The Beast 2

Garavito was frequently seen drunk and drifting from town to town as he outwore his welcome, often due to his domestic disputes with co-workers, abuse of his girlfriends, and general inability to behave normally. His erratic behavior reportedly left him unable to develop meaningful relationships, despite living with two different women in Pereira at the time of his arrest.

Toward the end of Garavito's crime spree, he drifted through western Colombia as a homeless drifter. Weary of murdering minors who he felt were much too easy to lure, Garavito developed plans to eventually commit a mass murder in which he would kidnap several adults and murder them as he attracted the attention of journalists, possibly dying in the frenzy. Nevertheless, Garavito was detained for the attempted sexual assault of 12-year-old John Iván Sabogal before being able to perform this mass murder on 22 April 1999.

A prolific pederast and torturer of youths, Garavito began to feel apathy with his crimes. On 4 October 1992, he had spotted 13-year-old boy Juan Carlos walking near a bazaar where he had been drinking. According to Garavito, the reflection of the moonlight had invoked a "strange force" within him, reminding him of his childhood which compelled him to murder upon entering a state of rage. He began to follow the child, buying synthetic rope and a butcher's knife on the way, before offering him work for 500 or 1,000 pesos. The boy left the crowded area in Jamundí with Garavito to go to a remote area near the local railroad, where he was later found with his front teeth knocked out, severe cuts to his rectum and throat and his genitals severed. Waking upon sunrise, Garavito began sobbing as he noted the blood stains of Carlos on his clothes.

On 10 October 1992, Garavito would make the trip to Trujillo to see his sister Esther. Attempting to control his urges by drinking brandy, he began breaking containers in a state of rage after seeing a child pass by. Garavito then murdered 12-year-old Jhon Alexander Peñaranda on the way to his sister's residence while in Tuluá. He then began to compulsively murder youth, predominately male and poverty-stricken, and collected their amputated toes. In 1993, Garavito also began cutting into his victims' bellies, luring eight youths aged 9 to 11 from a local school to a nearby wooded lot in the La Victoria district. For fear of being traced by bloodhounds, Garavito then discarded their amputated toes before murdering Henry Giovanni García, Marco Aurelio Castaño, Juan David Cárdenas, Jaime Orlando Popayán, and three more unidentified children in southeast Bogotá. He then murdered two additional children in the Meissen neighborhood, before departing for Tuluá, to Pereira, to Quimbaya, then to Tuluá again where he murdered more children, ending his spree in 1993 with the death of 13-year-old Mauricio Monedero Mejía.

In early 1994, Garavito would lure a Bogotá youth—estimated to be about 12 years old—who had fallen asleep on the bus. After providing him with brandy, Garavito proceeded to strip and bind the boy at a secluded ravine spot in a dazed state before noticing a foul odour; he then let the child go after discovering the source of the odour was a mass grave. Immediately, the child seized the knife, severing Garavito's tendons in his left hand with the weapon before being overpowered and murdered by him. On 4 February 1994, Garavito would lure 13-year-old Jaime Andrés González from the Plaza de Bolívar to a sugarcane field shortly after being expelled from a bar that night for complaining of their food; noting a crucifix in the area, he entered a brief psychosis in which he buried his knife, prayed for forgiveness, retrieved the knife and returned to his hotel room to chant scripture from the fifty-seventh psalm for several hours until dawn. On the 12th of January 1997, Garavito murdered an 8-year-old boy, before murdering an additional two minors during this period.

The victims were almost exclusively boys, though Garavito has also been noted by local media to have molested and murdered female victims. In addition to his 172 initial charges of murder, Garavito also confessed to 28 more murders in 2003, of which 5 were adult. All adult victims were thought to have been killed to rid Garavito of potential witnesses rather than to fulfill personal fantasies.

Garavito was also said to have operated in Ecuador during the summer of 1998, when he murdered 14-year-old Abel Gustavo Loor Vélez, a local shoe-shiner and paper boy on 20 July 1998 and 12-year-old Jimmy Leonardo Palacios Anchundia in Chone, Ecuador. Both boys were from poor families, and disappeared at noon. Garavito was subsequently spotted at an all-girls' school in Santo Domingo, Ecuador before fleeing Ecuadorian authorities who had been setting up an operation to catch him. There they found two corpses, one of whom was a young girl who had been raped, tortured, murdered, and discarded in similar fashion to that of Garavito's modus operandi. Marked for his thick Colombian accent, locals spotted a foreign drifter begging for money in July and August of that year. In addition, Garavito also stated that he had allegedly committed murder in Venezuela.

In the early 1990s, Garavito would approach 10-year-old Carlos Alberto in the Circasia sector of Quindío. Offering him gifts and 200 pesos in exchange for work, Garavito led Carlos to the Alto de la Taza where he amicably spoke with the child. Upon reaching a secluded hill spot, Garavito placed a knife at Carlos' throat before proceeding to bind, rape, and torture him. After doing so, Garavito asked Carlos whether he enjoyed it. Humiliated and fearful of Garavito, Carlos stated that he liked it, prompting Garavito to leave after stating, "See you next week. That's how I like it, that you [also] like it."