After his jail term he started preying on young girls in Peru. He later claimed that, by 1978, he had killed over 100 of them. He had been caught by a native tribe, who were preparing to execute him, when an American missionary intervened and persuaded them to hand him over to the state police. The police soon released him. He relocated to Colombia and later Ecuador, killing about three girls a week. López later said "I like the girls in Ecuador, they are more gentle and trusting, more innocent."[4] The authorities had previously believed the disappearance of so many girls was due to sexual slavery or prostitution[citation needed].
López was arrested when an attempted abduction went wrong and he was trapped by market traders. He confessed to over 300 murders. The police only believed him when a flash flood uncovered a mass grave of many of his victims.[4]
According to the BBC:[5] "He was arrested in 1980 but was freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of last year [1998] and deported to Colombia. In an interview from his prison cell, López described himself as 'the man of the century' and said he was being released for 'good behaviour'."
An A&E Biography documentary[6][7] reports that he was released by Ecuadorian prison on 31 August 1994, and re-arrested an hour later as an illegal immigrant, and handed over to Colombian authorities who charged him with a twenty year old murder. He was found to be insane and held in a psychiatric wing of a Bogotá hospital. In 1998 he was declared sane, and released on $50 bail. The same documentary says that Interpol released an advisory for his re-arrest by Colombian authorities over a fresh murder in 2002. He has not been heard from or seen since his release and to date, no one knows if López is dead or alive.
