[1] He was given the nickname "El Monstruo de los Cañaduzales" ("The Monster of the Cane Fields").
[2] Manuel Octavio Bermúdez was born in Trujillo, Valle del Cauca, Colombia on 15 October 1961, and was orphaned after birth.
Investigators inspected a room he had rented in El Cairo and found newspaper clippings of the murders, syringes, Lidocaine, and the wristwatch Luis Carlos Gálvez was wearing the day he disappeared.
Bermúdez confessed to the murders of 21 children, 17 of whom were found and was sentenced to 25 years in prison on 20 March 2004.
On 17 October 2024, only two days after his 63rd birthday, Bermúdez was killed during an ambush against a prison vehicle in which he was travelling on the Pan-American Highway in the department of Cauca.