Pedro Lopez | The Monster
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And this time, dear listener, we visit neither Europe nor the United States of America. We travel south, past the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, and to the beautiful tropical nation of Colombia. Colombia is a country of contrasts. From lush beaches to snow-capped mountains, from busy metropoli to small dustbowl villages,

It has been home to many notorious figures such as Pablo Escobar, the Medellin and Cali cartels, and the FARC guerrilla. But none of these holds a candle to the depravity displayed by tonight's subject. In South America, it has probably been said by many that if evil had a face, it would be that of Pedro Lopez.

As we will explore in this episode, this was a man that, not unlike many other serial killers, appeared normal, but who turned out to be anything but. Lopez was a man who had a very troubled upbringing and adolescence. Born in Tolima on October 8th, 1948 by a prostitute, the seventh of thirteen children.

He spent his childhood hiding behind the family's ramshackle homes' curtains, looking at his mother selling every kind of sexual favor to strangers every single day. Nothing was sacred in the Lopez household, and the constant exposure to deviancy might very well be the reason young eight-year-old Pedro one day sexually abused his own little sister.

His mother discovered him, and thus Pedro found himself alone and terrified. On a cold night in 1957, expelled from his own home, ordered to never return. It was in that moment that Lopez realized how expendable he was. His victimization is likely to have intensified during this phase of his life.

Pedro walked the dark streets of Tolima, trying desperately to come to terms with the edict handed down by his mother. The first time he went home, refusing to stay away, his access was denied. The next time he tried, his mother not only prevented him from rejoining the family,

but went a step further and dropped him off at the city border with no food, no shelter, no support, and no options. Pedro was at his most vulnerable, but for a short while his luck was about to change. A ray of hope came walking by in the form of an older man who found Pedro wandering around the streets. The man stopped,

spoke to him and finally decided to help him. For Pedro, this man was his saving grace and second chance, and more importantly, doing things right again. The man promised food and shelter and offered Pedro a chance at absolution. But the older man, this Mephistopheles, come to life

who lured young Pedro away from the dirty streets in 1957 with gilded promises of a better future, he was a sexual predator. That night, eight-year-old Pedro Lopez was not taken home to a plush bed and warm food. He was taken instead to an abandoned building where cold, grasping hands tore the clothes off his back

and repeatedly, anally raped him, only to finally toss him out onto the filthy Colombian streets once again. This betrayal of faith, so soon after he'd lost his only sense of stability, ruined Pedro's trust in humanity in the most basic ways. But most of all, it destroyed his trust in adults.

Pedro Lopez soon began to go to unnatural lengths to avoid contact with any adult. Pedro's mother, in her attempt to protect her daughter against further sexual trauma, had sentenced Pedro to a lifetime of trauma, one that he would never truly overcome. At the peak of his problems, young Pedro hid out in dark alleyways or deserted buildings on the mean streets of Tolima,

leaving his carefully scouted sanctuaries only to scavenge for food in the nearby bins and trash-fields. A pitiful existence that became all Pedro knew for over a year. The following year, in 1958, Pedro finally gathered enough courage to travel across the country to where he went back to scavenging and begging for food.

it seemed he had to some degree been able to overcome his aversion towards adults and it was thus that he met yet another set of adults who would play a life-changing role in his life an elderly american couple was so heart-broken at the sight of the young child scavenging for food that they offered to take him home

Young Pedro probably realized that he had few other options for a better life, so he chose to once more put his trust in adults and went with the elderly couple. It seems evident that this decision would further influence Pedro into becoming what was to be known as the Monster of the Andes.

This was not directly down to the elderly couple, as they were nothing but kind to Pedro, providing him food and board, and enrolling him in a school for orphans. In fact, it was just as his life began to regain a sense of normality that Pedro Alonso Lopez was reminded that he would never be lucky enough to be saved. You see, dear listener,

In 1960, at the tender age of only 12 years old, Pedro Lopez was sexually molested yet again. This time by a male teacher at a school the well-meaning elderly couple had enrolled him in. This was the last straw. Pedro Lopez was tired of being the victim

and according to later interviews he then began to feel an anger grow inside of him and started using all his previous fears to channel courage and aggression and so a life of crime began when pedro carefully planned the theft of a large sum of money from the school's office before he fled back to the streets of colombia that he now considered his only safe haven

He was 15 years old, and it was now 1963. Colombia's period of civil unrest, known as La Violencia, was just over, and businesses were opening up once again. Unfortunately for Pedro, he was neither trained nor educated well enough to be able to take advantage of this growing economy.

he instead resorted to begging for food once again for almost six years combined with petty theft for survival an early entry into a life of petty crime is typical of psychopaths and pedro's initial foray into theft was probably an early indicator of how he had lost if indeed he ever had any to begin with any respect for the concepts of right and wrong

he soon shifted to car theft as a teen and became impressively adept at it not only was he well paid for his services but also for the first time in his life he was sought after for someone like pedro who had never fit in anywhere such valuation was likely highly comforting and addictive

Like most other things in his rather miserable life, however, this too fell apart. In 1966, at 18, Pedro was arrested for car theft and sentenced to seven years in jail. As you might imagine, life in a South American prison has never been a tropical holiday resort.

And Pedro Lopez experienced yet again the terror he was afflicted upon only two days into his sentence. Pedro was gang-raped by three older inmates. They forced him to perform oral sex, repeatedly anally raped him, without lube, mind you, and beat him viciously.

Left beaten, bleeding, and with furious tears streaming down his cheeks, he swore silently to himself that never again would he allow his abusers to get away unscathed. Pedro Lopez's childhood does in many ways explain how he transformed from a common criminal to a full-fledged sadistic serial killer.

This is not to say that his misfortune exonerates him or justifies anything he did, but it does explain many of his actions and reactions. What it doesn't explain, however, is Pedro's sadistic enjoyment of not just the act, but the web of manipulation that he weaved around his victims. And for that, we must step into the mind of the man himself.

Unlike most other serial killers, Pedro's history of murder actually begins from when he was imprisoned. An angst-filled teenager with revenge on his mind, Pedro Lopez murdered the three men that had raped him within the first month of his imprisonment. He slit their throats one by one as they slept and bled to death on their beds.

Surprisingly, Pedro was not convicted for the murders. The prison authorities, who had been aware of the three men and their prior assault on the 18-year-old, decided to list Pedro's act as one of self-defense, allowing him to get off with a mere two years added to his previous sentence. Nine years later, in 1978, Pedro Alonso López was released from prison.

now twenty-seven years old pedro lopez was no longer the young man who had once scavenged for food in the dirty streets of tolima his past experiences in addition to having spent his formative years in prison made pedro accelerate an already extremely anti-social personality

pedro later claimed that because of his mother's abuse and the way he had come to view adults he found it difficult to even hold a conversation with an adult female he needed to find an alternative and so he did pedro lopez began to travel widely through the neighboring country of peru soon after his release from prison

he later admitted that during this time he stalked and murdered at least one hundred young girls from various native tribes across the region he began to realize that younger females were more susceptible to his meager charms and their reign found the solution to his difficulty with women

pedro's new solution was put to a halt when he was captured in northern peru by a native tribe known as the ayacuchos at the time pedro had been attempting to abduct a nine-year-old tribal girl

Infuriated, the tribe stripped Lopez bare and flayed him with a whip for hours before finally deciding to bury him alive with honey, with ants coming closer, probably going to eat him. Once again, however, an American intervened in an effort to help Lopez, this time a Christian missionary.

the lady in question convinced the tribe that lopez ought to be handed over to the appropriate authorities and that since she was on her way to the town square she could easily drop him off at the nearest police station the tribe reluctantly agreed and tied pedro up in the back of her truck the missionary delivered lopez to the local authorities

However, because of the cultural divide, the Peruvian police were unwilling to, in their words, waste their time by investigating so-called petty complaints lodged by natives. Instead, Peruvian authorities released the rapist and serial killer into the country of Ecuador, where the second phase of Lopez's murder spree commenced.

Upon regaining his freedom, Lopez began to do the exact same thing he had done when he was released from prison. He traveled extensively, lured young girls and women to go with him, and murdered them. In his own words, in a much later interview, he usually did the same thing over and over, and I quote, "...at the first sign of light, I would get excited."

I forced the girl into sex and put my hands against her throat. When the sun rose, I would strangle her. It was only good if I could see her eyes and the life going out of them. I never killed anyone at night. It would have been wasted in the dark. I had to watch them by daylight."

The majority of this happened in Colombia. The authorities began to notice an increase in the number of missing people on their reports. Because of their ages, the authorities initially thought that the children were runaways. But soon it became clear, and there was a pattern evolving. All the victims were young girls with a similar pretty demeanor. The number of disappearances and the similarities of the cases increased.

led authorities to suspect a sex slave or prostitution ring was involved not in their wildest dreams did they imagine that the hundreds of missing girls were the work of one single person bodies also began to appear in other places initially since there were only one or two bodies at a time the authorities didn't know whether to associate them with the mass disappearances

Dr. Rothman Rios, who was the medical examiner at the time, explained that the bodies themselves did not indicate any significant links. There was little or no evidence to suggest who was behind the murders, and no witnesses. It began to seem like whoever was responsible had managed to commit the perfect crimes.

in march of nineteen eighty a flash flood near ambato ecuador unearthed four bodies all four were female all four had been sadistically tortured the method of murder was always strangulation sometimes followed by a slit throat oftentimes lopez would strangle the young girls to the point of passing out

only to shake them back to consciousness and continue to rape and strangle them all over again according to later interviews some of which i will quote later on the murders sometimes lasted several hours back to the four girls found in the flash flood

The idea that these four girls were just victims of random murders when the country was besieged by an increase in missing girls was looking less and less likely. The authorities were forced to reconsider. There was clearly more to these disappearances than slavery or prostitution rings. The discovery of the four bodies from the flood and the constant disappearance of young girls

put the entire country on edge the fact that the police had no leads made the entire population paranoid mothers with young daughters realized that the murderer could literally be anyone as could the victims it was this country-wide awareness that would lead to the capture of pedro lopez

just days after the flash flood unearthed the bodies of four victims pedro lopez was to stalk his last victim it was early morning and carolina ramon a vender at the local market was setting up her stall with her young daughter in tow lopez had entered the market posing as a pedlar who was selling chains padlocks and other similar wares

he continued selling all day until late in the afternoon when he finally approached carlina's food-stall tended to look into her pots and pans to see what she was cooking meanwhile the stranger began to sneak looks at carlina's eleven-year-old daughter maria

maria became flustered by the man's attentions and went to her mother she told her the man had been looking at her and beckoning to her realizing that this abduction was not going to be as easy as he had previously thought pedro lopez quietly slipped out of the market

however by then maria had already alerted her mother who realized that there was a strong possibility that this was the man the entire country was looking for within minutes carlina gathered some of her vendor friends and chased down the unknown man who had just made his way to the main entrance the authorities were summoned immediately

Pedro Lopez, when they found him, was babbling incoherently, so much so that the authorities initially presumed they had captured a madman, failing to realize that the man they now held in custody and were driving to local police headquarters were none other than the monster of the Andes.

once he had been taken to police headquarters lopez adopted a silent pout which much to the dismay of the officers in charge he maintained throughout the entire questioning procedure it wasn't that lopez was scared or frustrated it was more like he was bored and was enjoying flustering the authorities realizing that the regular scare tactics would not work on this particular suspect

the authorities decided to use a very different approach at this point the police did not suspect lopez to be guilty of anything more than the murders of the children whose bodies had been uncovered weeks before in the flash flood an officer on duty suggested that one of them dress up as the local priest and attempt to win over the man's confidence

Ultimately, Pastor Cordoba Gurdina, who actually was the captain of police at the time, entered Lopez's cell and sat with him throughout the night. Soon enough, the padre began to win over Lopez's confidence by regaling him with the tales of crimes he professed to have committed as a rapist.

Lopez began to contribute to the conversation the young padre had initiated. Each story was more gruesome than the prior, each revealing such bone-chilling acts of inhuman degradation of the victim that at one point even the seasoned officer could no longer sit there listening to them.

The detective, who remained undercover for nearly an entire month, was stunned. Pedro Lopez had by then gleefully informed the undercover padre that he had been traveling through Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia for the past three years, and by his own count had raped and killed over three hundred young girls.

A claim that, if proven to be true, would rank him as the most prolific serial killer in modern history. By next morning, authorities had been able to gather enough evidence to finally confront Lopez with his crimes. This time, Lopez finally spoke up.

Pedro Lopez, or as he came to be known, the monster of the Andes, claimed proudly that he had raped and murdered over 110 young girls in Ecuador, at least 100 in Peru, and, as he put it, many more than 100 in Colombia, going on to state that he only really enjoyed the girls in Ecuador.

Claiming their trusting nature made them more appealing, as opposed to the stranger-weary little girls back in Colombia. In his own words, and I quote, I liked girls in Ecuador. They are more gentle and trusting, more innocent. They are not as suspicious of strangers as Colombian girls, end quote.

it was at this point that the police began to reach out to the neighboring countries to see if there were any cases to corroborate his claims it made no sense that a serial killer could have been active in three countries and yet remain entirely undetected by the authorities in all of them lopez was relishing this new-found attention he started to talk about his own childhood and the many ways in which society had failed him

He reasoned how society was at fault for what he had become, the monster he was claiming to be. At one point, he specifically pinpointed the moment he decided to become a serial killer. I quote, I lost my innocence at age eight, so I decided to do the same to as many young girls as I could.

Still, the police could not make sense of the sheer number of murders Lopez was confessing to. And when both Colombian and Peruvian authorities failed to substantiate his claims, Lopez began to realize that the authorities didn't quite believe him. So Lopez did the only thing a narcissistic psychopath such as himself could do. He offered to take them to the bodies.

Initially hesitant, the local police finally decided to allow Lopez to guide them to the gravesites, which he claimed were scattered all over the country. Over the span of six weeks, Lopez led the police across 11 Ecuadorian provinces, at each revealing yet another gruesome collection of bodies.

For his own safety, the police required Lopez to dress as a police officer when he accompanied them out to the gravesite. There was a guard placed on either side of him, both for his protection and to thwart any attempt at escape. The first gravesite was just on the border of Ambato.

He described the girl as a newspaper seller, who he had abducted, raped, and then murdered just ten months earlier. He told them he'd buried her under a specific bridge in the locality. To their surprise, the police found a complete skeleton, as described at the base of the bridge.

the medical examiner was unable to determine any specifics of the crime from the body other than a knife-scarred arm and leg bone evidence of the torture he had inflicted on the young child however the police soon gained the clarity they sought after one of the victim's family members was brought to the site

They recognized the clothes hanging off from the bones of the skeleton and confirmed what Lopez had told the police. The bones belonged to a young girl named Hortensia Garces Lozada. Pedro's claims were shockingly accurate, and as the police moved on to the next location, they found more and more bodies.

the police shared some blame for these horrendous atrocities the disappearances had begun long before the identity and capture of lopez but investigations never really amounted to anything even in the case of hortensia the police had refused to investigate the case insisting that it was merely an incident of a runaway child

the locals claimed that such bias was due to the extreme class divide so rampant in most of south america at the time for the most part lopez's victims had been from impoverished families which was why they would fall for his lures of money so easily hortensia for instance had been lured away by a mere ten dollars

Roughly two months after Hortensia, Lopez chose the wrong victim. A nine-year-old girl named Evanova Giacome. As the daughter of a successful baker, Evanova's disappearance was responded to in ways that none of the other girls had been. Immediately, there was media coverage and flyers were distributed all across Ecuador, with the police working day and night to find her.

it was this burst of media attention that had triggered the wave of suspicion back in april that eventually resulted in lopez's arrest evanova's body displaying evidence of both rape and mutilation was eventually found on an abandoned farm

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Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Pedro Lopez's trip down memory lane would go on for over 53 gravesites. At each gravesite, Lopez would display the exact same amount of amusement and satisfaction.

as if each grave marked a victory in his name his pride was sickening to the police officers present and yet they had little choice but to follow him around and encourage him to take them to the next site lopez told of how he would often indulge in sick gruesome games with his victims they now dug up again

he even propped them up in their graves for conversation and macabre parties he added and i quote my little friends like to have company i often put three or four girls in a single hole and talked to them it was like having a party but after a while because they couldn't move i got bored and went looking for new girls

They desperately needed the information that only Lopez himself could give them. So they continued to supply him with cigarettes and even alcohol. Lopez began to develop a friendship with the captain of police he had initially confessed to. In fact, at one point, Pedro began to refer to the captain as father, an impulse the police later attributed to his lack of a fatherly figure in his own life.

Finally, when the police began to realize that Lopez was leading them to already compromised gravesites, possibly from wild animals or floods, they decided to bring him back to the police headquarters, where he was charged with 57 counts of murder for the 53 gravesites and four corpses discovered in the floods.

it was lopez's own detailed confessions however that led to him being charged with one hundred and ten murders the governor of the ambato jail where lopez was being held a man named victor lasano told reporters that in his personal opinion the tally of three hundred girls that lopez claimed to have murdered was likely a low estimate

Pedro Lopez openly confessed to over 300 murders, calling himself worse than an animal, and yet showed no sign of regret in his actions or words. His voice was calm, steady, and unemotional. Lopez had been caught in Ecuador, a country that had become a favorite hunting grounds for serial killers due to the sentencing laws.

no matter the nature or number of murders the maximum conviction was sixteen years by confessing to all of his crimes lopez was ensuring he could not be tried again in that same jurisdiction for the crimes he was confessing to a judicial practice known as double jeopardy ecuadorian law also prohibits consecutive sentencing

meaning he could only be sentenced to sixteen years total rather than sixteen years per murder he was convicted nine months after his arrest by judge jose roberto in a southern town in ambato close to where he was first apprehended pedro lopez by his calculations would be spending only seventeen days in jail per murder he'd confessed to

Outraged, the families demanded a reform of the prison laws, but the prison minister, Pablo Faguero, responded with, Yes, it does sound strange, but that is our law. Fourteen years after his sentencing, on August 31, 1994, Pedro Alonso Lopez walked free.

his behavior in jail had been so exemplary that the monster of the andes had had his sentence reduced by two years however the ecuadorian authorities detained him an hour after his release lopez discovered that the superintendent of the province had ordered him back into custody claiming that he was an illegal immigrant who did not have proper documentation

The only logical step, therefore, was to hand him over to the Colombian authorities. The hope was that, once on Colombian soil, Pedro López would be forced to face the harsher laws of his country of origin. The very next day, López was handed over to Colombian authorities at the Rumichaca Bridge, which connects Ecuador and Colombia.

After more than two decades, Pedro Alonso Lopez was home. On arrival, Lopez was picked up by Colombian national security and was immediately processed and sent to Tolima, his childhood home, for prosecution. The reason for Tolima was chosen was simple. In December of 1979, he had traveled to El Espinal, a small town in Tolima,

within months a ten-year-old girl by the name of flores sanchez had disappeared sanchez's body had later been found and identified by her mother the pattern and methodology of this twenty-year-old murder fit lopez's previous methodology perfectly along with the evidence gathered by the police colombian authorities had everything they needed to secure another conviction

Yet by another stroke of luck, Lopez once again found himself saved. In 1995, he was declared mentally incompetent on grounds of insanity and incarcerated in the psychiatric wing of a prison in Bogota. Three years later, Lopez was declared sane on evaluation by the prison psychiatrist.

He was then released on the condition that he attend monthly sessions with a judge and continue to receive psychiatric treatment, both of which requirements Lopez would later forego. Upon his release, Lopez decided to go back to his roots and visit his mother, Benilda, for the first time in 19 years. He slipped back into his terrifyingly cruel persona.

taunting his impoverished mother by selling her belongings before her very eyes pedro kept the meagre earnings from the sale and walked back into the countryside he had once littered with the bodies of little girls never to be seen again the monster of the andes had provided only one official interview in his life to a mr ron leitner of edith international

this one interview in combination with his confession and the evidence obtained at the gravesites has allowed authorities to piece together what went on in the mind of pedro lopez the man and the murderer investigators have been trying to understand the psychology behind one of south america's most deadly men if not the most deadly man

so that they can ascertain both his victimology and methodology after all with lopez on the loose it might only be a matter of time before the monster strikes again for a man whose victim count is in the hundreds it is remarkable how consistent he has always been with his victim choices

As most profilers will tell you, victim profiling is still a relatively new mode of investigation. However, it offers great value to authorities, both by helping to predict prospective targets and identify specific events in the serial killer's own life that can point to the perpetrator. In the case of Pedro Alonso Lopez, all of the victims were little girls, aged from 8 to 12.

As discussed earlier, this was the same age that Pedro was first molested. It's also the same age he was forced to leave his house for molesting his sister. When asked in his interview why he only ever chose young victims, Pedro stated: "It's like eating chicken. Why eat old chicken when you can have young chicken?"

this statement along with many others was probably intended to elicit shock and repulsion a mass murderer who shamelessly confesses to crimes does not have a lot to hide remember dear listener that lopez reveled in the horror he inflicted theories suggest that this was a reflection of his fear of adults

as well as his revulsion for adult females. FBI profiler Robert Ressler once famously pointed out that, especially in cases like Lopez, a serial killer will often have an obsession of sorts with their mother, one that would manifest in a love-hate relationship.

In cases of mothers who presented with sexualized lives, this obsession would manifest with an edge to it, meaning his selection of young girls was indicative of his complex relationship with his mother as well as the abuse he suffered at an early age at the hand of sexual predators. In López's

deranged mind he viewed the innocence of the girls as well as their age as a reflection of his own naivete which he perhaps was attempting to purge from the girls some profilers have theorized that in his mind lopez actually considered himself to be helping the girls indicated by the way he would refer to them as his dolls

They posit that his notion of being their savior, despite his torture, rape and murder routine, could be a reflection his feelings about poverty and life as a victim of sexual abuse. Profilers in the FBI has posited that he might have seen death as a gift,

and that in his eyes he was giving them the release none of his abusers had been kind enough to provide him even lopez's method of luring the girls was reflected of his own abusive past

lopez would bait them by offering sweets or money material lures similar to those offered to eight-year-old pedro when he roamed the streets of tolima by himself the way he had responded to the lures must have been something he regretted and berated himself for as a child and as an adult

watching little girls the same age make the same mistake he had was maybe cathartic for lopez it might have given him a feeling of reducing a warped sense of guilt and shame what he had done to contribute to this abuse was a mistake hundreds of children would make this also explains why he preferred the ecuadorian girls to the colombian girls

the girls he hunted in colombia were much more wary a reminder of what he had not been their suspicion spoiled pedro's satisfaction in the kills the abuse lopez endured was a catalyst for the monster this viciousness that the acts of rape and torture reflected

pedro alonso lopez may have killed over three hundred young girls and he remembered every one of them at no point did they blur into each other these murders were not done in an attempt to purge something from his memory in fact it was more as if they were keeping a memory alive allowing him to live it again and again

acts born not of a compulsion he was forced to satisfy but rather the indulgence of a luxury his signature move throughout the murders was strangulation he stated that the moment of the kill was the most precious the moment he watched her life-force slowly drain from her body

of his victims three had been strangled so ferociously that their eyes popped out of their sockets lopez tried to explain this fetish by likening it to the moment of truth in bullfights as if he were the spectator watching either the bull or the matador realize he is facing certain death strangulation was a very risky method

It left behind evidence, and it was slow. With Lopez's level of intelligence, something must have compensated for those drawbacks. Identifying that reward is maybe the key to understanding what drove him. Like most sexual sadists, Lopez felt that his ability to control the moment of death gave him power. He had lacked that sense of control his entire life.

He began as a street child with no way to ever amount to anything more than just that. As a man, the monster of the Andes was not some powerless street rat who could be used and abused at will. He was powerful, a force to be reckoned with. Lopez derived pleasure from controlled acts of violence. That's also what makes him so dangerous, because it suggests that

that pedro lopez now a free man is far from done some people claim they've seen pedro lopez somewhere in the mountain ranges he once haunted while some claim that he was murdered by the kin of the families he ripped apart but the truth is no one really knows it is this uncertainty that causes the people of the andes to look over their shoulders as they walk their daughters through the fish market

or warned them never to talk to strangers when they sent them on an errand after all it was the monster of the andes himself who said in his only interview with calm prophetic intent some day when i am released i will feel that moment again i will be happy to kill again it is my mission i have been your host thomas weiburgh thun

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Thank you, dear listener, for listening. And join me next time for another tale of serial murder. Good night and good luck.

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