A farmer in Colombia admitted to police Saturday he had murdered 20 people, including his wife and kids, as authorities investigated him for possibly murdering a woman.
Jaime Ivan Martinez Betancourt, 44, was initially questioned by authorities regarding the January disappearance of Maria Gladys Arango, 51. Betancourt ultimately confessed to authorities that he had killed Arango and 19 other people.
After the serial killer’s confession, Colombian police raided Betancourt’s farm near Medellin in the town of Guarne. At the murderer’s home, they found Arango’s jewelry stored as a memento of the killing.
Authorities came across a mass grave on the property. The maniacal killer had been living alone for some months, according to neighbors, who realized his wife and two kids — five and seven-years-old — weren’t around.
To ensure his wife’s family would not question her disappearance after he murdered her, Betancourt kept her cell phone and impersonated her in texts to her family ,saying she left her husband and had kept their kids. Authorities believe the murders have taken place over the past 10 years and they are looking into missing persons’ reports in other parts of Colombia at periods of time that Betancourt lived there. The killer’s motives are unclear and it is thought that most of his victims were likely women.
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