Pedro Lopez Essay Example

reasoning to be somewhat understood by all. Serial killer Pedro Lopez, although, had a different and more disturbed childhood than most serial killers which is thought to have lead to his type of crime.

Like most "normal" people Pedro Lopez was unable to forget the past of revise it in any way. The trauma Pedro Lopez faced as a child caused psychological issues upon him, beginning his career as a mass murder. Pedro Lopez, identified as "the most famous serial killer within the Southern Hemisphere", killed more than three hundred girls from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, while on his quest for revenge. This quest would last his entire life. Pedro Lopez underwent more brutality by the age of 18 than most will go through in their lives.

The first of these dreadful acts happened while Pedro was eight years old. After the age of eight Pedro had no innocence left within him, but he still found a way to live and begged for a normal life. Pedro never achieved his wish to be normal for he had to encounter multiple acts of evil which changed the makeup of his thought process. Of the 300 girls Pedro Lopez raped and killed, all were between the ages of seven and thirteen years of age. Psychologists suggest that the pain caused to Pedro at a young age forced him to stay trapped in his mindset of a child.

Others suggest all he wanted was cold revenge for the sin committed against him by taking the innocence away from other children. Unfortunately, both sets of psychologists proved correct based on evidence from Pedro's childhood. Witnesses of Pedro's childhood paint Pedro Lopez as

the epitome of the perfect child. Pedro Alonzo Lopez was born in Santa Isabel, Colombia on October 8, 1948. As a child Pedro had no schooling, but was self taught from the boys on the street to help the ones younger than him. His mother, Benilda Lopez, stated, "There was no boy ever who had the heart of Pedro. Pedro grew up in a home of thirteen children, being the seventh, all being raised by his mother who was a prostitute. Pedro's father was killed in Colombia's civil war, "La Violencia", which is why many psychologists believe Pedro's yearning for young girls came not from hate, but from fear of men as they were unknown. On many accounts Pedro recalled seeing his mother have sex with men, sometimes two to three men a night, who not only enjoyed Pedro watching, but then beat his mother while he watched.

One night, at the age of eight, Pedro asked his younger sister if he could feel her breasts because he was curious and she agreed. When his mother walked in the room and saw Pedro touching his sister's breast, she kicked him out of the house knowing that the crime rate in Colombia was fifty times higher than any other country at the time. Pedro wandered on the streets for two days until a man picked him up by offering Pedro a hot meal and a place to sleep. The stranger brought him to an abandoned building and raped then eight year old Lopez. Pedro now had no choice but to live on the streets of Bogota, Colombia and beg for food.

Pedro lived this way, in fear and

desperation, for three years until he met an American couple who could not stand the sight of Pedro begging, and offered him food and a place to live. The American couple enrolled Pedro into a orphanage school within Colombia and treated him as if he was their own son. It seemed as if life for Pedro was turning around. Sadly, in 1963 at the age of 12, Pedro was raped yet again by his male teacher at his orphanage day school. The day after his rape Pedro stole money from the orphanage office and ran away from he American couple who was caring for him, vowing that he would never be alone again.

The trauma of being raped twice within the span of four years led Pedro to be scared of all strangers, but was not enough to start his career as a serial killer. The events which gave birth to the infamous Pedro Lopez would occur within the next six years. For the next six years Pedro roamed the streets of Colombia, in civil war, begging and stealing to survive. In 1969, at 18, Pedro was arrested for stealing a car and sent to jail for seven years. Two days after being jailed Pedro Lopez was brutally gang raped by three other prisoners.

It was after this that both Pedro's heart and mind underwent a drastic transformation and the knowledge of what was "good" and "bad" left him. At this time Pedro avoided women because he would think back to his childhood when his mother would beat him and his siblings near death. He now thought that the only way sex could be achieved was through

violence and force, because this was the only way he ever saw or experienced. Thinking to his childhood when his mother would have sex and then allow men to beat her it seemed there was no alternative process for Pedro.

This mindset would be the reason for the complication within socializing Pedro would soon experience. After the being raped multiple times by the age of eighteen Pedro made a choice to avoid men. Before he would move on to proving his name of serial killer, Pedro would commit his first murder to begin his revenge. Pedro's first murder was a metaphoric and pinnacle moment in his life. After being viciously raped by the three men while in jail Pedro established the mindset of a killer. The night after his rape, Pedro crafted a knife out of utensils given to the prisoners by the guards and killed the three men who raped him within two weeks.

The guards said nothing about the murders, but instead looked at the murder as self defense and took two years off Pedro's seven year term. While in jail Pedro made a vow to "do the same to as many little girls as possible. " Pedro made the decision that he would live his life raping and taking innocence away from girls based on the way his innocence was taken away from him. Pedro blamed his mother for most of the cruel hardship that had fallen upon him, which was one of the key factors as to why he chose to rape young girls as oppose to young boys.

One of Pedro's motives to rape girls was based on his relation to boys, for

they reminded Pedro of himself in the early years of his childhood. In a sense the first killings, although they were not young girls, transported Pedro Lopez to relive his childhood trauma from start to finish. This allotted him a motive to show revenge to the world by taking the lives of innocent, beautiful young girls in the most savage way possible. Pedro Lopez began his career as a killer of young girls a week after his release in 1974, at the age of twenty-three.

Psychologists have been faced with the question of why Lopez chose girls. Many psychologists assume that young boys reminded Pedro of himself and he could not bear to harm boys, but others think it was Pedro's view of his mother which made him rape and kill little girls. In his informative book, Violence, David Bender states that "unsuitable supervision of a boy by his mother is one of the prime causes of delinquency. " His mother was rarely home, and when she was she had thirteen children to look after and feed making it nearly impossible for any of them to get the attention they deserved.

It would seem that Pedro chose to target young girls based on the hate he had toward his mother for both putting him on the streets of Colombia as well as the innocence which was taken away from him as a child. In a 1994 interview Pedro stated that he only killed "young girls with a look of innocence and beauty" because while they were dying "their innocence transferred from their eyes" to his. Pedro killed his first victim in 1974. He pre-dug all graves before

setting out to look for his victim, whom he would stalk for two to three days before abducting them.

After abduction, Pedro would bring the girls back to an abandoned building, similar to the one where he was first raped, and rape them three times a night until sunrise came. When Pedro would see the sun rising he would rape the girl again and then strangle her to death. , He killed an average of three girls a week from different towns and sections of Ecuador and Peru to eliminate any suspicion the police may have. When questioned about his actions Pedro stated that, "I felt nothing while I suffocated the little girls" based on how innocent he thought they were.

Pedro assumed that the girls did not scream because they were unaware of what was going on based on their innocence, but he never took into account the fact that the girls were being asphyxiated. It would take the girls about five to ten minutes to die by suffocation, and afterwards Pedro would take the dead bodies and have tea parties with them, asking the corpses how they liked his accommodations. These actions would lead to the psychologists to dub Pedro Lopez with many diagnoses. In 1990, while being detained in jail Pedro Lopez was interviewed by a reported, Ron Laytner, who worked to gain Pedro's trust for the interview to be honest.

It was after Pedro's first interview with Laytner that psychologist first thought that Pedro was a victim of excessive anxiety and multiple personality disorder. , The high anxiety disorder was based on the way he would react when authorities came to obtain so he

could show them where he buried the girls. Pedro would appear anxious and excited to show them the grave sites, and one time even went so far as picking up one of the skulls and asked an officer to take a picture of him holding it.

Another disorder Pedro was diagnosed with was Intermittent Explosive Disorder, a disorder which describes people who have impulsive acts of aggression. Psychologists thought Pedro had IED based on his acts of aggression towards his mother and other men but not his victims. In the case of Pedro Lopez, a prime example of IED would be his visit to his mother after thirty-five years at the age of forty-five. During this visit Pedro told her to bow down before him for he was a god, and when she refused Pedro took her chair, bed and sleeping gowns to sell in front of the house.

Those were five of seven items Pedro's mother had to her name. All of these actions were performed in a rage which psychologists assume Pedro had no control over due to Intermittent Explosive Disorder. In a later interview Pedro states that he took his mother's possessions on pure impulse, confirming diagnosis of the psychologists, and that his alternative personality told him to do it. The last and final diagnosis which was given to Pedro Lopez and had stood firm is that of a sociopath.

In 1994, the year when Pedro was released from his second fourteen year term in jail on one hundred and sixty counts of murder in the first degree and rape, Pedro was entered into a psychiatric ward in Colombia on the grounds of "Emotionally unfit

to live among people. " Pedro was in the ward for three short months before he was announced as sane. Unfortunately at this time no one seemed to note that excessive lying was a part of being a sociopath. "A person's earliest experience with violence comes within the home. "

This quote epitomizes the childhood of Pedro Lopez where it is recorded he was brutally abused by his mother. It was like she wanted us dead", Pedro stated while describing his childhood. It is thought that the rapes in which Pedro underwent as a child inflicted psychological damage which caused his career as a serial killer. Another factor which may have lead to his career as a serial killer was whether or not his largely abusive childhood made it a possibility for Pedro to have had brain damage. The amygdala is a part of the brain which acts as a specialist for emotional matters such as emotional responses, empathy, pain recognition within others, and arousal.

It is vital for the interaction of human life, for without the amygdala one would not be able to differentiate between pain and happiness. There is a chance that while beating him his mother damaged his amygdala which may have led to the lack of empathy psychologists would see in Pedro as an adult. After police captured Pedro in 1980 they questioned him. One officer came out of the questioning room frazzled saying that "He felt no remorse of guilt over what he has done". The trauma caused to Pedro due to being raped along with abuse from his mother both served as motives for his career in killing young girls.

What makes

the art of killing interesting to outsiders is the means of motivation, especially if there is none. Pedro Lopez underwent dramatic events in which most people would never parallel within their lifetime. The trauma, both psychological and physical, caused to Pedro haunted him into his adult life and acted as the foundation of his career as a serial killer. Throughout a person's life they have stepping stones which shape their personality as well as their character and ability to socialize with others.

Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, all these serial killers showed some signs of violence within their childhood although none of them underwent the horrors in which Pedro Lopez faced. Pedro's experience of being raped, abused, and avoided created the "Monster of the Andes" who is famous around the world today. After 1995 Pedro Lopez was never spotted again and is most likely loose somewhere in Colombia continuing on his rampage of killing little girls all because of the trauma caused to him as an innocent and endearing child.