BOGOTA, Colombia(CNN) -- Two years ago, police found the remains of dozens of children in a mass grave in the Colombian city of Pereira. Now, the nationwide police investigation has landed a shocking confession from the leading suspect.

In what could be the world's worst case of serial killings, handyman Luis Alfredo Garavito, 42, told authorities that he had raped, tortured and beheaded about 140 children over five years.

Authorities say they have found the remains of 114 of the children Garavito claims to have killed, and investigators are still searching for the remaining bodies. They say Garavito will not be charged until the investigation is concluded.

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Colleen McEdwards reports on the man who has admitted to killing 140 children in Colombia
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He faces a maximum of 30 years in prison if convicted, Colombia's severest sentence for murder.

Colombia's chief prosecutor, Alfonso Gomez, said Garavito lured his mostly poor victims by assuming various identities, including a beggar, a cripple and a monk.

Garavito, a handyman known as "Goofy," was arrested in April in the eastern city of Villavicencio on charges of attempting to rape a 12-year-old boy. He confessed to the 140 deaths during a court session on Thursday.

"The bodies were beheaded and bore signs of having been tied up and mutilated," Gomez said, adding that Garavito would drink heavily and then bind his young victims with nylon cord.

He said Garavito would not be charged with the murders until the investigation was complete.

Mutilated corpses of mostly male victims between the ages of 8 and 16 have been discovered near more than 60 towns in at least 11 of Colombia's 32 provinces, the prosecutor said.

Many were children of street vendors

Many of the victims were children of street vendors who were left unattended in parks and at city stoplights to solicit money from motorists.

Garavito passed himself off as "a street vendor, monk, indigent, disabled person or a representative of fictitious foundations for the elderly and children's education, in that way gaining entrance to schools as a speaker," Gomez said.

Until November 1997, police had few clues into the multiyear rash of child disappearances. It was then that the remains of at least two dozen boys were found in a ravine and an overgrown lot near Pereira in the central coffee-growing region.

Twelve freshly planted palms stand as a memorial to the 25 children whose skeletal remains were found there last year.

Brightly painted figures of children at play are carved into an overlooking hillside, and a sign at the bottom of the grassy gully reads: "If we continue with the indifference and the abandonment, we'll never know what happened to the children of Pereira."

At the time, investigators believed the children may have been murdered as part of a satanic ritual. The discovery prompted authorities to create a nationwide task force that began to encounter similarities between cases across the country, Gomez said.

That effort turned up an arrest warrant for Garavito in a 1996 homicide case of a child in the north-central city of Tunja.

At the time of his arrest in Villavicencio, where he is being held, Garavito was living under an assumed name, prosecutors said.

Investigations also under way in Ecuador

Garavito moved around the country frequently after the killings began in 1994, and also spent time in Ecuador, where investigations are under way to determine whether he might be linked to other child slayings, Gomez said.

Most of the Colombia killings took place in the western state of Risaralda, of which Pereira is capital, where 41 bodies have been found, and in bordering Valle de Cauca, where another 27 turned up.

Gomez said Garavito was apparently abused himself as a child, and would undergo extensive psychological examinations.

Among the worst known cases of serial killings in recent decades is that of former sailor Anatoliy Onoprienko, who has been sentenced to death in Ukraine after being convicted of murdering 52 people from 1989 to 1996.

Children in constant fear, danger

One expert said the killings in Colombia were probably facilitated by the overall environment of the strife-torn country.

UNICEF official Nidya Quiroz said that of the thousands of children who beg at stoplights and walk unattended, many are refugees from the growing violence between leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups.

"These children are living in constant fear and danger," she said.

Reporters Colleen McEdwards, Alexandra Gomez, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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