Notorious: A word reserved for household names such as Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer. But there exists ironically, the least known about, but likely one of the worst killers to exist in the modern era. And after learning about him, I am sure you will not forget his name.
Pedro Alonso Lopez — a name synonymous with child rape, murder, and depravity. This man was put through thorn after thorn (ranging from sexual assault to drug addiction) in his childhood, being subject to a gang rape as a young adult, and began a quiet rampage on unsuspecting 9-12 year-old South American girls until he was caught in Ecuador and charged with 110 murders. The horrifying part is that 110 is only about ⅓ of the total murders committed by Pedro. Numbers have risen to be as high as 350[2], the highest in the last 4 centuries.
One October 8th, 1948 in Santa Isabel, Columbia, Pedro’s mom, Benilda López de Castaneda, had just given birth to a child she thought that would never be engendered. She was a married prostitute having an affair with her “husband” Madardo Reas. The reason for Castaneda’s doubts on giving birth were all set on her secret lover, Reas, who was fighting in the Colombian Civil War when he was tragically shot and killed by rebels on April 9, 1948. After hearing this, only being three months pregnant with Pedro at the time, Castaneda started experiencing stress. This stress combined with her pregnancy caused Castaneda to fear her body would kill the baby. Despite the odds stacked against Pedro, he was born six months later, a day that would go down in infamy as the birth of a monster.
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As a young boy, Pedro was described by his mom as being very polite, loving to help other students with school. He wanted to be a teacher and was encouraged by his mom, peers, and teachers to continue on this venture. He even sometimes helped his 13 siblings with their schooling which was applauded by his ecstatic mother. But this is where Pedro’s happiness and prosper ended.
It began with his mother’s occupation, prostitution. An important part of Castaneda’s job was that she would serve her clients in her dilapidated shack of a home. As a result, frequently Pedro would accidentally walk in on his mother and her clients, and even more frequently was beating, not only by her clients but by the only person Pedro could look up to and trust, his own mother. Pedro was quoted with saying: “That woman was violent. It was my understanding that she was sick in the head. Because that was not the proper way to punish your children. She would punish me with such violence” -Pedro Lopez on his mom.
Sometimes he was beaten just because Castaneda was angry that day or was beaten by her clients. Despite the conflicting story told by Castaneda to police and reporters, Pedro insisted upon this fact that his mother was in fact, sick in the head. Something he claimed was the root of all his depravity. As previously mentioned, Pedro was born fatherless, a status that would never be shaken off. This status caused a number of “daddy issues” in the ensuing years. And without a proper father figure, Pedro lacked a moral compass which compromised his mental and emotional state as a whole. At the age of eight years old, Pedro started to live in the streets of Bogota. This was the cause of one of two conflicting stories. The first goes as follows: Pedro ran away himself after bearing witness to his mom’s sexual acts and the ensuing abuse she received.
In an interview Castaneda said: “That night I cried and cried and looked all over for him and I couldn’t find him. Then I went to a man who was a fortune teller and he said Pedro went in a car with a man from Cani. I borrowed money to go and I cried and cried. They killed his father and now my son was stolen” -Benilda Lopez de Castaneda on her son’s “kidnapping”[2]
The second story was that Pedro was caught molesting his eight year-old sister and was thrown out as a result. Of the two, it is more likely the first as Pedro himself disclosed he “ran away”, but there is a chance Castaneda was lying about her side of the story and refused to disclose she kicked him out out of shame. No matter the story, the paths diverge to the same outcome– Pedro wound up living in the streets of Columbia’s capital city.
With this new life, Pedro had to adapt to the violence that surrounded him. He joined a gang of gammies (homeless children) for protection where they employed the use of knives and belts to fight other gammies for places to sleep. While on the streets, Pedro also got addicted to a dangerous street drug, Masuka, which was an impure form of cocaine. He was hardened by age 9, learning to survive on pure violence and hatred.
A turning point for Pedro was when a man offered him a bed and hot meal, a veil for the man’s true intentions. Once he had Pedro the man took him to an abandoned building and raped him. To add insult to injury, the police were of no help as they could care less about gammies, just leaving them to their own.
After this traumatic experience at age 10, Pedro vowed to only ever go out at night. It was during this time he was found by an American elderly couple living in Bogota who pitied and enrolled him in a school for orphans. For a time, Pedro said his life was mediocre but a step up from the streets, and for a mere two years, it remained stagnant and semi stable until tragedy struck. A male teacher Pedro had trusted molested him. With this, Pedro was done. Stealing some money from the school’s office and abandoning his new family, he went back to the only place he could always call home, the streets.
Pedro had lived on the streets for 13 years until in 1969, he was arrested at age 21 on one count of grand theft auto, a frequent crime in Bogota. He was sentenced to two years in prison. But two days into his sentence and he was already sexually assaulted. But this was unlike anything Pedro had experienced before. This was a brutal three-man gang rape. As revenge, Pedro fashioned a shank and murdered his assaulters.
“When I was locked up in Columbia, I was taught how to defend myself. I don’t deny that *unintelligible* I killed to endure, but the warden said don’t worry. -Pedro Lopez on his experience in prison[2]
The warden testified that the murders were in self defense and there was no time added to his sentence. Pedro was released at the age of 23, in 1971, and swore to never be a victim, instead to enact his own brand of justice.
“Being a child, I lost my innocence. They dishonored me. I was a small child, very innocent. It was something I wanted to forget. I don’t deny that it affected me. I have always wanted to punish those responsible.” -Pedro Lopez on his first sexual assault[2]
Thus, a killer was born. Although Pedro’s first kill date was unknown, it can be estimated that it happened sometime in 1971. Pedro had a basic and very repetitive style of killing. First, he would act as a salesman who was lost and asked for directions from a young 9-12 year old girl. He would only lure in poor, less-educated hispanic girls as they were “he would act helpless to appeal to the children,” a charm of sort. Then he would take them to a place where their screams could not be heard, complete with a pre-prepared grave. First came rape, then slept with her, and raped her the next morning. His routine ended with strangulation. Pedro would usually give the girls very crude burials. Sometimes shallow graves, sometimes just throwing their body under or behind something.
A particularly heartbreaking story was that of 11 year-old Ordencia Garces Lozada. May 5, 1979, in the Amparro region in Ecuador. Young Lozada was selling newspapers to help her pregnant mother provide for her family. Enter Pedro. He asked Lozada to be his guide to the city and gave her 100 Sucres ($10) in return. From there, Pedro led her to the outskirts of town under a bridge where he raped, beat, and strangled her and threw the body in a ditch where he covered her with the same newspapers she sold. When she did not come home, Lozada’s father, Leonidas Garces went searching. He was quoted saying the police were against the people, that they saved Pedro[2]. Lozada’s sister, Rosa Garces Lozada, mirrored her father’s opinion expanding that “only the rich have access to the police. To justice.” The body was later found heavily decayed, still covered by newspapers.
Back in the early 70’s though, Pedro had been killing and raping for several years. This continued without a hitch until around 1978 when he was captured by the Ayachucos tribe (Peru) after luring one of their nine year-old girls away. Once captured, he was supposed to be subject to tribal law where he would have gotten buried alive with only his head above ground, and had honey poured on his face while the tribe watched ants eat his honey soaked flesh. Luckily for Pedro, an American missionary woman convinced the chiefs to release Pedro to the Peruvian police. This backfired though as he was not prosecuted, instead taken to the Columbian border and set free. He promptly made his way back to Ecuador and in the ensuing year alone, Pedro committed at least 125 murders until the fatal spring of 1980.
Spring of 1980: Carlos Jacome, a successful baker, submitted a missing person’s report on behalf of his nine year old daughter, Ivanova Jacome. Due to the father’s high place in the social hierarchy, the police looked into the case. Soon news of the other missing girls spread and Ecuador was on high alert. On March 8th, the body of a little girl was found in a shack in La Floida, a farm near the Ambato region. News coverage warned the citizens of a killer in their midst. A street vendor, Carlino Ramone, was notified by her daughter that a man was “looking at me ugly and motioning me to come over to him”. The mom got a group of vendors to apprehend the man and he was questioned by police.
Initially, the Monster refused to cooperate with the police. Only after an undercover cop, Pastor Cordova Gudino, was sent in did the Monster start talking. Because of the Monster’s “daddy issues” and nature, Gudino got the front row seat to the Monster’s crime theatre. Gudino even reported that the Monster was calling him “papa”, likely because he seemed like the only thing close to one he had ever had. Gudino was so disgusted by the Monster’s crimes, he had to leave the cell. Only an explanation from the man himself can do justice to the sadism of his modus operandi.
“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. At the first sign of light, I would get excited. I forced the girl into sex and put my hands against 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. It took them between five and 15 minutes to die. Sometimes I had to kill them all over again. They never screamed because they didn’t expect anything would happen. They were innocent.” -Pedro Lopez on killing[3]
During this explanation, Pedro was described as being indifferent, even relishing in his work. He continued on saying he prefered victims that appeared innocent. Sometimes he would even play demented games with his victim’s lifeless corpse such as having conversations and “parties”. In Pedro’s words:
“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 looking for new girls.” -Pedro Lopez on his “corpse parties”[3]
Pedro recollected these parties with nostalgia, yearning for more. When questioned on his preference for young girls he said it was like eating chicken. “Why eat old chicken when you can have young chicken?”[3]. Pedro continued: “I like the girls in Ecuador, they are more gentle, trusting, and innocent.”[1] With the public’s knowledge of these crimes, the Monster of the Andes was born.
Lopez confessed to 240 murders. Funny enough, he was charged with over 50 murders, and even with the confession, only an additional 60 were added to the list. Of course, the police did not originally believe the height of this number. But to almost like divine intervention, a flash flood washed up around 57 bodies, all little girls. Some of the bodies had been strangled so hard, their eyeballs were bulging out of their head or even hanging out completely by their thin red stems.
When Lopez was identified, those living in the Ambato region were fuming. Not only was their killer reveling in his work but the laws would back up Lopez He was smart and knew that the laws of Ecuador were on his side. He knew that no matter how many girls he killed, whether one murder or a thousand times that, there was no consecutive sentencing. In other words, Lopez could only be charged with one count of murder.
After two years in Ambato’s prison, Lopez was sent to the Garcia Moreno in Ecuador where, and much to public outcry, he only served 12 years. Lopez had served a total of 14 years, being released early for good behavior on August 31, 1994. By age 31, Lopez was the most prolific serial killer the world had ever seen, and by 45, he was set free. It may have been 14 years but to the families of the victims, it felt like mere days. They wanted to become the law and take revenge on Lopez to account for what the court did not do. But these plans were never realized because Lopez’s stay in Ecuador was short lived. Just one hour after being released, he was detained for illegal immigration. The district’s superintendent had ordered him back so he could be deported to Columbia. As Lopez was being escorted to a vehicle to leave Ecuador, there was a crowd surrounding the path throwing things at Lopez and shouting things like “Die, die, die!” There was even a police escort to make sure Lopez was not harmed. Ironically, the one thing the police were competent at was used to transport one of the most universally hated individuals in South America at the time.
Once Lopez was back in Columbia, he was immediately detained. Unlike Ecuador, the laws were much harsher to where Lopez could be locked away for good. The police were able to link a single 20-year-old murder back to it. They had all the evidence stacked against he but despite this, Lopez’s was found not guilty via insanity. Lopez was held in the psychiatric ward of the Carcel Distrial in Bogota up until 1998. Incredibly, he was determined sane and released on a $50 bail.
“It could either be that the psychiatrist really felt he had recovered or that he faked it. I mean he went on for 10, 12 years killing people without being caught. He was smart. He could have faked being better. He could have faked change.” -Alexandra De La Torre Jaramillo, Criminal Psychiatrist [2]
Lopez was released on two conditions: he had to continue to receive psychiatric treatment and had to report monthly to a judge. These conditions were never met. Looking back on all Lopez experienced throughout his life, it seems to be his childhood that is the root of all his evil. From being consistently beat between ages one and nine to experiencing numerous sexual assaults by those he trusted, these events took a serious toll on Lopez’s mental health and, sexual assaults especially, were even used as excuses and M.O. to justify what he did.
Despite the over 110 confirmed, and 240 more confessed murders, the first thing he did was return to he home in Santa Isabel. For the first time in 19 years, Benilda Lopez de Castaneda got to see her son. The first thing she said he did was tell her to kneel down so he could bless her. She responded by saying “he is the son who kneels down before the mother.”[2] He did and thus was the end of this sweet moment. Lopez showed his cruelty saying “I came to ask about my inheritance”. After being informed of her extreme destitution, Lopez took his mom’s only belongings, a bed and small chair and went out on the street. From there, he yelled he was selling these items and if they were not sold, they would be burned. As this was occuring, Castaneda was crying pleading with her son to not do this and knowing Lopez, he did not listen. Eventually, a woman bought the items and Lopez pocketed the money.
And that was the last time the Monster of the Andes was ever seen. Some think he went back to his original killing grounds in the country parts of Ecuador. Others believe his past has caught up to he and the families of the victims have killed him. But his mother believes otherwise. She is an extremely religious individual and believes that when someone dies, you would know, and she had not felt any sign yet.
20 years after Lopez was originally arrested, the maximum prison sentence for murder was changed to 25 years. Then in October 2002, INTERPOL, an alliance of police forces in over 190 countries, released an advisory on behalf of Columbia for any information as to the whereabouts of Lopez. A dead girl turned up matching Lopez’s modus operandi. But nobody was ever able to find him. He could still be free at the ripe old age of 70, roaming around anywhere, maybe with a changed identity, living among us. He once prophesied: “Someday, when I am released, I will feel that moment again. I will be happy to kill again. It is my mission.”
