Campo Elías Delgado

The Pozzetto massacre was carried out by 52-year-old Campo Elías Delgado at three locations in eastern Bogotá, Colombia on 4 December 1986. Over the course of seven hours, 29 people were killed and 11 others were injured.

Delgado first murdered nine people, including his mother, at two apartment buildings, luring some out by triggering the fire alarm system. Afterwards, he went to the upscale Restaurant Pozzetto, where Delgado opened fire on customers and staff, killing 20 people before being shot dead by police. It is currently the deadliest shooting by a lone gunman in the country's history.

Incident

Preparation On 3 December 1986, around noon, Delgado entered the Banco de Bogotá to close his bank account and withdraw his entire deposits of COP$49,896.93. When the cashier handed him a round number of COP$49,896.50, Delgado insisted on receiving the remaining 43 cents. Either during the afternoon of the same day, or the next morning, Delgado bought a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 31-1 revolver and 500 rounds of ammunition.

Apartment buildings On 4 December, at approximately 2:00 p.m., Delgado went to an apartment building at Calle 118 No. 40–11 in the La Alhambra barrio of Usaquén and entered apartment 304, where Nora Becerra de Rincón lived with her teenage daughter Claudia Rincón, to whom Delgado had given lessons in English, as well as her son Julio Eduardo, her mother, and her mother's friend. Only Nora and Claudia were at home when Delgado arrived. Delgado gagged and handcuffed Nora, placing her on the couch in the living room before stabbing her nine times in the neck and chest with a hunting knife. He also gagged Claudia and bound her hands and feet before stabbing her 22 times in the back and left side of the chest, leaving her dead on a bed. Both died from hypovolemic shock as a result of the stab wounds. Nora's sister tried to call them about Claudia's upcoming First Communion, but did not report them missing. Julio found the bodies the next day, after spending the day locked out of the apartment until a locksmith picked open the door. Their murders were not initially connected to Delgado's later killings.

Outside the building, Delgado stood still for about ten minutes, staring at a poster advertising a play of Blood Wedding at a local theater, which was witnessed by a resident's relative, Blanca Agudelo de González. Meanwhile, Berta Gómez flagged down a police patrol to ask them for help, but the car did not stop. Gómez then approached a security booth of the Army Health Directorate across the building, but seeing the fire on the fourth floor, the two posted officers responded that this was more a case for the firefighters and therefore did not intervene.

Restaurant Pozzetto Delgado arrived at the restaurant at around 7:15 p.m. Because Delgado was dressed formally with a suitcase and typically didn't visit on weekdays, his usual waiter, Alfonso Guaneme, asked if it was his birthday, to which Delgado responded that he was celebrating "something very personal". He ordered his usual meal, spaghetti bolognese, but instead of his drink of choice, Colombiana cola, Delgado uncharacteristically ordered alcohol, a half bottle of red wine. The waiters noticed that during his meal Delgado went to the restroom several times. After finishing his meal, he ordered dessert, read an American magazine, ordered two screwdriver cocktails, and paid his bill, telling the attending waiter, Ecce Homo Rosas, that he would compose a poem for his service. As usual, Delgado gave a large tip to Guaneme, who offered Delgado a third vodka on the house. Delgado accepted and told Guaneme "You always treat me well. I'll keep that in mind". Delgado drank a third vodka at around 8:15 p.m., handing Rosas payment and the promised poem. Afterwards, he sat down at the bar to have a fourth. It is alleged that because the assailant was only armed with a revolver, meanwhile some victims had been struck by Uzi shots, that some of the victims at the restaurant were actually slain by police crossfire.

Victims Two people were killed at the Calle 118 apartments. Seven people were killed at the Calle 51 apartments. At Pozzetto, thirteen people were dead at the scene. Fifteen injured people were brought to San José, San Ignacio, and San Pedro hospital and various military medical centers. Of the wounded, an additional six died in the hours after the shooting, while another died four days later. With the exception of an Italian national, all were Colombian citizens.

In the days following the massacre, the public list of casualties was repeatedly revised, as some fatalities had their names misspelled or expunged, their ages misstated, or were first listed as injuries and vice versa. Some victims were mistakenly counted twice, such as Claudia del Pilar Bermúdez, since she died at a hospital where victims of the Pozzetto shooting were treated. The murders of Nora Becerra and Claudia Rincón were only tentatively connected on 6 December 1986. and Rita Elisa Morales, in Durania, as shown on his birth certificate and notary registry, though this is widely misreported as nearby Chinácota, The family lived in Durania, where Delgado's father was a business owner and part of the town's beautification committee, but they were forced to leave in late 1939, after a scandal in which the elder Delgado had unknowingly ordered the felling of a historic saman tree planted in honour of Durania's namesake. before settling in Bucaramanga, where Delgado's father ran a well-known ice cream parlor. In 1941, his father suffered a nervous breakdown and died by suicide in the cemetery of Bucaramanga's Romero Park, shooting himself in the head in view of his son,

Delgado graduated from Colegio de Santander in Bucaramanga in 1950, where he was regarded as a quiet, well-behaved student with excellent grades. He then attended San José Provincial School in Pamplona, but records indicate he dropped out in his graduation year of 1956, despite being listed on the honor roll. the conflict had ended four months before Delgado entered service.

A refugee in the streets of New York City, he returned to Colombia after he was injured by a gunshot to the chest during an altercation with a mugger. There was also a heavy focus on Delgado's familial background regarding his negative relationship with his mother and psychological trauma from witnessing his father's suicide.

According to himself, Delgado was no longer able to develop friendships in Colombia, for which he blamed his mother. As the years went by, he grew more and more resentful of her, calling her only "that lady" ("esa señora"). In the months leading up to the shooting, Delgado also got into several arguments with neighbours because they heard him beating his mother and locking her in a bathroom for hours.

Aftermath The Pozzetto massacre drew comparisons to the Diners Club killings in Cali, almost exactly two years earlier on 3 December 1984, in which three robbers killed nine people during a hostage situation at the .

The newspaper El Tiempo was the first to publish information about Delgado that would later be proven false, including that he trained with the Green Berets and the U.S. Army Rangers, was honoured for valor by the South Vietnamese government, and that his position as a medic was a lie to cover up his true mission as a "super spy", based on frequent trips through the Americas and Europe made during his service.

Restaurante Pozzetto closed down for eight days to clean the blood left behind by the corpses and renovate the interior damaged by gunshots. The restaurant remained open at the same location until 2018, when the building was sold by the children of the original proprietor and was set to be demolished for the construction of apartments. The restaurant itself was bought by a former employee and as of early 2019, it still operated out of the old place, with plans to relocate within the city.

Several acts of copycat crime were attributed to the Pozzetto massacre, in what Colombian dubbed aa social phenomenon known as "Pozzetto syndrome". A commonly cited example was Manuel "Mocho" Delgado Mahecha, a security guard who abandoned his workpost, set his discarded uniform on fire, and went on a shooting spree in Bogotá from late February to 3 March 1987, killing his former employer and injuring the man's daughter and two police officers with gunshots before being killed in a shootout. The claim that he was inspired by the Pozzetto massacre was challenged by Semana magazine, as it was later revealed that Manuel Delgado Mahecha was an escaped convict wanted for murder.

Prolific serial killer Luis Garavito admired Delgado and other murderers, developing a desire to emulate him and go on a murder-suicide killing spree after murdering his family. He developed the idea after watching news of the Pozzetto Massacre on TV at a bar. He believed going on a murder-suicide killing spree like Delgado would be a good way to die.

In popular culture One of the first media depictions of the Pozzetto massacre was in a 1987 episode of the Colombian television series "Este es mi Caso", in which Campo Elías Delgado was portrayed by .

In 2002, Colombian writer Mario Mendoza Zambrano published the novel Satanás, which presents the fictionalised accounts of the Pozzetto Massacre through the view of Delgado and the victims. The book was very successful and won the 16th Premio Biblioteca Breve award shortly after its release. Mendoza Zambrano met Delgado at the university in Bogotá when he was a literature student, lending him books later found by police in his apartment and keeping in contact with Delgado just several days before the massacre, later claiming that Delgado had actually sought him out on the day of the shooting.