Pedro López (Monster of the Andes)

Case background and investigation

Pedro Alonso López was born in 1948 in the Tolima department of Colombia. According to El Tiempo, he was first imprisoned in Bogotá in 1969 for car theft and was released in 1978. In the years that followed he moved between Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and news accounts say he targeted young girls, many from poor and indigenous families, whom he approached in markets and lured away with small gifts or coins.

He was arrested in 1980 in Ambato, Ecuador. Accounts of the arrest differ in detail, but El Telégrafo, Infobae and the Deseret News all describe him being seized at or near a market after trying to take a girl, with the child's mother and bystanders intervening. Infobae reports that flooding in Ambato had recently exposed the buried bodies of girls who had been reported missing.

In custody López confessed to Ecuadorian police. El Telégrafo reports that he admitted raping and killing more than 300 girls aged roughly 8 to 13 across the three countries; a 1994 El Tiempo report put the figure at more than 100 girls in Ecuador plus dozens in Colombia. News reports say he led investigators to graves in the Ambato area, with the number of bodies recovered given as 53 by the Deseret News and more than 60 by El Tiempo. The totals he claimed were never established in court, and El Tiempo reported in 1994 that in prison he had begun describing himself as only an accomplice.

An Ecuadorian court gave him 16 years, which was the maximum sentence available in the country at the time. Sources disagree on the number of killings covered by the conviction: Wikipedia states he was found guilty of three murders in January 1981 after being charged with 57, while other outlets cite 57 or 110. With reductions for good behavior he was released in 1994 and handed over to Colombia.

El Tiempo reported on September 6, 1994 that López had been taken to El Espinal, Tolima, to answer accusations concerning the rape and murder of children there some 14 years earlier, and that a courthouse fire had destroyed much of the original file. He was then held in a psychiatric facility. According to El Tiempo and Infobae, he was declared mentally sound in 1998 and released on a small bail payment with a requirement to report to the authorities.

He did not remain in contact. El Tiempo reports that the last confirmed sighting was on September 22, 1999, when he renewed his identity card in Bogotá, and that an Interpol alert was issued in 2002 in connection with another child's death. His identity document was cancelled in 2005, but records conflict as to whether he died. As of the most recent reports located, his whereabouts are unknown.