Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating
new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help
the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm
to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.
Laytner’s interviews were widely published, first in
the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, 13 July 1980, then in the Toronto
Sun and The Sacramento Bee on 21 July 1980, and later in many
other North American papers and foreign publications over the years. Apart
from Laytner’s account and two brief Associated Press wire reports the
story was published in The World's Most Infamous Murders by Boar
and Blundell.
According to Laytner’s story, López became known as the
"Monster of the Andes" in 1980 when he led police to the graves of 53 of
his victims in Ecuador, all girls between nine and twelve years old. In
1983 he was found guilty of murdering 110 young girls in Ecuador alone and
confessed to a further 240 murders of missing girls in neighbouring Peru
and Colombia. Lopez was released from prison in 1998.
Background
According to López, his mother, a prostitute with
thirteen children, caught him fondling his younger sister in 1957, when
he was eight years old, and evicted him from the family home. He was
then picked up by a man, taken to a deserted house and repeatedly
sodomized. At age twelve he was taken in by an American family and
enrolled in a school for orphans. He ran away because he was allegedly
molested by a male teacher. At 18, he says, he was gang-raped in prison
and, he claimed, killed three of the rapists while still incarcerated.
After his jail term he started preying on young girls
in Peru. He later claimed that, by 1978, he had killed over 100 of them.
He had been caught by a native tribe, who were preparing to execute him,
when an American missionary intervened and persuaded them to hand him over
to the state police. The police soon released him. He relocated to
Colombia and later Ecuador, killing about three girls a week. López later
said "I like the girls in Ecuador, they are more gentle and trusting, more
innocent." The authorities had previously believed the disappearance of so
many girls was due to sexual slavery or prostitution.
López was arrested when an attempted abduction failed
and he was trapped by market traders. He confessed to over 300 murders.
The police only believed him when a flash flood uncovered a mass grave of
many of his victims.
According to the BBC: "He was arrested in 1980 but was
freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of last year [1998] and
deported to Colombia. In an interview from his prison cell, López
described himself as 'the man of the century' and said he was being
released for 'good behaviour'."
An A&E Biography documentary reports that he was
released by Ecuadorian prison on 31 August 1994, and re-arrested an hour
later as an illegal immigrant, and handed over to Colombian authorities
who charged him with a twenty year old murder. He was found to be insane
and held in a psychiatric wing of a Bogotá hospital. In 1998 he was
declared sane, and released on $50 bail. The same documentary says that
Interpol released an advisory for his re-arrest by Colombian authorities
over a fresh murder in 2002. He has not been heard from or seen since his
release and to date, no one knows if López is dead or alive.
By Ron Laytner -
Edit International
QUITO, ECUADOR - Modern history's worst murderer, a
serial killer of young girls, has been released from prison and is free
to kill again.
Pedro Alonzo Lopez served less than one month's
prison time in Ecuador for each of 350 young girls he murdered in three
countries. But now he’s free because the country holding him has no
death penalty and had to release him after 20 years.
Lopez became known as the 'Monster of the Andes' in
1980 when he led shocked police to the graves of 53 of his victims in
Ecuador, all girls between nine and twelve years old.
Three years later he was finally found guilty of
murdering 110 young girls in Ecuador alone and confessed to a further
240 murders of missing girls in neighboring Peru and Columbia.
When Lopez was a prisoner in Ecuador this journalist
was granted the only interview he ever gave.
Meeting the world’s worst modern serial killer
required preparation.
Pedro Alonzo Lopez was held in the center of an
otherwise abandoned section of Ambato Prison on top of a mountain far
from other prisoners for their safety and his.
There was an unofficial reward, believed raised by
the families of his victims, of $25,000 US for any guard or prisoner who
killed him. I was searched for weapons as I went through three levels of
security.
Taking off my shoes, I tiptoed down the corridor and
peeked over the edge of the small barred window into his cell. The
Monster of the Andes, as he was known, was on the floor, sitting against
a wall, huge hands flexing. On the wall behind him were faded clippings
of his mass murder trial.
I sat on the other side of the corridor, turned on my
flash and pre-focused my camera on the barred window. Somewhere down the
corridor behind me a guard made a hissing sound. The guards liked to
torment the serial killer who feared they would kill him.
The Monster stirred. He growled and ran at the window,
grabbing the bars and snarling. That’s when I captured the picture
showing his rage and powerful killer hands.
The next day I returned with the warden. While guards
with cocked pistols watched through the little window and from the
larger entrance to his cell in which he had been kept for 12 years in
solitary confinement, I stepped into the cell.
From outside the bars, the Prison Director, Victor
Lascaño, introduced me and I foolishly and innocently held out my hand
for the Monster to shake.
He was surprised. Probably no one had ever touched
him since he was locked away in 1980 following a three year killing
rampage.
He stared into my eyes then gripped my hand and began
squeezing. His enormous hand, which had exerted so much pressure on
young girls’ necks that many had their eyes popped out by the pressure,
now turned its power on me.
My hand went numb. If I’d been wearing a ring my
fingers would have broken. Instead, the ends of my fingers began to
swell up like tiny red balloons, gorged with blood. I was about to
scream out when the Monster suddenly stopped and smiled. That’s when he
decided to grant me the one and only interview he ever made.
He now invited the the director of the prison in with
me, but only if the director's pretty daughter, who was acting as
interpreter, came in also.
He told the warden he had not touched a woman in a
dozen years. He would go forward with the interview but only if he could
touch the hands of the warden’s daughter.
Everyone gasped. We three were now in th cell with
the Monster. Guards aimed pistols through the bars. If there was
shooting I hoped I wouldn’t be shot. Then the brave girl held out her
hands and the Monster of the Andes, very carefully touched the ends of
his fingers to her wrists.
Would he grab her by the throat and kill her? The
moment passed. He released her and began talking. Later he told us that
at about 26, she was too old to attract him.
With pistols aimed at him continuously so he wouldn’t
suddenly strangle any of us, The Monster of The Andes answered every
question - questions no serial killer had ever answered before: What is
it like to kill? Why kill at all? And why such young girls?
Just as other men shave, shower and eat, Lopez killed
on a regular basis slaying two, sometimes three girls every week, every
month, every year over a three-year-long murder rampage.
Locked within his cell, watched by nervous guards
holding cocked pistols, the mass murderer told me, “I am the man of the
century. No one will ever forget me.”
Lopez killed his young girl victims by luring them
away from market places with the promise of giving them trinkets such as
hand mirrors.
He took them to secret hideaways where he had
prepared graves. Sometimes there were bodies of earlier victims lying in
the shallow pits.
Lopez lulled the innocents by holding them in his
arms like a loving parent before raping them at sunrise.
He explained: “At the first sign of light I would get
excited. I forced the girl into sex and put my hands around her throat.
When the sun rose I would strangle her.
“It was only good if I could see her eyes. I never
killed anyone at night. It would have been wasted in the dark. I had to
watch them by daylight.”
He said it took the girls five to fifteen minutes to
die.
“I was very considerate. I would spend a long time
with them making sure they were dead. I would use a mirror to check
whether they were still breathing.”
Lopez slit the girls' wrists or throats to see if
blood was still pumping. If they had somehow survived, he finished them
off.
“Sometimes I had to kill them all over again,” he
admitted. They never screamed because they didn't expect anything would
happen. They were so innocent.”
He explained how he snared his victims. “I walked
among the markets searching for a girl with a certain look on her face,
a look of innocence and beauty.”
“She would be a good girl, always working with her
mother. I followed them, sometimes for two or three days, waiting for
the moment when she was left alone. I would give her a pretty, shining
trinket, then get her to leave with me for the edge of town where I had
promised to give her another trinket for her mother.”
The killer also revealed he wanted to rape and kill
the children of visiting tourists.
“I often followed tourist families, wanting to take
their beautiful blonde daughters. But I never got the chance. Their
parents were too watchful.”
Lopez acted out gruesome 'parties' with his dead
victims propping them up in their graves and talking to them.
He told me and the shocked interpreter, “My little
friends liked to have company. I often put three or four girls in a
single hole and talked to them.
“It was like having a party. But after a while
because they couldn't move, I got bored and went out looking for new
girls.”
He explained why he only chose very young girls:
“It's like eating chicken. Why eat old chicken when you can have young
chicken?”
The monster's crimes came to light in 1979 when a
river overflowed near the town of Ambato in Ecuador and the bodies of
four girls were washed up on the banks.
Three had been strangled with such ferocity that
their eyes had popped out of their sockets. The fourth child's eyes were
still in her head frozen open in horror.
Three days later Lopez was captured as he tried to
snatch another girl. Luckily for her, the 10 year-old's mother, Carlina
Ramon Poveda, saw Lopez walking away hand in hand with her daughter
Maria and screamed.
An angry mob of market workers pounced on the
stranger, holding him down until police arrived.
He had been captured once before, revealed Lopez.
“Indians in Peru had me tied up and buried in sand to my neck when they
found what I had been doing to their daughters.”
“They had placed syrup on me and were going to let me
be eaten by ants. But an American missionary lady came by in her jeep
and promised them she would turn me over to the police. They left me
tied up in the back of her jeep and she drove away. But she released me
at the border of Columbia and let me go. I didn't hurt her because she
was too old to attract me.”
But he wasn’t able to get away from the police in
Ecuador. To find out whether Lopez had murdered the river bank children,
police placed undercover detective Pastor Gonzales in his cell.
Detective Gonzales said, “For 27 days I hardly slept,
afraid I'd be strangled in my bed. I kept a towel wrapped around my
throat. But I tricked Lopez into confessing by pretending I was a rapist
too. He boasted to me of murder after murder in Ecuador, Columbia and
Peru. It was beyond my wildest nightmares. He told me everything.”
Lopez took shocked police to the graves of 53 of his
victims, then refused to help further.
Two months later in 1980 he pleaded guilty to 110
charges of murder.
Police said the killer could have been charged with a
total of 350 murders of missing girls but additional trials in Columbia
and Peru would have been too complex and costly.
Lopez was already a convicted murderer before he
started preying on girls.
He had slit the throats of three men who had raped
him as an 18 year-old in a Colombian jail where he was serving time for
car theft.
Lopez said he knew from the age of eight that he was
going to be a killer.
He explained, “I was the seventh son of 13 children
of a prostitute in Tolima, Colombia. All the children slept on a big bed
behind a drawn curtain while our mother did her business with men.”
“My mother threw me out when I was eight after she
caught me touching my sister's breasts. She took me to the edge of town
but I found my way home again.”
“Next day she took me on a bus and left me off more
than 200 miles from home. There I was found by a man who took me into an
abandoned building and raped me over and over again. I decided then to
do the same to as many young girls as possible.”
He tried to explain his killings, comparing himself
to spectators who attend bullfights to watch the ‘Moment of Truth’ when
the fighting bull or Matador faces death.
Said the Monster of The Andes, “There is a wonderful
moment, a divine moment when I have my hands around a young girl's
throat.”
“I look into her eyes and see a certain light, a
spark, suddenly go out. Only those who kill know what I mean.”
“The moment of death is enthralling and exciting.
Someday, when I am released. I will feel that moment again. I will be
happy to kill again. It is my mission.”
That night I went to my hotel room, shaken, knowing I
had just met the Devil inside a man.
I locked my door carefully. The world’s worst serial
killer was out there in the night just a quarter mile away. I closed
down the wooden shutters to my room and carefully locked them. I was so
unnerved, I pushed a piece of furniture up against the door. Then I
drifted into a troubled sleep.
At 3 am I awoke to find a hand around my throat,
squeezing and choking me.
I screamed and fell onto the floor, almost breaking
my elbow. That’s when I discovered it was my own hand! Thank God!
In my disturbed sleep it had made its way protectiely
around my throat. I thought over and over again of the more than 350
young girls who had died alone and terrified at the hands of The Monster
and of the dark secrets he had told me.
Ever since that interview I keep hearing the voice of
the world’s most deadly serial killer laughing. “I will soon be a free
man again,” said Lopez, then 33. “They are releasing me on good behavior
in 1998 or 1999.”
For much of his eighteen years in captivity Pedro
Alonzo Lopez feared he would be extradited to Colombia where he would
have faced a firing squad in a country with a death penalty.
But it never happened. Instead, modern history's
worst killer was released into the night.
They came for Pedro Alonzo Lopez some hours after
midnight just after New Years 1999. Four loyal prison guards and an
officer took him out of solitary cell 29 in Penal Garcia de Moreno (to
which he had been moved) in Quito and with his powerful hands cuffed
behind his back, put the world's worst serial killer into the back of a
locked police van
Lopez must have been fearful. Would they simply kill
him for the 'reward' money offered for so many years?
But that night there were no attempts on his life
according to police and the Monster of the Andes went free.
Followed by two escort vehicles protecting the mass
murderer from possible attack by families of his 350 young girl victims,
he was driven to the Columbian border. The Ecuadorian government said
they were deporting him because he had no visa to stay in Ecuador.
Lopez was given a bottle of water, newer shoes and a
shirt and pants, a small amount of Columbian pesos and a package of food.
Then he was set loose.
A week later police found The Monster of the Andes
back in Ecuador, the best country for a serial killer because of its
lack of a death penalty. They quickly took Lopez back into Columbia and
told him to never return.
Meanwhile, in Columbia, Ecuador and Peru, families
who have heard that the Monster has been freed are watching carefully
over their young girls in what is being described as 'a life of terror'.
Phone lines to radio and television stations in the
three countries have been full of sightings and citizens calling on
police to act immediately and capture Lopez again.
Jose Rivas, commander of the Carchi police in
Ecuador, said Lopez was seen in the mountains between Ecuador and
Columbia. Police, who are carrying my photographs of Lopez are currently
searching without success.
Quizzed about the killer's release sometime in 1998
or 1999, Prisons Minister Pablo Faguero admitted, “Yes it does sound
strange, but that is our law. The law of no executions or sentences
longer than 20 years was passed over 100 years ago to protect presidents
of Ecuador from being killed following revolutions and military coups.
In the past they had been executed in horrific ways like being pulled
apart by four horses. The law seemed humane.”
Victor Lascaño, governor of Ambato jail, where Lopez
was first held before transfer to Quito, is terrified that he will
strike again.
Said, Lascaño: “God save the children. He is
unreformed and totally remorseless. This whole nightmare may start again!”
“He won't live long”, predicted the tough mother of
Maria Poveda, the young Ecuadorian girl who helped in his capture.
“It will be a kindness to the world for someone to
murder this fiend. The Monster of the Andes won't last long on the
outside. Maybe that is why we haven’t heard of more missing girls.
Perhaps someone, even the police in Columbia or Ecuador, have already
killed him. If they have, I hope they made him suffer.”
Since He was taken into Columbia for a second time.
Lopez has not been heard of since. There have been no cases of missing
young girls reported. No one knows if Pedro Alonzo Lopez is alive or
dead.
Police believed it likely that many fathers and
brothers of murdered little girls would go after The Monster of the
Andes when he was released. Perhaps the Monster of the Andes was finally
murdered by someone who felt they were doing humanity a service.
When news of the secret release of Pedro Alonzo Lopez
was first announced there was anger among victims families and some talk
of trying to change Ecuador's constitution to re-instate the death
penalty. But it soon faded away.
Since then Ecuador has become a training ground for
serial killers who know all they face is a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Serial killing is a growing crime throughout the
world. About 3% of all world-wide murders are thought to be at the hands
of serial killers.
But police around the world hope there will never be
another like ‘The Monster of The Andes.’