Pedro Lopez: The Monster of the Andes
Final Justice
(Louis Myrie/LMI)
Just days after his initial confession, Pedro was taken from police headquarters in leg irons so that he could direct a police caravan to his various dump sites. The investigators' doubts soon began to vanish when Pedro led them to a secluded area in the vicinity of Ambato, where they discovered the remains of 53 girls, aged eight to twelve. Throughout the day, Pedro led them to 28 other sites, however no other bodies were discovered. Some of the investigators felt that animals had most likely scattered the remains and floods had washed what little was left away.
Upon arrival back at police headquarters, Pedro was quickly charged with 57 counts of murder, however Pedro saw the ante boosted to 110 as a result of his detailed confessions. The director of prison affairs, Victor Lascano, later explained: "If someone confesses to 53 you find, and hundreds more, you tend to believe what he says." Lascano also told reporters that, "I think his estimate of 300 is very low."
No information is readily available on Pedro's brief trial, however it is known that sometime in late 1980, Pedro Alonso Lopez was convicted on multiple counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
One chilling pattern that emerges about serial killers in general is the number of them reported to have been the children of prostitutes. Henry Lee Lucas, one of this century's most infamous serial killers, apparently started his rampage with the rape and killing of his own mother, a prostitute.
"It's part of the profile," former FBI profiler Robert Ressler once said. "Serial killers very often have obsessions of some kind with their mothers. A love-hate relationship, in popular language. These moms usually aren't candidates for mother of the year, although they aren't necessarily abusive either. The common thread seems to be the sexual element, mothers who were very seductive, who had many sex partners of which the son was aware. Of course, the children of prostitutes are more likely to be exposed to this type of behavior."