Sunday, May 14, 2023, was Mother's Day in Colombia, and visiting day at El Barne, the high- and maximum-security prison outside the town of Cómbita in the department of Boyacá. That morning Merly Andrea Rengifo Cuadros, a 33-year-old house cleaner from Cali, checked in with the guards at about 11:07. She had traveled across the country, as she had every few weeks for several months, to see the inmate she called her partner, Efraín Sarmiento Cuero. She had told her family that he was in prison for extortion.
He was not. Sarmiento Cuero was serving 416 months and 18 days, close to thirty-five years, for killing two other women he had been involved with, one in Cali in 2017 and one in the department of Nariño in 2018. Some hours after Merly went in, as the guards were starting to tell visitors their time was up, he came out of the cell and told an officer of INPEC, the national prison service, that he had just killed his wife. Staff went in and found her dead.
The Fiscalía, Colombia's national prosecutor's office, charged him with femicide within two days. At that first hearing he accepted the charge. A sentence in that case has not been reported in any source found for this page, and under the site's rules he is described here as charged, not convicted, in Merly Rengifo's death. The two earlier killings are convictions.
According to court records cited by El Tiempo and Infobae, Efraín Sarmiento Cuero was born on May 20, 1996, in Policarpa, a municipality in the department of Nariño, in Colombia's southwest. His parents are named in those records as Claudio Estrella and Janeth Sarmiento Cuero. He completed primary school and no more.
Nothing else about his childhood, his family life or his work before 2017 appears in the reporting found. He was twenty years old at the time of the first killing for which he was convicted, and twenty-six when Merly Rengifo died. (Publimetro gave his age in May 2023 as 27; his recorded date of birth makes him 26 on that day.)
The first woman whose death he was convicted of causing is named in El Tiempo and in a May 21, 2023, Infobae report as Cristina Mendoza Maya, and in two other Infobae reports as Cristiana Mendoza Maya. Infobae described her as his former girlfriend. No age, occupation or family details for her appear in any source found, and no contemporary report of her death from 2017 surfaced in searches for this page.
According to the press records cited by El Tiempo, on December 29, 2017, he asked her to meet him at a motel in Cali, the capital of the department of Valle del Cauca. She arrived at about 7:20 in the morning. He asphyxiated her and left. An Infobae report that drew on the Tunja newspaper El Nuevo Día said the autopsy showed she had been subjected to violence. The Honduran paper El Heraldo, summarizing Colombian coverage in 2023, wrote that she had been found dead in a Cali motel "under strange circumstances" after meeting him.
How investigators connected him to her death, and when he was arrested for it, is not reported in any source found. El Tiempo quoted a source who asked not to be named as saying that no relative or friend of his came to the hearings in that case, and that he showed no reaction when he was charged or sentenced.
In 2023 the Fiscalía said Sarmiento Cuero was also the subject of a preliminary investigation for acceso carnal violento, the Colombian offense of violent sexual assault, and that a precautionary measure had been imposed in it. The Fiscalía's own statement, as reported by Infobae, Blu Radio and El Universal of Cartagena, dated the alleged assault to 2019. El Tiempo and a later Infobae report, both citing the case records, gave the date as October 7, 2018, and the place as Tumaco, in Nariño. Infobae described the complainant only as a young woman. Her name has not been published, and no outcome of the inquiry was reported.
If the October 2018 date is right, the complaint falls less than a month before the second killing.
The second woman was Jacqueline Muñoz Ojeda. Infobae, citing the Fiscalía, said she and Sarmiento Cuero had been in a relationship for several months. As with Cristina Mendoza, no age, work or family details for her appear in the sources found.
Most accounts place her death on November 3, 2018, in Policarpa, his home municipality. El Tiempo, citing court records, says he summoned her to a hotel there and asphyxiated her, the same method used in Cali. El País of Cali and the Infobae report drawing on El Nuevo Día also give a hotel in Policarpa and November 3, 2018. Infobae's May 21, 2023, report put it as a motel "called Policarpa," which looks like a confusion of the town's name with the establishment's.
A different version appears in Infobae's May 16, 2023, report on the Fiscalía statement, which dates her death to June 3, 2020, in Pasto, the capital of Nariño. That report said motel employees realized what had happened, and that the forensic service, Medicina Legal, found signs of sexual and physical violence on her body. Infobae described the case as following the same pattern as the first. El Universal of Cartagena also gave June 3, 2020, in Pasto, while noting that the Cali case was the earlier one. Blu Radio, reporting the same Fiscalía statement, used those dates differently: it said he had two convictions, one handed down on June 3, 2022, in Pasto and the other on April 4, 2019, in Cali. A possible reading is that June 3 and Pasto refer to a court date in the Nariño case rather than to the killing itself, but no source says so, and the discrepancy is set out in the section on what the sources disagree about below.
Infobae's May 21, 2023, report and El Tiempo say that in August 2021 he was convicted of both femicides and sentenced to 416 months and 18 days, to be served in the prison at Cómbita. That is about 34 years and 8 months, the figure most outlets used in 2023. Infobae's May 15, 2023, report, citing El Nuevo Día, broke it down differently: 34 years, 8 months and 8 days for the Cali killing, and 20 years and 8 months for the Nariño killing. Blu Radio said each conviction carried 34 years. The courts that handed down the sentences are not named in any source found, and whether he appealed is not reported.
The charges in both cases were for feminicidio, the Colombian offense of killing a woman because she is a woman, which the sources translate and report simply as femicide.
He was held in El Barne, the penitentiary complex at Cómbita in Boyacá. Merly's family later dealt with the formalities after her death in Tunja, the departmental capital. Infobae and Pulzo both describe it as a maximum-security prison.
Merly Andrea Rengifo Cuadros turned 33 on March 5, 2023. She lived in the Siloé neighborhood of Cali and earned her living cleaning houses and apartments and doing other work as it came, according to El País of Cali and El Tiempo. She was the mother of a 17-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter. Her sister, Mayra, and her mother spoke to the press after her death. (El País gives the sister's surname as Rengifo; Blu Radio, Infobae and El Tiempo give it as Mayra Cuadros.)
The two met on social media, El País reported. El Universal said it was on Facebook. He told her he was innocent and was in prison for extortion. El Heraldo, summarizing her sister's interviews, said family members had warned Merly not to get involved with him and that she did not listen. Some later versions reported by El Tiempo said she had found out about his earlier convictions and was planning to leave him; her family's main account is that she did not know.
Her family knew very little about him while she was alive, Mayra told El País. Most of what they learned about his past came out after she died.
Inmates in Colombian prisons are not permitted to use social media or make unsupervised phone calls, INPEC's director said afterward. Sarmiento Cuero appears to have had access to both. The Fiscalía told the court at the May 2023 hearing that he had exercised continuous control over Merly from inside the prison. He demanded constant contact, monitored where she went and whom she spoke to, and limited when she could be out of the house. He made her send photographs of where she was and join video calls so he could see who was with her.
According to the Fiscalía, as reported by Infobae, during conjugal visits in February and March 2023 he left marks on her cheeks, chest, neck and legs. The prosecutors said he described the marks as a way of showing others that she belonged to him. El Tiempo reported that the hearing heard he had marked her so "she would know she had an owner," and that he had said that if she was not his she would be no one's. The Fiscalía also said he had threatened her before the visit, apparently out of jealousy.
Her mother, as relayed by Mayra to El País, described him as possessive. Merly gave him the explanations and the photographs he asked for, El Heraldo wrote, but the two argued often.
Merly had visited the prison three or four times before, roughly every 15 to 20 days, her sister told El País. El Tiempo put it at about every 20 days over several months. The trip from Cali to Cómbita crosses most of the country, and he sent her money for the bus.
Mayra told El Tiempo that he usually sent enough for a round trip. This time, she said, he sent only enough to get her from Cali to Cómbita and told Merly he would give her the fare home after the visit. The family took this as a sign that the killing was planned, not the result of a sudden argument. That is the family's view. The Fiscalía's account, as reported, refers to an argument before the attack and to jealousy as the apparent motive, and does not say whether the killing was planned.
On the Friday before Mother's Day, Merly stayed at her sister's home and said she was going to see him. Her sister and her mother both told her to be careful. Mayra said she did not like her going to the prison at all. Mayra believes Merly traveled on the Saturday.
On the Sunday, Merly sent her mother a message saying she loved her and that she was "the best mother in the world." Her mother read it that night. Soon after, the family received a call telling them Merly had been killed in a cell at Cómbita.
According to INPEC's account, as reported by Infobae, Merly arrived at the prison at about 11 in the morning and went in for the private visit in the normal way. El Tiempo, citing witnesses, put her check-in at 11:07. Noticias RCN, in two reports, gave a different timeline, saying the killing happened at about 10 in the morning and became known at about 3 in the afternoon; the 10 o'clock time conflicts with the check-in time given by the other outlets.
The Fiscalía said the two argued for a few minutes and that he then attacked her, and that she died almost at once. Pulzo reported that he also struck her in the face during the argument. When the guards began asking visitors to leave, he came out of the cell and went up to an INPEC officer. INPEC's description, quoted by Publimetro, RTVC and Pulzo, was that "the inmate comes out of it, approaching an INPEC officer." Noticias RCN and El Heraldo reported his words as: "¿A quién me le presento? Acabo de matar a mi esposa." ("Who do I report to? I just killed my wife.") Guards on duty went in and confirmed she had no vital signs.
Accounts of how she died differ. The Fiscalía, Publimetro, Blu Radio and Noticias RCN said she was attacked with a bladed weapon, and Infobae's first report and El País said the fatal wound was to the neck. INPEC's director, Colonel Daniel Fernando Gutiérrez, gave a fuller version to El Tiempo: "What we know is that he asphyxiates her and then cuts her with the blade." He said the blade was a razor blade, of the kind inmates commonly use and which are not restricted. Accounts also differ on where it happened. Most say a cell; RTVC's lead and the Procuraduría's statement refer to a corridor and a visiting room.
INPEC's judicial police took Sarmiento Cuero into custody and handled the removal of the body, Blu Radio reported. Pulzo said he was isolated and moved to a cell in the maximum-security wing.
Her family later complained about how the body was handled. They told El Tiempo it lay on the floor all day and was removed only that night, which they believed was done to keep the news from spreading. The body was released to them on May 16. Blu Radio's first report, on May 15, said she was pregnant. No other source found repeats that, and it is not included in the facts table.
The Fiscalía, through a prosecutor of its Boyacá office, brought Sarmiento Cuero before a judge of guarantees (juez de control de garantías), the judge who supervises the early stages of a Colombian criminal case. El Tiempo and Infobae date the hearing to Monday, May 15, 2023, and say it was held over Zoom. Publimetro reported the charge on Tuesday, May 16, the day the Fiscalía's statement was published. The prosecutors charged him with femicide. Infobae reported that the judge accepted the charge, and Blu Radio, Publimetro and Infobae all reported that he accepted it.
El Heraldo, citing Colombian reporting, wrote that his total penalty was expected to increase because he had confessed. El Tiempo's report, last updated on May 24, 2023, said he had been ordered held and was awaiting a new conviction for femicide.
Mayra Cuadros watched the hearing remotely. She told El Tiempo that he wore a face mask, that she heard him laugh as he accepted the charge, and that he said he had done it "because he could" and that he "didn't care about anything." Those are her words as reported, not a court record.
Publimetro noted that it was the third time the Fiscalía had charged him with the same crime.
The killing raised a question INPEC had to answer in public: how an inmate in a maximum-security prison came to have a blade during a visit. Merly's sister asked it first. Speaking to Blu Radio, she said Merly was supposed to be under INPEC's supervision and questioned how a bladed weapon got into the prison. Speaking to W Radio, as reported by Infobae, she said it was alarming that the killing happened inside a prison at all, given that he had killed before.
Colonel Gutiérrez told El Tiempo that razor blades are routinely used by inmates and are not restricted. He described the scale of visiting: the prison handles up to 200 visitors on a weekend. Each inmate may register five visitors and change that list every three months, a right that cannot be taken away, he said. He said the case called for a response that went beyond the prison service, involving the health ministry and other parts of government, to deal with the behavior of inmates.
General Carlos Triana, acting head of services of the National Police, told Blu Radio that internal inquiries were under way to establish whether protocols had failed.
The family's complaints were about more than the blade. Mayra told El País that INPEC had only told them Merly had been killed in the cell. When the family went to deal with the formalities, she said, no one from INPEC was there, not the prison director and not the social worker, and they handled the procedures in Tunja alone. She said INPEC had issued no public statement. Blu Radio reported that the family intended to take legal action. No such action was reported in any source found.
Merly Rengifo was one of several women killed in Colombia that Mother's Day weekend. Erika Aponte was shot by her former partner at the Unicentro shopping center in Bogotá the same afternoon, and Gloria del Carmen Rodríguez was attacked in her home in Santa Marta. El Tiempo described the Cómbita case as the first of three femicides that day. Noticias RCN reported official figures of 53 femicides in Colombia so far in 2023, and said jealousy was the most common motive.
On May 22, 2023, Blu Radio reported that the Procuraduría General de la Nación, the national oversight body, had assigned special teams to act as the Ministerio Público in the criminal cases over the Santa Marta and Cómbita killings. In the Cómbita case it designated the 173rd Judicial Procurator II for Criminal Matters of Tunja to take part in the proceedings. The same report said President Gustavo Petro had announced an extraordinary security council on femicide, trafficking of women and domestic violence, which he described as an emergency of gender violence.
El Tiempo asked two specialists about the case. Edwin Rodríguez, a profiler with the Fiscalía, said that three killings over six years, in each of which a woman was asked to meet him and then asphyxiated, could indicate a serial killer, and that the authorities ought to assess that pattern because it represented a danger. He pointed to jealousy and control over partners, said a psychiatric evaluation was needed, and said he saw what he considered psychopathic traits, citing the calm with which Sarmiento Cuero asked guards where to turn himself in. Rodríguez was offering an opinion to a newspaper; no psychiatric evaluation of Sarmiento Cuero has been reported, and the serial description is his assessment, not a finding of any court.
Elmer Montaña, a criminal lawyer, said there was no follow-up of people convicted of such crimes, inside prison or after release, and called that a failure of the state. He said prisons lacked resources for education and work and had become what he called "universities of crime," and that in some prisons inmates with money could buy visits, phone access and other privileges. He said the INPEC director shared his view but that shortages of staff and infrastructure made reform difficult.
Merly's sister put the same point more simply. Speaking to El Tiempo, she called him "a sick person" and said he had killed two women before and would do it again.
On Sunday, April 21, 2024, Yisella Pérez Gaspar, 27, died during a conjugal visit at the prison in Palmira, Valle del Cauca. An inmate, Cristian Alexis Rivas Sánchez, 26, was named as the suspect, and the preliminary cause of death was mechanical asphyxia, according to El País of Cali and El Heraldo of Honduras. El País's report on that case recalled Merly Rengifo's death at Cómbita the year before. The two cases are unrelated except in where they happened, and are mentioned here because the Colombian press linked them in reporting on the safety of women visiting prisons.
As of the reports of May 2023, Efraín Sarmiento Cuero was serving 416 months and 18 days at the El Barne prison in Cómbita for the femicides of Cristina Mendoza Maya and Jacqueline Muñoz Ojeda. At that rate, before any further sentence, he would not complete the term before about 2056, counting from August 2021; no source gives an official release date, and time served before 2021 may count toward it.
In the death of Merly Andrea Rengifo Cuadros, he was charged with femicide in May 2023 and accepted the charge. As of the El Tiempo report updated May 24, 2023, he was awaiting sentencing. Searches in this run, through October 2026, found no report of a sentence, of a withdrawal of his acceptance, or of any other outcome. Until a sentence is confirmed, this page describes him as charged in her death.
The sexual assault inquiry from Tumaco was open, with a precautionary measure in place, as of May 2023. No outcome has been reported.
Several details in this case are reported differently, and none has been settled by a court document available online.
The first victim's name appears as Cristina Mendoza Maya (El Tiempo; Infobae, May 21, 2023) and as Cristiana Mendoza Maya (Infobae, May 15 and 16, 2023; the site's news page). This page uses Cristina, the spelling attributed to court records, and gives the other.
The date and place of Jacqueline Muñoz Ojeda's death appear as November 3, 2018, in Policarpa (El Tiempo, El País, Infobae citing El Nuevo Día, El Heraldo) and as June 3, 2020, in Pasto (Infobae citing the Fiscalía; El Universal). Blu Radio, from the same Fiscalía statement, treated June 3, 2022, in Pasto and April 4, 2019, in Cali as conviction dates. This page follows the November 2018 date, which most outlets give and El Tiempo attributes to the court file, but it may be wrong.
The sentence is given as one combined term of 416 months and 18 days (El Tiempo, Infobae), as 34 years and 8 months for each conviction (Blu Radio), and as 34 years, 8 months and 8 days for Cali plus 20 years and 8 months for Nariño (Infobae citing El Nuevo Día).
The sexual assault complaint is dated 2019 by the Fiscalía's statement and October 7, 2018, in Tumaco by El Tiempo and Infobae.
How Merly Rengifo died is described as an attack with a bladed weapon (the Fiscalía) and as asphyxiation followed by cuts with a razor blade (INPEC's director). The time of the attack is given as about 10 a.m. by Noticias RCN, which conflicts with an 11 a.m. check-in reported elsewhere. The place is given as a cell, a corridor or a visiting room. One report says she was pregnant; no other does.
Whether the killing was planned is disputed. Her family points to the one-way bus fare. The Fiscalía's account, as reported, describes an argument and jealousy.
The description of Sarmiento Cuero as a serial killer comes from a Fiscalía profiler speaking to El Tiempo. He has been convicted of two killings, which took place eleven months apart, and charged in a third.
May 20, 1996: Efraín Sarmiento Cuero is born in Policarpa, Nariño, according to court records cited by El Tiempo.
December 29, 2017: Cristina Mendoza Maya is killed in a motel in Cali. He is later convicted of her femicide.
October 7, 2018: Date given by El Tiempo and Infobae for a sexual assault complaint against him in Tumaco (the Fiscalía's statement says 2019).
November 3, 2018: Jacqueline Muñoz Ojeda is killed in a hotel in Policarpa, according to most accounts (one version: June 3, 2020, in Pasto). He is later convicted of her femicide.
August 2021: Convicted of both femicides and sentenced to 416 months and 18 days, to be served at Cómbita.
February and March 2023: During conjugal visits, according to the Fiscalía, he leaves marks on Merly Andrea Rengifo Cuadros's body.
March 5, 2023: Merly turns 33.
May 12 to 13, 2023: Merly stays with her sister in Cali, then travels to Cómbita.
May 14, 2023 (Mother's Day): Merly checks in at El Barne at about 11:07 a.m. and is killed during the visit. He tells an INPEC officer he has killed his wife and is taken into custody.
May 15, 2023: Remote hearing before a judge of guarantees, according to El Tiempo and Infobae. He is charged with femicide and accepts the charge.
May 16, 2023: The Fiscalía publishes its statement on the charge. Merly's body is released to her family, who bring her back to Cali.
May 22, 2023: The Procuraduría assigns a Tunja procurator to the case.
May 24, 2023: Latest update of El Tiempo's report saying he is awaiting a new conviction.
April 21, 2024: A woman dies during a conjugal visit at the Palmira prison, and El País recalls the Cómbita case.
October 2026: No sentence in the Rengifo case found in this run.