DRIFTER ADMITS KILLING 55 GIRLS: THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, APRIL 2, 1980
By the time the story reached Salt Lake City, the police of Ecuador had spent weeks being led from one burial place to the next by the man who said he had made them. On Tuesday, April 1, 1980, they told United Press International the search was over. A 31-year-old Colombian drifter, they said, had confessed to sexually attacking and killing at least 55 girls between nine and fourteen. The Salt Lake Tribune ran it the next day and named him only as Alonso Lopez. He was Pedro Alonso López, and the confession made him known as the Monster of the Andes.
Police described a mild-mannered man who had worked odd jobs and lured girls to lonely places with promises of money or candy, then strangled them. In the first five days after his arrest he took them to the bodies of four girls around Ambato, buried in shallow graves or dragged out of sight and covered with rubbish. Then the tour widened, from Cuenca in the south to Imbabura near the Colombian border, to Riobamba and the coastal provinces of Manabí and Esmeraldas. The most bodies, sixteen, were found around Quito. Some places he could no longer find, and he apologized to police for being unable to locate them.
The story names none of the girls. One was Hortensia Garcés Lozada, eleven, a newspaper seller he met in Ambato and paid a hundred sucres to follow him; he led police to her body under a bridge in the canyon of the Ambato River. Another was Ivanova Jácome, nine, taken from a parking lot on her way to school. He had been caught at last in an Ambato market, trying to lead a little girl away, and the women who worked the stalls would not let him go. The story closes on Ecuadorian law, under which he would be prosecuted only for the first crime discovered.
This is a wire report of what the police said, written before any trial, and the figure in its headline is his own confession. The paper dates his arrest to February 9; the date most often cited is March 9, 1980. It says he had come to Ecuador seven years earlier, but he was in prison in Bogotá until 1978. Police recovered the remains of fifty-three girls between eight and thirteen and accepted his count of 110 killings in Ecuador; only seventeen of the dead were identified. What the Ambato court actually convicted him of is unclear, as accounts differ, but he was sentenced to sixteen years and released in 1994. His claims of a hundred killings in Colombia and many more in Peru were never verified.
The Salt Lake Tribune printed this United Press International dispatch on page 10A on April 2, 1980, with no staff byline. The scan comes from Utah Digital Newspapers, the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library collection, which rates the issue In Copyright. No copyright notice was found on the dispatch or on the issue. The citation and the library's rights rating are reproduced under the scan.
Transcribed word for word from a single narrow column, with no word marked illegible. The wire's inconsistencies are left alone: it uses both "Ecuadorian" and "Ecuadorean," and it calls him "Alonso Lopez" throughout, without his first name or the accent. The crop takes in a thin strip of the neighboring column at its right edge; that text belongs to another story and is not transcribed.
Transcription
Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.
Drifter Admits Killing 55 Girls
QUITO, Ecuador (UPI) — A 31-year-old Colombian drifter has confessed he sexually attacked and then killed at least 55 girls between the ages of 9 and 14 during the past seven years, Ecuadorian police said Tuesday.
Police said the accused killer, Alonso Lopez, took them on a tour of cities and towns across a wide area of Ecuador where he had killed the girls while working at odd jobs.
If convicted, Lopez would rank as one of the biggest mass murderers in Latin American history, but under Ecuadorean law he is expected to be prosecuted only for the first crime discovered.
Lopez was arrested Feb. 9 in Ambato, a city in Ecuador's central highlands, when two people saw him trying to lure a small girl away from an outdoor market.
Lures Girls
After being jailed, police said the mild-mannered drifter confessed that he had lured scores of girls to lonely areas with promises of money or candy, had sexually abused them, and then killed them by strangling.
Lopez, who arrived in Ecuador from neighboring Colombia seven years ago, told police he had committed similar crimes in his native country and in Peru, which also borders Ecuador.
Police said that during the first five days following his arrest, Lopez had led them to the bodies of four girls in the Ambato area. All were buried in shallow graves or simply dragged out of sight and covered with rubbish.
The search for bodies ended Tuesday, but police said there were apparently more victims. In several cases, Lopez was not able to remember where the bodies were and apologized to police for being unable to locate them.
Discover Bodies
Bodies were discovered all the way from the city of Cuenca in the south to Imbabura near the Colombian border in the north. The greatest number, 16, were found around Quito, with others in Riobamba in central Ecuador and in the coastal provinces of Manabi and Esmeraldas.
Notes: The paper calls him "Alonso Lopez"; SKC's page is Pedro Alonso Lopez. "Ecuadorian" and "Ecuadorean" are both used, as printed. The story runs as a single narrow column, and the crop keeps a sliver of the neighbouring column at its right edge. No words were illegible.