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Killer: Evil Spirit Directed Slaying

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By KELLI KENNEDY, The Associated Press

Published: September 3, 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, 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.
Love Triangle Forms

Galindo was tired of Argelio Gonzalez driving by his girlfriend's mobile 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 before 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 the 42-year-old Gonzalez to stop coming around, so when he saw Gonzalez's gray Cadillac cruising 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. Then he started crying.

'I already knew what was going to happen,' Galindo later would tell police.

He said he felt a sensation in his pocket, forcing him to whip out his switchblade and repeatedly stab Gonzalez. He thrust the 8-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 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 said he 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.'

He Was A Santeria Practitioner

Galindo brought his practice of Santeria to the trailer park when he moved there in 2000.

Santeria is a blend of traditional African religions and Roman Catholicism. Followers 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.

'Italian Mafia' Did It

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, according to his confession.

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.

'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 once had 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 man he met on the street for $100.

Boys Playing Find Leg

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 drew chilling drawings. A crying eye. A dark figure with a halo. A man missing a leg lying 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.

Galindo Finds God

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 didn't kill 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 a little more than two hours to convict him of second-degree murder.

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