Daniel Camargo Barbosa

On 13 November 1994, Camargo was stabbed to death in prison by Geovanny Noguera, who was a nephew of one of his victims. He was 64 years old at the time of his death.

Camargo was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence available in Ecuador at the time. While serving his sentence in the Garcia Moreno de Quito jail, he claimed to have converted to Christianity. In this penitentiary he was imprisoned with Pedro Alonso López (also dubbed "the Monster of the Andes"), who is believed to have raped and killed as many as 300 girls in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Camargo was arrested by two policemen in Quito on 25 February 1986, only a few minutes after he had murdered a 9-year-old girl named Elizabeth. The policemen were on patrol and approached him at the height of the avenue Los Granados, thinking that he was acting suspiciously. They found that he was carrying with him a bag containing the bloody clothes and clitoris of his latest victim, and a copy of Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. He was taken into custody and later moved to Guayaquil for identification. When he was arrested he gave a false name, Manuel Bulgarin Solis, but he was later identified by María Alexandra Vélez who was one of his rape victims that had escaped.

In June 1986 Francisco Febres Cordero, a journalist for the newspaper Hoy (Today), managed to arrange an interview with Camargo. It was difficult to get the interview due to the police blocking all access to Camargo, and the fact that Camargo himself demanded a large fee before he would let himself be interviewed. The journalist pretended to be part of a group of psychologists that were allowed access to the prisoner, allowing him to ask Camargo searching questions without arousing his suspicion.

In November 1984 Camargo escaped from Gorgona prison (known as the Colombian Alcatraz) in a primitive boat after having carefully studied the ocean currents. The authorities assumed that he died at sea and the press reported that he had been eaten by sharks. He eventually arrived in Quito, Ecuador. He then traveled by bus to Guayaquil on 5 or 6 December 1984. On 18 December he abducted a 9-year-old girl from the city of Quevedo, in the province of Los Ríos, Ecuador. The next day a 10-year-old girl also disappeared.

From 1984 to 1986 Camargo committed a series of at least 54 rapes and murders in Guayaquil. The police at first believed that all the deaths were the work of a gang, not understanding that one man could have killed so many. Camargo slept on the streets, and lived off the money he gained by reselling ballpoint pens in the streets. Occasionally he supplemented his income by selling clothing or small valuables belonging to his victims.

Camargo was arrested on 3 May 1974 in Barranquilla, Colombia, when he returned to the scene of the crime to recover the television screens that he had left beside the victim. Even though it is believed that he raped and killed more than 80 girls in Colombia, Camargo was imprisoned in Colombia after being convicted of raping and killing a 9-year-old girl. He was initially sentenced to 30 years in prison, but this sentence was reduced to 25 years, and he was interned in the prison on Gorgona Island on 24 December 1977.

In 1973 he was arrested in Brazil for being undocumented. Due to a delay in sending Camargo's criminal records from Colombia, he was deported and released with his false identity. When he returned to Colombia, he took up a job as a street vendor in Barranquilla selling television monitors. One day when passing by a school, he kidnapped a 9-year-old girl, after raping her, he murdered her so that she could not inform the police as his previous victim had done. This was his first assault involving murder.

Camargo had a de facto union with a woman named Alcira and had two children with her. He fell in love with another woman, Esperanza (age 28), whom he planned to marry, but then found out that she was not a virgin. This became the root of Camargo's fixations. He and Esperanza formed an agreement that he would stay with her if she aided him in finding other virgin girls to have sex with. This began a period of their partnership in crime. Esperanza was Camargo's accomplice, luring young girls to an apartment under false pretenses and then drugging them with sodium seconal sleeping pills so that Camargo could rape them. Camargo committed five rapes in this way, but did not kill any of the girls. The fifth child that they abused in this way reported the crime, and both Camargo and Esperanza were arrested and taken to separate prisons. Camargo was convicted of sexual assault in Colombia on 10 April 1964.

He was first arrested in Bogotá in 1958 for petty theft.

Daniel Camargo Barbosa (22 January 1930 – 13 November 1994) was a Colombian serial killer. He is one of the most prolific serial killers in history and is believed to have raped and murdered at least 72 young girls in Colombia and Ecuador during the 1970s and 1980s.