This Thursday afternoon, Colombia’s National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC) announced the death of Luis Alfredo Garavito, convicted of abusing and murdering more than 200 children and adolescents in three countries.

Garavito was serving a sentence in Valledupar, northern Colombia.

“Mr. Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos, who was detained in the city of Valledupar, died in the last minutes,” INPEC reported in a short statement, adding that he died early in the morning at the new Santo Tomás clinic as a result of “multiple conditions.”

Garavito was known as the Monster of Genoa or the Beast and had been sentenced to 1,853 years for crimes of violent sexual acts, murder, simple kidnapping and violent sexual intercourse, although his sentence was 40 years, the maximum penalty.

He had been arrested in April 1999 when he tried to rape a minor and entered prison in December 2002.

Garavito, the child murderer whom Ecuador tried to bring to justice, suffers from eye cancer and leukemia

The RCN portal reported that he was born in Génova (Quindío) in 1957 and that he had been the victim of abuse by his father, sexually abused by a religious man, and suffered torture and physical attacks.

In a documentary he confessed to an alleged ‘pact with the devil’ and in 1992 he committed his first crime in Cali.

His dealings were sinister, he would deceive through disguises or change jobs and offer money or alcohol to children and young people between the ages of 6 and 16.

His crimes extended to Ecuador, where proceedings were opened against him. In the country it was linked to the deaths of two minors in the cities of Santo Domingo and Chone (Manabí) in July 1998.

In 2012, Ecuador attempted to request Garavito’s extradition, but that country’s Supreme Court of Colombia (CSJ) refused extradition to Ecuador because it considered that the events for which he was wanted in Ecuador constituted res judicata, taking into account He notes that the specific acts of which he is accused have been the subject of investigation and trial by Colombia’s judicial authorities there.

In recent years it was learned that he had been diagnosed with eye cancer and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. (JO)