It has been decades since I have written about this man…this monster. But with the recent information I have received from Interpol and the American government, it might be best to come forth with this story and with my experience with one of the most deadly killers in the world. I am an American psychiatrist who, during her early years, made a trip down to Columbia to document and have a discussion with one of the most violent and deadly documented serial killers in South America. I will keep his name disclosed, as he is already known well enough and I would hate to give this disgusting excuse of a man any further fame than he already has.
I was sent by the American government and by Interpol to go and evaluate this man and try and gain as much of an understanding of his mental state as I could, as well as any other information on him or his killings. Over the course of a few days, I made my way down south by airplane to Columbia with the intent on making a quick assessment and hopefully getting enough information to demand that he be extradited to the United States to face harsher punishment. It was up to me to prove that he was sane enough to be prosecuted under federal law and would at least face a life sentencing. After him being released from a sixteen-year sentence in Ecuador, of which he only served fourteen years, for the estimated murder of over a hundred young girls, I knew that this might be the only chance we have at bringing justice to this monster. He was scheduled to be released the following month, and our goal was to at least demand a longer sentence, if not an indefinite one.
I canceled all appointments I had with my personal clients and made sure that this journey would be my main focus for the next several days as I stayed in Columbia and took the opportunity to evaluate this monster. Once the appointment was set with the mental institution he was held in, I was brought in the next day. I asked that he and I be placed in a room where he could be observed but that was comfortable enough for me and him to have an open discussion.
I was brought to a well-furnished room with a couple of cameras tucked within the corners. There was a window that peered out to the tropic exterior that remained outside of the facility. There was a shelf that had rows of books on mental disorders and on the brain itself. On the table was a stack of magazines, all of them written in Spanish. Across from me on the other side of the room was the man I had come to evaluate. He was restrained to in a specialized wheelchair, within which he was secured by several restraints. The facility deemed that he would not be necessary to restrain, but I requested to have him in handcuffs at the very least when I conducted my evaluation.
His appearance took me aback. He was preoccupied with a magazine discussing the latest gossip in America and was reading the English version. He had on a button up shirt, khakis, some rather nice shoes, and appeared to be well groomed. His face was a relaxed yet masculine look and was, dare I say, handsome. He was a fairly attractive man who looked well for his age. He had a very relaxed demeanor about him. The setting seemed all too relaxed and comfortable for a man of his criminal standing. This was a man who had been convicted of murdering over a hundred young girls and confessed to raping and murdering as many as three hundred. I had to take a brief second once I entered the room to remind myself of who the person sitting across from me was and what he was capable of.
For the sake of this document, I shall be referring to him as Mr. Dominguez. I took my seat across from him and heard him speak in a heavy Spanish accent. “Ah! My therapist has arrived.” He surprised me. He spoke a bit of English from what I could discern on first glance and his pronunciation was nearly perfect. “What would you like to tell me, new doctor? Are you here to diagnose me with something new? Or are you here to tell me something I don’t already know?”
I tried my best to hide the fact that I swallowed out of intimidation. I asked him first in Spanish if he spoke my language “¿Tu hablas Ingles?”
He laughed and nearly dropped the magazine he held in his hand. “Yes, of course, I speak English. Wasn’t it obvious from the magazine I held in my hand?” He was gesturing the magazine towards me and I took it. I scanned the page to see what he was so interested in reading and came across a small article that detailed how he would be released and what it meant for the country of Columbia. “See, new doctor? I’m famous!” He threw up his hands as he said those words with proclamation. This man had a disturbing level of charisma, one that deeply disturbed me and challenged my composure.
I focused myself and gave a composed reply. “Yes, you are indeed famous. Now, I’m here to talk with you about your time in Ecuador and Columbia. How has your time been here? Have you had any fun experiences here?”
He gave a series of chuckles before his face became serious and he lowered his head to face away from me. “I know exactly why you are here, Doctor. You are here to investigate me and make observations on my mental state. You know what I am and what I’ve done and I am not ashamed to show it. You doctors and therapists are worth shit. What you say amounts to nothing and will do nothing to change me.”
I did my best to conceal my intentions. “Why, whatever do you mean? I had no idea of your intentions or your actions up until today. This is all a major surprise to me, so please feel free to tell me more about yourself.”
Unfortunately for me, he saw straight through me. “Oh, come now, Doctor. Do you really believe that I would accept that lie for a single second?”
I couldn’t help but sigh as he asked me that question. Though, I did take note of him smirking through the corner of my eye when he heard me sigh in defeat. I had to remember that he took pleasure in other people’s pain. He showed signs of narcissism and I could easily see how he gained some form of satisfaction from my discomfort and grief while being around him. My next moves were going to have to be measured and calculated if I was going to get the information that I wanted from this man.
“Please tell me more about yourself, Mr. Dominguez. I would like to hear things from your perspective. Reading what some nobody from America has to say means nothing to me when we have such a celebrity such as yourself present to tell their side of the story. So please, do tell me.”
He smirked and changed his tone from being one of mocking to being one that was meant to intimidate and inspire fear in me. “No doctor from America would come here to speak to me unless they had something to gain from it. Look around you, Doctor. They have pampered and prepared themselves for your arrival, but take one look outside of that window and you will see the disgusting slums and shitholes you would call Columbia. I know what you are and why you came here. So I will tell you everything that you need to know, but know one thing; you cannot change ‘La Bestia’ within me, Doctor and once I am free, I will kill again.”
I was not as fluent in Spanish as Mr. Dominguez was in English, but his words wrapped around me like a cold grasping hand. I froze up for a brief second in my chair as he spoke these words to me. My brief pause was enough to broadcast my fear to Mr. Dominguez and he immediately had a monstrous smile spread across his face. Every moment he could see fear in my eyes was a moment he relished with glee and pleasure. He enjoyed every second of this evaluation and his enjoyment seemed to grow deeper and deeper with each passing moment.
I thought over his words and decided to ask him what he really meant by the term “La Bestia”. It seemed like this term, for better or for worse would lead me down the path that would allow for me to deem him a danger to society and request him to be detained longer, or at least long enough to extradite him to the United States.
“You seem to hold a lot of value in what you called ‘La Bestia’. Would you mind explaining that further?”
He slowly pulled his hands together, lowered his face, furrowed his brow, and began to explain in great detail what he meant by that term. “You see, doctor, there is a monster within all of us. The more you feed it, the bigger it gets. If it gets too big, it can swallow you alive. And once you are swallowed, you become a part of it. ‘La Bestia’ is in all of us, Doctor. ‘La Bestia’ is in you, the people outside, all of the people outside in their huts, everyone you ever knew and loved has ‘La Bestia’ inside of them.” He paused for a moment to raise his face up to meet his eyes with mine. This was the first time that I saw his eyes clearly and looking into his gaze was an experience that disturbed me to my core and is something that has not since ever been replicated by any other client or subject that I have observed. He spoke again, assured that he had my attention.
“I was always bored, Doctor, bored by needless things in the world. People let too much of their lives be dictated by emotions. People live, people die, people cry over worthless things in a world that cares less about then than they would ever realize. All that we have within this world, Doctor is ourselves and ‘La Bestia’. Unlike most people though, Doctor, ‘La Bestia’ has been a part of me all of my life. ‘La Bestia’ does not feel, ‘La Bestia’ does not care for others, ‘La Bestia’ only cares for itself and only cares about who feeds it.”
These words passed through my mind slow and hung over me like a thick fog. This beast he was describing, it sounded just like Mr. Dominguez was describing psychopathy in the form of a monster. His outlook on life was one that was full of narcissism, boredom, and a complete lack of empathy for others. Mr. Dominguez showed several signs of being a psychopath, but something about him was different from other psychopaths that I had come across. He was completely self aware of himself and of his inner nature. I listened on as he continued.
“Ever since I was young, I always had a fascination with causing others to feel pain. Pain, that was something that I never felt. I never experienced the pain of loss, of struggle, of going without something that I wanted or needed. Pain was something that I rarely thought about. The only time I ever thought about pain was when I could see it across someone’s face.” Mr. Dominguez started to grow more animated as he continued to talk to me about “La Bestia”. He began to grow excited in a twisted and sick fashion, practically salivating as he continued to talk.
“I loved to see pain in others, Doctor. You see, ‘La Bestia’ is fed not by food or by achieving something. ‘La Bestia’ is fed through acts of…evil. You would call what I feed ‘La Bestia’ evil, however to me, feeding ‘La Bestia’ gives me life. You see, Doctor, ‘La Bestia’ is as much a part of me as she is a part of you. I feed her, and she gives me life. ‘La Bestia’ cannot consume me because we are one and the same, Doctor. She has taught me many things. She taught me how to charm, how to manipulate, and most importantly, she taught me how to kill.”
Mr. Dominguez started to struggle between his sick laughter to tell me what he had to tell me. It was horrifying to watch his mental state unfold right in front of me. I have never seen someone so self-aware of their evils and simply not care about whether or not what he was doing was wrong. This man before me had been completely swallowed up by his own evil, and was about to tell me in great detail just how he had carried out such evils. “People are easy to manipulate, Doctor, but do you know what might be even easier to manipulate and so much more rewarding to kill?”
I hesitated for a brief second, as I knew already what he was going to say but dreaded his response. “What is more rewarding than manipulating and harming people, Mr. Dominguez?”
“Children, Doctor, sweet innocent children are the most rewarding thing to watch die. You see, every adult, no matter how good they are, always has the mark of ‘La Bestia’ within their eyes when they die. But children, oh children! They lack the gaze of ‘La Bestia’ in their eyes. It is so rewarding and exciting when a child dies, because you know that they are free of ‘La Bestia’ and are waiting to be slaughtered.”
My blood began to boil. The simple fact that the country of Columbia was going to release this monster back into the public due to a lack of funding and overcrowding was a ridiculous and horrifying prospect. This man was past the point of insanity. He was nothing more than a monster who spoke in riddles. I let him finish what he had to tell me and took careful notes as he described his murderous formula in detail.
“My way of killing was rather easy, Doctor. You see, I would lure young girls to my home and offer them to join me in a tea party. They would say yes and come and have tea with me in backyard, and when I grew bored, I would leap across the table and strangle them to death. Watching the life drain from their eyes is the most addictive thing in the world, Doctor. It is stronger than any drug you could offer, better than sex, and is very rewarding. Disposing of the bodies was easy, so easy that sometimes, I would make the young girls dig their own graves out of fear and kill them with the shovel. It was so easy to have my way with them, Doctor. It was so easy, so simple.”
Part of me could not believe that this man, this evil, evil man has plead insanity for his case and the government believed him. I had enough of listening to Mr. Dominguez talking about his dark and twisted way of gaining satisfaction in the world. I lost my composure, dropped my facade, and called him a monster in front of all who were watching us. “You aren’t insane, Mr. Dominguez! You aren’t sick or ill in any way! You are a disgusting monster who deserves to rot for what you’ve done!” I turned my attention to the cameras. “I demand that Mr. Dominguez be detained until further notice and that he be extradited to the United States to face trial for his crimes!”
Mr. Dominguez started to laugh almost uncontrollably at my anger. And, in my anger, I failed to notice that Mr. Dominguez had managed to slip out of his restraints. “Come, Doctor! Let me show you ‘La Bestia’!” He put his hands around my neck and drove me to the ground, violently wrapping both of his hands firmly around my neck. I began to choke and flail as I desperately clawed and struck Mr. Dominguez, hoping to somehow break free of his grip. My world began to turn black as air escaped my lungs and my eyes began to shut. My memories started to all come back to me as I continued to lose air. Right on the brink of death, I felt myself awakened by two nurses who had made it in just in time and had sedated Mr. Dominguez with several tranquilizers and had removed his firm grip from around my neck. Both myself and the staff available decided that it was best that I leave.
I made my way back to my hotel and made preparations to head home. I had the documents that I needed to convict Mr. Dominguez of several crimes, including his attempted murder of me. But…the Columbian government wasn’t patient enough. Even after trying to kill me and admitting that once he was free, he would not stop killing, they released him. They released that retched monster back into Columbia. Authorities tried to keep track of him, but within just a few weeks, he was gone. Agencies from around the world continued to scramble as more and more bodies of young girls in mass graves turned up, many of the bodies showing signs of death by strangulation. The governments of Ecuador and Columbia both doubted his claims and considered him insane until the bodies started to pile up. I will never forgive them for letting that man loose. Both governments in my eyes have blood on their hands for letting him free.
I have not written about this man for many, many years, as I have taken counseling myself to try and forget what he had done to so many young girls, and what he had done to me. But seeing as how more and more bodies have been turning up in Columbia recently, all young girls who showed signs of being strangled, it brought back too many memories for me to ignore. Interpol and the United States government want him found and want him to pay for his crimes, which I also want, but something about what he told me still lingers and I think should be addressed as well if we are ever going to catch him. People nowadays commit egregious crimes for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with being a psychopath. Just this week, I heard of a school bus full of children being murdered in Mexico by one of the drug cartels because one of the children on that bus was the son of someone who owed the cartel money. People do horrible, unspeakable things all the time in this world, and many of us do not want to acknowledge this fact. The way he described the monster within himself still haunts me.
I still wonder to this day if Mr. Dominguez was only a disgusting monster or if there was something more to what he told me. “La Bestia”, or as it would be said in English, “The Beast” that resided within Mr. Dominguez may reside within all of us, all but only the most innocent. Perhaps he was insane and created some morbid way of justifying what he had done to himself, so as not to have to accept the fact that he was indeed evil. Maybe I will never have the answer to that, but one thing I will always carry with me is that, maybe within all of us, there is a beast that is waiting for the right moment to strike, and the more we feed it, the bigger it gets, until one day it swallows us whole, and destroys everything we hold dear.
