A man known as the “Monster of the Andes” has confessed to the killing of hundreds of young girls across South America. Despite being caught, he went in and out of prison for years, and his whereabouts remain a mystery today.
Pedro Alonso López was born in Colombia’s Tolima region in 1948. His father was fatally shot before he was born, and his mother, a s*x worker, raised him and his 13 siblings in poverty.
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Trigger warning: The following story includes references to crimes and child assault
López claimed he grew up in a violent household and that his mother would often sleep with his stepfather in front of him. He also claimed he was kicked out of his house at the age of eight after his mother saw him touching one of his sisters inappropriately.
The “Monster of the Andes” subsequently spent time homeless, during which he said he was assaulted by a grown man who had lured him to a house with the false promise of shelter.
In Bogotá, López joined a gang of street children and took different substances while struggling with malnutrition.
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When he was 12, he was briefly adopted by an American missionary family but ran away after stealing money from them.
At age 18, he was jailed for car theft and sent to Bogotá’s violent La Modelo prison. There, he was reportedly r*ped by three inmates, later taking revenge on them with a makeshift knife. His sentence was extended by two years, as the acts were considered self-defense.
Many believe the Colombian national remains fugitive
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After his release in 1978, he drifted through Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, where he murdered over 100 young girls, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in history.
López targeted girls from poor or Indigenous backgrounds, often vendors at local markets or children walking alone. He would reportedly lure them by offering them gifts, money, or asking for directions.
When he was alone with the victims, he would assault and strangle them, burying their bodies in shallow graves.
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In interviews from jail, López claimed he chose his victims because “they were easy to take” and added, “I lost my innocence at the age of eight. So I decided to do the same to as many girls as I could.”
The “Monster of the Andes” stated that his victims were Indigenous girls and not “white” girls because “their parents watched them too closely,” as per Infobae.
He committed his monstrous crimes after serving time in prison for car theft
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By 1979, the rising number of missing girls in Ecuador had drawn suspicion from authorities, but they concluded the disappearances were cases of human trafficking.
The following year, a natural event exposed López’s killings: the areas surrounding Ambato, Ecuador, were hit by flash flooding that unearthed the remains of four young girls who had been reported missing.
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Her mother, who recognized López from frequently seeing him in the local market, grabbed him by the arm and shouted at him. She told bystanders that López had tried to take her daughter and was potentially responsible for the killings of the young girls unearthed by the flood.
Local merchants were able to overpower López and turned him over to the police.
López’s victims were young girls from poor or Indigenous backgrounds
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After days of silence in custody, he confessed to an undercover officer posing as a fellow inmate that he had strangled hundreds of children. He then offered to lead police to the burial sites of his victims.
The bodies of 53 girls, aged eight to thirteen, were found in a forest near Ambato.
In jail, López boasted about strangling one hundred girls in Colombia, at least 110 in Ecuador, and “many more” in Peru.
On 27 January 1981, he was found guilty of 57 counts of murder and received a sentence of 16 years, the maximum prison sentence available in Ecuador at the time. The families of many missing children were reportedly present in the courtroom.
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López was frequently interviewed by journalists throughout the early 1990s and often made contradictory statements about his crimes, sometimes admitting to them and other times claiming he had been framed or was merely an accomplice.
He was released from prison in 1994, two years early, for “good behavior” and was subsequently deported to Colombia.
In Colombia, the criminal was transported from El Espinal to the capital, Bogotá, after vigilantes threatened to take his life. Families of his victims had reportedly placed several bounties on him, the highest being $25,000.
López led authorities to the burial site of his victims, where 53 bodies were found
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After being convicted of the murder of 12-year-old Flor Alba Sánchez, López was sent to the psychiatric ward of La Modelo prison, having been declared as exhibiting “unhealthy personality traits.”
In 1998, doctors declared him sane and released him on a bail equivalent to $70, on the condition that he periodically report to the police and attend appointments with his therapist—conditions he never fulfilled.
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The last reported sighting of López was in September 1999, when he visited the National Civil Registry in Bogotá to renew his citizenship card under a false name.
Three years later, the Colombian National Police and Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest over another murder in Colombia, but he was never found.
He is considered one of the most prolific serial criminals in history
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Officials deactivated the warrant in 2005 after claims that an abandoned body found in Colombia had been identified as López. However, forensic evidence was inconclusive, and many believe he’s still alive.
“We still ask ourselves if he’s alive,” one Ecuadorian police investigator said in 2002. “Because if he is, there is no reason he wouldn’t kill again.”
Many people were outraged by López’s release from jail for “good behavior”
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