A Murderer Known as ‘the Human Hyena’ Escaped Prison During a Conjugal Visit

A convicted murderer known as the “human hyena” escaped prison during a conjugal visit in Argentina this week.

José Carmona spent the past 36 years behind bars until busting free after a blunder by prison authorities, shocking locals around the city of Cordoba who still remember his heinous crimes from the 1980s.

Since at least 2017, Carmona was granted a temporary supervised release from a prison in the far off Chaco region near the border with Paraguay every six months where he was escorted back to Cordoba to visit his wife at her home. As Argentina played Croatia in the semi-finals of the World Cup on Tuesday, Carmona reportedly fled his wife’s home, and hopped into a taxi. He then allegedly forced the taxi to crash, killing the driver. He quickly stole another vehicle, and again crashed as police launched both a ground and aerial operation to catch him, which they quickly did. 

News of Carmona being on the loose, albeit briefly, likely sent shivers down the spines of residents in Cordoba.

Carmona was a life-long criminal who first escaped prison in 1979 at 16 years old while serving a sentence for robbery, kidnapping, and drug charges, according to Argentine newspaper La Voz. He was captured four months later during another robbery. Carmona was in and out of prison for several years, before having his sentence commuted in the early 1980s.

But it was in 1986 that Carmona earned his ignoble nickname — the human hyena.

When he was 23 years old, he robbed three teenagers and kidnapped one, a 16-year-old girl named Gabriela Ceppi. He proceeded to rape and kill Ceppi, then abandoned her body on the outskirts of the city. She wasn’t found for 29 days, causing widespread fear throughout the city, even after authorities arrested Carmona and he confessed to the crime. The press labelled him at the time as the “human hyena”, reportedly because of his behavior, his life of crime, and because he continuously misled the police about where her body was. After giving officers the incorrect locations multiple times, he eventually told them the truth.

La Voz reported that the crime is remembered as a “before and after” moment for residents of the city, who were unaccustomed back then to kidnappings and murders.

Carmona received one of the longest sentences in Argentine history, which was extended after he murdered two other prisoners, one in 1994 and another in 1997.

His escape this week was widely condemned in the Argentine press, especially after it was announced that prison authorities had not notified police in Cordoba that Carmona was in the city under supervised release for the conjugal visit with his wife. Six prison guards who were supposed to be guarding Carmona when he escaped have been arrested by Cordoba police, according to Argentine newspaper La Nacion.