Alfredo Balli Trevino was a very talkative, inquisitive, attractive, psychologically difficult surgeon who was convicted of brutal murder. Does his personality remind you of anyone? Meet the real-life killer doctor who inspired the protagonist of the acclaimed film Hannibal Lecter.
Assassin Doctor Alfredo Bally Trevino
The name Alfredo Balli Trevino is probably not familiar to you. But if you are a fan of horror movies, then the name Hannibal Lecter is probably on your hearing. This character is one of the most subtle cinematic villains of all time.
As it turns out, Hannibal Lecter is not just a figment of pure imagination. In 1963, Thomas Harris, an author whose novels were adapted into films with the main character Hannibal Lecter, met a man named Alfredo Bally Trevino. He was a surgeon who was serving a sentence in a prison in Monterrey, Mexico for murder. While working as a medic in 1959, he got into an argument with his co-worker, Jesus Castillo Rangel. The precedent led to Trevino cutting Rangel's throat with a scalpel. The surgeon cut the corpse into small pieces and buried it. When the crime was solved, the doctor was sentenced to death.
Interesting meeting
Promotional video:
The day Harris met Alfredo, he was in Monterrey Prison, where he worked on a story about another inmate, Dykes Askew Simmons. This criminal was sentenced to death for triple murder. Trevino became interested in the facts surrounding the killer after Simmons was shot and killed while attempting to escape. When Harris met with the surgeon, he initially thought he was talking to the prison doctor.
Pathological personality
Harris described Trevino as "a small, lithe man with auburn hair" who "stood motionless." “There was a certain elegance to him,” Harris said. The surgeon, whom Harris had given the pseudonym Dr. Salazar to keep his real name a secret, invited Harris to sit down. A conversation followed, eerily similar to the infamous conversation between Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, and a young FBI agent, Clares Starling, played by Jodie Foster.
Trevino posed a series of questions to Harris, gradually debunking his mysterious personality and complex psyche. When Harris asked the doctor if he had seen the photographs and if he thought the victims looked beautiful, Trevino replied: "Why are you not talking about the fact that they themselves provoked their death?"
Only after the interaction did Harris learn who Alfredo Balli Trevino was - a former surgeon serving a prison sentence for murder. He was by no means a prison doctor.
“This man is a killer doctor,” the jailer replied when Harris asked how long Trevino had been in prison. The jail warden told Harris about how a skilled surgeon was able to pack his victim into a surprisingly small box. “He will never leave this place because he is crazy,” said the overseer.
Pangs of conscience
Ultimately, the criminal doctor was released from prison. Despite the harsh sentence, the death penalty was commuted to 20 years in prison, and he was released in 1980 or 1981.
In his last famous interview, which was given in 2008, Alfredo Bally Trevino said: “I don't want to relive my dark past. I do not want to wake up my ghosts, because it is very difficult. The past is too hard, and the truth is that the longing I feel is simply unbearable."
Trevino died in 2009 when he was 81 years old. He reportedly spent the last years of his life helping the underprivileged and the elderly.
As for Harris, the strange accidental meeting with the "prison doctor" will remain in his memory forever. In 1981, he released The Red Dragon, the first of his novels, to feature a brilliant character, the doctor and murderer Hannibal Lecter.
Maya Muzashvili