Colombia Searches for Serial Killer's Victims After Confession
Colombian authorities are searching the capital of Bogota for victims of self-confessed serial killer Fredy Valencia.
The BBC reports that, so far, the police have discovered 11 bodies near the shack where Valencia lived.
The victims, all female, had been strangled to death. The 34-year-old Valencia said he killed them for refusing to have sex with him.
The case surfaced on Nov. 28, when police on Monserrate mountain came across a plastic bag containing human bones next to a wooden shack. Forensic experts who came out to the scene discovered four more bodies that very same day.
Police later arrested Valencia, the owner of the wooden shack.
The homeless man, who had been living in the woods on Monserrate for years, confessed that after killing the women, he then disposed of their bodies in trash bags. According to Colombia Reports, Valencia briefly studied chemistry in college.
Valencia said he preyed on women in need, approaching women in a poor neighborhood of Bogota called the Bronx, which is known for prostitution and drugs. There appears to have been a method to Valencia’s mode of murder, as he said he chose victims who were homeless or runaways in order to make sure they would not be reported missing.
Valencia, who revealed that he would first offer his victims food and clothes in exchange for sexual favors, said he had taken over 100 women to his shack over the years. Although the exact number of victims is not known, the dead range in age from 18 to 30.
Valencia has cooperated with the authorities by leading them to the various burial spots that surround his shack, although he did tell them he was too intoxicated to recall where all the bodies were buried.
One of the victims has been identified as Maria del Pilar Rincon, a 26-year-old who is thought to have run away from home when she was 13.
Location seems to have everything to do with the murder rate in Bogota. As The Guardian reports, a mere 2 percent of urban street addresses account for a full 98 percent of the homicides that occur in the city.
President Juan Manuel Santos has not addressed the capture of the killer, as he is very focused on ending over 50 years of deadly tension between the government and the Marxist rebel group FARC.
The Colombian leader did take time out to congratulate Venezuela on their turn in a recent election toward a more right-wing government. "Colombia is pleased by this important step in the Venezuelan democracy," he said.
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