Luis Garavito | The Beast - Part 1
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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Episode 216. I am your humble host, Tomas Roseland Weyberg Thun. And tonight, we begin our journey into the life and crimes of the world's perhaps most prolific serial killer, aside from Pedro Lopez.

The man in question was a depraved pedophile who hunted, tortured, and killed hundreds of little boys. As with Lopez, the subject of this series hailed from and operated in Latin America. I am, of course, talking about none other than La Bestia, the Beast, Luis Garavito, and this is his saga. Enjoy.

This episode, like all other sagas told by me, would not be possible without my loyal Patreones. They are...

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and without you there would be no show. Thank you. I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast.

No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise. And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now. A cliched question asked of nearly every child is what they wish to be when they grow up.

An easy question with anything but an easy answer. For all the million answers children have given to this question over time, the answer is never a remorseless, paedophilic serial killer. It's unlikely that these individuals were born with this intention. Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubilos, later in life given nicknames such as La Bestia,

The beast, Tribilene, Disney's Goofy, or El Cura, the priest, was born in the small village of Genovo, in Quindio, of Colombia, on the 25th of January, 1957, a few months before the deposition of President Gustavo Rojas.

and at the threshold of a decade-long civil war that would ravage the country. He was the son of Rosa D'Elia and Manuel Antoni, the first of seven children to be followed by three brothers and three sisters. Quindio, the region where Garavito was born, is in the central western part of Colombia, nestled in the heart of the Andes range.

Characterized by fertile coffee-growing lands, splendid landscapes, and the languid flow of the La Vieja River, Quindio offered idyllic physical surroundings for the young Louis. However, despite the picturesque environs, the socio-economic reality was harsh. Poverty was rampant, and many families eked out a living by working laboriously in the coffee fields.

The Garavito household was a disheartening manifestation of this societal impoverishment. Born into a family of seven children, Garavito's home was alarmingly scarce in both physical comforts and emotional warmth. Their modest dwelling, cramped and meager, mirrored the strenuous struggle for daily subsistence. His father, Manuel Antonio Garavito,

was an alcoholic with a volatile temper. Trying to drown his sorrows in drink, he frequently resorted to physical violence, subjecting his children to brutal beatings. In this oppressive and hostile atmosphere, the young Garavito found little comfort or joy.

A darker facet of his childhood, less publicly disclosed, but equally crucial in understanding this individual, was the sexual abuse he reportedly endured. The precise details of the abuse that Garavito endured are, understandably, scant and thinly documented. What is recognized, however, is that the sexual violence perpetrated against him was reportedly recurrent,

beginning from an early young age, involved multiple perpetrators and often occurred within his family's crumbling walls. Among the alleged abusers were some of Garavito's own relatives, neighbors, and even supposed friends within the community. The abusers exploited the vulnerability of Garavito's circumstances, his family's economic challenges, and their lack of protective measures.

The exposure to such recurring sexual abuse during formative years would have devastatingly profound and long-lasting effects on Garavito's psychological development. The trauma would potentially trigger feelings of severe shame, guilt, confusion, betrayal, and powerlessness. These emotional burdens, omnipresent in Garavito's psyche,

interfere with the normal process of personality development and can lay the groundwork for severe mental health issues and problematic behaviors. Worth noting is that survivors of childhood sexual abuse are more likely than their non-abused counterparts to exhibit various psychological problems.

These can often encompass major depressive episodes, anxiety disorders, suicidal ideation and behavior, antisocial personality disorder, and substance abuse. In line with the working-class realities of Genova, Garavito's education was an uneven journey cut short by familial economic constraints.

His brief stint with formal education took place in a humble local school, much like countless other schools in rural Colombia, a tiny brick-and-mortar structure hosting a single classroom that clustered children from different age groups. Garavito, similar to a sizable portion of his peers, faced the harsh duality of juggling academics with manual labor.

This necessity was rooted in the prevailing socio-economic conditions of Quindio, one of the central zones of the Colombian coffee areas. The economy of this region, heavily centered on coffee farming, required all hands, even those as young as Garavito, to contribute to the family income by working in the fields. Those bruising days were spent picking coffee cherries under the unforgiving Andean sun,

For children laboring in these vast plantations, the rugged glistening hillsides and the canopy of coffee shrubs offered no charm. Instead, they embodied an intense livelihood struggle as part of an economic ecosystem that barely rewarded the toil of its hardest workers. Imagine, if you will, there is now the following. The day began right at the crack of dawn.

even before the sun had fully risen above the horizon. Garavito, along with other child laborers and field workers, would embark on their journey to the coffee fields, armed with empty sacks and a sense of resignation to the day of labor ahead. Their journey was usually on foot, traversing rural paths leading to the sprawling coffee plantations, the undulating hills shrouded in a mantle of green.

Upon arrival, a short briefing by the majordomo, translated in English as the overseer, would lay out the day's goals. Then the workers would set about their tasks. Coffee-picking, unlike some types of harvest, demanded a delicate touch and high precision. Only the ripest beans, those that had achieved a perfect hue of deep red, were to be picked.

garavito like other workers was expected to sift through clusters of coffee cherries selecting only those that were at peak maturity the lush greenery of the plantation offered no solace from the strenuous focus this task required

hours would pass in this state of continuous labor the only sounds piercing the air were the rustling of leaves and the occasional hushed conversation between the laborers by afternoon after several hours in the relentless Andean sun the workers sacks would be filled with coffee cherries it was time to deposit the produce but before the day ended there was still much to be done

A significant part of the day involved sorting and weighing the cherries. Each worker's collection was meticulously weighed and logged by the field overseer. Missteps were poorly received. Workers whose beans were not ripe, or who had not collected a sufficient amount, were often reprimanded or faced a deduction in their meager wages. A physically demanding day drew to a close in the late afternoon.

Exhausted, the workers, with muscles aching and clothes stained by the crimson juice of the coffee cherries, would then embark on their journey back home. As they tread wearily over meandering paths, the setting sun cast long shadows over the tranquil coffee fields. Garavito's workday on the coffee plantation, like that of countless child laborers, was a grueling experience.

The repetitive back-breaking labor under the scorching sun belied the romanticized image of lush coffee plantations. His exhausting daily routine underscores the stark reality of conditions child laborers endured and the intensive labor underpinning Colombia's booming coffee economy. The school was not a sanctuary from Garavito's tumultuous domestic life.

Instead, it became another arena underlining his distinct otherness. He was often the target of school bullies, an ordeal heavily contrasted with the wild-held Latin American notion of escuela como segundo hogar, school as a second home. The bullying further compromised his already flimsy emotional stability, pushing him towards isolation.

These early years of juggling a rigorous work schedule with the bitter experiences of school and home coerced him into premature adulthood. The innocence of childhood was largely absent for Garavito, replaced instead by a harsh existence that belonged in an adult world.

Trapped in this suffocating vortex, the seeds of a troubled psychology, later manifested horrendously, were sown. As Garavito trudged into his teenage years, his circumstances barely improved. Any semblance of normal adolescence was a distant dream.

An unpredictable home environment, crushing manual labor, and stark isolation from peers continued to mark his daily life.

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But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night. For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it.

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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Garavito was already demonstrating signs of behavior that were alarming, if not outright disturbing, for a young adolescent.

His prolonged isolation pushed him further to the fringes of society. It's speculated that his preference for solitude was a defense mechanism against the relentless adversities he faced in interpersonal relationships. Concurrently, as Garavito was battling his personal demons, Columbia, too, was in the throes of tumult.

These were the pivotal years when the country was spiraling deeper into socio-political violence, leading to a long-protracted internal conflict. During this period, predominantly the late 1960s and the 1970s, Colombia witnessed the rise of various guerrilla groups fueled by ideological differences and a battle over lucrative drug trafficking routes.

The famous, or rather infamous, FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, consolidated its power during these years, further exacerbating the historical tensions between the state and the various communist guerrilla groups.

While these events unfolded mostly in the remote parts of the country, they added to the narrative of fear, instability and violence that seeped into the society's collective psyche, including in places like Quindio, Garavito's home. This tension-steeped environment likely imprinted itself on Garavito's already troubled psyche.

possibly offering a grim preview of the violent path he would tread later the turbulent framework of garavito's adolescence and the social political unrest of colombia during this time played definitive roles in shaping his transition into adulthood

This period marked a fundamental shift, not only in Garavito's life, but also across the landscape of the nation that was about to witness a terror like no other. Garavito ubiquitously carried the scars of his childhood and adolescence, a history of abuse, neglect, poverty, and isolation, into his adulthood.

This period of his life was less of a transition and more of a continuation of his earlier adversities, with new grim complexities. With no viable support system, Garavito's life began to unravel rapidly. He fell into chronic destitution, sometimes resorting to homelessness and transient jobs. This dire state rendered him a societal pariah.

projecting him further into the margins. As he drifted across towns to stay afloat, Caravito began consuming alcohol heavily, a futile attempt to smother the torment of his past and the bleakness of his present. This alarming pattern was starkly reflective of his father's behavior, repeated in a vicious cycle.

Simultaneously, Colombia was grappling with a surge in political violence and drug trafficking through the 1980s, escalating societal unrest. Violent crimes swept through the nation, often masked under the broader conflict. The national crisis, coupled with an ineffective social protection system, offered Garavito a distorted advantage.

His crimes went unnoticed amidst a larger turmoil and frequently misattributed to the political strife that monopolized the nation's attention. As a country that has been immersed in political and social strife for the past 50 years, Colombia struggles to provide even the most basic security to its citizens.

It is this chaos of incessant political unrest that created, in the shadows of every impoverished neighborhood, the perfect victim pool. For as crowded as Colombia's streets are, one specific group of people will remain forever unseen, its street children. Colombia's continuous political strife has bred a subculture of anonymous children,

Garavito carefully selected his prey from the children of low-income households where more vulnerable to the charms of a wandering peddler were a pleasant priest. As the anonymity meant a low risk of discovery, this was a significant factor in Garavito's crimes going for so long undetected. And so it was that on the 22nd of April 1999,

It was just another day at Los Cantauros Park, Via Vicencio. Located in eastern Colombia, the park itself was part of the regular route for an impoverished young boy named Ivan Sabugal, who sold lottery tickets to help fund his schooling. Ivan's abduction, or rather as it was then noted, disappearance,

was not discovered until later that evening, when his mother realized he had not returned home by the assigned time. Terrified, Ivan's mother contacted the police and pleaded with them to take on her son's case, hoping to be able to convince them that there was indeed something sinister about Ivan's not coming home that day. In a country like Colombia, as Ivan's mother had little to no power to exert,

His abduction could easily have been glossed over, and probably would have been had it not been for the prosecutor Fernando Aya. Aya had already been investigating the disappearances of thirteen other young children over the span of six months. Aya had discovered several mass graves just on the outskirts of Via Vicencio,

and identified a pattern in Ivan's case that was consistent with previous disappearances. Villa Vicencio was not the only village affected. Thousands of kilometers away, in the heart of Colombia's coffee district, another set of mothers were desperately trying to apprise the authorities of their missing sons, each hoping against hope that their son would be the one who came home.

The horrors of Garavito's crimes had begun long before that investigation. Years before this, dead children were being discovered all across Colombia, in mass graves. One such discovery took place in the quaint little town of Nacaderos, where the tortured bodies of fourteen children, ranging from eight to fourteen years old, were unearthed, baffling the Colombian police.

What was even more shocking was the state of the remains. These were not recently deceased bodies. The bodies being unearthed were already decomposed to the point where there was almost no way of individual identification. All that was recoverable at this point were the bones and teeth. Surprisingly, the dental records did initiate a major breakthrough.

None of these children had had work done on their teeth, indicating that they could not afford it, which put them in the same economic subgroup as the missing street children. Mario Artung Duaga, Colombia's most renowned forensic reconstructionist, began working on the bones of the children that were recovered. It was here that the forensic team hit their first major roadblock.

The team soon realized that the diagnostics they were used to working with would not apply to these cases, because the subjects were children as opposed to grown adults. The malleable nature of their bones and the way in which their craniums were constructed called for a major adaptation in process. Artung Duaga realized that he would have to create his own methods, and so he did.

Mario Artung Duaga's involvement in the case of Luis Garavito was pivotal. As the chief engineer of the Luis Carlos Galán Forensic Institute, it was through Artung Duaga's diligence, expertise and tenacity that a detailed and cohesive picture of La Bestia began to emerge. Taking note of the recurring abnormality in Colombia,

A spate of disappearances and murders of young boys from impoverished backgrounds, Artung Duaga began compiling all available data to identify any common links and patterns. From victim's age, physical description, clothes, to the precision and pattern of the wounds inflicted, the proximity of the victim's last seen location, to places of public interest, everything was meticulously examined and recorded.

Artung Duaga, along with his team and cooperative law enforcement agencies, painstakingly put the jigsaw pieces together, which eventually led to a significant break in the case. They concluded that the victims, often lured with small gifts or the promise of odd jobs, were the victims of a single predator.

Extensive forensic studies conducted under Artung Duaga's leadership confirmed the peculiarities in the case, including specific patterns in the manner of slaughter and item usage, bottles of brandy, signs of bondage, and similar types of knives that pointed toward a serial killer's existence. As Artung Duaga worked, the authorities began to chase down every lead they could.

Theories ranged from satanic cults to drug traffickers. Every scrap of evidence was considered and reconsidered. The only thing they could be sure of was that, whatever they were dealing with, they could not afford to miss any clues. Back in Via Vicensio, when Aya was still looking for evidence in his initial investigation,

He decided to go and stake out the points of disappearance, hoping that this would allow him to reconstruct the crimes and understand how the abductions took place. Once he arrived at the disappearance points, Aya was confounded. Each one was located in a heavily populated area. How could the abductions have gone unnoticed? Why had the stench of the bodies not been reported?

Aya and his team decided to do some groundwork in an attempt to figure out exactly how this happened. Very soon, Aya and his team began to realize how easy it was to miss an abduction in that region. Despite the high population, the area was covered in thick vegetation, and the terrain much too difficult to walk through, making it very difficult for an abduction to have been detected.

In another end of the country, Detective Aldemar Duran, who had previously investigated three similar murders, recognized similarities with other cases all around the country. He cross-referenced the murders against homicides and abductions of a similar nature dating from 1991 to 1998.

His hunch became another important key to unlocking the mysteries of Garavito's modus operandi. And with that, we come to the end of part one in this series covering Luis Garavito. Next episode will feature part two. So as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.

I don't know.

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