Serial Killer: Pedro López (Monster of the Andes)

[Midnight Man 2]

Pedro Alonso López, accused of raping and killing more than 300 girls across his native country, then Peru and Ecuador, and possibly other countries. Aside from uncited local accounts, López’s crimes first received international attention from an interview conducted by Ron Laytner, a long time freelance photojournalist who reported interviewing López in his Ambato prison cell in 1980. By his mid-teens, Lopez had left school and returned to Colombia where he took to stealing cars. He ended up in prison where he was brutally gang raped. He retaliated by killing each of his assailants and was released in 1978. Following his release, Lopez claimed to have raped and killed at least 100 girls from various Indian tribes throughout the region. In 1980, while in police custody, Lopez revealed that he had performed similar grisly acts with more than 100 others throughout Peru and Colombia. Police were skeptical at first, but Lopez escorted agents to his burial sites, where they uncovered 81 bodies. Though it is impossible to know exactly how many lives Lopez took, some guess the number to be more than 300. In late 1980, Lopez was convicted on multiple counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

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