Dorángel Vargas

José Dorángel Vargas Gómez (born May 14, 1957), also known as "El comegente" (lit. The people eater), is a serial killer and cannibal in Venezuela. He was a homeless man who used to hunt people at a park in the city of San Cristobal, Táchira. Once he was caught, he confessed to killing and eating at least eleven men over a period of two years preceding his arrest in 1999.

Biography

Dorángel Vargas was born in 1957 to poor farmers. His priors included three arrests, two of them for minor offenses (theft of chickens and cattle). The third was acquired in 1995 when he was admitted to the Institute of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Peribeca for the murder of Baltazar Cruz Moreno, and the subsequent cannibalism of his body. He was released from the center because he made a normal impression; he then led a seemingly normal life in poverty.

It is believed that he was actively murdering men between November 1998 and January 1999. Vargas hunted victims with a tube-shaped spear and occasionally with rocks. He kept the parts that he could cook and usually buried the feet, hands and heads. It seemed that his primary targets were unsuspecting athletes and laborers working on the riverbank. He did not eat women or children, and when asked why, he explained that he felt that they were too "pure" to consume. Since he had no place to store the human flesh, most of it would decompose quickly, which made him kill routinely.