By Kristy Stevens
The passage below is written in the killer's voice and is invented. It is not a quotation. See the editor's note at the end of this article.
For as long as I could remember, I’ve always hated women. They’ve never met the expectations of what I believed women should be, and I thrive on their suffering. I enjoy killing the young ones because they cried the most, and it really made their deaths even more satisfying. But those bitches that want to interview me? They gotta pay my appearance fee.
Daniel Barbosa was born Jan 22, 1930 and was just a kid when his mother died. His father was known for being emotionally distant and overbearing. Once his father remarried, Daniel’s stepmother was described as being severely abusive. It’s been said that she punished him regularly and dressed him up in girl’s clothes and humiliated him in front of other children.
Once he reached adulthood, Barbosa had a live-in relationship with a woman by the name of Alcira. Together, they had three children, however Daniel fell in love with another woman by the name of Esperanza. Barbosa and Esperanza planned to get married, until the night he discovered she wasn’t a virgin. Upon finding this out, Barbosa managed to convince Esperanza that he would stay with her, on one condition… that she had to help him find young girls that were virgins for him to have sex with, and for some reason, she agreed to this.
Esperanza began luring young girls to their apartment, where she would drug them with sleeping pills, while Barbosa raped them. A total of five young girls were raped like this, but all were released without further harm. However, the fifth victim reported the rape to authorities and both Barbosa and Esperanza were arrested. Originally Barbosa was sentenced to three years in prison, however another judge was called in and overturned the sentence, extending it to eight years instead. After serving his full term in prison, Barbosa was released back out into the public. Again, you’d think the cops would’ve already learned their lesson by this point, right? Well, if they had, this would be the end of the story, but unfortunately, it is not.
In 1973, Barbosa was arrested in Brazil for failing to provide proper documentation, because at this time, he was travelling under an assumed identity, in order to delay his criminal records from Columbia. This led to his deportation back to Columbia. Upon his return, he began selling televisions on the streets of Barranquilla, and this would be the start of his reign of murder and terror. Not long after being deported back to Columbia, Barbosa kidnapped a nine-year-old girl from a school he was walking past. This time, however, not only did he rape her, but he murdered her in order to keep her from reporting him to police, as his previous victim had. This was his first known murder victim, but yep, you guessed it, she wasn’t his last. However, this guy was a total idiot. He was caught at the scene of the crime, after going back to get a TV. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and in December of 77, he was sent to a prison located on an island off Columbia called Gorgona. However, he was not to stay here very long. Was he released? No such luck.
In November of 1984, Barbosa made his GREAT escape using a boat that was barely put together, go figure right? It has also been said that before making his escape, Daniel spent a lot of time studying the ocean and its currents. After he escaped, those in charge of searching for him ASSUMED (we all know what that means right? It makes an ass of you and me.) that Barbosa was either lost to the currents or eaten by sharks. And the next part of this story is what we get when we have a lazy justice system that doesn’t care to be thorough and make sure the murderer is dead.
Barbosa made his way all the wat to Quito in Ecuador. He then traveled to Guayaquil in December of 84. This is where the fun begins all over again. Barbosa kidnapped another nine-year-old girl and the following day he kidnapped a ten-year-old girl. Boy this guy is really getting greedy ain’t he? Anyway, it’s been estimated that between 1984 and 1986, he committed a MINIMUM of 54 rapes and murders in Guayaquil. Due to the high volume of victims, our wonderful authorities once again dropped the ball. They thought that initially these victims were the work of MANY people such as a group or a gang, they never stopped to consider it could be only one person. Gotta love these guys, right? Think of how many lives could’ve been spared if they were capable of thinking outside the box.
Moving forward, it is noted that Barbosa had a habit of pretending to be a foreigner looking for a church. This is how he managed to lure his young victims in so easily. Ya know, it just doesn’t pay to help strangers these days sadly. You can’t even trust people in wheelchairs these days! Another tactic he used to gain the trust of his victims, who were always young, helpless, and poor, he would flash large stacks of money and promise to pay them if they agreed to help him. I’m telling ya, this is exactly why they say the love of money is the root of all evil. Once he had them eating out of the palm of his hands, he notified them of a shortcut through the woods. This is where it gets a little weird, considering the age of many of his victims, but if they seemed hesitant to follow him, he would simply let them go. Doesn’t make much sense considering the brutality of his crimes, right? I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one myself. However, for those poor, unfortunate souls that followed him willingly were raped and murdered either by strangulation or stabbing as soon as they were out of witness eyesight. Let me tell ya, this guy was such a gem, that he would often dismember the bodies of his victims with a machete. Real stand up guy if ya ask me.
FINALLY, Barbosa was arrested on February 26, 1986 only a few MOMENTS after murdering another little girl. Two policemen approached him because he was acting suspiciously, and when they got near him, they discovered he was carrying bag blood covered bag that contained the clothes of his victim and part of her mutilated genitals. Originally, he gave the police a fake name, identifying himself as Manuel Bulgarin Solis, but unfortunately, this is where his luck ran out for good. A surviving rape victim revealed his true identity to the police, and while being interrogated, he admitted to murdering 72 girls during his time in Ecuador. It is stated that he was cooperative and even showed police his “dumping ground” where most of his victims were, well what was left of them after being dismembered anyway. Unfortunately, the maximum penalty in Ecuador did no justice to the victims. It has been stated that this man murdered close to 150 victims and all he received for it was a 25-year sentence. And you wonder why many of us want the actual PURGE to become a reality? You have people like this and authorities like that to thank for it all. He was sent to the Garcia Moreno de Quito jail to serve out his sentence. Turns out, this jail also housed Pedro Alonso Lopez. Gotta love it right?
Well, that concludes our story for this evening. However, I’m throwing in another added bonus and blessing y’all with some trivia facts about our buddy Daniel Camargo Barbosa.
In November of 1994, Barbosa was murdered in prison by Luis Masache Narvaez, who just happened to be the cousin of one of Barbosa’s victims. Talk about karma coming back to bite you in the ass, right?
When being interviewed by journalists, Barbosa demanded an expensive fee for the “privilege” to talk to him.
Barbosa claimed that he killed because of his hatred for women due to their lack of virtue and not being what he thought they should be.
He stated that he preferred young girls because they cried the most, and it made killing them all the more satisfying to him. What a guy!
Editor's note: this piece is one of five in the Murder and Madness series, which ran in Serial Killer Magazine. Each article opens with a passage written in the killer's own voice. Those passages are invented. They are the author's dramatisation, not a quotation, not a confession and not drawn from any letter, interview or statement, and nothing in them should be read as something the man actually said.
In this case the invented passage is close to something he is reported to have said, which makes the distinction easier to lose rather than easier to make. The article's own closing trivia records the same two claims, that he killed out of hatred for women and that he preferred young girls because they cried the most, as things he stated. Those reach this archive secondhand and no primary source for them has been seen here. The invented opening should not be read as a quotation of either.
On the numbers, this article gives three different figures and they are not the same kind of figure. He admitted to seventy-two killings in Ecuador under interrogation. A minimum of fifty-four rapes and murders in Guayaquil between 1984 and 1986 is an investigative estimate. The figure of about one hundred and fifty is an attribution and has never been tested. What he was sentenced for is narrower than all three: he received sixteen years, the maximum available in Ecuador at the time, and the article's twenty-five years is the Colombian sentence he was serving on Gorgona when he escaped. The archive has no roster entry for him yet, so none of these counts can be checked against a case file here.
His name is spelled Camargo Barbosa. The country is Colombia, not Columbia, throughout. The article's account of his death is right: he was killed at the Garcia Moreno prison in Quito in November 1994 by Luis Masache Narvaez, a relative of one of his victims. Pedro Alonso Lopez was held in the same prison, which the article notes and which is true, though the two men were never connected to each other's crimes.