Pedro Lopez: The link between his childhood and child victims

Rosanne Lai

Criminology

Dr. Esther Hanes

2022

Criminology is the scientific study of crimes, those who commit crimes, and those who fall victim to crimes. A main track within criminology is the study of serial killers, best defined as the killing of several victims in three or more separate incidents separated by weeks or more (Hanes, 2022). Criminologists have studied the patterns and behaviors of those who commit violent crimes to try and understand the reasoning behind their cruelty. Although there are no definite answers, trends have been found among serial killers to help track their patterns and apply to criminology and criminology law enforcement. One of the common trends among serial killers is an antisocial personality disorder which may lead people with this disorder to lack empathy for the people around them, behave in arrogant or cocky ways, or have an excessively cynical view of the world.

In most cases, they may even appear charming on the first meeting, though their charm is often glib and superficial. People with ASPD may also lack remorse and be irresponsible or impulsive (Hanes, 2022). Another trend among serial killers is parental neglect, abuse, or rejection. About 40% of those abused as children grow up to be abusers themselves (Hanes, 2022). Some more common characteristics of serial killers are early psychiatric problems, high rates of suicide attempts, fire starting, and bed-wetting during adolescence (Hanes, 2022). Many serial killers fit into the trends above, but this essay will focus on one specific serial killer active in the 70s who claimed to have murdered more than 300 young girls. It will discuss the effect of childhood traumas on serial killers, the characteristics which a sexual predator may hold, and victimization.

Pedro Alonso Lopez, otherwise known as the Monster of the Andes. Born in Colombia, Lopez murdered at least 110 young girls across Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador. Lopez’s childhood was not the most pleasant. He was born to a prostitute and faced abuse frequently as a young boy. Watching his mother being sexually objectified by different men every day drowned Lopez’s innocence at a very young age. As he lived a life where nothing was sacred, the eight-year-old found himself sexually molesting his sister. As a result, Lopez was kicked out of the horror-filled childhood home. When Lopez stood alone and terrified on a cold night in 1957, he realized how expendable he was, likely leading up to his victimization, according to Green (2016). Lopez desperately tried rejoining the family; however, he was prevented and denied by his mother from ever going back again. His mother dropped him off at the city border with no food, shelter, or support. Pedro was at his most vulnerable. To his luck, an older man found Pedro wandering the streets and stopped him. The man spoke to him and finally decided to help him. Although promising food and shelter for the young boy, the man’s intentions were far more sinister than a kind stranger, taking Pedro off the streets just to take the vulnerable young boy to an abandoned building to rape him repeatedly, tossing him back out onto the streets once again. Green suggests that this betrayal of faith ruined Lopez’s trust in humanity very soon, but mostly, his trust in adults (Green 2016).

After another year out on the streets, an elderly American couple found Lopez and was heartbroken by the vulnerable child. They were nothing but kind to the boy, but Lopez’s decision to live with the couple seemingly played a life-changing role in his life (Green, 2016). Although the elders were not directly related, Pedro was again molested by a male teacher at the school he had been enrolled in at 12. From that point, Pedro decided that he was tired of becoming the victim and soon developed anger within him. He carefully planned the theft of a large sum of money from the school’s office and fled back to the streets of Colombia, where he considered his only safe haven. 1963, when the civil war drew to an end, businesses reopened once again. Nevertheless, unfortunately for Pedro, he was neither trained nor educated well enough to take advantage of the growing economy (Green, 2016). This led him to another six years on the streets, begging for food when he eventually turned to petty theft. As a teen, he soon switched to car theft and became impressively adept at it. However, this fell apart at the age of 18 for Pedro. He was arrested and sentenced to seven years in jail for car theft. Two days in, he was gang-raped by four adult inmates. Furiously, Pedro swore never to let his abusers get away again; he hunted down the four men and killed them. However, Pedro was never sentenced for this murder as the judge decided that it was self-defense (Ryan Green, 2016). Thus began the journey of Pedro Lopez’s prolific killing and sadistic enjoyment of manipulation that led to the alleged killing of more than 300 young girls.

Lopez’s spatial behaviors when choosing locations are specific and calculated when traveling from country to country. A study by E. Beauregard et al. (2005) looked at serial killers’ spatial behaviors and found correlations that will later be discussed in this essay. After Pedro was released from jail, he traveled from Colombia to Peru, claiming that he had killed over 100 girls by 1978 before members of an indigenous tribe captured him. The captors were preparing to execute him when a missionary from the US intervened and persuaded them to hand him over to the state police. However, the police quickly released him. Pedro then returned to Colombia and later moved to Ecuador, claiming that he had killed about three girls a week (Wikipedia, 2022). In March 1980, after a flash flood unearthed the bodies of four victims, Pedro Lopez was to stalk his last victim. Carlina Ramon Poveda, a vendor at the local market, was setting up her stall with her daughter as Lopez entered the market posing as a peddler. He continued until the afternoon, approaching Carlina’s food stall and pretending to look into her pots and pans to see what she was cooking, meanwhile sneaking looks at Carlina’s 11-year-old daughter, Maria (Ryan Green, 2016). She soon became flustered by the man’s attention and told her mother. Lopez realized this abduction would not be easy, and he quietly slipped out of the market. However, Carlina already realized the man might be the man the entire country was searching for and chased the unknown man down with her other vendor friends. Authorities were immediately summoned, and Pedro Lopez was captured, babbling incoherently as he was sent to custody (Ryan Green, 2016). Finally, the monster was caught after he claimed to have killed 300 young girls. Lopez fits into the characteristics that make up a typical serial killer, who had been abused in childhood, becoming a child rapist as he was hurt multiple times by adults as a child and felt the need to feel powerful for once in his life, and suffers from an antisocial personality disorder.

Like many other serial killers, Lopez’s traumatic childhood is undoubtedly the origin of his prolific killing. The Macdonald Triad revisited, conducted by Leary, Southard, Hill III, and Ashman (2017), provides greater clarity of the research regarding the unique relationship between each element of the triad (i.e., enuresis, cruelty to animals, and fire setting) and various parental abuse (i.e., psychological, physical and sexual). The study consists of the Chi-Square Analysis and Binary Regression Analyses on 280 participants who had committed crimes between 1950 and the present. For Lopez, he could be included as a participant who had experienced parental abuse. However, it is unclear what type of parental abuse he had experienced. Therefore, this could lead to insignificant results. The cohort consists of serial killers who had provided “yes” or “no” data about one or more elements of both the Macdonald triad (enuresis, cruelty to animals, and fire setting) and parental abuse (psychological, physical, and sexual abuse).

Sources of information for each profile include books, court documents, newspapers, self-reports, and websites. The Chi-Squared test results showed no statistical significance between enuresis and sexual abuse. According to Mitchell and Aamodt (2005), the proportion of enuretic serial killers in the sample was significantly higher than that of the general population (18.5% vs. 1%). The next set of chi-square showed the relationship between fire setting and each discrete variable of parental abuse. Firesetting and psychological abuse show a statistically significant result at a medium effect size (Cohen, 1988). While Firesetting and physical abuse revealed a significant association, indicating a small to medium effect size. Firesetting and sexual abuse showed no statistically significant relationship. The final set of results evaluated the relationship between animal cruelty and each discrete variable of parental abuse. Animal cruelty and psychological abuse/physical abuse found a significant result, indicating a small effect size. Animal cruelty and sexual abuse revealed a non-significant result. The binary regression analyses illustrate that respondents who reported fire setting were more than eight times more likely than the general population to have experienced psychological abuse, those who reported enuresis were almost three times more likely to have experienced physical abuse, and associations between each triadic element and sexual abuse were not statistically significant. The data from this study showed that those who experienced psychological and physical parental abuse are more likely to have relationships with enuresis, fire setting, and animal cruelty than those who experienced sexual abuse (Leary Southard, Hill III, and Ashman (2017).

Although Lopez had experienced abuse from his mother, it was never proven that he was enuretic, set fire, or was cruel to animals. Therefore, this study does not fully apply to Lopez. Despite Lopez’s childhood consisting of exposure to obscenity due to his mother being a prostitute, the amount of sexual abuse from strangers was more impactful than Lopez’s mother’s abuse. It led to him becoming a child rapist instead of directing his anger towards his mother where else, proving that the study showing no significance between sexual abuse and the elements of the triad is valid.

Sex offenders often share characteristics that group them, such as routine activities, hunting patterns, and geographic profiling. As mentioned earlier, Lopez was precise when choosing locations when targeting child victims. Here is a summary of the article, Spatial patterns of sex offenders (E. Beauregard et al., 2005). It reviewed the theoretical, empirical, and practical issues related to the spatial behavior of sex offenders. To take a few examples out of this study, this essay will only discuss the age and organization of the killer and the correlation with their spatial behavior.

The study looked at correlations between crime spatial behavior and age as characteristics associated with spatial behavior. The study reported that in a study undertaken by Davies and Dale (1995) on a sample of 79 strangers rapists who committed 300 sexual offenses, results support the view that younger men tend to offend nearer to home. According to the study, Warren et al. (1998) found that older rapists (20 years or more) traveled farther than younger rapists. This could be attributed to greater impulsivity in the offense behavior of younger offenders, greater access to vehicles by older offenders, or simply because of the age-related development of the cognitive map (E, Beauregard et al., 2005). This result applied to Pedro as he had committed crimes at around the age of thirty, and most of them were in another country. This proved the result valid of older rapists traveling further, maybe due to being less impulsive– as Pedro was more precise about his choice of victims than younger rapists. In an interview with Ron Laytner (2009), Lopez reported, “I walked amongst the market searching for a girl with a certain look on her face, a look of innocence and beauty.”

The study also reported that the disorganized murderer would likely remain close to home while the organized sexual murderer would travel longer. As suggested by E. Beauregard et al. (2005), in a research done by Hazelwood and Warren (2000), it is illustrated that impulsive sex offenders are generally the least successful at evading identification and apprehension. Psychopathic traits often characterize their personalities, and they tend to perceive that anything in their environment is there for the taking. The impulsive offenders travel a shorter distance to offer and commit rapes over a smaller area, reflecting less specific victim selection criteria and crude attempts to prevent recognition and identification. This result is also valid for Lopez, as he acquired most characteristics of an organized killer (Hanes, 2022). He lured his victims, had a methodological way of killing, and mostly maintained control over the crime scene. In an interview with Ron Laytner (2009), he explained that Pedro killed his young victims by luring them away from markets places with the promise of giving them trinkets such as hand mirrors. He took them to secret hideaways where he had prepared graves, Laytner explained further, and sometimes there were bodies of earlier victims lying in the shallow pits. Lopez continued, “At the first sign of light, I would get excited. I forced the girl into sex and put my hands around her throat. When the sun rose, I would strangle her”. To further illustrate that Lopez lacked impulsivity when choosing his victims, in the interview with Laytner (2009), he disclosed, “I often follow tourist families wanting to take their beautiful blonde daughters. But I never got the chance. Their parents were too watchful”. The spatial behavior of Pedro Lopez applied to parts of the study making the results significant and finding a correlation between the distance traveled and the age and organization of the killer.

Lopez’s choice of victims was young, beautiful girls, mainly between 8 to 12. Killers, as such, led to studies that discussed the factors that led killers to choose specific victims. The subsequent research conducted by Beauregard and Martineau Crime Sci (2015) studied the application of CRAVED to the choice of a victim in sexual homicide. The study attempts to use the CRAVED (Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable, and Disposable) model to explain the differences between sexual homicide of children and sexual homicide of children and adults. The study results showed that amongst the 23 variables investigated, 11 are not significantly related to the type of sexual murder. Out of the significant results, Lopez’s case applies to Concealable, Available and Disposable indicators of choosing child victims. The study sample included 350 cases of sexual homicide committed between 1949 and 2010 in Canada, and 79 offenders out of 350 killed a child. However, all offenders in this sample are male, which could be inconsistent when the results are applied to female offenders. Regardless, the study does apply to Lopez, and the results are still significant for his choice of victims. All of the cases in the sample met the definition of sexual homicide provided by the FBI (Beauregard and Martineau Crime Sci, 2015).

The results for Concealable indicators were significant (or approaching significance). It showed that offenders who target adults are more likely to remain undetected, but the police recover the victim’s body quicker than those who target a child victim (approaching significance). Although Lopez remained undetected for the most part, most of Lopez’s victims were not discovered until he took the police to the crime scene himself, proving the number of days to recover body variable significant for Lopez. Available indicators showed that offenders who target children are more likely to find the victim at home or outside on the street, be living with another adult. Most of Lopez’s victims were lured away by an adult and mainly from a busy market, showing significant results of victims living with adults and outside on the street. Finally, the Disposable indicators showed that offenders who target adults are less likely to strangle but more likely to stab their victim to inflict fatal injury. This result is valid for Lopez, as he explained in an interview with Laytner (2009) that he would strangle his victims in the middle of his criminal activity. The results that applied to Lopez’s choice of victims showed the significance of the model CRAVED when comparing sexual homicide of children and adults.

Pedro Alonso Lopez, undoubtedly one of the most prolific killers ever, experienced many unfortunate incidents in his life that led to the making of a monster. Firstly, this paper looked at the elements of the Macdonald Triad and its correlation with parental abuse, and mainly, those that were sexually abused did not show a significant relationship with either one of the behaviors in the Macdonald triad. Lopez, who was sexually abused by strangers many times as a young boy, was never proven to have carried any behaviors in the Macdonald triad, validating the results. Next, this paper also looked at the spatial behavior of sex offenders. The study results showed a correlation between the distance traveled and age and organization. Lopez committed crimes in his thirties, categorized into older offenders, traveling between three countries, and murdering young girls along his journey. He also categorizes as an organized killer, which also validates that organized killers are more likely to travel a further distance to commit crimes and have a specific choice of victims. Lastly, there is the choice of adult and child victims of offenders. According to Beauregard and Martineau Crime Sci (2015), sexual murderers of children are more likely to present evidence of paraphilic behaviors and possess a sexual collection. This is significant to Lopez’s killing. Gibson (2014) mentioned in Serial Killers Around the World that Lopez’s confession told of having tea parties and playing morbid games with his victims. He propped them up in their graves and talked with them, convinced that his “little friends” enjoyed his company. This is a strong indication of paraphilic behaviors from Lopez, linked to his choice of child victims. Another theory suggested by Ryan Green (2016) is that the choice of child victims was a reflection of Lopez’s fear of adults and his revulsion for adult females. It could reflect his feelings about poverty and life as a victim of sexual abuse; it could also be that he saw death as a gift and that he was giving them the release none of his abusers had been ‘kind’ enough to provide him.

Nevertheless, those who did become the target of Lopez or their families are not to blame whatsoever. Theories of victimization suggest that qualities such as attractiveness and low income are more likely for the victim to experience crimes (Hanes, 2022). Those more attractive tend to be targeted by killers such as Lopez, who explained in an interview with Laytner (2009) that “I walked among the markets searching for a girl with a certain look on her face, a look of innocence and beauty”, and those from lower-income households tend to find valuables more appealing, this gave Lopez the opportunity to take advantage of young girls from poorer families. Environmental factors also contribute to the risk of those under the influence of becoming a victim. When the crimes were committed, the civil war in South America ended, leading poorer families to take their children to work in a market together to begin making some money finally. This led to the eventual killings by Lopez, luring attractive girls from low-income families with valuables out of a busy market to commit his murder. These are factors that increase the risk of one becoming a victim, and therefore, those who are in these environments are more likely to become a victim. Pedro Lopez, who committed murders due to factors of his traumatic childhood, was undoubtedly one of the most prolific killers worldwide.

REFERENCES

Leary, T., Southard, L., Hill III, J., & Ashman, J. (2017). The Macdonald Triad Revisited: An Empirical Assessment of Relationships between Triadic Elements and Parental Abuse

in Serial Killers. North American Journal of Psychology, 19(3), 627–640.

Beauregard, E., Martineau, M. (2015). An application of CRAVED to the choice of victim in sexual homicide: a routine activity approach. Crime Sci 4, 24. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-015-0036-3

Beauregard, E., Proulx, J., & Rossmo, K. D. (2005). Spatial patterns of sex offenders: Theoretical, empirical, and practical issues. Aggression and Violent Behavior 10(5), 579–603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2004.12.003.

Hanes, Esther. (2022). Criminology Practicum: Lecture 2: Serial Killers and Cults. [PowerPoint]. Criminology Practicum Lecture #2.pptx

Hanes, Esther. (2022). Criminology Practicum: Lecture 3: Cult and Victimization. [PowerPoint]. Criminology Practicum Lecture #3.pptx

Laytner, R. (2009). The Monster of the Andes. Pedro Alonzo Lopez Monster of the Andes (pp.1–8). Edit International.

https://issuu.com/edit_international/docs/pedro_a_lopez__new_article

Gibson, D. C. (2014). Serial Killers Around the World. The Global Dimensions of Serial

Murder. Pedro Alonso Lopez (pp. 101–111). Bentham Science Publisher Ltd.

Green, R. (2016). Colombian Killers: The True Stories of the Three Most Prolific Serial

Killers on Earth. In R. Green (Eds.), Pedro Alonzo Lopez (pp. 21–32). Ryan Green Publishing.