Pedro Alonso López (born 8 October 1948) is a Colombian

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

and

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who murdered a minimum of 110 young girls from 1969 to 1980 and claimed to have murdered over 300 victims across Colombia,

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and

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. Released from a Colombian mental facility in late 1998, his whereabouts are currently unknown. Aside from uncited local accounts, López's crimes first received international attention from an interview conducted by Ron Laytner, a freelance photojournalist who reported interviewing López in his Ambato prison cell in 1992. Laytner's interviews were widely published, first in the ''

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'' in July 1992, then in the ''

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'' and ''

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'' later that month, and over the years in many other North American papers and foreign publications, including the ''

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''. Apart from Laytner's account and two brief

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wire reports, the story was published in ''The World's Most Infamous Murders'' by Boar and Blundell, and has found its way into many serial murder anthologies, both in print and online. According to Laytner's story, López became known as the Monster of the Andes in 1980, when he purportedly led police to 53 graves in Ecuador of girls between 9 and 12 years of age. Laytner also claims that in 1983, Lopez was found guilty of the murder of 110 girls in Ecuador and confessed to an additional 240 murders in Peru and Colombia.

Early life

López was born to Benilda López De Casteneda. According to López, witnessing acts of prostitution by his mother while growing up had disturbing effects on his psychiatric health. Subsequently, his mother caught him fondling his younger sister in 1957, when he was eight years old, and evicted him from the family home. Pedro, who was reportedly the seventh child among 13 siblings, was polite as a boy and wanted to be a teacher according to his mother. Following this, the eight-year-old Pedro López had fled to

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, Colombia's capital city. Soon afterwards, he said, he had been abducted by a man and raped. At age 12, Pedro was taken in by a US immigrant family and enrolled in a school for orphans. He ran away after two years, according to one account, because he had been molested by a male teacher. Other sources claim that he ran away with a teacher.

Murders

López claimed that, during his incarceration for car theft, he was brutally gang-raped, and that subsequently, while he was still in prison, he hunted down the most brutal of his rapists and killed them. He said that after being released from prison, he moved to Peru and started murdering young girls. López claimed that, by 1978, he had killed over 100 girls before being caught and captured by members of an indigenous tribe. These captors were preparing to execute him, when a missionary from the US intervened and persuaded them to hand him over to state police. However, the police had quickly released him. López said that he had subsequently returned to Colombia and later moved to Ecuador; during this period, he claimed, he had killed about three girls a week. López said: "I like the girls in Ecuador; they are more gentle and trusting. More innocent."

Arrest

López was arrested when an attempted abduction failed and he was trapped by market traders. The

(AP) reported that he was arrested in March 1980, and confessed to killing 200 young girls and possibly up to 350 in total.

Release

According to

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, López "was arrested in 1980, but was freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of

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" In an interview from his prison cell, López described himself as "the man of the century" and said he was being released for "good behavior". An A&E ''

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'' documentary reported that he was released from an Ecuadorian prison on 31 August 1994, then rearrested as an illegal immigrant and handed over to Colombian authorities, who charged him with a 20-year-old murder. He was declared insane and held in the psychiatric wing of a Bogotá hospital. In 1998, he was declared sane and released on $50 bail, subject to certain conditions. He later absconded. The same documentary says that

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released an advisory for his rearrest by Colombian authorities over a fresh murder in 2002, and he is currently wanted by the police. His whereabouts are unknown as of 2002.

Coverage

The 2006 edition of the ''

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'' credited Lopez as being the "most prolific serial killer". The listing was removed after complaints that it made a competition out of murder.

References