Daniel Camargo Barbosa

Background and early crimes in Colombia

Daniel Camargo Barbosa was born in the department of Cundinamarca, Colombia. Most accounts give his birth date as 22 January 1930, although the Ecuadorian magazine Vistazo lists both 1930 and 1931 in the same profile, and outlets disagree on his hometown: Vistazo names Anolaima, while El Tiempo names La Mesa. Colombian press later called him the "Sádico del Charquito", after El Charquito, a rural area west of Soacha where the bodies of young girls were found during the 1960s. According to El Tiempo, investigators identified him in 1967, and he received a five-year prison term for rape. Vistazo describes a first case in which he and a female partner targeted underage girls, after which both were convicted; it says he was given six years and released early for good behavior.

Second conviction and the Gorgona penal colony

After his release, Camargo again sexually assaulted and killed a young woman, according to Vistazo, and was returned to prison. Accounts of the length of that second sentence differ: Vistazo reports 25 years, a 1994 AFP dispatch published by El Tiempo says 24 years, and a later El Tiempo feature gives 30 years. The same 1994 dispatch says he had been convicted in Colombia over roughly twenty women. After passing through prisons in Barranquilla and Bogotá, he was sent to the penal colony on Gorgona, a Pacific island off Colombia's coast; El Tiempo dates that transfer to 1977.

Escape from the island in 1984

Gorgona was considered nearly impossible to leave, but Camargo got away in 1984. The details of the escape are not consistent across sources. Vistazo dates it to 23 November 1984 and says he reached the island's dock in diving gear and slipped aboard a small boat bound for the mainland, while El Tiempo says he left in a small canoe and spent three days at sea before reaching Ecuador. Colombian authorities presumed him dead. Vistazo says he entered Ecuador through Tulcán in December 1984.

Killings in Ecuador

Between late 1984 and 1986, girls and young women disappeared in Guayaquil and other parts of coastal Ecuador. El Tiempo reports that Camargo approached victims while presenting himself as a religious pastor, and Vistazo places his crimes in Guayaquil, Quevedo, Machala and Quito, with remains later found in the Colinas de Los Ceibos area of Guayaquil and along the road toward Nobol. The cases involved sexual assault and murder. As remains were recovered, forensic physician Carlos Barcos Velásquez of the University of Guayaquil concluded in 1985 that a single person was likely responsible, according to El Universo. He worked alongside Cuban forensic anthropologist Héctor Soto and used photographic superimposition to help put names to the remains.

Arrest, confession and sentence

Camargo was arrested in Quito in 1986. The 1994 AFP report says a police officer on guard duty noticed him acting nervously in a wooded area near the city and caught him after he tried to flee; Vistazo says he was carrying a suitcase containing evidence linked to his latest victim, while El Tiempo's later feature refers instead to a highway control. He confessed to 71 killings in Ecuador, and El Universo reports that he knew where each victim had been buried. Vistazo also reports that police used physical coercion during his questioning. Victim totals vary widely: El Universo says more than 67 of the 71 were identified, the 1994 AFP dispatch speaks of more than fifty Ecuadorian victims, and later estimates cited by Vistazo and El Tiempo exceed 150 and 170 across both countries. These higher figures are not confirmed counts. In 1986 an Ecuadorian court sentenced him to 16 years, then the maximum penalty in the country.

Death in prison

Camargo did not complete his sentence. In November 1994 he was killed inside a Quito prison by fellow inmate Geovanny Noguera, who had recently been transferred from Guayaquil. Vistazo and El Tiempo both report that his attacker was a relative of one of his victims. According to Vistazo, Camargo was buried in a common grave at the El Batán cemetery in Quito.

Why the case still matters

The case exposed how weak the region's institutions were at the time: a convicted killer escaped an island prison, was presumed dead, and moved across an international border while the killings continued. It also showed the limits of Ecuador's sentencing rules, since a confessed killer of dozens faced at most 16 years. Ecuador's Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code (COIP), in force since August 2014, now allows penalties for multiple crimes to be added together, with a ceiling of 40 years. In Ecuador the case is also remembered for the forensic work that linked scattered remains to one offender.