True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

 (Pedro Lopez: Picture credit: murderpedia)

As you go through this post (if you're not already familiar with this horrendous individual - so many things that I would like to call him and none of them are complimentary) you will understand why I was sitting going through my books and there would be moments where I would say profanities out loud because I could not believe the level of evil of this guy. No matter how many cases I have written about, I'm still a human being at the end of the day and some of them really affect me and this is one of them. So it is at this point where I should mention that I'm going to be talking about nightmarish things in this post to do with horrible things that have happened to children, abduction, sexual assault and other related evil. I will try my best as always to be as sensitive as possible whilst stating the facts.

The quotes I have included in this post, however, the ones that have come from that thing pictured above, is beyond my control. I have not edited them or changed them in any way for a reason because these are his words, this is the person he is and these are the horrendous things that he has done. I always aim to give you an insight on what really happened and I feel that it's important to include quotes to give you a glimpse at just how truly evil and twisted these people can be. 

So, in my fourth instalment of looking into some of the serial killers from the 1970s, I have been focusing on Pedro Lopez. We never can really tell when these people commit their first murders but I have included him in this decade of the 70s because (although he had committed murder in prison in 1969 whilst serving time for a petty crime) he was the most active in the 1970s and his victims were innocent girls from ages 8 to 12. The murders that he committed in prison in 1969 were revenge attacks after he had been assaulted. I don't class the two as the same. In 1969 he murdered fellow r**ists who had attacked him, as a form of revenge he sought them out and killed them (I'll go into all of the details in this post) whereas when he was out of prison, he was stalking, abducting, sexually assaulting and murdering children at an alarming rate so I class that as when his criminal career as a 'serial killer' began. 

I have tried to cut this post into bite size chunks as I have done previously in this series. I hope you find this post interesting and I hope that it doesn't affect you too much as some of the details make for very difficult reading. 

So let's get into who Pedro Lopez is...

1) Pedro Lopez came into the world in all the wrong ways you can imagine. He was born on the 8th of October 1948 in a poverty stricken area of Venadillo, Colombia. His birth was a result of an 'arrangement' between his mother and his biological father. His mother was a sex worker and already had 12 children to different fathers. His biological father was a married man who frequented sex workers and was a regular customer of Pedro's mother. He was also a small time, right wing politician who ended up being shot to death before Pedro was even born. So his introduction to the world was an absolute mess to begin with and things just got worse as the years rolled by. 

2) He lived with his mother and siblings in dire circumstances and lived off whatever earnings his mother made from prostitution, which wasn't much. Various men would come to the house and Pedro and his siblings would have to share the same bed just a few feet away from their mother's bed. It's hard to imagine 13 people in a bed but that's how it was. Their mother would be having sex with her customers in full earshot (and in many cases, full view of Pedro and his siblings) of her children. They were all in the same room with a thin strip of curtain separating their mother's bed from their own. 

3) Pedro always had a difficult relationship with his mother. It was clear that his mother wasn't maternal and resented the fact that Pedro's father had been killed because she thought that could have been a huge financial help. In her mind she was stuck with 13 children and no money and struggled. She never showed any love to her children and there was a lot of abuse. Pedro was beaten many times by his mother. When reading the beginnings of his childhood and not knowing what came after, you could forgive someone for feeling sorry for him. I knew of his crimes before I read about his childhood so I lack in sympathy in that department because of what he went on to do but I understand the path to which he was put on and I don't think anyone could have come out of that harsh beginning a fully well balanced person. There's lots of people who have come through abusive childhoods and don't go on to harm others. I see no excuse for what he was to go on and do. 

4) When he was just 8 years old (having witnessed all the regular, sordid goings-on with his mother and her customers) Pedro became curious about his sisters in an unsavory way and tried to act out some of the things he had seen the strange men doing with his mother. His mother found him touching his sister's breasts one day and all hell broke loose. Pedro was beaten and thrown out of the house to live on the street. 

''My mother threw me out when I was 8 after she caught me touching my sister's breasts.'' - Pedro Lopez. 

5) His mother made it clear that under no circumstances was he going to be allowed back into the family home and he was even banned from seeing his siblings. At 8 years old, Pedro found himself sleeping in alley ways and eating out of trash bins. He also begged for money and food and on one occasion a man stopped him in the street and asked him what he was doing there. Pedro explained that he was homeless and that his mother threw him out. This man appearing to be sympathetic promised Pedro some food and a nice place to stay at his home. Being naive and just a young child of 8 years old with no proper guidance in life or warnings about wandering off with strangers, Pedro followed the man. Instead of being taken to the man's house, he was led into a derelict building where the man forced him to undress before sexually assaulting him repeatedly. The man then left Pedro, who was traumatised, in pain and bleeding, lying on the cold, concrete ground. It was at this moment that Pedro claimed that he had lost his innocence and didn't care about anything anymore. 

6) So here he was at just 8 years old, without a father, abandoned by his mother, no food, no water, no money, no place to sleep and had just been horrifically sexually assaulted. A child's brain at that age is not capable of dealing with so many levels of trauma, even fully grown adults would struggle with that. So he became numb to everything and lived a life on the streets, begging, stealing, being sexually assaulted and sleeping wherever he could. A positive moment in the darkness was when an American couple decided to take Pedro into their home and give him a chance at life. They fed him, clothed him and helped get him sorted out with school. For Pedro, maybe he wasn't used to people being so nice to him or maybe the rot had already set in, but he repaid this nice couple's kindness by stealing from them and the school. Instead of facing the consequences, he alleged that a teacher had sexually assaulted him (there's no way of knowing if this was the truth) and he basically ran away. 

7) Pedro returned to the streets and somehow managed to survive, by this time he was becoming more hard as nails and had no feeling left, it was all about just surviving and what could he steal next. He went from stealing small items to cars. He realised that there was more money in stealing and selling cars and he was able to live on the money he made by doing this for quite a while. It all caught up with him though and he was arrested at the age of 18 for auto theft.

8) So he had his first experience of prison at the age of 18 and of course, like everything else, it was going to be a traumatic time in his life. The second day that he was there, four older men attacked him. They beat him and he was subjected to another horrendous sexual assault. Instead of telling prison officials what had happened, Pedro decided he was going to take the matter into his own hands. He decided that he wanted revenge and that he was going to kill them. He stalked each of them for a period of time and found out their routines. He made himself a 'Shiv' which is basically a makeshift knife. He individually attacked the four men over the course of about two weeks by cutting their throats with the shiv, Three of the men died and one survived. When the truth came out of what had happened, authorities came to the decision that Pedro had been acting in self defence and added an extra two years on to his sentence. 

9) When Pedro was finally released from prison he didn't come out of the gates wanting to change his life for the better and work through his trauma. Instead he carried the anger of everything he had endured before and decided that somebody was going to pay. He'd never received proper therapy for his traumatic childhood or the horrific r*pe by the four men so all of that pent up anger and scars from past trauma were still there. He was deeply angry about what had happened to him at 8 years old when he was sexually assaulted and the fact that the man had gotten away. He decided that he was going to be in charge of everything now and began to have sick fantasies about targeting young girls. 

10) He called it his mission to find as many young girls as possible and take their innocence away as well as their lives. In his mind, he was angry about his childhood and he wanted other people to suffer like he suffered. He also got a sexual kick out of it. He put his fantasy into a cold-hearted reality and began to seek out young girls, abduct them, sexually assault them and strangle them. 

''I lost my innocence at age of 8. So I decided to do the same to as many girls as I could.'' - Pedro Lopez 

11) Pedro Lopez's method of murder was very up close and personal as he would strangle his victims but insisted in looking into their eyes as he did so. He claimed that he enjoyed doing this because he would see the light in their eyes vanish and feel the life go out of them. 

''I walked among the markets searching for a girl with a certain look on her face of innocence and beauty. She would be a good girl, always walking with her mother. I followed them, sometimes for two or three days, waiting for the moment she was left alone. Once, I even spent two days following a tourist family. I was told they came from England or Scotland. I really wanted to take their beautiful blonde daughter, but I never got the chance. Her parents were too watchful. There is a wonderful moment, a divine moment, when I have my hands around a young girl's throat. Her fingers flutter briefly. The moment of death is enthralling. Only those who kill actually know what I mean. I look into her eyes and see a certain light, a spark...suddenly go out. It took them between 5 and 15 minutes to die. Sometimes I had to kill them all over again.'' - Pedro Lopez

''They never scream, they expect nothing. They are innocent.'' - Pedro Lopez

13) He later stated in an interview (the only one that he granted whilst in prison) that he would often spend time at the graves of his victims and would exhume the bodies so that he could sit with them and have a 'tea party'. He would call his victims 'my little friends'. 

14) He would target a children from different tribes and whilst in Peru he tried to abduct another child. A tribe by the name of Ayachucos caught on to what he was doing and they decided to punish him in their own way. He was stripped, beaten and then buried in sand with only his head exposed. They covered him in syrup and planned to just leave him there to die and let the ants and animals feast on him. This should have been the end of the story but just as all this was happening, an American aid worker and her team had spotted Pedro and tried to persuade the tribe to let him go. They said that they would see to it that he faced justice and the authorities would be informed. 

''They had me tied up and buried in sand to my neck when they found out what I had been doing to their daughters. They had placed syrup on me and were going to let me be eaten by ants. But an American missionary lady came by in her jeep and promised them she would hand me over to the police. They left me tied up in the back of her jeep and she drove away. But she released me at the border of Colombia and let me go. I didn't hurt her because she was too old to attract me.'' - Pedro Lopez

15) The Ayachucos took the lady at her word and got Pedro out of the sand but kept him tied up for safety reasons and placed him in the back of the lady's jeep. Now, in every book I have been reading this week, the outcome to this incident was that the lady contacted the authorities and they refused to deal with Pedro so he was deported. In Pedro's own words (which, in some cases you may want to take with a pinch of salt) the lady apparently drove him to the border, took him out of the back of the jeep, untied him and let him go. He said he never attacked her because he wasn't attracted to her and she was too old for him. Whatever the case, he was free again to carry on with his sickening murder spree. 

16) Pedro continued to travel extensively throughout Colombia and Ecuador carrying out his sickening crimes wherever he went. Young girls were going missing but their disappearances were not taking seriously because of their backgrounds and that it was a regular occurrence for young girls to be forced into human trafficking in many parts of those areas. Apparently this still happens to this day, girls are abducted by human traffickers and rich businessmen travel to these parts to take part in human sacrificing rituals. 

''I like the girls in Ecuador. They are not as suspicious of strangers as Colombian girls.'' - Pedro Lopez 

17) In April of 1980 there was a huge flood in the area of Ecuador where Pedro had been staying and where a number of his sickening crimes took place. Like a scene out of a horror movie, deceased bodies and remains of skeletons of (previously reported) missing young girls were suddenly revealed as the flood had opened some of the ground up. 

18) A few days after the horrific discovery of the remains, a lady had witnessed a strange man trying to abduct her daughter. The lady screamed for help and luckily other members of the public could see what was going on. It was Pedro up to his old tricks again and this time he was being held down by a few kind members of the public until the police arrived. 

19) When Pedro was arrested he was rambling nonsense and the police didn't know what to make of it. When he was questioned about the remains that had been found, he went silent. The police believed that they had their man but they needed more evidence. Pedro was placed in a cell and it was decided that a local priest was going to go undercover and join him in there. The idea was that the priest was going to pretend to be a child sex offender in an attempt to get Pedro to speak and confess his crimes. Although it was a terrifying experience for the priest and he whole ordeal went on for nearly a month, Pedro soon spoke up and once he started talking, he just could not shut up. 

''For 27 days I hardly slept, afraid I'd be strangled in my bed. I kept a towel wrapped around my throat. But I tricked Lopez into confessing by pretending I was a r*pist too, He boasted to me of murder after murder in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. It was beyond my wildest nightmares. He told me everything.'' - Father Cordoba Gudino. 

20) Pedro told his undercover cellmate that he had been responsible for 110 deaths of girls in Peru, as well as hundreds of others in Colombia and Ecuador. He estimated to have around 300 victims (investigators believe it to be more). Pedro went into great detail about everything and the police put him to task for it, he confessed and led the police to 53 of his deceased victims. It was a hell of a shock for everyone because they thought at first that Pedro was just a fantasist, a complete madman who was just making up stories about having all of these victims but then when he took them to the graves of the 53 victims, they realised what a dangerous man he really was and that there could be truth in everything else he said about the deaths he was responsible for. 

''If someone confesses to 53 you find hundreds of more you don't, you tend to believe what he says. I think the estimate of 300 is very low, because in the beginning he cooperated with us and took us each day to three or four hidden corpses. But then he tired, changed his mind and stopped helping.'' - Major Victor Lascano. 

21) The police charged him with 110 murders but they believed him to be responsible for as many as 400. He claims it's around 300. He was sentenced to life in prison but in Ecuador that only amounted to 16 years. 16 years is a pathetic sentence for all of the lives he cruelly took. He served the majority of his sentence and did his only one interview in prison (which clearly continued to highlight the fact that he was a sick predator who had not changed his evil ways and was boasting about how he was looking forward to getting out so he could start killing again). He even told the interviewer with a confident grin that he was going to be released early for good behaviour and that's exactly what happened. The removed him from prison two years early and drove him to the border. They didn't want him back in Ecuador but they found him back in the country a few days later where he was arrested and deported to Colombia.

23) Pedro managed to get to his mother's house and demanded that she gave him some money. She refused so he took some items out of her house to sell on the street. He then took what money he made and completely vanished!

24) For a while he was on the most wanted list on Interpol and whilst I was reading Michael Newton's excellent book Extreme Killers as part of my research, he stated that he checked Interpol for Pedro's record in August 2014 but it had been removed. I checked Interpol myself to see if the record had been put back up but it hasn't, so it's a mystery as to why it was removed unless they know something we don't?

''It will be kindness to the world for someone to murder this fiend, The Monster of The Andes won't last long on the outside. Maybe that's why we haven't heard of more missing girls, perhaps someone, even the police in Colombia or Ecuador have already killed him?. If they have, I hope they made him suffer.'' - Corvinia Poveda. 

25) Pedro Lopez has never been officially declared deceased or been returned to face justice. If he is alive right now, he'll be in his 70s so where is he? According to investigators, there's no evidence that he has continued to kill in recent years but they are interested in looking into a 2002 case and possibly a 2012 case which they think he may have been involved in but again it comes down to evidence. Would he still be able to carry out such murders as an elderly man in his 70s? 

26) Whilst in prison, rumours circulated around for years that the families of Pedro's victims all got together to put a price on his head. Apparently they were looking for anyone, a prison guard, a fellow inmate, basically anyone, to murder Pedro Lopez and they would pay the individual $25,000. This was never proven and the fact that he was still alive and able to get away says a lot. Nobody would have complained or missed him if he suddenly 'had an accident in prison'.

''Someday when I am released. I will feel that moment again. I will be happy to kill again, it is my mission.'' - Pedro Lopez 

27) The Guinness World records once listed Pedro Lopez as one of the most prolific serial killers of all time. Due to public outcry, they removed the title quite rightly so. Serial killing should never be glamourised or seen as an achievement to reach a certain level. 

And there you have it! A difficult case to get though and one that leaves you both seething and confused. It angers me that this monster never properly faced justice. His mother has a lot to answer for and has a part to play in this too. Was he born a monster or did he just become one because of his childhood trauma? Who knows the answer to this question. I wonder why Interpol removed his details and if the likes of Michael Newton don't know the answer to that question then I don't think anyone else will. Maybe he died? His whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. It probably sounds unprofessional but imagine if that aid worker had not driven by and rescued him, the number of lives that would have been saved and the heartbreak that would have been prevented. People like him don't deserve a place on this earth and I think about the numerous victims and their families, the pain of losing a child in such a horrendous way and then never getting that proper justice and closure. I can't imagine what that must be like but my heart goes out to them.

RIP to the little angels.

Further Reading & Sources:  

- Hunting Humans | Book by Michael Newton

- Extreme Killers | Book by Michael Newton

- The Big Book of Serial Killers | Book by Jack Rosewood & Rebecca Lo

- The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers | Book by Michael Newton

- Pedro Lopez | Wikipedia

- Pedro Lopez | Murderpedia

- Capital Punishment In Colombia | Wikipedia

- Pedro Lopez: Article | The Sun

- Pedro Lopez: Article | Encyclopedia Britannica

Thank you for joining me in this difficult post, if you've made it to the end, I really appreciate it as always. I hope you will join me in my next post in my 1970s Serial Killers series. I have a feeling you may know this individual quite well. 

Take care x