Bruja Asesiana

María Concepción Ladino Gutiérrez is a Colombian charlatan, swindler and a serial killer. Alias: “Doña Conchita,” “La Hermana María” (“Sister Mary”); called by the press “La Bruja Asesina” (The Killer Witch).

No mention of her age has been located yet, but a photo that appeared in the newspapers has the appearance of a woman of about 40. The image used here was taken from a Columbia’s true crime Discovery Channel show, Instento Asesino, which was first broadcast Feb. 7, 2011.

Her murder career began, as far as is is known, in 1994. She used poison on some of her victims, all of whom believed her claims of having magical powers. One of them was drugged and then incinerated in her own car. In at least two cases, her credulous clients were recipients of letters they were expected to believe were written by the spirits of their deceased loved ones, including from one of the murder victims address to his widow.

The known death toll is seven, plus one poisoning in which the victim survived the attempted murder, as well as at least twenty swindles. The number being indeterminate due to the dupes’ very reasonable fear of violent reprisal from the “witch’s” male accomplices.

She was arrested September 1998 (and assigned a public defender on September 25, 1998), was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison on September 11, 2002 and released to "house arrest” in 2009, a decision which, when discovered by El Tiempo, elicited controversy.

~ Murder Number 1: Carlos Julio Montaña (Oct. 13, 1994) ~

The earliest recorder murder, that of 54-year-old father of three Carlos Julio Montaña, occurred in the Fontibón district of western Bogota. On August 15, 1994, Doña Conchita rented rooms in the home of the Montaña family. She soon began to “diagnose” her new landlord as suffering from emaciation and offered him her magical curative.

She offered Señor Montaña baked desserts and gave him a concoction that she poured from “dark bottles” (another news report states they were in pill form), a measure of laxative that Doña Concita announced was worth more than the rent she was paying. After that she coaxed her patient to submit to continuous herbal baths with herbs that wold exorcise the evil spirits from his body. She likewise subjected his three young children to this treatment.

On October 13, when Señora Montaña was absent, she went in for the kill. The poisoner sent the little ones outdoors and prepared to finish him off. At about one in the afternoon according to one newspaper account, she went to her victim’s room and plied him with liquid refreshments.

When, five hours later, the wife returned she was surprised to see that her husband’s lunch, which she had prepared for him, before she left. She went to her husband’s bedroom

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