Pedro Lopez, born 8th October 1948, is who first ever sparked my interest in true crime. My sister got me a book once of 501 most notorious crimes and there he was. A man who was sentenced to killing 110 girls, but who claimed to have killed more than 300. How could this man have got away with SO MANY murders, it really blows my mind.
Lopez was the seventh out of thirteen children born by Benilda Lopez De Casteneda. Lopez’s mother was a prostitute and Lopez admitted that witnessing acts of prostitution while growing up had disturbing effects on his psyche. In 1957, at just eight years of age, Lopez was thrown out of his family home for molesting his younger sister. An American family “adopted” Lopez at age twelve and enrolled him in school, however, it was not long before he ran away from that life and began stealing cars. At 18 Lopez was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison for car theft.
Whilst in Prison Lopez was the victim of a gang-rape which resulted in Lopez killing 3 out of the 4 inmates with a shank. Two years were added to Lopez’s sentence for the murders. By 1978 he was a very angry man with murder in his heart.
Lopez had a particular hatred for women and over the next two years went on a murder spree, focusing his attention mainly on girls between 8 and 12. He picked girls from Indian tribes who were less likely to be missed than white children. He also covered his tracks by travelling and killing widely cross he Andes in Columbia, Peru and Ecuador.
Lopez later confessed to killing 100 Peruvian girls before the Ayachuco Indians caught him while he was trying to abduct a nine-year-old girl. The Ayachucos stripped and tortured Lopez and were only stopped from burying him alive by an American missionary who persuaded them to hand him over to the authorities. Instead of trying him, the police simply drove him to the Ecuadorian border and let him go.
Lopez was arrested when an attempted abduction failed and he was trapped by market traders. He confessed to over three hundred murders. The police only believed him when a flash flood uncovered the mass graves of many of his victims.
According to the BBC “Lopez was arrested in 1980, but was freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of 1998.” An A&E Biography documentary reports that Lopez was released from an Ecuadorian prison in 1994, then rearrested as an illegal immigrant and handed over to the Colombian authorities, who charged him with a 20-year-old murder. Lopez was declared insane and held in the psychiatric wing of a Bogota hospital. In 1998, he was declared sane and released. He later absconded. The same documentary says that Interpol released an advisory for his rearrest over a fresh murder in 2002, and is currently wanted by police.
As you can clearly see there is currently a shortage of knowledge regarding his whereabouts. It isn’t even clear whether he is released or currently in prisoner. Some article say that he whereabouts is unknown as of 2019. Other say that he is in prison. Perhaps the Monster of the Andes is still at large.
Conspiracy Queen 