Serial Killers: Pedro Lopez And Pedro Rodriguez Vega
Serial murder is the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events (Morton, 2005). For centuries serial killers have plagued society. These social deviants cunningly meander through communities murdering the most vulnerable: women, children, the homeless, and the elderly (Guillen, 2002). This paper will focus on two serial killers; Pedro Lopez and Jose Antonio Rodriguez Vega.
Pedro Lopez
‘ The man who would grow up to become the notorious “Monster of the Andes” had the sort of childhood almost guaranteed to produce a criminal psychopath. Born in rural Colombia in 1949, Lopez—one of thirteen children of a penniless prostitute—was raised in utter squalor. At eight, he was kicked out of his home after his …show more content…
mother caught him fondling one of his own little sisters. Out on the streets, he quickly fell victim to a middle-aged paedophile who—promising him food and shelter—lured him to an abandoned building and raped him.
Making his way to Bogotá, he subsisted on whatever he could beg, pilfer, or scavenge.
He was briefly taken under the wing of a sympathetic American couple who enrolled him in a school for orphans. This relatively normal interlude in his life ended abruptly when he stole some money from the school (allegedly after being molested by one of the male teachers) and ran away.
By his mid adolescence, Lopez had turned to car theft, a vocation that landed him in jail when he was eighteen. Two days after he started his seven-year sentence, he was gang-raped by a quartet of older inmates. Not long afterward, Lopez killed all four of his attackers with a homemade shiv. Deemed an act of self-defence, the killings earned him only an additional two years.
Released in 1978, Lopez embarked on a nomadic career of sadistic lust-murder that would earn him international infamy as possibly the most prolific serial killer of all time. Traveling widely through Peru, he raped and strangled scores of young girls, many snatched from Indian tribes. Once, after being caught during the abduction of a nine-year-old Ayacucho’s child, he was beaten, tortured, and nearly buried alive. Only the timely intervention of an American missionary saved …show more content…
him.
Deported from the country, Lopez resumed his homicidal ways in Colombia and Ecuador. He was finally caught in April 1980, while attempting to lure a twelve-year-old girl from an Ecuadorian marketplace. In custody, Lopez was initially silent, though he finally opened up to his “cellmate”— actually a priest in prison garb, planted there by the authorities. Confronted with the horrifying admissions he had made to the disguised priest, Lopez broke down and offered a full confession that would have seemed flatly incredible if subsequent developments hadn’t supported its truth.
In the two years between his release from prison and his capture, Lopez claimed to have murdered at least a hundred girls in Ecuador, the same number in Colombia, and “many more” in Peru. He would scout village markets for the most innocent-looking children he could find, then—having decided on a victim—lure her away with small trinkets. Once he had her in his power, he would strangle the girl while raping her, prolonging his pleasure as long as he could while he watched the life drain from her eyes. “It took the girls five to fifteen minutes to die,” he told interrogators. “I would spend a long time with them, making sure they were dead. I would use a mirror to check whether they were still breathing.
Sometimes, I had to kill them all over again.” Initially sceptical over his staggering claims, police became convinced when Lopez led them to a secluded area where they dug up the remains of fifty-three female victims, age’s eight to twelve. Charged with 110 counts of murder, Lopez was convicted in 1980 and sentenced to the maximum under Ecuadorian law: life imprisonment.’ (Schechter, The Serial killer Files, 2003)
Jose Antonio Rodriguez Vega
‘A pervert whose sexual pathology combined elements of necrophilia and gerontophila (erotic attraction to the elderly), Rodriguez Vega conducted a two-year reign of terror in the Spanish coastal town of Santander.
Following his 1986 release from prison on a rape charge, he began talking his way into the homes of solitary old women under the pretext of performing minor household repairs. Once alone with his victims, he would strangle and rape them (in that order), then set about expunging every sign of his presence.
He did such a thorough job of cleaning up after himself—neatly tucking the bodies into bed and removing all traces of incriminating evidence—that most of the deaths were chalked up to natural causes. Only after his arrest—when police found the cache of “trophies” he had removed from his victims’ homes—did the full extent of his crimes become known: sixteen murders in all, earning him a place in the criminal record books as the most prolific serial killer in recent Spanish history.
During his 1991 trial, the sadistic Rodriguez Vega seemed to revel in the grief he had caused his victims’ families. He was sentenced to 440 years in prison, though—given the leniency of the Spanish penal system—there is every likelihood he will end up serving no more than twenty.’ (Schechter, The Serial Killer Files,
2003)
WHY DO SERIAL KILLERS COMMIT THEIR CRIMES- WHAT MOTIVATES THEM?
Over the past twenty years, law enforcement and experts from a number of varying disciplines have attempted to identify specific motivations for serial murderers and to apply those motivations to different typologies developed for classifying serial murderers (Morton, 2005). To assist law enforcement in narrowing the pool of suspects, attendees at the Symposium suggested that broad, non-inclusive categories of motivations be utilized as guidelines for investigation. The following categories listed below represent general categories and are not intended to be a complete measure of serial offenders or their motivation:
Anger is a motivation in which an offender displays rage or hostility towards a certain subgroup of the population or with society as a whole. ‘In world mythology, there is a figure known as the Terrible Mother: a nightmarish female who, instead of offering nurture and comfort, dominates and destroys her own offspring. Unfortunately, this type of female isn’t limited to myths, fairy tales, and horror fantasies. She sometimes appears in real life. Her effect on the vulnerable young males unlucky enough to be her sons can be devastating, causing them to grow up with a virulent hatred, not just of the maternal monsters who raised them, but of womankind in general’ (Schechter, The Serial Killer Files, 2003). Looking at the case of Jose Antonio Rodriguez Vega ventured into his criminal career because of revenge against his mother. She had thrown him out of the house
Pedro Lopez
‘ The man who would grow up to become the notorious “Monster of the Andes” had the sort of childhood almost guaranteed to produce a criminal psychopath. Born in rural Colombia in 1949, Lopez—one of thirteen children of a penniless prostitute—was raised in utter squalor. At eight, he was kicked out of his home after his …show more content…
mother caught him fondling one of his own little sisters. Out on the streets, he quickly fell victim to a middle-aged paedophile who—promising him food and shelter—lured him to an abandoned building and raped him.
Making his way to Bogotá, he subsisted on whatever he could beg, pilfer, or scavenge.
He was briefly taken under the wing of a sympathetic American couple who enrolled him in a school for orphans. This relatively normal interlude in his life ended abruptly when he stole some money from the school (allegedly after being molested by one of the male teachers) and ran away.
By his mid adolescence, Lopez had turned to car theft, a vocation that landed him in jail when he was eighteen. Two days after he started his seven-year sentence, he was gang-raped by a quartet of older inmates. Not long afterward, Lopez killed all four of his attackers with a homemade shiv. Deemed an act of self-defence, the killings earned him only an additional two years.
Released in 1978, Lopez embarked on a nomadic career of sadistic lust-murder that would earn him international infamy as possibly the most prolific serial killer of all time. Traveling widely through Peru, he raped and strangled scores of young girls, many snatched from Indian tribes. Once, after being caught during the abduction of a nine-year-old Ayacucho’s child, he was beaten, tortured, and nearly buried alive. Only the timely intervention of an American missionary saved …show more content…
him.
Deported from the country, Lopez resumed his homicidal ways in Colombia and Ecuador. He was finally caught in April 1980, while attempting to lure a twelve-year-old girl from an Ecuadorian marketplace. In custody, Lopez was initially silent, though he finally opened up to his “cellmate”— actually a priest in prison garb, planted there by the authorities. Confronted with the horrifying admissions he had made to the disguised priest, Lopez broke down and offered a full confession that would have seemed flatly incredible if subsequent developments hadn’t supported its truth.
In the two years between his release from prison and his capture, Lopez claimed to have murdered at least a hundred girls in Ecuador, the same number in Colombia, and “many more” in Peru. He would scout village markets for the most innocent-looking children he could find, then—having decided on a victim—lure her away with small trinkets. Once he had her in his power, he would strangle the girl while raping her, prolonging his pleasure as long as he could while he watched the life drain from her eyes. “It took the girls five to fifteen minutes to die,” he told interrogators. “I would spend a long time with them, making sure they were dead. I would use a mirror to check whether they were still breathing.
Sometimes, I had to kill them all over again.” Initially sceptical over his staggering claims, police became convinced when Lopez led them to a secluded area where they dug up the remains of fifty-three female victims, age’s eight to twelve. Charged with 110 counts of murder, Lopez was convicted in 1980 and sentenced to the maximum under Ecuadorian law: life imprisonment.’ (Schechter, The Serial killer Files, 2003)
Jose Antonio Rodriguez Vega
‘A pervert whose sexual pathology combined elements of necrophilia and gerontophila (erotic attraction to the elderly), Rodriguez Vega conducted a two-year reign of terror in the Spanish coastal town of Santander.
Following his 1986 release from prison on a rape charge, he began talking his way into the homes of solitary old women under the pretext of performing minor household repairs. Once alone with his victims, he would strangle and rape them (in that order), then set about expunging every sign of his presence.
He did such a thorough job of cleaning up after himself—neatly tucking the bodies into bed and removing all traces of incriminating evidence—that most of the deaths were chalked up to natural causes. Only after his arrest—when police found the cache of “trophies” he had removed from his victims’ homes—did the full extent of his crimes become known: sixteen murders in all, earning him a place in the criminal record books as the most prolific serial killer in recent Spanish history.
During his 1991 trial, the sadistic Rodriguez Vega seemed to revel in the grief he had caused his victims’ families. He was sentenced to 440 years in prison, though—given the leniency of the Spanish penal system—there is every likelihood he will end up serving no more than twenty.’ (Schechter, The Serial Killer Files,
2003)
WHY DO SERIAL KILLERS COMMIT THEIR CRIMES- WHAT MOTIVATES THEM?
Over the past twenty years, law enforcement and experts from a number of varying disciplines have attempted to identify specific motivations for serial murderers and to apply those motivations to different typologies developed for classifying serial murderers (Morton, 2005). To assist law enforcement in narrowing the pool of suspects, attendees at the Symposium suggested that broad, non-inclusive categories of motivations be utilized as guidelines for investigation. The following categories listed below represent general categories and are not intended to be a complete measure of serial offenders or their motivation:
Anger is a motivation in which an offender displays rage or hostility towards a certain subgroup of the population or with society as a whole. ‘In world mythology, there is a figure known as the Terrible Mother: a nightmarish female who, instead of offering nurture and comfort, dominates and destroys her own offspring. Unfortunately, this type of female isn’t limited to myths, fairy tales, and horror fantasies. She sometimes appears in real life. Her effect on the vulnerable young males unlucky enough to be her sons can be devastating, causing them to grow up with a virulent hatred, not just of the maternal monsters who raised them, but of womankind in general’ (Schechter, The Serial Killer Files, 2003). Looking at the case of Jose Antonio Rodriguez Vega ventured into his criminal career because of revenge against his mother. She had thrown him out of the house