Dorángel Vargas has been held in a police jail in San Cristóbal, the capital of Venezuela's Táchira state, since February 1999. He has never been tried and never been sentenced. He was arrested at Táriba, where he was living in a shack, after Civil Defense searchers found human remains there. Police said he admitted killing men and eating parts of their bodies, and the case drew attention far beyond Venezuela. Psychiatrists diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and he was declared not criminally responsible. The one psychiatric hospital to which a transfer was arranged refused to admit him, and the police cell where a court sent him "provisionally" in 1999 has been his home ever since.
No court has ever found, after a trial, that he caused any death.
His name is spelled several ways. La Nación, the San Cristóbal daily, gives his full name as José Dorancel Vargas Gómez and notes that most people know him as Dorangel. Infobae calls him Dorángel Vargas Gómez. The independent Venezuelan outlet El Diario, in a 2020 fact check, gives the name as José Dorancel Vargas Petro, and the Miami-based broadcaster VPItv used the same second surname in 2022; both say "Dorángel" is a common misspelling. Agencia Reforma, the Mexican news agency, also says he was born José Dorancel Vargas. He is best known as Dorángel Vargas.
He has been called by a nickname that means "people-eater" since 1999. La Nación has observed that the nickname is far better known than his name.
Vargas was born on May 14, 1957, in El Vigía, in Mérida state, according to La Nación, El Diario, VPItv and Agencia Reforma. Asked his birth year in a 2016 interview, he said 1956; the newspaper noted the recorded date of May 14, 1957. Infobae gives the year as 1957.
He grew up on a farm near El Vigía in a poor family, and La Nación's 2016 profile describes a childhood shaped by poverty. Infobae reports that he worked in the fields with his family from childhood and did not go beyond the sixth grade of school. La Nación found that he could read and write. He told La Nación he had ten brothers and sisters and was the third of them; his mother had died. Agencia Reforma describes a family of eleven children that farmed for a living and says he left school early.
His life before 1999 was marked by petty crime and homelessness. Infobae and VPItv report three arrests before 1999: two for stealing animals, and a third in 1995, in the case of a man who died that year. Agencia Reforma says he was arrested three times for stealing livestock. By the mid-1990s, according to Agencia Reforma, he was sleeping under a bridge with other homeless men and living by begging.
In 1995, Vargas was accused in the death of Cruz Baltazar Moreno, a homeless man who shared his sleeping place under a bridge, according to Infobae and VPItv. Agencia Reforma, which spells the first surname Baltasar, says Moreno had been missing for several days when a friend went looking for him and reported him to the authorities. Searchers then found his remains. Infobae names the man who reported him as another homeless man.
Agencia Reforma says that when police questioned the homeless men in the area, Vargas told them what had happened to Moreno. He was not tried. He was sent instead to the Instituto de Rehabilitación Psiquiátrica de Peribeca, a psychiatric rehabilitation institute, for about two years, according to Infobae and Agencia Reforma.
He was then released. Agencia Reforma says he was let go without medical follow-up because he had behaved quietly in the institute. Infobae writes that the justice system judged him able to live a "normal" life on the street and that the authorities lost track of him. VPItv's account is the same: after about two years in a psychiatric clinic he returned to the streets and was no longer watched. By early 1999, according to Infobae, he was living in a shack near the park in Táriba.
Táriba is in the Cárdenas municipality of Táchira, La Nación notes. Its Parque 12 de Febrero was used by runners, and workers walked along the nearby Torbes River, according to Infobae.
Between November 1998 and January 1999, at least ten men disappeared, according to Infobae. Their relatives, many of whom knew the park, asked the police to investigate. VPItv also reports that the disappearance of ten men alerted the local police and that the requests came from relatives of runners and of workers who used the park. Agencia Reforma describes a series of disappearances in the San Cristóbal area of men who had gone out running and had not come back.
The police did not at first connect the disappearances with Vargas. Infobae says the theories ran from scores being settled between drug gangs to satanic rituals. Agencia Reforma reports that investigators first looked at a revenge killing tied to drug dealing, and set the idea aside because the missing men had no known links to the drug trade.
On February 12, 1999, Civil Defense personnel searching in Táriba found the remains of two people, according to Infobae, El Diario and VPItv. Further searches found remains of six more people. El Diario describes the finds as part of a search in Táriba.
According to Agencia Reforma, the break in the case came when an officer remembered the homeless man who had been committed to a psychiatric institute four years earlier. VPItv also reports that investigators recalled the man who had been hospitalized over the 1995 death. Police then searched his shelter, according to Infobae, El Diario, VPItv and Agencia Reforma.
Vargas was arrested at his shelter on February 12, 1999, according to Agencia Reforma, VPItv and Infobae, which says he has been held since that date. A 2024 report by the human rights organization Una Ventana a la Libertad, as relayed by several Venezuelan news sites, gives the date of his detention as February 13, 1999, and his age at the time as 42. El Diario reports that he was taken into custody the day of the raid and that the case was placed in the hands of the Public Ministry, Venezuela's prosecution service, in Táchira.
El Diario reports that in his statement he said he had done nothing wrong and acknowledged that the remains found were those of other people. Infobae, drawing on press accounts of the time, writes that he told a reporter he had acted "por necesidad," out of need, and that he put the number of men at about ten. Infobae's 2017 headline material put the figure he confessed to at about a dozen. He said he did not harm women. Agencia Reforma reports that he showed no regret.
Forensic experts, as summarized by Agencia Reforma, described a pattern in the men chosen: men of about 30 to 40, never women or children. Infobae writes that the men were runners who used the park and workers walking along the river, and that he was reported to prefer men who looked fit and healthy.
Years later he gave a different account. Interviewed in jail by La Nación in November 2016, he said he had not killed anyone, and he said he did not know what the word used in the press for his case meant. He told the reporters that when he was arrested he had been in the park in Táriba making a vegetable soup.
Only one person in the case has been named: Cruz Baltazar Moreno, the homeless man who died in 1995 and who had shared Vargas's sleeping place under a bridge. Little else is known about him, beyond the fact that a friend looked for him when he went missing.
The men who disappeared in late 1998 and early 1999 are described only as men who ran in Parque 12 de Febrero and workers who walked along the Torbes River, and through the relatives who pressed the police to find them. It was those relatives, according to Infobae, El Diario and VPItv, who brought the disappearances to official attention.
How many deaths there were is not settled. Civil Defense searchers found the remains of two people on February 12, 1999, and of six more in later searches, according to Infobae and El Diario. Infobae puts the number of men who disappeared at no fewer than ten and the number Vargas told a reporter at about ten; its headline material says about a dozen. Agencia Reforma, in a 2023 feature, writes that he was alleged to have killed twelve more men after his release. VPItv in 2022 referred to ten confirmed deaths. None of these figures was tested at a trial.
Psychiatrists diagnosed Vargas with paranoid schizophrenia, a diagnosis reported in every account of the case. According to Agencia Reforma, the experts held that his capacity to judge and understand his acts was completely impaired. Jesús Alberto Berro, a lawyer and former judge in Táchira who later directed the state police, described the diagnosis to La Nación in 2020 as schizophrenia with progressive paranoia.
Under Venezuelan law, a person found to lack that capacity is inimputable: he cannot be held criminally responsible and cannot be given a criminal sentence. Vargas was declared inimputable. Agencia Reforma reports that the judge found him not criminally responsible on all the charges and ordered medication, supervision and specialized care for the rest of his life. Berro told La Nación that the 1999 ruling was meant to restore his mental health, that the judge applied a security measure (medida de seguridad) calling for confinement in a mental health institution rather than a police building, and that Vargas "tiene sentencia, pero no condenatoria": there is a ruling in his case, but not a conviction.
Accounts differ on how to describe the legal outcome. El Diario and La Nación (2020) describe him as accused of anthropophagy and never sentenced. The 2024 report by Una Ventana a la Libertad, as relayed by Venezuelan news sites, says he was never tried, convicted or sentenced, and that because of his mental state he was "not accused of anything." Berro calls it a ruling of not criminally responsible with a security measure. Every account agrees that he has never been convicted of any crime in connection with the deaths.
He was not sent to an ordinary prison. La Nación reported in 2016 that he had been sent "provisionalmente," under a court measure, to the Cuartel de Prisiones of the Táchira state police in San Cristóbal, because a mentally ill man with his history was judged to be in grave danger in an ordinary prison. Infobae reported in 2017 that he was held in a facility of the Táchira state's Directorate of Security and Public Order and kept in isolation because he was considered a person of "peculiar peligrosidad," particular dangerousness.
The provisional placement became permanent. He was still there in 2016, in 2020 and in 2024, according to La Nación, El Diario and the reports relaying Una Ventana a la Libertad. In 2020, La Nación and El Diario reported that he was held alone, on a different floor from the rest of the detainees.
There was one attempt to move him to a hospital. Berro, who said he had served as a judge of the court that supervises the carrying out of sentences, told La Nación in 2020 and the human rights group Una Ventana a la Libertad in 2024 that a forensic psychiatric report found Vargas needed treatment, and that a transfer was arranged to the psychiatric hospital at Bárbula, near Valencia in Carabobo state.
The hospital would not take him. According to the 2024 reports relaying the group's findings, the facility cited his serious mental condition, the lack of any guarantee that he could be held safely, and the risk to other patients. Berro told La Nación that the staff "no quisieron recibirlo," did not want to receive him, and he was sent back to Táchira. The 2024 reports date his return to Politáchira to 2002.
In 2010, a court ruling found that the police jail was "no era el mejor lugar," not the best place, for a man with his diagnosis, according to Infobae and El Diario. Both report that the same ruling concluded he should stay where he was, for his own safety and that of others. The court and the judge have not been named. He remained in the Politáchira cells.
In October 2016, detainees at Politáchira took over the jail in a riot that lasted 29 days, according to Infobae; La Nación described it as a 30-day riot. Two inmates were killed, and their bodies were never found, La Nación reported. El Correo del Orinoco reported on October 11, 2016, that Franklin Duarte, a National Assembly deputy for Táchira, said the allegations coming out of the jail were being investigated.
Relatives of detainees claimed that Vargas had taken part in what was done to the two men. Infobae reported that police considered whether he had been involved and that he denied it. In his November 2016 interview with La Nación, Vargas said of the riot, "Hubo cuchillos," there were knives, and "Me quedé tranquilo," I stayed calm. He said he had been locked in his cell and was later moved to another cell with many other people.
Berro told La Nación in 2020 that Vargas was not involved and that his name did not appear in the case file on the riot. The 2024 reports relaying Una Ventana a la Libertad say the claims were denied and that he was held in his cell throughout.
In November 2016, the La Nación reporter Omaira Labrador, with journalists from the outlet Analítica, interviewed Vargas in the office of the Politáchira director, Commissioner Amador Torres. Her profile describes a shy man who smiled, looked down when he spoke, had lost weight, and kept pointing out his new rubber boots. His beard had gone gray and his hair was mostly white.
He told the reporters he believed in God and prayed. He said he took medicine that kept him calm, given to him by a woman he knew by name. He knew that Hugo Chávez had died and could name the current president. He was seen serving coffee and sweeping, and staff and inmates teased him in a friendly way, the newspaper wrote. Asked what he would do if he were freed, he said he would go to work, and that he would go to Táriba. Asked what he feared, he said, "A la muerte," death.
Torres, the director, later described him as helpful and respectful: according to the 2024 reports relaying Una Ventana a la Libertad, Torres said in 2017 that Vargas helped clean the facility and was receiving treatment. Berro, as director, had found him calm and cooperative, and said Vargas delivered correspondence to other detainees. Berro told La Nación in 2020 that Vargas sometimes served as an orderly at Politáchira and was "realmente no es agresivo," not really aggressive. Neither former director reported violent or threatening behavior by him, according to the 2024 reports.
Vargas depends on medication. For years, a single relative traveled to Táchira to bring it. La Nación reported in May 2020 that the relative came from Maturín, and that the visits had stopped four or five years earlier; the family was presumed to have died. El Diario reported in October 2020 that a single relative from Monagas state had supplied the medicine for more than five years, and that his current state of health was not known because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Berro directed Politáchira, he told La Nación, the police made sure Vargas had his daily food and the medicine he needed.
Berro proposed that Vargas be examined regularly by doctors from the acute-patient unit (Unidad de Pacientes Agudos) of the Hospital Central, that his medicine be guaranteed, and that close relatives be found who could take custody of him. In 2024, the reports relaying Una Ventana a la Libertad said he was taking medication prescribed by a specialist and was visited by a relative.
In May 2020, posts on social media claimed that Vargas had been freed. Users said he had been seen wandering in La Concordia, in Táchira, and sleeping in a plaza in Guanare, in Portuguesa state, La Nación reported. The rumors frightened many people.
General Jesús Arteaga Simancas, the director of Politáchira, denied them. "Es falso, él sigue en prisión," he told La Nación: it is false, he is still in prison. The rumors returned in October 2020. El Diario checked them again, rated the claim false, and reported that Arteaga Simancas had said there had been no change in his case.
In June 2020, Berro told La Nación that Vargas's human rights had been violated for more than two decades. A man declared not criminally responsible, he argued, should be in a mental health institution under the security measure the judge ordered, not shut in a police building, and keeping him in Politáchira since 1999 was "una violación flagrante de sus derechos humanos," a flagrant violation of his human rights. He acknowledged the cases that led to the 1999 arrest, and said that without proper treatment Vargas could be a danger to society.
In late October 2024, Una Ventana a la Libertad, a Venezuelan organization that monitors conditions of detention, published a report on Vargas. Venezuelan news sites relaying it, among them Notas de Hoy, Alertas 24 and Impacto Venezuela, wrote that he had spent 25 years, or 308 months, in custody without being tried, convicted or sentenced. They gave his age as 67.
Berro told the group that had Vargas been found criminally responsible and sentenced, he would already have served his term. Instead, as a man found inimputable, he was held under what Berro called a security measure "in quotation marks," with no known end: "Es una sentencia condenatoria de nunca acabar," a punishment that never ends. The organization described his case as one of the most severe forms of human rights violation.
The reports said no violent incident involving him had been recorded. They quoted his wishes, as he gave them in a 2017 interview with the journalists Omaira Labrador and Lorena Arráiz: to leave prison, find a job, and be left in peace. In late 2024 he remained in the Politáchira jail.
The Colombian journalist Sinar Alvarado wrote a book on the case, Retrato de un caníbal. La Nación gave its publisher as Debate and its year as 2005; Infobae dated it to 2014. The Venezuelan band Bacalao Men made a music video retelling the police account of the case, according to Infobae.
No conviction. Vargas has never been tried. Every death connected with him rests on police statements, press reports of his own statements, and the findings of searchers in 1995 and 1999. No court has heard evidence on any of them.
The number of deaths. The figures given include about ten (his own statement as reported by Infobae; ten confirmed, according to VPItv), about a dozen (Infobae's headline material) and twelve after his release (Agencia Reforma). Searchers found the remains of two people on February 12, 1999, and of six more later.
His statements. In 1999, according to the press, he said he acted out of need. In 2016 he told La Nación he had not killed anyone.
The legal outcome. Berro describes a 1999 ruling of not criminally responsible with a security measure; Agencia Reforma reports a judge's finding of not criminally responsible on all charges; Una Ventana a la Libertad reports that he was never accused. The court and date are not reported.
The 2016 riot. Claims by relatives of detainees that he took part in the deaths of two inmates were denied by former police directors, and his name, according to Berro, does not appear in the case file.
The release rumors of 2020 were false, according to the Politáchira director and El Diario's fact check.
Names and dates. His second surname is given as Gómez (La Nación, Infobae, Una Ventana a la Libertad) and as Petro (El Diario, VPItv). His arrest is dated February 12, 1999 (Infobae, Agencia Reforma, VPItv) and February 13, 1999 (Una Ventana a la Libertad).
May 14, 1957: born in El Vigía, Mérida state (La Nación; El Diario).
Before 1995: arrested twice for stealing animals (Infobae; VPItv).
1995: arrested in the death of Cruz Baltazar Moreno; committed to the Instituto de Rehabilitación Psiquiátrica de Peribeca for about two years, then released.
November 1998 to January 1999: at least ten men disappear around Táriba (Infobae).
February 12, 1999: Civil Defense searchers find remains of two people; Vargas arrested at his shelter (some reports: February 13). Remains of six more people found in later searches.
1999: diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; declared not criminally responsible; placed "provisionally" in the Politáchira jail in San Cristóbal.
2002: returned to Politáchira after the Bárbula psychiatric hospital in Carabobo refuses to admit him.
2010: a ruling finds the police jail is not the best place for him; he stays.
October 2016: 29-day riot at Politáchira; two inmates killed; claims about Vargas denied.
November 2016: interviewed by La Nación in the Politáchira director's office.
May and October 2020: false reports of his release denied by the Politáchira director.
June 2020: former judge Jesús Alberto Berro says his rights are being violated.
October and November 2024: Una Ventana a la Libertad reports he has spent 25 years in custody without trial or sentence; aged 67, still held at Politáchira.