“I have a gift for you.” With those words, Hugo Bustamante —also known as the drum killer— confessed that he murdered two people in 1996 to Ivonne Toro, a journalist who spoke repeatedly with the man, as she was writing the book about Ámbar Cornejo, his last victim.
According to Toro, when Bustamante told her he would give her a gift, she thought it could be some craft she made in prison. But it wasn’t that: The man mentioned two names, a man and a woman, whom he had murdered two decades ago, crimes that had not been discovered by the authorities.
“I told him that I knew that the bodies were at Covadonga 641. At first he tried to deny it, but he ended up admitting it.”said the author.
But why did Hugo Bustamante decide to confess now?
Why Hugo Bustamante confessed to two crimes he committed 20 years ago
The Prosecutor’s Office found the bodies of the two people that, until the confession, they were missing.
According to the deputy prosecutor of the Villa Alemana Prosecutor’s Office, Osvaldo Basso Cerda, these are “two people, a mother and a son, whose data we have in reserve.” Both had been buried in the same house in Villa Alemana where Ámbar Cornejo was found.the minor who was murdered by Bustamante in 2020.
“Bustamante asked to speak with a prosecutor and spoke with one from Rancagua (…) and explained to him that, in addition to the homicides for which he was convicted, he would have committed other homicides”said the authority.
The reason why the Drum Killer decided to confess now would be, according to the prosecutor, for “basically a matter of position and weight of conscience.”
