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Killer Says An Evil Spirit Made Him Do It

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The Associated Pess

Published: September 2, 2007

MIAMI - As a child, Lazaro Galindo cut open the family
puppies "to see all the pretty colors inside." As a teen, he kept
a black cauldron filled with hatchets and knives, all tools he used
to sacrifice animals for his religion. He once told a detective he
had an insatiable desire to eat human flesh.

He used his cherished weapons to butcher a romantic rival. He
said he cut off the victim's leg and fingers because an evil spirit
he called Candelo told him to.
He detailed the grisly murder in a nearly 40-page confession,
which was detailed at his just completed murder trial.

Galindo was tired of Argelio Gonzalez driving by his
girlfriend's trailer home, blasting romantic music and leaving
fruit for her children in an effort to win her back.

It's not that Galindo, then 19, was in love with Yosalyn
Gonzalez - they had met only a few months ago at the Miami-Dade
County trailer park where they both lived. But she was his
girlfriend now. It was about respect.

Galindo suspected she was still in love with Gonzalez, but he
tried not to let it bother him.

He'd warned 42-year-old Argelio Gonzalez a few times to stop
coming around, so when he saw Gonzalez's gray Cadillac cruising
around the trailer park in June 2000, he was ready for an argument.
"Don't come around my house. Please leave," Galindo said.
"Why should I leave if the street's not yours?" Gonzalez
retorted.

Galindo asked him again to leave. And then he started crying.
"I already knew what was going to happen," Galindo would later
tell police.
He felt a sensation in his pocket, forcing him to whip out his
switchblade and repeatedly stab Gonzalez. He thrust the eight-inch
blade into Gonzalez's chest, face and back - so many times the
prosecutor said it was hard to count.

He said his dead uncle was controlling him, telling him what to
do. He called the spirit "Candelo."
"He was manifesting himself inside of me. I was losing and
coming back into conscious, blacking out," Galindo told
detectives.

Gonzalez stumbled to the pavement and vomited.
Galindo grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into his
trailer, leaving behind a trail of blood. Gonzalez lay on the
living room floor gasping for air so Galindo stabbed him in the
right lung, then grabbed a hatchet from a cauldron and smashed his
head open.

Galindo blacked out. When he woke up he was in the bathroom,
crying and trying to cut Gonzalez's knee off.
He put Gonzalez in the bathtub and ran hot water on him for
several hours.

"I was told by Candelo to do so," he said. "I was told this
would cause the meat to cook and the blood to stop pouring."
Galindo brought his practice of Santeria to the trailer park
when he moved there in 2000.

A blend of traditional African religions and Roman Catholicism,
followers of Santeria believe in spiritual forces whose survival
depends on blood sacrifices. Galindo believed it brought good
fortune.

He set up an altar and sacrificed chickens and other animals.
Sometimes people stopped by and he told them their future.

When police came to his trailer days after the murder, they
found a cauldron filled with knifes and metal weapons. Chicken
blood, a coconut, cigars and pennies littered the altar; skulls
were scattered about.

Galindo also followed a dark religion that involved, "enslaving
spirits to work for you. Some people call it Satanism," he later
told police.
He drew eerie pictures on the trailer's walls. A pentagram. An
inverted bleeding cross and ancient names for Satan. Lucifer.
Beezlebub.

"May Satan cover you with his hate. Lazaro, Yosalyn forever,"
it said.
A sinister setting to carry out a gruesome murder.
Before police arrived, Galindo had been holed away in the
trailer for two days, hacking at the victim and blacking out for as
long as 30 minutes at times.

He wrapped the body in a pink sheet and garbage bags and tied it
with a phone cord. He scribbled a note and stuck it in the victim's
hand along with a white rose he picked from outside.
"Italian mafia. Sorry, Metro-Dade," it read.
For good measure, he slit Gonzalez's mouth open to "make it
look like he snitched out the mob."

He put the body in two trash cans, loaded it in the trunk of his
girlfriend's car and dumped them near a middle school he had once
attended.
Galindo returned to the trailer, pouring water and bleach
throughout the house to clean up the blood. He threw the dirty rags
and his victim's clothes in various trash bins around town. Then he
tossed the man's keys and one of the knives in front of a factory
miles away.

He sold his girlfriend's car to a fat man he met on the street
for $100.
Detectives came looking for Galindo after some boys playing in
the neighborhood found the leg. Authorities later found the
dismembered body.
Gonzalez's fingers were never found. Prosecutors allege Galindo
ate them as part of a Satanic ritual.

Galindo was more than cooperative at the station. He asked for a
pen and paper and colored chilling drawings. A crying eye. A dark
figure with a halo. A man missing a leg laying in a bathtub. A
sword and a switchblade.
He was emotional at times, telling Sgt. Anthony Monheim that his
family always thought something was wrong with him. Especially
after he killed the puppies.
Galindo asked Monheim to handcuff him behind his back, warning
that he was dangerous and would kill again if he wasn't stopped.

"Do you go to church," Galindo asked Monheim.
"Yes."
"Do you take your family to church?"
"Yes."
"I think you're a holy person, Sarge. I'm going to tell you
everything."
And then Lazaro Galindo spent 45-minutes recounting how he
killed and dismembered Argelio Gonzalez.
At his August trial, Galindo, now 26, represented himself and
asked the judge's permission to wear his Satanic garb, including a
robe and pins. He brought his Satanic bible to the courtroom, but
on the day of jury selection told the judge he'd found God and wore
a long-sleeve, button-down shirt and dark pants instead.

He told jurors he never killed Gonzalez and that deputies had
beat him and coerced the confession from him, but offered no
evidence to support the claim.

"The confession is simply a bizarre twisted transcribed
channeled statement given as a way for (authorities) to clear the
case," he said during opening statements.
It took the jury just over two hours to convict him of
second-degree murder.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is based on Lazaro Galindo's
confession, court testimony from Galindo, Yosalyn Gonzalez and Sgt.
Anthony Monheim and interviews with Assistant State Attorney
Herbert E. Walker III.

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