Pedro Alonso López is a Colombianserial killer, who was sentenced for killing 110 girls, but who claimed to have raped and killed more than 300 girls across Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. Aside from uncited local accounts, López's crimes first received international attention from an interview conducted by Ron Laytner, a longtime freelance photojournalist who reported interviewing López in his Ambato prison cell in 1980. 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 over the years in many other North American papers and foreign publications, including the National Enquirer. 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, 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 led police to 53 graves in Ecuador. The victims were all girls 12 years of age. In 1983, he was found guilty of the murder of 110 girls in Ecuador. He further confessed to an additional 240 murders in Peru and Colombia.
Early life
López's mother was a prostitute named Benilda López De Casteneda. According to López, witnessing acts of prostitution while growing up had disturbing effects on his psyche. Subsequently, his mother caught him fondling his younger sister in 1957, when he was eight years old, and evicted him from the family home. Following this, López fled to Bogotá, Colombia's capital city. He says he was 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 after two years because he was allegedly molested by a male teacher. An alternative account says he ran away with a teacher. At 18, he stole cars for a living and sold the cars to local chop shops.
Murders
During his incarceration for car theft, López claimed he was brutally gang-raped and that he hunted down his rapists and killed the most brutal while still in prison. He said that after his jail term, he started murdering young girls in Peru. He claimed that, by 1978, he had killed over 100 of them and that he had been caught by a native tribe, who were preparing to execute him, when an American Christian missionary intervened and persuaded them to hand him over to the state police. The police soon released him. He said he moved to Colombia and later Ecuador, killing 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 Associated Press reported that he was arrested in March 1980, and that he confessed to killing 103 girls, including 53 whose bodies had been found. In January 1981, he was convicted of three murders, and had confessed to three hundredsexual assaults and stranglings. The police only believed his confessions when a flash flood uncovered a mass grave containing many of his victims.
Release
According to the BBC, López "was arrested in 1980, but was freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of ." 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 Biography 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 Interpol released an advisory for his rearrest by Colombian authorities over a fresh murder in 2002, and he is currently wanted by the police. There is currently a shortage of information regarding López. His whereabouts are unknown as of 2020.
Coverage
The 2006 edition of the Guinness World Records credited Lopez as being the "most prolific serial killer". The listing was removed after complaints that it made a competition out of murder, as well as comments that it overlooked killers such as Thug Behram, who reportedly murdered around 900 people in India.
