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Mike Hoffmann/Wikimedia CommonsThe airplane involved in the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 disaster, pictured here in 1980.On Aug. 31, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 took off from New York City with 246 passengers and 23 crew members on board. It was bound for South Korea but it would never arrive.After a brief stop in Anchorage to refuel, the plane continued its journey across the Bering Sea. However, a navigational error sent it off its planned course and directly into Soviet airspace. As military forces in the U.S.S.R. watched the aircraft on radar, senior officials made the decision to shoot it down if it strayed into their territory again. So, when the plane crossed over Sakhalin Island, a Soviet pilot fired two air-to-air missiles. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 crashed into the Sea of Japan a few minutes later. There were no survivors.In the aftermath, the U.S.S.R. claimed that theyd thought the aircraft was a spy plane. However, U.S. President Ronald Reagan suggested that the incident was an intentional act of barbarism, adding fuel to the blazing flames of the Cold War.The Ill-Fated Journey Of Korean Air Lines Flight 007Korean Air Lines Flight 007 left John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, 1983. It landed as scheduled at Anchorage International Airport to refuel before continuing on to its final destination of Gimpo International Airport in Seoul.There were 246 passengers and 23 crew members on board, for a total of 269 people, including 22 children under age 12. U.S. Representative Larry McDonald was also on the plane, heading to Seoul to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the United States-South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty. The flight was supposed to follow a common path across the Bering Sea that took it south of Soviet territory and across northern Japan before landing in South Korea. Just 10 minutes after taking off from Alaska, however, it began deviating from its planned route, straying slightly to the north. Public DomainA flight map of Korean Air Lines Flight 007s intended route (dotted line) versus its actual path (solid line).Experts believe that the crew either failed to switch the autopilot into the proper mode or did so too late. Either way, nobody noticed that the aircraft was heading straight for Russias Kamchatka Peninsula. It was an error that proved to be fatal.The Soviet Union Shoots Down A Civilian PlaneKorean Air Lines Flight 007 entered Soviet airspace at a particularly precarious moment in history. Tensions were high between Moscow and Washington, D.C. A few months earlier, President Reagan had denounced the U.S.S.R. as an evil empire. Now, 269 passengers and crew members were caught in the middle of a geopolitical storm.Around 5:30 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1983 (the plane had crossed the International Date Line during its journey west), Flight 007 entered the restricted airspace surrounding the Kamchatka Peninsula. Soviet forces were carefully monitoring the radar because they were carrying out a missile test in the area. They were also aware that the U.S. Air Force had deployed an RC-135 military reconnaissance plane nearby.Public DomainU.S. Representative Larry McDonald was among the passengers on the doomed flight.As the passenger plane approached the peninsula, the Soviets sent four jets to intercept it, but the flight returned to international airspace before they could reach it. General Valeri Kamensky, Commander of the Soviet Far East District Air Defense Forces, then ordered the planes destruction if it was positively identified as a military aircraft. But General Anatoly Kornukov, who commanded the Sokol Air Base, was more aggressive with his assessment. He stated that since the plane had already entered Soviet airspace once, it should be destroyed if it did so again, even without proper identification.As reported by The New Yorker in 1993, Kornukov said, I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the state border.So, when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 flew over Sakhalin Island, Major Gennadiy Osipovich fired two air-to-air missiles from his Su-15 fighter jet. Whether one or both missiles made impact remains unclear, but the fate of everyone on board was sealed. The plane didnt explode immediately, though. Its descent into the Sea of Japan lasted several excruciating minutes, ending in a violent downward spiral that left no survivors.The Worlds Reaction To The Tragic AttackThe world awoke to shock and confusion on Sept. 1, 1983, as muddled details about the downed Korean Air Lines plane slowly emerged. Early reporting by The New York Times noted that the U.S.S.R. refused to acknowledge that theyd shot down the plane. Library of CongressMembers of the Korean Association of New York read a New York Post article about the downed aircraft. Sept. 1, 1983.However, President Reagan called the attack a horrifying act of violence and demanded an explanation. Moscow initially stayed silent on the matter, but Soviet officials soon responded with a narrative of their own: The U.S.S.R. claimed that the apparently unidentified aircraft had deliberately provoked Soviet defenses and appeared to be involved in U.S. espionage in enemy airspace, forcing the communist regime to shoot the airliner down.International outrage followed. Numerous governments suspended negotiations, canceled prior agreements, and imposed new restrictions on the U.S.S.R. Public demonstrations against the Soviet Union sprang up in New York City, Seoul, and Tokyo before a damning national address from President Reagan on Sept. 5.Commercial aircraft from the Soviet Union and Cuba on a number of occasions have overflown sensitive United States military facilities, Reagan said, as documented by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. They werent shot down. We and other civilized countries believe in the tradition of offering help to mariners and pilots who are lost or in distress on the sea or in the air.The president added, We believe in following procedures to prevent a tragedy, not to provoke one. But despite the savagery of their crime, the universal reaction against it, and the evidence of their complicity, the Soviets still refuse to tell the truth. They have persistently refused to admit that their pilot fired on the Korean aircraft.Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection/UCLA Library Digital CollectionsKorean Americans in Long Beach, California, protesting the attack on Korean Air Lines Flight 007. Sept. 7, 1983.And as more information came out about the incident, the political fallout continued to escalate. The Turbulent Aftermath Of The Korean Air Lines Flight 007 TragedyThe International Civil Aviation Organization launched its own investigation of the tragedy and came to two conclusions: According to their findings, The flight crew did not implement the proper navigation procedures to ensure the aircraft remained on its assigned track throughout the flight. In addition, The U.S.S.R. air defence command assumed that KE 007 was a United States RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft before they ordered its destruction.However, the Soviet Union wasnt innocent by any means. They had found the wreckage in the Sea of Japan and secretly retrieved the planes voice recorder, which confirmed that the flight wasnt part of a U.S. reconnaissance mission. Soviet leadership had been desperate to maintain this narrative as justification for shooting down the aircraft.Then, in 1996, Gennadiy Osipovich, the pilot who downed Korean Air Lines Flight 007, made a shocking revelation. He told The New York Times, I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type plane into one for military use I did not tell the ground that it was a Boeing-type plane. They did not ask me.It was also discovered that Soviet forces had seen that the passenger plane had navigational lights, which a military aircraft wouldnt have been using during a spy mission. Still, they decided to fire the missiles, killing hundreds of innocent people. Public DomainShips search for the wreckage of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 during recovery operations in the Sea of Japan. Sept. 17, 1983.The incident went on to have major consequences for air travel. President Reagan noted in his national address that Soviet military planes were not equipped with international radio wavelengths, communication through which could have prevented the fatal aerial escalation in 1983. As a result, the U.S. announced that Global Positioning System (GPS) would be standardized and freely available for civil aviation.The tragedy also fueled conspiracy theories that continue to this day. One claims that the U.S. downed the plane itself to kill Rep. Larry McDonald, who had spoken out against industrialists such as the Rockefellers and their alleged efforts to create a one-world government.Whats more, divers exploring the crash site purportedly found very little luggage and only a few bodies. They stated that it looked as if the debris had been dragged to the seafloor. The Soviets also claimed that former president Richard Nixon was expected to be on the plane until the CIA warned him not to board. In the end, however, no conspiracy theory can change the fact that 269 people lost their lives due to navigational error, political mistrust, and the heightened tensions of the Cold War.After reading about the tragedy of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, go inside the worst plane crashes in aviation history. Then, learn about Camp Century, the U.S. military base built in Greenland during the Cold War.The post The Tragic Story Of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, The Civilian Plane Shot Down In 1983 appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Utah Department of Cultural & Community EngagementArchaeologists and volunteers teamed up to uncover more than 5,000 artifacts at Alta Ski Area near Salt Lake City.In the summer of 2025, the installation of snowmaking pipes at Utahs Alta Ski Area uncovered thousands of relics from a mining town that stood at the site more than a century ago. Alta was founded around 1865 to house prospectors working in the silver mines of Little Cottonwood Canyon, but it was mostly destroyed 20 years later by an avalanche and subsequent fire.The area where the excavations took place was once a busy thoroughfare known as Water Street. Archaeologists and volunteers unearthed bottles, shoe soles, bullets, a leather mining hat, and much more, revealing the intimate details of daily life in Alta in the late 19th century.An Unexpected Archaeological Treasure Trove At Alta Ski AreaWhen the U.S. Forest Service asked archaeologist Jeremy Moore to oversee planned construction work at Alta Ski Area last summer, Moore didnt expect to find much, particularly after the first day of the dig was uneventful. But toward the end of day two, historical artifacts began emerging from the dirt.Utah State Historic Preservation OfficeA coin from 1873 that was uncovered during excavations at Alta.As Moore told The Salt Lake Tribune, Essentially, Im one person here and my job is to kind of watch and make sure [the workers digging the trench] are not going to mess anything up, but there are already hundreds and hundreds of things, and Im trying to screen dirt while Im watching and trying to pull out artifacts.Many of the items were in pristine condition, from bottles and coins to clothing and bullets. They were the remnants of the 19th-century mining town of Alta, which was built at the site of the current ski resort around 1865.When it became clear that there were still thousands of artifacts to uncover, the Utah State Historic Preservation Office called in volunteers to help. Over the following days, they found bones, shoe soles, cookware and fine china, ink wells, pistols, a 16-pound dumbbell, perfume bottles, and more.One bottle still had a label for Dr. Crossmans Specific Mixture, which was marketed as a cure for Gonorrhoea, Gleets, Strictures, and analogous complaints of the Organs of Generation. Another, still corked, was full of alcohol. Its currently being analyzed, and so far, experts believe its an apple-based sherry or cider.Utah Department of Cultural & Community EngagementA 150-year-old corked bottle was still full of alcohol, which is believed to be sherry or cider.Perhaps the most fascinating artifact was an intact leather hat with two small holes where miners would have inserted a Sticking Tommy, a piece of iron that held a candle to create a makeshift headlamp.While none of these discoveries are particularly valuable or groundbreaking, they do show what day-to-day life was like for the miners and their families who lived in Alta more than a century ago.The History Behind The 19th-Century Mining Town Of Alta, UtahIn the 1860s, silver was discovered in Utahs Little Cottonwood Canyon, and several small communities were built to house the miners flocking to the area. One of these was Alta, which was constructed on a flat stretch along Little Cottonwood Creek just outside of Salt Lake City.Saloons, brothels, stores, butcher shops, laundromats, hotels, restaurants, Chinese apothecaries, and houses soon popped up around Water Street, forming a town of more than 1,000 people that thrived until the mid-1870s. Then, the falling value of silver led to a drop in population, but around 300 residents remained.Utah State Historical SocietyThe town of Alta in the 1870s, when it was home to more than 1,000 silver miners and their families.But in 1885, disaster struck. A massive avalanche destroyed much of Alta and killed at least 13 people. An article in The Salt Lake Herald from February 15, 1885, declared The Dread Avalanche Sweeps Over the Town Demolishing all the Houses in the Place but Seven A Terrible Disaster.In the aftermath of the avalanche, a fire destroyed many of the remaining structures, and Alta was all but abandoned. However, it was these very tragedies that preserved so many artifacts for more than a century. The snow, ash, and dirt covered the objects and discouraged looters, while the cold temperatures for much of the year slowed the items decay.So far, between 5,000 and 6,000 artifacts have been uncovered, but archaeologists think there may be a million more still buried beneath Alta Ski Area. They hope to conduct another dig this coming summer to learn even more about the long-lost mining town and the people who lived there.After learning about the mining town artifacts found at a Utah ski resort, look through 33 photos of other Wild West mining towns. Then, go inside 13 of Americas eeriest ghost towns.The post Thousands Of Artifacts From A 19th-Century Mining Town Were Unearthed In Utah During Construction At A Luxury Ski Resort appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Richard Wershe Jr. was arrested in his home in 1988 with 17 pounds of cocaine. He was 17 years old. Reporters and the police broadcasted the teenager all over the news with headlines that called him the leader of a drug cartel. Wershe, the police claimed, was a dangerous cocaine godfather known to his underlings as White Boy Rick.Convicted murderers came and went while Wershe was behind bars for possession. I told on the wrong people, Wershe confessed.Public DomainRichard Wershe Jr.s 1988 mugshot.Thats because White Boy Rick wasnt a drug lord he was an FBI informant. At the age of 14, the FBI taught Wershe how to deal drugs and planted him inside one of the citys most dangerous gangs.But when Wershe uncovered a police corruption problem that ended with the mayor of Detroit, the men who trained him cut him loose. Then they had him thrown in prison for life.Richard Wershe Jr. Becomes An InformantClick On Detroit/WDIV/YouTubeRick Wershe Jr. in prison.I was brought into this life by law enforcement, Richard Wershe Jr. reported to Vice, I was taught it, they left me alone, and a year later Im busted and put in jail for life.The law enforcement to which hes referring are the FBI agents who came to his door for his father in 1984.White Boy Ricks father, Richard Wershe Sr., wasnt a man who lived entirely within the law. He raised his son and daughter alone in a Detroit slum overrun with crack addicts and gangsters. He made his living running scams and selling guns out of his own home.The FBI, though, wasnt there to send him to prison. They wanted information. They came with an envelope full of pictures and hoped that Richard Wershe Sr. would recognize the faces. Richard Wershe Sr. didnt have any answers but his 14-year-old son, Richard Wershe Jr., knew every name.The 14-year-old wasnt a drug dealer or a gangster. Though he wasnt an angel he already started looting peoples homes for cash Wershe Jr. had never touched cocaine in his life. He was just aware of what went on around him in his community, a streetwise kid, and the FBI was willing to pay to find out just how much he was aware of.Wershe Jr.s father saw this as an opportunity to keep food on their table. As Richard Wershe Sr. put it:I took the money. I wasnt doing all that well at the time. And I thought it was the right thing keep some drug dealers off the street and get paid for it.And to the 14-year-old Richard Wershe Jr., it was an adventure:What kid doesnt want to be an undercover cop when hes 14, 15 years old?Thats how Richard Wershe Jr. became the FBIs youngest informant.White Boy Rick Is BornClick On Detroit/WDIV/YouTubeRick Wershe Jr. in court, shortly after his arrest.Richard Wershe Jr. was good at what he did. He went above and beyond what the FBI asked him to do. He took up with the Curry Gang, the foremost drug slingers in Detroit at the time, and made friends with dangerous criminals so that he could get better information.The FBI, in turn, began to train the young Wershe Jr. on how to be a gangster. They taught him how to pedal drugs on the street. They even gave him money specifically to buy cocaine so that the FBI could use it as evidence. To put a 14-year-old boys life at risk wasnt exactly FBI protocol but White Boy Rick as Wershe then began to call himself was too useful to let go. According to FBI Agent John Anthony, at that time, White Boy Rick was the single most productive informant the FBI had in Detroit.The FBI covered their tracks. On paper, they recorded White Boy Ricks tips under his fathers name.A 15-Year-Old Exposes Widespread Corruption In DetroitWikimedia CommonsColeman Young, the Detroit mayor who was allegedly involved in the police corruption scandal exposed by Rick Wershe Jr.White Boy Rick, though, was a little bit too good. Pretty soon he uncovered a conspiracy that ran through the whole city.Rick Wershe Jr. began to see the corruption when a 13-year-old boy was shot by the Curry Gang and the Detroit police did nothing about it. Their chief of homicide, Inspector Gilbert Hill, deliberately diverted the investigation away from the gang leader, Johnny Curry.White Boy Rick knew this was because Johnny Curry was connected to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young; in fact, the king of Detroit crime, Johnny Curry, dated the mayors niece Cathy Volsan. In Mayor Youngs city, to get Curry into trouble was dangerous for himself and bad for his business. Curry, Rick found out, had slipped Inspector Hill a $10,000 bribe.BoogeyMan Ben/YouTubeInspector Gil Hill was a minor celebrity. This picture of him is a still from his role in the movie Beverly Hills Cop.His information helped uncover one of the biggest corruption cases in police history. More than a dozen police officers were implicated.Inspector Hill and Mayor Young, though, would walk away free. According to one anonymous FBI agent, the agency was ordered to let the mayor go. The order came down the pipe that the nation didnt want to deal with another news story about a corrupt mayor: Washington didnt want another Marion Barry, the Washington D.C. mayor who had recently been caught smoking crack.The Hit On White Boy RickAl Profit/YouTubeNate Boone Craft, the convicted hitman who claims he was hired to kill Rick Wershe Jr.The case had grown exponentially. The FBI was now involved in mayoral corruption. But they worried that if they took action on their findings, the agency would get wind of their all-too-young informant.So the FBI left Richard Wershe Jr. to fend for himself. He was forced to find a way to navigate the streets and make ends meet without the FBIs protection, which wasnt easy. Though Rick didnt know it, there was a price on his head.Nate Boone Craft, a hitman with thirty confirmed murders under his belt, claims that Inspector Gil Hill offered him a small fortune to kill the teenager who knew too much. Craft, years later, told reporters:I was told to kill White Boy Rick. He said, $125,000, Ill make sure you get it as long as that boy is dead. His keyword, Dead. This came from Gil Hills mouth to me.Rick Wershe had already taken a bullet to the stomach from another Curry Gang member. The man who shot him had claimed it was an accident but Rick had his suspicions that there were people out to get him. He needed protection, and he needed money.White Boy Rick only knew one way to do it. He did what the FBI taught him to do.He sold cocaine.A 16-Year-Old Detroit Drug LordClick On Detroit/WDIV/YouTubeRick Wershe Jr. in prison.In Detroit in the 80s, everyone knew when White Boy Rick was around. He might have been a pimple-faced teenager who struggled to pull off a mustache but he came out in style. Rick went out in mink coats wrapped up with a belt made of solid gold and a diamond-encrusted Rolex on his wrist. Hed roll up in a white jeep he was too young to legally drive, with The Snowman emblazoned on the back.Johnny Curry was history. Ricks information had gotten the drug lord locked up behind bars and White Boy Rick began to take his place. Hed even taken his girlfriend, Cathy Volsan, the mayors niece.Every drug dealer was impressed. One gang lord, B.J. Chambers, praised White Boy Ricks climb up to the top: He rose all the way through the ranks. He did it just as big as me, the Curry brothers, Maserati Rick whoever you want to name.The FBI had nobody to blame for this new drug lord but themselves. Agent Gregg Schwarz would later admit:We brought him into the drug world. And what happened? He became a drug dealer. And were surprised by that?17-Year-Old Richard Wershe Jr. Goes On TrialWhite Boy Rick was still a few days shy of his 18th birthday when the Detroit police broke down his front door. They caught him with 17 pounds of cocaine. The police took White Boy Rick right to the media.The baby-faced teenager, the news said, wasnt just a drug dealer. He was a kingpin. They put up pictures of a criminal hierarchy, and each one showed 17-year-old White Boy Rick at the top of the ladder with every dangerous, hardened criminal in the city listed as his underling.It was a bit of stretch. White Boy Rick was certainly involved in drugs, and he definitely moved cocaine. But the news made him bigger than he was because the police were out for blood.During his trial, the judge had no sympathy. White Boy Rick was worse than a mass murderer. Richard Wershe Sr. tried to get the FBI to help his son but they refused to say a word. Richard Wershe Jr. was sent to prison for life at 18 years old. A 48-Year-Old Up For Parole And The Hollywood Adaptation Of White Boy RickClick On Detroit/WDIVRichard Wershe Jr. during his parole hearing.It took 30 years for Richard Wershe Jr. to win his freedom. While the people he exposed were sent free, Wershe stayed behind bars and spent the bulk of his life in a jail cell.It was journalism that saved him. In 2014, freelance writer Evan Hughes read Wershes seemingly outlandish claims about a conspiracy that had put him behind bars and started to look into whether they were true. When he followed up with the FBI, Hughes found out that Wershe was telling the truth.Pandemonium followed. Hollywood went to work making a film version of White Boy Ricks life, while an HBO documentary crew moved into the prison to film a tell-all about his story.For the first time in 30 years, White Boy Ricks name was back in the headlines but this time, the real story was printed underneath.White Boy Ricks new fame changed his life. On July 14, 2017, just a few days shy of his 48th birthday, Richard Wershe Jr. was finally granted parole.Ive lost 30 years of my life, Wershe said during the parole meeting. All I can give you is my word. Ill never commit another crime.It wont be easy. Even now, the only trade Wershe knows is crime. From the moment he started high school, he was pulled away from a normal life and dragged into a life on the streets.But Richard Wershe Jr. is ready to try. All I can do is try to be the best man I can from this day forward, Wershe says. I cant look back.After learning about White Boy Rick, find out about the unjust convictions of Richard Glossip and of Lawrence McKinney, who was given $75 to make up for 31 years of wrongful imprisonment.The post The Story Of Richard Wershe Jr., The 1980s Detroit Drug Lord Known As White Boy Rick appeared first on All That's Interesting.

During the late 1970s, a number of young girls went missing across Peru. At first, the disappearances went largely unnoticed, as many of the girls were street children or members of Indigenous tribes. But one day, a group of Ayachucos people witnessed the near kidnapping of a 9-year-old girl and stopped her would-be abductor, a man named Pedro Lopez.Rather than turning Lopez over to the police, however, the tribe members beat him, stripped him of his clothes, and started to bury him alive, presumably so that he could die a slow, agonizing death. Lopez likely would have perished, if not for an American missionary who happened upon the scene and convinced the tribespeople to report Lopez to the police. Hoberman Publishing/Alamy Stock PhotoSerial killer Pedro Lopez, also known as the Monster of the Andes.However, local authorities never took Pedro Lopez into custody. Instead, he was simply expelled from the country free to abduct more girls off the streets in other South American countries, and free, as it would later be revealed, to brutally rape and murder as many as 300 children.But even though Lopez was later captured and charged for his crimes in Ecuador in 1980, he was sentenced to just 16 years in prison. Shockingly, he was released early in 1994 for good behavior before he was arrested yet again as an illegal immigrant. Then, he was deported back to his home country of Colombia, where he was held in a psychiatric hospital. Surprisingly, Pedro Lopez was eventually declared sane and was released again in 1998 and the last time he was ever seen was in 1999.It wasnt long before he was suspected of more murders, but to this day, no one has been able to track down the elusive Monster of the Andes again.The Tumultuous Early Life Of Pedro LopezPedro Lopez was born on October 8, 1948 in Santa Isabel, Colombia. His father died about six months before he was born, a member of a right-wing party who was killed during La Violencia, a 10-year civil war between the countrys Conservatives and Liberals that lasted from 1948 to 1958.According to Britannica, La Violencia claimed more than 200,000 lives. The conflict was especially violent under the reign of Laureano Gmez, a fascist who sought to bring the country under his authoritarian rule, only to collapse under his own power when he was brought down by a military coup. The conflict continued to have a lasting impact even after the fighting slowed, affecting all areas of society, including the economy. As all of this was unfolding, Pedro Lopez, the seventh of 13 children, grew up in poverty and chaos. Despite this, Lopez was actually a rather kind and polite child who dreamed of becoming a teacher. He later said, however, that his mother was abusive toward him. He also said that his mother was a sex worker who was frequently abused by her clients. Colombia PolicePedro Lopez in 1998, upon his release from a psychiatric hospital. There are varying accounts as to why Lopez left his home as a young child. Some claim that his mother kicked him out at the age of eight after she caught him fondling one of his sisters. Others say that he simply ran away. In any case, Lopez eventually found his way to Colombias capital city of Bogot, where he lived on the streets among other homeless children.Like many unhoused youths in the area, Lopez joined a gang and got involved with drugs. At one point, Lopez said a seemingly kind stranger offered him a place to stay for the night, and then sexually assaulted him. When he was 10 years old, Lopez met an elderly couple who offered to give him a home and enrolled him at a school for orphaned children. Unfortunately, Lopezs chance at a better life was once again destroyed when, at age 12, he was molested by one of the schools teachers. He promptly ran away from the school and went back to living on the streets.By this point, Lopez was broken, yet hardened, and he began to speak often of getting revenge for the pain that he had suffered as a child. Then, in 1969, Pedro Lopez was arrested for auto theft and sentenced to seven years in prison. During his imprisonment, he was once again sexually assaulted, this time by several other inmates. Soon after, Lopez slit his attackers throats with a makeshift knife. He was reportedly sentenced to additional time behind bars about two years for the killings.Pedro Lopezs Brutal Murder Spree BeginsUpon his release from prison in 1978, Pedro Lopez traveled to Peru with a newly acquired taste for blood. He had also developed an intense hatred for his mother and by proxy, other women and a distorted objectification of women due to a porn addiction, according to La Vanguardia.But instead of targeting his mother or other adult women, Lopez decided to start kidnapping and killing young girls in the Ayacucho region of Peru.Lopez later explained that he started by abducting girls from the nearby Indigenous communities, especially those in the more remote areas. He offered the young children gifts if they came along with him, specifically targeting the ones with a certain look of innocence.After luring a victim away from her loved ones and local community, Lopez explained, I would take her to a secret hideaway where prepared graves waited I cuddled them and then raped them at sunrise. 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.YouTubePedro Lopez targeted Indigenous girls because he believed white girls were watched too closely by their parents.Lopez delighted in watching a certain light go out in his victims eyes, but his murderous rituals didnt end with the young girls deaths. He would then violate their dead bodies before hiding or burying the corpses before he went after his next victims. He also noted that he never kidnapped or killed white girls because their parents were too watchful. He would later claim that during this period in Peru, he murdered more than 100 girls between the ages of nine and 12, which would eventually earn him the moniker Monster of the Andes. This string of murders only came to a halt because a group of Ayachucos Indigenous people discovered Lopez as he was attempting to lure away a nine-year-old girl from their community. Indians in Peru had me tied up and buried in sand to my neck when they found what I had been doing to their daughters, Lopez recalled of his near-death experience. They had placed syrup on me and were going to let me be eaten by ants. But an American missionary lady came by in her Jeep and promised them she would turn me over to the police. The Ayachucos reluctantly agreed to let the woman take Lopez to the police, dug him up, and returned his belongings to him. But as Lopez and the American woman walked away, some accounts say, she never handed him over to the police. Other accounts say that Lopez was handed over, but managed to escape as he was being sent over to Ecuador. In either case, Lopez was once again free, and his violent crimes continued. The Capture And Eventual Release Of The Monster Of The AndesIn the late 1970s and 1980, more and more young girls were disappearing as Pedro Lopez had moved on to Colombia and Ecuador. However, without any bodies, most police officers assumed that the disappearances were related to human trafficking or child runaways, not a serial killer. But, as 9News reported, their opinion changed in 1979, when a flash flood in Ambato, Ecuador revealed the bodies of four young girls. The discovery was shocking, but when locals reported seeing Lopez leading a 10-year-old girl away just days later, they connected the dots. Police quickly apprehended Lopez, and an undercover investigator posed as his cellmate in order to get a confession. In their cell, Lopez ended up telling his cellmate about the brutal rapes and murders he had committed.Lopez eventually led police to a mass burial site, where he had dumped the bodies of 53 of his victims. A few months later, Lopez claimed to have killed many more, placing the total number, by his count, at more than 300. However, some experts have suggested that Lopez may have been exaggerating and that the number of victims may in fact be closer to 70. TwitterPedro Lopez has been free since 1998, but his current whereabouts are unknown. In 1980, Pedro Lopez was ultimately convicted for the murder of 110 people and sentenced to the maximum prison term allowed under Ecuadorian law at the time. Unfortunately, that was only 16 years. Then, he was released two years early, in 1994, for good behavior, and deported back to Colombia. There, he was expected to face the firing squad for his crimes committed in that country, but prosecutors were unable to make a case for it. A judge instead declared that Lopez was insane and ordered that he be placed in a psychiatric hospital. But then, in 1998, the hospital unexpectedly declared him to be sane and released him. Lopez was supposed to report to the police each month after that, but he never did.Just a few years later, in 2002, Interpol issued a new warrant for his arrest in connection with a new murder case. But the last time Lopez was seen in public was in 1999, when he was renewing his citizenship card in Bogot. His whereabouts remain unknown to this day.After learning about Pedro Lopez, read about some other disturbing serial killers from history. Then, meet the four scariest teenage serial killers.The post Why Pedro Lopez Might Be The Worst Serial Killer Youve Never Heard Of appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Resident Evil Requiem is finally here, and it's a nerve-wracking experience for first-time players fighting for their lives. Rhodes Hill Care Center is particularly ruthless, which is why you are tasked with escaping it.