“The Monster of Henova,” one of the worst child killers serially around the world, the Colombian Luis Alfredo Garavito, also known by the nickname “the monster of Genoa”, who murdered at least 170 minorsdied yesterday Thursday, serving his sentence, aged 66.

Imprisoned since 1999, after being arrested for attempting to kidnap a child, he died in a clinic in the north of the country due to “multiple pathologies”. In May, Colombian media reported that he was suffering from cancer and leukemia.

In 2000, Luis Alfredo Garavito was sentenced to 835 years in prison for the rape and murder of at least 170 minors, mostly boys, between 1980 and 1999. However, the maximum sentence in the country is 40 years in prison.

He also confessed to having committed murders in neighboring countries, Venezuela and Ecuador.

According to information obtained from investigations carried out in Colombia, Luis Alfredo Garavito he would pose as a homeless man, priest or street vendor and lure children with gifts or money before in most cases raping and murdering them.

Also known as “The Beast”, the man, born in Henova, a small community in the central-western part of the country, accompanied the killings with acts of extreme brutality. He cut off the genitals of his victims and put them in their mouths.

In an interview in 2004 with the Colombian television network RCN, he stated that he had become a Christian. “I have now been forgiven (…) What’s done is done. I will not be tortured,” he had said.