Nachum Israel Eber: NYC Man Found Butchered and Stuffed in Wardrobe Was in Colombia to Find New Bride after Failed Marriage with Teenager

The Orthodox man from Brooklyn who was brutally killed in Colombia had been struggling after his brief one-month marriage to a teenager ended — and was desperately searching for a new love when he was butchered. Nachum Israel Eber’s body was found dismembered inside a blood-stained wardrobe that had been abandoned on a street in Bogotá on Sunday.

Yosef Matheron, a Colombian man who became friends with Eber and often helped him with translation, shared that Eber had met his 18-year-old wife not long before their brief marriage fell apart in January. Eber, 51, was part of the Boro Park Belz Hasidic community and was looking for a new love.

Death Overpowers Love

After divorcing his first wife about five or six years earlier — with whom he had four children and two grandchildren — he traveled to South America in hopes of finding a new partner. Eber made extensive efforts to find a new bride, reaching out to matchmakers in both New York and Ukraine before eventually turning his attention to Colombia, according to his best friend.

He was particularly drawn to the country because he knew a rabbi from his community who frequently traveled there to help people—many of them descendants of those who fled the Spanish Inquisition—convert to Judaism.

“He mentioned that he was exploring the possibility of meeting someone to marry, and eventually he made a match,” Matheron said.

Eber met the much younger woman in Barranquilla and believed she was 20 at the time, according to his friend.

Matheron said he spent a great deal of time with the couple, often joining them on simple outings like going out for ice cream together.

“They were a religious couple, a very wholesome couple,” he said, “He didn’t drink alcohol, he didn’t use drugs, he was a religious man.”

He said the couple tied the knot in a ceremony in Barranquilla, and later marked the occasion with a celebratory dinner in Bogotá.

“The young woman eventually broke up with him, though mostly because she told him she didn’t feel ready — she felt she was too young and believed she had rushed into taking that step. But it was never something she was forced to do,” Matheron said of the marriage.

Sudden Breakup

His friend said he urged Eber—who had been deeply down after the breakup in January—to return to New York and take time to heal. But Eber refused, insisting on staying in Colombia until he found a new wife.

“It’s very hard to live alone in our community. Everyone lives with their families and has children in the house,” his Brooklyn friend explained.

Matheron added that Eber, whom he described as “high-strung” and often anxious, seemed to have a run of bad luck following him.

“I decided to stop traveling with Nachum, as I had already encountered several security issues. I was being robbed frequently in the places we stayed, though I couldn’t figure out why,” he said.

Matheron believed Eber may have unknowingly made himself a target for a “paseo millonario” attack — a type of crime where robbers observe and track someone for days — by behaving in ways that can draw attention, like walking around with his phone in his hand.

“I used to tell him, ‘Nachum, this isn’t New York,'” he recalled. “He would speak Yiddish, Hebrew, and English openly in public. Between the way he dressed and the different languages he spoke, he stood out and attracted attention.”

Despite everything, his friend remembered him as a devoted father cared for his family and would go to great lengths for them.