The silent killings of San Joss new psychopath The Tico Times Costa Rica News Travel. There is one lying there, in the shadows, where the blue pedestrian bridge crosses over the highway. Investigators approach the body while cars continue traveling in both directions along the loop of road known as the Circunvalacin, which circles Costa Ricas capital, San Jos, eventually passing through this neighborhood, Hatillo, on the southwestern edge of the city. Red marks on the neck, which clash so visibly with the pale body drained of its last breath, are the first things investigators notice before they lift the naked corpse into a bag. This lifeless body belongs to a mother. Jack Napier, youll remember, is the same name of the man who eventually becomes the Joker in Tim Burtons Batman from 1989, meaning that in a way, weve known. A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over. California Speed Freak Killer Loren Herzogs last victim appears to have been himself. After having committed a number of murders with Wesley. Which Cop Show has one not appeared in A Serial Killer is defined as someone who commits multiple murders, out of some kind of mental or sexual compulsion. After saving the day and winning the contest, Wade finally logs off of the OASIS and finds Art3mis, whos hidden herself at the center of a reallife version of the. David Grann on the French serial imposter Frdric Bourdin, who assumed dozens of false identities, including those of missing persons. Though shes been robbed of her voice, she has a story. She had a name before he left her there dead under the bridge, for anyone to see. She was Tania Marlene Barrientos Asta. She had four children. Tania was once a child, too, who bloomed with potential. As the youngest of nine kids, she had to be strong to survive after her father abandoned the family, leaving a single mom to take care of her and her older brothers and sisters in central Hatillo, a notoriously rough district. She was the captain of the volleyball and basketball teams at her school. Always an extrovert, Tania was one of the popular girls, going out with friends and getting chased by boys. But she grew up too quickly. She started going out with the wrong people. And the wrong people are easy to find in a place dominated by drug traffickers and pocked with shacks  known here as bunkers  where drugs and sex and violence are traded and distributed with ease. Falling into a pattern as cyclical as the highway that runs around the city, she started stealing with her new friends in order to pay for crack and cocaine. She sold her body for drugs, too. She would do anything to stay high, even if it meant getting locked up a few times for armed robbery. Fear has no place in the bunkers, where the need to consume becomes the only engine moving the body. Death looks easy, almost welcome, when compared to life here, where men and women are beaten to death for no more than the shoes on their feet. Tania, a longtime addict, knew how cheap life could get in Hatillo while she sold herself on the corners. She was last seen by her family on July 2. Her older sister Marianela, who helped watch over her when their dad left, took her in and fed her when Tania knocked on her door. Before then, Tania used to come about twice a week, getting hungrier and frailer each time. Thank you, sis, Tania said to Marianela for the last time before she walked back to one of Hatillos bunkers. You know that I love you very much. May God bless you. Marianela said the whole family, including the four kids Tania left behind, was shocked when they heard she was dead. Sure, the drugs had made her skinny and unhealthy looking, but Tania could fight like hell. It didnt seem like she would ever give in. When they found her, her mouth was open. Shed been strangled. Semen was found on her body. And the pattern was just like all the others. Her death was the sixth  but not the last  to be attributed to a serial killer stalking San Joss slums. The killer, who has been dubbed Mata Indigentes, or Killer of the Poor, is still at large, targeting impoverished, drug addicted women like Tania. He is now believed to be the second most prolific serial killer in Costa Rican history. And yet, hardly anyone in the city seems to care. A mural on the wall at the Gnesis Foundation in Alajuelita. Alberto FontThe Tico Times. The bunkers. In Alajuelita, just south of where most of the murders have taken place, some semblance of salvation exists. Within the fortress like barrier surrounding the Christian based Gnesis Foundation, a social services organization, there are women who fit the profile of Tania and the other murder victims. Any of the former drug addicts who now sit in a semicircle at the foundations rehab center could just as easily have been one of them. Eight of them have gathered to talk to a reporter, the same number of victims that the Judicial Investigation Organization OIJ officially attributes to the serial killer Mata Indigentes. Each is a survivor of the bunkers who, like Tania, resorted to prostitution and crime to scrape up enough money for the nights drug supply, most commonly crack and cocaine. Theyve all heard the same rumors about the killer, of whom word spreads through the neighborhood like a ghost story.  But most of the women hes targeting are too numb to be moved by fatal tales. When you are high on those drugs, the last thing you care about is dying, said one woman who has been in the rehab center for three months. Due to the foundations privacy policy, The Tico Times was not permitted to publish the womens names. Theres even times you would prefer to die because theres no longer a drug strong enough to make you feel good, another said. Anxiety starts kicking in. When one substance isnt enough, neither are a thousand. And thats the end of it. Many who frequent the bunkers have cut ties with family and friends in favor of drugs and fellow users. I have gone to the bunkers to drink rubbing alcohol, one woman said. I went there because I needed the company of other addicts. I didnt want to be in a social place like a bar. I wanted to feel isolated in company.  The isolation surrounding most of the serial killers victims has made the killings hard to solve, and easy to forget at least for those removed from the dark world of drug bunkers and street corners. Members of the Gnesis Foundation go through the bunkers on Fridays to feed addicts and, hopefully, bring some back to the center to get cleaned up. Some of the women who get to Gnesis share stories about the killer with the foundations cleaning lady, Evelyn Porras Surez. She says they talk of a rich man who is bent on revenge after he contracted HIV from a prostitute in Hatillo, a place into which outsiders rarely volunteer to go. But those who live in this world, if they take enough time off drugs, begin to see more and more clearly the terror rolling through the concrete wilderness. If its not a serial killer threatening the lives of women like those at the Gnesis Foundation, its other lingering dangers that follow the sunset as subtle as disease and as conspicuous as drug gangs. When the night comes, theres sadness, Porras said, her dark hair flowing over her pink, flower patterned shirt. Before coming to Gnesis, Porras spent 2. San Joss Zona Roja, just north of downtown.  When she was living in the streets, Porras remembers the time a violent man picked her up from a corner, paid her for sex, and proceeded to beat her for what felt like the entire night. He almost beat her to death, but he stopped and eventually kicked her out of his car on the side of a highway. Only God knows why she didnt die that day, she said, or some other day during that life she left behind. I know the devil always wanted to destroy me, she said. But he didnt. La Cruz de Alajuelita stands above the Cerro de San Miguel, southwest of Costa Ricas capital. Wikimedia Commons. The psychopath. For only a moment, the large metal cross on the mountaintop above the Gnesis Foundation breaks through the muddy colored clouds of an early afternoon rainstorm. Its La Cruz de Alajuelita, a monument on Cerro de San Miguel, south of San Jos, once regarded as a host for religious pilgrimages.