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Luis Alfredo Garavito's Sentences for Child Murders Reach 1,853 Years in Colombia

Colombia's Attorney General's Office said the total was the highest in the country's judicial history, with 32 more killings of children still to be tried.

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Front and profile police photographs of Luis Alfredo Garavito, mustached, in a checked shirt

Two years after his arrest, the sentences against Luis Alfredo Garavito had already passed 1,853 years. On November 3, 2001, Colombian prosecutors announced the total, the highest in the country's judicial history.

The figure was not a single sentence but the sum of the convictions handed down so far, 1,853 years and nine days, and more cases were still to come. According to the report from Colombia's Attorney General's Office, the Fiscalía, investigators had found enough evidence to hold Garavito responsible for 138 killings of children, one more case was awaiting sentence, and 32 others were still under investigation.

The report credited the Fiscalía's investigative unit, the CTI, and its forensic genetics laboratory. By matching Garavito's blood against skeletal remains found along his route through some ten cities and towns, they had identified several of the children, and that evidence had supported many of the convictions. The victims were children from poor families, between 6 and 16 years old. Garavito approached them in playgrounds, sports fields, bus terminals, outside schools and in markets, offered them money and sweets, and persuaded them to walk with him.

Garavito was captured in Villavicencio in April 1999. At first he denied everything, but when prosecutors laid out how he had operated, he began to describe the killings one by one. Despite the record total, Colombian law limited the time he could serve to 40 years.

Caracol Radio's report on the Fiscalía's findings gave the total number of cases as 172 in one passage, while its breakdown of 138 proven cases, one awaiting sentence and 32 under investigation adds up to 171.

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