Expatica news

DNA proves ‘monster’ killed university student

6 April 2005

LERIDA-DNA tests have conclusively proved an Ecuadorian serial killer who was mistakenly allowed into Spain murdered a Spanish university student.

A report from the Toxocological Institute said Gilbert Antonio Chamba Jaramillo raped and killed Maria Isabel Mascunana in Lerida in Catalonia in north-eastern Spain.

He then used her mobile phone to call a sex line and talk for six minutes.

It later emerged Ecuadorian legal sources told their Spanish counterparts that the serial killer did not have a criminal record.

In fact, Chamba Jaramillo had been jailed for the rape and murder of six women in his own country.

A certificate supplied by the Ecuadorian authorities to the Spanish immigration officials in June 2003 said Chamba Jaramillo did not have any antecedents.

The certificate was issued after he arrived in Spain in 2000, though it is not clear why it was issued after he had been granted residency in Spain.

Interpol has now confirmed he was a serial killer jailed in Ecuador.

Chamba Jaramillo was the so-called  “Monster of Machala” who served eight years in his own country after strangling 10 women.

Last week, he was arrested for the murder of Maria Isabel Bascuñana, a university student who was killed in Lerida, last year.

In Ecuador, the daily Extra newspaper reported Chamba Jaramillo is “the Monster” who carried out a killing spree in the southern Ecuadorian provincial capital of Machala in 1993.

Until his arrest in Spain, the suspect lived in the northeastern Spanish city of Lleida and worked as a guard at an entertainment complex located near the law school where the young victim had been studying.

The woman was found strangled in the trunk of her car.

Extra also published a summary of the 10 crimes Chamba Jaramillo committed in Machala, along with a statement in which he acknowledged having committed the murders.

“I raped them after they were dead,” he told reporters after police arrested him 12 years ago.

“That was my personal thrill. I’m guilty, and I acted alone, and I’ve confessed with a wealth of detail, so get off my back.”

Chamba Jaramillo was eventually convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison, of which he served only half.

He later decided to move to Spain to flee death threats he was receiving from relatives of his victims.

[Copyright  EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news