Campo Elías Delgado
Campo Elías Delgado (June 24, 1934 – December 4, 1986) was a Colombian Vietnam War veteran who killed 30 people, and wounded 15 more at a luxurious Bogotá restaurant before apparently being shot dead by police.
Life
Delgado was born June 24, 1934, in Chinácota, Colombia. He was drafted into the Vietnam War as an electrician in 1970. Friends reported that his experience in Vietnam had made him antisocial and bitter. After his return from Vietnam, Delgado lived by teaching private English lessons and was taking graduate studies at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. He was no longer able to develop friendships, for which he blamed his mother. As the years went by, he grew more and more resentful of his mother. The capstone of this story of loneliness was the murder of his mother on December 4th, 1986, after which Delgado embarked on a horrific killing spree.
The Murderer’s Path
The restaurant massacre occurred in the evening of December 4, 1986, but the murders started in the afternoon, in the apartment of one of Delgado’s English students, where he killed a girl (his 15 year old pupil) and her mother. He went back to his own apartment (where he lived with his mother and then went to have dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant in the Chapinero district. He carried a .22 Magnum handgun, five boxes of ammunition hidden in a briefcase, and a hunting knife, which he discarded while walking to the restaurant.
His Apartment
Delgado packed his briefcase full of ammunition and loaded his pistol. He walked up behind his mother and killed her with a single stab to the back of the neck. He then wrapped her corpse in newspapers and set them on fire. He then ran through the apartment complex screaming "Fuego! Fuego!" (Fire! Fire!) and lured people outside into the main hallway one by one and killed them. He killed one man with the knife, then opened up his briefcase and opened fire on them, killing five more people.
The restaurant
Delgado arrived at the restaurant at around 19:30 EST and ordered an expensive meal, red wine, and eight vodka tonics. About one hour into the dinner, he opened fire on the diners. A lady was quick to call the police and they got there ten minutes later. Delgado shot twenty-three people to death, mostly women, by the time they had arrived. His method was to corner his victim and shoot them at point-blank range in the forehead and then move on to the next victim. A further fifteen were wounded. Delgado promised himself not to kill any children, but he accidentally killed a six-year-old girl sitting at an adjacent table as a result of his pistol misfiring. When the police arrived, Delgado turned his attention to them and managed to fight them off for one minute. Eventually, he was apparently killed with a shot to the temple by a police officer. However, there is also a belief that Delgado committed suicide before being captured or killed.
In popular culture
The Novel
In 2002, Colombian writer Mario Mendoza published “Satanás” (Satan), a novel that analyzes the case of Delgado. The book was very successful and received several international awards. Mario Mendoza met Delgado at the university in Bogotá when he was a Literature student, and he actually talked to Delgado just a couple of days before the massacre.
The Film
In 2006, Colombian filmmakers Rodrigo Guerrero (Producer) and Andi Baíz (Director), adapted "Satanás" into a film (with the same title). The story is framed in a context of urban solitude in the modern world and sheds some light on the motivations and anxieties of Campo Elias Delgado but avoiding explicit or manichean conclusions.