The Beast 3

Brand Ferney Bernal Álvarez was a 16-year-old youth who worked with his father in the rooster fighting business in the 1990s. While Bernal Álvarez tended to roosters in the cockpit, Garavito took him to a secluded spot by threatening him with a knife. He then proceeded to bind, sexually assault and torture Bernal Álvarez, with methods ranging from stabbing Bernal Álvarez seven times with a screwdriver as he raped him, to beating the youth until weak. Bernal Álvarez broke free from his restraints and fled from Garavito.

According to Garavito, he primarily targeted children of humble background who were working class, homeless, peasants or orphaned. Claiming to feel a force within that compelled him to kill, Garavito would look for children and lure them away by bribing them with small gifts such as money, candy or odd jobs. He typically abused thin children with soft features, fair eyes, hair, and/or complexion that he deemed "innocent" looking. Born and raised in the largely Spanish-descended Paisa region of Colombia, Garavito knew where to find victims that fit his criteria.

Terrified of the dark, he would approach them in broad daylight in public places ranging from the countryside to crowded city streets. Garavito also drank brandy near school zones on evenings to wait for unknowing children. He offered easy work for money and even disguised himself as various characters ranging from a Catholic priest, to a schoolteacher, to an elderly man to more effectively lure victims. To prevent suspicions about his activities from developing, Garavito would change his disguise often.

Once he had the trust of a child, Garavito typically walked to a secluded spot or mass grave site with the victim, encouraging them to talk about their personal life until they were tired and vulnerable, which then made them easy to handle. After sipping about half a bottle of brandy, Garavito bound the children, intimidating them with a knife as he fondled and sometimes masturbated over them. According to Garavito, he made a "pact with the devil" and Satanic rituals were also incorporated into the murders of the children, who were apparent blood sacrifices.

The children were often molested and tortured simultaneously for prolonged periods, with methods ranging from being stabbed with a screwdriver in the buttocks, hands, and feet to having their buttocks flayed with broken blades that Garavito had placed between his fingers. While alive, Garavito severed their genitals and placed them in the child's mouth. They were extensively beaten, burned, trampled and often showed deep cuts in the back, belly and throat. In some cases, they were sexually abused as their intestines poured out of their belly, impaled through the anus and out of the mouth, and stabbed over one hundred times.

Garavito's climax would occur when he had decapitated the child alive or cut the throat as he finished before leaving the severed genitals in the mouth of the decapitated head. Necrophilia with the victim's corpse was also occasionally involved in the crimes; sometimes prematurely, as Garavito could only achieve orgasm by beating and stabbing his victims during intercourse. The bodies of the children were all found completely naked, bearing bite marks and signs of anal penetration. Containers of lubricant were found near the bodies, along with empty bottles of the cheapest brandy in Colombia. Most corpses showed signs of prolonged torture.

Beginning in the 1980s, minors from impoverished backgrounds and other groups termed "desechables" ("disposable") began disappearing rapidly from the streets of Colombia. Due to the decades-long civil war, victims were unlikely to be reported missing. A group of children discovered a skeleton in Pereira while playing football on 7 November 1998, yet authorities did not take much notice until 15 November, when mass graves of as many as 36 children were uncovered—almost all of them boys—with signs of binding, sexual assault, and prolonged torture. They discovered a total of 41 children in the department of Risaralda, with 27 children discovered in neighboring Valle del Cauca.

This large number of missing children called for a widespread investigation as these killings were not confined to a specific area. The brutality was so fierce to authorities that they initially hypothesized the killings were performed by a Satanic cult or an international child-trafficking ring. In spite of this, the Prosecutor's Office quickly speculated that it was likely one man to be responsible for the killings, due to the prevalence of nylon cord and liquor bottle caps found at all of the crime scenes. On 6 February 1999, outside the town of Palmira, the bodies of two naked children were found lying next to each other on a hill near a sugarcane field. The next day, only meters away, they discovered another child's body. All three bodies had their hands bound and bore signs of sexual abuse. The victims' necks were severely cut and bruises were on their backs, genitals, legs and buttocks. The murder weapon was found in the same area as the bodies. Garavito had passed out partially naked on top of a child's corpse while drunk with a cigarette in his left hand, causing the cane field to catch fire. He burned himself severely in the process and left behind his money, burnt glasses, shorts, shoes, and underwear. Receipts and a note containing Graciela Zabaleta's address was also found.

From his glasses, the authorities were able to determine that the local serial killer was middle-aged and had an astigmatism in his left eye. His shoes also showed that he walked with a limp and stood 163–167 cm (5 ft 4 in – 5 ft 6 in) tall. They falsely arrested a local sex offender named Pedro Pablo Ramirez Garcia, who was 44 and had a limp in his right foot. As two boys disappeared in Pereira, a young boy had outed Garcia as the man who attempted to assault him. He was kept in jail until more children began to disappear in Bogotá. Meanwhile, Aldemar Duran, the main detective, had begun to suspect Garavito as their wanted killer. Garavito's girlfriend was contacted; she told police that she had not seen him in months. She did, however, give to the police a black cloth suitcase that Garavito had left in her possession, which contained a number of his belongings. These items included pictures of young boys, detailed journals of his murders, tally marks of his victims and bills. This new information led them to Garavito's residence, but the property was vacant. Detectives believed that Garavito was either travelling for work or away attempting to find his next victim. Garcia was released after Duran was able to track down the girlfriend and sister of Garavito.