Pedro Lopez: The Monster of the Andes

Pedro Lopez in
custody

Once back at police headquarters, Pedro refused to cooperate with authorities and remained silent throughout their lines of questioning. Investigators soon realized that they would have to employ a different strategy in order to get their suspect to talk. One of the officers soon suggested that they dress up a local priest, Father Cordoba Gudino, in prison garb and place him in a cell with Pedro. The plan was for Father Gudino to win the suspect's confidence and get him to discuss his crime.

It did not take long for Pedro to begin talking, and by the next day he had revealed such repulsive acts of violence to the padre, that he could hear no more and asked to be taken out of the cell. Following a brief interview with Father Gudino, investigators confronted Pedro with their newly acquired evidence and he finally broke down.

Pedro confessed to investigators that he had murdered at least 110 girls in Ecuador, 100 in Colombia, and "many more than 100" in Peru. "I like the girls in Ecuador," he told them. "They are more gentle and trusting, more innocent. They are not as suspicious of strangers as Colombian girls." In the course of his confessions, Pedro blamed his crimes on his hard life and lonely adolescence. "I lost my innocence at age eight," he explained, "so I decided to do the same to as many young girls as I could." When asked how he was able to pull off his self-professed crimes, Pedro informed them that he often times trolled village markets for selected targets with "a certain look of innocence." He always searched for his victims in full daylight, because he did not want darkness to hide their throes of death from him. When asked what he meant by this, Pedro explained that he would first rape his victim, and then strangle them as he stared into their eyes. He claimed to feel deep pleasure and sexual excitement watching their life fade before him. He went on to state that the horror would even continue after their death — he would often times act out gruesome tea parties with the bodies of the dead little girls — propping them up and talking to them.

Police were initially skeptical of Pedro's grisly, almost incredible confessions, and liaisons with Peru and Colombia were unable to substantiate them. As Pedro realized that investigators doubted the truthfulness of his claims, he offered to lead them to several burial spots throughout the country. With little else that they could do, investigators agreed and put the plan into action.