Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Cuban Santería Santería contexts Nariño, Colombia · 2025

Colombia: 'El Brujo de Sandoná' convicted of paying a hitman with a love ritual

Record class

Context only

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

self-styled santería and brujería practitioner

Organization

No organization assigned

Spiritual nexus

NOT AN AUTHORITY-ABUSE CASE toward the victim. The ritual element is the currency of the crime: the killer's fee was a spell, and the trophy was ritual material — belief functioning as payment.

  • Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim
  • Violent occult ideology or sacrifice

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2025-01-22 · conviction and sentence

    Criminal circuit court, Nariño, Colombia. Oner José Castillo Villota, known as 'El Brujo de Sandoná', was convicted in January 2025 of aggravated feminicide and evidence tampering for ordering the 2023 killing of his former partner, and sentenced to thirty-one years and three months. He paid the hitman not in money but by performing a love ritual for him, and required the victim's amputated hand as ritual proof. The hitman, Danilo Galeano Loza, had been separately convicted in November 2023 and received twenty-three years.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • a love ritual offered as the hitman's payment
  • an amputated hand required as ritual 'proof' of the killing

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report Infobae Colombia: conviction of 'El Brujo', 22 Jan. 2025.

Regional outlet's court report.

national newspaper court reporting sentencing report Cambio Colombia: sentencing report.

Independent corroboration.

Related record

Related cases · Cuban Santería

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