Rosewood - Serial Killers: The Colombian Monsters: True Crime Serial Killers

In the 1990s, some of the poorest boys living in the streets of Colombia went missing, but like the countless prostitutes and runaways who disappear in the United States every year, many of their disappearances went unnoticed for quite some time.

Because of political upheaval, military action that caused displacement from their homes and widespread poverty, Colombia has a large population of homeless children, who survive on the streets mostly by begging and stealing.

These children are easy targets for predators, and because many of them are rarely in contact with their families, when boys disappear it usually takes some time for loved ones to realize that their children have gone missing. For some, they are never missed because they are virtually alone in the world.

Kids disappear all the time in Colombia, especially those from the poorer strata, said Timothy W. Ross a journalist-turned-social worker, in a story that appeared in the New York Times. They tend to come from unstable homes anyway, but the deep social instability produced by military, political and economic displacement has fragmented families even further.

Of the 41 million Colombians, about 1.5 million, many of them children, were displaced by political strife, and children selling small items, begging or shining shoes are common throughout the nations larger cities and towns.

More than a quarter of the countrys population lives below the poverty line, and families are split because parents are unable to care for their children.

This disenfranchisement among families left so many boys on their own that the city streets were as easy to hunt as a game preserve for serial killer Luis Garavito.

Garavito suffered from a serious form of overkill, as his victim list is believed to have topped 300, in part because his targets of choice were not only prolific, but also easy prey. His tricks of the trade, which included posing as a priest to create a sense of trust between himself and his victims, allowed him to blend into the dust and the trash and the suffering, so he was able to get away with an unimaginable number of murders.

Other disguises, including entering schools on the pretext of serving as a guest speaker, also allowed him easier access to young boys.

Garavito was able to go unnoticed because he switched up his look, donning various disguises that were vastly different, save for his red plastic glasses, which were always part of his look.

He chose victims between the ages of 6 and 16, and at first offered them small gifts or money, which suggests that the poorest of children in Colombia are not told the dangers of accepting gifts from strangers.

He would then take them for a walk, leading them to places where the foliage was so thick that it not only muffled noises as he raped and killed his victims, usually by cutting their throats, but also prevented the smell of decay from wafting too far, even though throngs of people living their lives, often including regularly patrolling police, were usually not too far from the crime scenes.

Diabolical to the core, Garavito has a classic back story, one that he shares with many serial killers who choose young boys as their victims.