The Real Story Of Hannibal Lector

Harris was a journalist who was 23 years old in the early 1960s when he went to the Nuevo León state jail in Monterrey, Mexico, to write on an American called Dykes Askew Simmons who had been convicted of murder. This information was disclosed by Harris in the foreword to the 25th anniversary edition of The Silence of the Lambs book, which was published in 2013. Simmons, with his unsettling eyes and "bad Z-plasty repairing a cleft lip," clearly suited the description of a murderer; yet, Harris found himself more captivated by the physician who had treated the American after he had survived a failed attempt to escape from jail.

When Harris first saw "Dr. Salazar" at the medical office of the correctional facility, he referred to him as a "small, lithe man with dark red hair" and said that he had "a certain elegance about him." The physician came to life after the reporter provided a few replies that were unremarkable. He then proceeded to inquire about Simmons' scarred look and asked for his opinions.

"Did the people who were murdered stand out to you?" So Salazar inquired. In response, Harris said, "Yes." Should we take the doctor's statement to mean that the stunning victims were the ones who provoked Simmons into a violent rage?

The response from the physician was, "Certainly not." Early anguish, on the other hand, makes later agony easier to fathom.

"Mr. Harris, you are a journalist," he said. "I recognize you." How would you go about writing it down in your journal? When writing in journalese, how do you deal with the dread of agony? If you had to remark anything witty about the suffering, would you say something like, "It puts the hell in hello!"?

Later on that day, Harris was taken aback when he discovered that Dr. Salazar was not, according to his first assumption, a prison staff but rather a convicted individual who was facing a long sentence in jail. It was the warden who informed him that the physician was a killer. Because he was a surgeon, he was able to wrap his victim in a box that was astonishingly tiny. He is not going to leave this location ever. He is really mad.

As per the profiles published in The Times of the United Kingdom and The Latin Times, it has been revealed that the individual referred to as "Salazar" in Harris' narrative was really known by the name Alfredo Ballí Treviño. He was born in Méndez, Tamaulipas, to a family that was well-known in the community. As a result of his father's strictness, the youngster and his siblings were encouraged to achieve academic success.

When Ballí Treviño was a medical intern in 1959, he found himself in a disagreement with his sweetheart, Jesús Castillo Rangel. The reason for this disagreement might be either financial difficulties or his own determination on marrying a lady. The man who wanted to become a physician murdered his partner, then meticulously cut him up into bits so that they could fit into a box. He then tried to bury the box on a ranch.

Despite the fact that his work was quickly discovered, Ballí Treviño was ultimately condemned to death in 1961 for his "crime of passion that he committed." Another charge that was made against him was that he was a suspect in the murder and dismemberment of hitchhikers; however, it seems that these allegations were never confirmed.

It has been said that the "Werewolf of Nuevo León" continued to exhibit a sophisticated sense of style when he was incarcerated by wearing light-colored suits, dark sunglasses, and a gold Rolex watch. In addition to this, he kept up an unofficial medical practice by providing medical care to other inmates and by visiting residents of the town.

After serving a term of twenty years in prison, Ballí Treviño was released and was able to return to his former neighborhood in Monterrey, where he provided medical assistance to the ill and the impoverished, sometimes at no cost. In 2008, a few months before he passed away from prostate cancer, he consented to give an interview to a newspaper. However, he declined to discuss his violent history, stating, "I don't want to wake up my ghosts."

Reference

https://www.biography.com/crime/real-life-hannibal-lecter-alfredo-balli-trevino