Julio Pérez Silva

His modus operandi was always the same. Working as a taxi driver, he intercepted girls and young women with offers of free rides, then would take them somewhere remote, where he would rape and kill them with blows to the head. Later, Silva would throw the bodies in deep abandoned mines. He was convicted of killing 14 women and was sentenced to life imprisonment on February 26, 2004.

Finally, on February 26, 2004, Silva, 40 years old at the time, was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the murders of 11 adolescents and 3 adults in the attempted murder of other 2. He is currently incarcerated in the high security prison of Colina I in Santiago.

The Mea Culpa program made a special about this case in 2003.

Because of this, Silva did not attack for nine months, but on April 17, 2001, he struck again in the sector "Autoconstrccíon" where he intercepted a child under 16 years of age, only identified as Maritza, threatening her with a knife and raping her, but did not kill her. Later she managed to escape and returned home. They took her to the hospital, where they took samples of the aggressor's semen. Although Maritza wasn't able to see her attacker due to the darkness, months later, when they checked him, she recognized his voice. They compared the DNA samples and they were identical.

On October 4, 2001, Silva made this last attack, when a young woman identified as Bárbara Nuñez survived. He intercepted and attacked in the same way he did with other victims, the difference was that Silva confessed to being the murderer; After he had hit her with a stone on the head and thinking she was dead, he left. Nuñez survived however, and managed to report the attack. That same day he was arrested; without any remorse he admitted to the murders and rapes, also confessing to having acted alone and denying having dementia. After his arrest, Silva provided the necessary information to locate the other victims' bodies. Currently, he is monitored 24 hours a day and is subjected to sleep control, after he once tried to commit suicide in his cell with a shoelace wound to a toothbrush.

In February 2000 he attacked twice in less than a week; the first was Sara Gómez on February 21, and just 2 days later 23-year-old cellphone promoter Angelica Lay, both of whom were killed in the middle of the desert.

Orlando Garay, father of one of the victims Viviana Garay, began to fight for the truth and did not accept the authorities' speculations, selling his fisherman's boat to gather the families of other disappeared girls to find answers. On July 18, 2000, a bag and clothes belonging to Viviana were found on a rubbish dump where, according to her family and friends, she never went to; That same day, in another landfill, the neighbours found Katherine Acre's backpack and uniform. On July 20, Inés Valdivia, mother of Patricia Palma, distinguished her daughter's underwear in a ravine. This was how family members, friends and neighbours looked for the young women.

On November 24, 1999, while driving in Alto Hospicio, he offered 13-year-old Macarena Sánchez a ride to her school. After threatening her with a knife and raping her, he tied her hands and threw her into the Huantajaya Pique, which is more 220 meters deep.

So far, the names of five other disappeared young and adult women emerged in Alto Hospicio area between April 1999 and August 2001. However, Silva claims to know nothing about them.

On September 17, 1998, he picked up 17-year-old Montserrat Graciela Saravia on the waterfront of Iquique. According to his confession, she offered him money in exchange for sex. However, the young woman's real intention was to steal from him. When he noticed this, he beat her to death and left her on a beach.

According to the investigations, the 14 victims of Julio Pérez Silva, murdered between September 12, 1998 and August 23, 2001, would be:

In the mid-1990s he emigrated to Iquique looking for better job opportunities, finding a job loading sacks of salt. At a party he met Nancy Boero, fourteen years older than him and a mother of six children. After two weeks they were living together and then settled in Alto Hospicio, in a sector known as "La Negra". Later they would move to "Autoconstruccíon", another local sector.

Julio Pérez Silva (born July 15, 1963) is a Chilean serial killer who was active between 1998 and 2001. Known as the Psychopath from Alto Hospicio, his crimes took place in the Tarapacá Region, specifically in the city of Iquique and in the town of Alto Hospicio, hence his nickname.