RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The macabre case of Richard Choque, a 32-year-old serial rapist who raped at least 77 women and murdered at least three women and one man, is shocking Bolivia these days.
Richard Choque Flores was first arrested in 2013 for the rape, torture, and murder of Blanca Rubi Limachi, a 20-year-old woman whose body he buried in a house in San Martin in the city of El Alto, near La Paz.
At that point, the young man had already accumulated a fine and nearly twenty lawsuits, but he had managed to evade pressure.
In November 2015, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, the maximum penalty in his country, for the kidnapping and murder of a 20-year-old woman, but a judge granted him house arrest because he allegedly suffered from an incurable disease indicated in a false medical certificate.
Nine years later, on January 24, 2022, he was recaptured after a 43-year-old woman he had raped was able to turn him in.
After his arrest, it turned out that Choque sought out his victims through Facebook, posing as a “police officer of the special crime-fighting unit” and offering young girls employment as sex workers.
In this way, he managed to lure some 77 women into his trap. “Amigas who want a daily income in their spare time, ‘good income’ write to the private detective is paid by the hour, day or week. Write me,” the man suggested on social media.
Choque encouraged most of his victims to record videos in which they “confess” that they were found with drugs “planted” by him.
A 19-year-old girl from the city of Cochabamba recognized Choque as the man who raped her when she was a minor when she saw him on television: “It was the same voice; ‘that’s the same voice, the same face.’ This is the same person who did this to me (…); it is the same person,” she told El Deber newspaper.
PSYCHOPATH?
Richard Choque, whom prosecutors called a “sexual psychopath,” was charged with crimes including human trafficking, pimping, pornography, extortion and illegally carrying a firearm.
To find out how many crimes the man might have committed in his life, prosecutors authorized the demolition of the house Choque lived in with his mother and sister in the Ballivián neighborhood of El Alto.
There, police found a grave with the bodies of two women: one of them was identified as 17-year-old Lucy, who was reported missing on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. The family received text messages in which Choque demanded US$70,000 for her release.
“I don’t remember, I was drunk,” Choque said when questioned.
The second body was identified as 15-year-old Iris, who disappeared Aug. 27, 2021, and for whom her killer demanded US$80,000.
“The defendant has admitted that he was involved in these unfortunate facts that are being investigated by the prosecution and how he would have taken the life of the teenager, this data has been processed in the investigation booklet,” said prosecutor Edwin Sarmiento.
For this reason, Bolivian police suspect that more bodies may be hidden at the site. “The sinister case is being further investigated to see if there are more victims of this man. In some cases, he has managed to make his victims fall in love in order to kidnap more women,” the government minister said.
On February 2, the body of Fidel Lecón Choque, who disappeared in August 2011 at the age of 18, was found. He was murdered by his cousin Richard and buried in the same place where he had hidden the body of Blanca Rubí Limachi.
Police commander General Jhonny Aguilera said Richard poisoned his cousin and then cremated her body to cover up the crime, which was allegedly committed out of “envy” and to prevent the fraud from being discovered. His death was “extremely violent,” according to the local newspaper El Deber.
Jhonny Aguilera, commander general of the Bolivian police, stated that Richard “suffers from an antisocial personality disorder, with the core characteristics of criminal behavior of a psychopath (affective poverty, aggressiveness and lack of guilt).”
The director of the Special Crime Control Unit (Felcc) of La Paz, Rolando Rojas, also pointed out that Richard Choque Flores could be identified as a “sexual psychopath” and a “serial killer” based on the characteristics of the crimes.
“A serial killer, according to the criminological definition, is characterized by committing more than three murders with a period of pause, of cooling off, in between,” he explained to the Unitel channel.
DEATH PENALTY
Bolivia’s political class reacted sharply, demanding an exemplary sentence for the multiple murderer of women and rapist.
Congressman Héctor Arce Rodríguez of the ruling Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) said he was in favor of considering the death penalty for cases like that of the serial killer and rapist.
“These people who kill and rape without mercy should not live anymore. Richard Choque should not be alive. We should impose the death penalty for these types of people,” the congressman told a local radio station.
The congressman went a step further, suggesting that “these types of people should be executed.”
The death penalty was legal in Bolivia until Jan. 27, 1997, when the execution of convicts was abolished “in times of peace.” It was not until 2013 that the death penalty was finally abolished in all circumstances.