over, puts the boy into his patrol car and they start driving around looking for this man because they're like this is going to be the beast of Columbia and they see something straight out around looking for this man because they're like this is going to be the beast of Columbia. And they see something straight out of a horror movie. As they're driving, they see a man walking in the middle of the road. And their patrol car is loud. As they're driving up towards this man, whose back is facing them, this man does not move, does not run faster, he just keeps walking at the same steady, slow pace, blocking the

way, not even looking back to see who or what is behind them. And the kid is like, that's him. That's him. They pull up and they ask the man for his name. And he very calmly says, oh, my name is Banfasio. Yeah, what's my name? Okay, it's a very specific name.

Banfasio, what was your last name? Banfasacio Marero. Very interesting. While the partner is asking generic questions, like, what are you doing? Why are you walking? You're walking to the next town over. That's 55 miles away.

You got lost? Where did you get lost? Detective Mark looks down and sees scarred and healing burns all over the left side of his body. His weight is heavily distributed to the left side of his body. His weight is heavily distributed to the left side. He's wearing glasses and suspiciously looks identical to the suspect photo of Louis Garevito. He was finally arrested. He didn't try to run, he didn't try to fight, but he did insist that he was bunnyfacil. Okay, which was not the smartest thing,

because Bunnyfacio Mereira was a well-known politician from the next town over, and he kept at this whole shtick of being a well-known politician even though he looked nothing like the well-known politician, and he looked more like Lewis Garavito, and he's like, I don't know who that guy is. They brought in Detective Mark, and Detective Mark is kind of like your quintessential detective

that you would see in those Sleepy, Smeltown, Murdered, Thriller books. He said that he put his whole life on hold for this case. He sat down in front of Lewis, looked him in the eye and said, I have followed every footstep. I have seen every single victim. I have breathed every breath that you took for the past two years and now we finally caught you and it's over. Lewis calmly asked if he could pray, walk to the corner of the room and started sobbing while begging for forgiveness. He also confessed to 221 murders. At one point during the confession, he leaned over and vomited into the interrogation trash can.

Yeah. He also said in the same breath, as he's confessing to the murders, he said, really, my only problem is my leg. My psychic health is very good. I've never had psychic problems. I'm assuming he meant psychiatric. Most of his interrogations, at least the ones that our Spanish researchers could dig up,

it's of Lewis recounting his crimes. But there are certain parts that we haven't covered that's kind of stand out. At one point, the investigator asked him why he decapitated the boys and he said, I don't know because I made those decisions. Possibly it was because the boys didn't suffer and they died more smoothly. That's why he's stating that he was trying to help the boys pass in a softer way. This is the man that disemboweled his victims while they were alive. So he also kept saying, I don't want people to look at me like I'm a monster. I'm a human being.

Yeah. Well, he could live out the rest of his human being life in a Colombian prison then. He was sentenced for 162 murders. The courts counted up all the years that he would get for each individual case and it came down to 1,853 years and nine days. To give context, the United States of America has only been around for 247 years.

This man is being sentenced to 1,853 years. But Colombia has a max prison sentence. The philosophy behind it, Colombia is one of the countries where they believe that even criminals should have the right to life. Life is sacred and these criminals deserve to have a light at the end of the tunnel. And to condemn someone to a life behind bars without hope is inhumane. Okay, so when you argue it like that, I see it, right? I see the humanity aspect of it, but I don't see it in the sense that I could never look

apparent of a victim in the eye and tell them that their child's murder has the right to hope. But some countries can. Colombia has something called sentence unification. If you are sentenced to multiple crimes, then you will only serve the term that's the worst, that's the longest. It's basically serving your sentences concurrently rather than consecutively, so we kind of have that in the US.

So in Colombia, if you get sentenced to three crimes, two years for one, five years for one, and six months for one, instead of spending seven and a half years in prison, you'll just spend five years. Because it's your harshest sentence. And just like that, 1,853 years turned into 40 years. 40. 40 for the worst serial killings in history, where he kidnapped hundreds of children, tortured them, dismembered them, disemboweled them, assaults them, decapitated them, used their bodies for satanic rituals that we don't even know because he won't talk about 40 years. But people are like, okay, let's have some hope because Colombian prisons are notorious for being harsh and Lewis was sentenced to the maximum security prison

in Colombia, probably one of the worst in the entire country, which apparently the prison itself was inspired by the US penitentiary system. So there's that, but it's really, really bad. People have stated that the first thing you'll notice before you even walk into the prison is the whole smell. I mean, the place stinks of urine and feces to the point where even if you walk in covering your mouth and nose, your eyes start to water because of the whole smell. I mean the place stinks of urine and feces to the point where even if you walk

in covering your mouth and nose your eyes start to water because of the stench. There's only running water for about 8 to 15 minutes a day and only on the first floor. Now there's no guarantee that you're allowed to go to the first floor when water is running. If you don't have a first floor cell more likely than not you get access to no running water. It's really bad. Since there's no running water, there's no toilets. So the prisoners are forced to relieve themselves in plastic bags. I'm talking both types urine and feces into plastic bags.

But if they leave these plastic bags in their cells, it starts to stink up the entire cell. So they toss the plastic bags through the bars of their cell into the communal space beneath. And more often than not, these bags plop. And they splatter to the ground. And since water is never on, prisoners basically have water rations. They have water deliveries where the prisoners are forced to line up, shoulder to shoulder, they're stiff, it's tense, they've got empty jugs in one hand, and they've got the guards will pour their water into those empty jugs. And then in the other hand hand they just have like a knife out in the open improvised weapon like a shank that they made in prison because usually the violent outbreaks happened during water deliveries. The cells themselves are jam

packed with prisoners even the hallways of the jail are filled with mattresses because of how many people are in there. It's really bad. And they are exposed to the elements in most cases. In the maximum security tower where Luis is a prisoner, they are allowed out of their cells for one hour a day. The conditions in there are so bad that some prisoners have taken to sowing their mouth shut as a protest against the Horde conditions. Others have made these cocoons out of their bed sheets.

So they make these hammocks and I guess the window bars are enough for them to get out of their window. But they can't really escape because I guess there's guards everywhere and it's completely isolated, right? So they make these little hammocks that they tie on the cell window bars. They get out of the building and they're just basically dangling off the side of the building but four stories tall. Now the guards, they don't like it. So they start cutting little incisions into the prisoner's bedsheets so that if they try to do this, their bedsheets will fall apart and they will fall four stories, potentially

to their death. One volunteer stated that he saw multiple men scaling the inner wall of the jail, climbing from the ground floor to the fifth floor. Someone was pulling down bedsheets so that they could climb up while balancing water jugs around their neck. It's because the top dogs of the fifth floor wanted some water, so the bottom people had to go fetch water. Many of them would slip and fall to their deaths and the guards would not even look. Nobody cared. Ironically outside the prison, there is a fish pond, with a constant stream of running

water poured into it. It's interesting. Even visitors were not safe in the congegal visit room, which is where prisoners are allowed to spend a lone time with partners, it's typically filled with blood and used condoms. And recently, in a separate Colombian prison, but similar, the drain pipes were clogged. Plummers came to work on it. They found the remains of a hundred people in the drains of a prison. Inmates, visitors, nobody was safe.

And while he's in here, Lewis, people thought maybe he's going to get killed in prison. I mean, a lot of people were hopeful that would be the cause because they didn't want him out in 40 years. That's for sure, right? So a lot of people were hopeful, but he was treated kind of like a king. He got his own isolated cell because this is such a high profile case the guards were scared that if he was murdered,

their jobs would be on the line. So he had like his own personal bodyguard the whole time. There were journalists lining up to interview him and he was like a picky little princess. He would charge a big sum of money to be interviewed and that's why we don't have a lot of interviews of this guy. And most of the time, he would just ramble on

about nothing in his interviews. It's very hard to follow. He never provides much new information that could help bring closure to families. He just starts lying in his interviews at one point. He straight up claimed in an interview that he never assayed a single victim and that he does not consider himself a rapist. He also stated he thinks that he should be able to get out of prison,

because it's just not fair. You know, he's learned his lessons and he's not a rapist because he has erectile dysfunction. And if you need proof, you should just go ask his ex-girlfriends because he could never get it up with them. Like, this is literally his thought process. function and if you need proof you should just go ask his ex-girlfriends because you could never get it up with them. Like this is literally his thought process. And he's like, I need to be let out of prison because I've got life goals now. The journalists are like, what's your life goal? I'm going to be a congressman and I want to fight for the rights of children.

I cannot make this up. He also goes on a rant about how he sees himself in some of the most unsavory dictators and mass murders. They went to his cell and it was decorated with posters of Hitler, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Princess Diana. It was a very, very strange mix of people. Another interesting thing to note, one journalist who interviewed Lewis directly in jail said, there was something about his eyes where I felt like they were sucking the energy out of me. It was terrifying. But it gets worse. Louise receives multiple sentence reductions, the largest of which took off almost half of his sentence because he did a work study program in

jail. Yeah, with that reduction amongst others, Louis's sentence was now 22 years and he was scheduled to get out of prison in 2023. Louise was up for release in 2023 and everyone was terrified except for a Facebook group where he had 170 fans that just loved him, loved him, could not wait for him to be free. And eventually October 12th 2023. Last month? Mm-hmm. And eventually October 12th, 2023. Last month? Mm-hmm.

Lewis Garvito was pronounced dead in prison. What? He had leukemia and a very aggressive form of eye cancer, which a lot of people believe to be karma, because he had bad eyesight. He gouged out the victim's eyes, and now he was dead from eye cancer. Wait, is that true?

Yeah. Leukemia and eye cancer. Wait, is that true? Yeah. leukemia and eye cancer. It wasn't foul play. There are some suspicions, but. But he's about to come out. Yeah. But he died of. Yes, he also didn't really want to come out. There's mixed conversations about,

did he even want to get out? So a lot of people were trying to boycott him coming out. So they were writing letters to congressmen, local officials, to the president. And everybody was doing everything in their power to make sure that this man does not get out on the street. Some sources made it seem like he wanted to get out on the street and he's fighting with these judicial people. But a lot of other sources said this guy wants to stay in prison. He's doing okay in prison and he knows the minute that he steps out he's dead on site. Like who's gonna hide him? Who's like he has no power, he's not Pablo Escobar.

Like where is he going to go, you know? So I don't know. I don't know if it was foul play. The official statement is leukemia and eye cancer. But I don't know if it can even be considered karma because he took so many lives. I don't know. I mean, this is just one of those cases where I keep thinking about the ripple effect. It's not just the 400 kids, which already in itself isn't an insane number,

but it's their parents, their siblings, their friends, relatives that are all traumatized and impacted. And there are still rooms full of boxes of bones of children who are yet to be identified. But I guess it's better dead than free for someone like Lewis, Garveyto. What are your thoughts on this case? Did you guys know about the story of the Beast of Columbia and how he was set to be released this year? Please stay safe and I will see you guys on Sunday for the mini-sode. Bye!