Julio Pérez Silva, the Psychopath of Alto Hospicio

The girls of Alto Hospicio

Alto Hospicio sits on the desert plateau above the port city of Iquique, in Chile’s far-northern Tarapacá region. Around the turn of the millennium it was a fast-growing, largely poor settlement of migrants and working families, many living in self-built homes. Between 1998 and 2001 (some reports date the series from 1999), a succession of girls and young women from the town vanished, many of them secondary-school students last seen walking between home and class in their uniforms. Eleven of the fourteen victims later identified were adolescents and three were adults. Among those named in press coverage are Graciela Saravia, 17; Macarena Sánchez, 14; Angélica Lay, 23; Laura Zola, 14; Patricia Palma, 17; and Viviana Garay, 16.

Disappearances dismissed

For months the families were told to wait. Police and officials repeatedly suggested that the girls had run away from home, and speculation circulated that they had left to work in prostitution in Peru or Bolivia or had fallen into a trafficking network. In 2001 the then Interior Undersecretary, Jorge Burgos, publicly attributed at least some of the cases to voluntary departures driven by domestic violence, ‘promiscuity’ and extreme poverty — remarks he later said had been based on police briefings and that he came to regret. Relatives argued that their daughters were treated as less worthy of a search because they were poor. Parents themselves found some of the first physical traces: in July 2000 Orlando Garay discovered his daughter Viviana’s uniform and school bag at a rubbish dump, and televised images of a grandmother finding her granddaughter’s clothing finally drew national attention.

A survivor’s escape and the arrest

The case broke in early October 2001 because of the courage of a 13-year-old girl. After accepting a lift, she was abducted, sexually abused and left for dead in a disused mine shaft in the desert. She survived, climbed out and walked several kilometres to the road, where she was found on 3 October. The next day, 4 October 2001, police detained Julio Pérez Silva, an informal taxi driver, after his car matched her description. She identified him and the vehicle. Under questioning he confessed and led investigators to abandoned mine shafts, including the deep Huantajaya shaft, and to dumps on the outskirts of Alto Hospicio, where the remains of the victims were recovered over the following days. More than 1,500 people attended funerals at Iquique Cathedral in mid-October. Pérez Silva later claimed his confession had been coerced and the evidence planted, but the courts rejected his account.

Conviction and sentence

In February 2004, Eliana Ayala, a judge of the Iquique Court of Appeals acting as special investigating magistrate, convicted Pérez Silva of 14 homicides, two rapes and one attempted murder. She imposed simple life imprisonment, which under the law then allowed a prisoner to seek release after 20 years. Families protested that the penalty was too lenient. In September 2005 the Iquique Court of Appeals raised the sentence to presidio perpetuo calificado, Chile’s harshest penalty, and in October 2006 the Supreme Court upheld it. Under that sentence he must serve at least 40 years before he can even apply for any prison benefit. He has been held under heavy guard, first in Arica and later at the Colina I maximum-security prison near Santiago.

Apologies and unanswered questions

President Ricardo Lagos and other officials publicly apologised to the families, and the state later gave the victims’ relatives housing and a modest lifelong pension, according to reporting by Infobae. Many relatives remain unsatisfied. Pérez Silva is the only person convicted, and five other young women who disappeared from the area have never been found. When Burgos was appointed to the cabinet again in 2014, relatives protested that the decision reopened old wounds.

Developments in 2025 and 2026

The case returned to national debate in 2026. In March the Senate approved in general a bill, filed in January 2025 by a group of five senators, that would allow elderly and terminally ill prisoners to serve the rest of their sentences under alternative arrangements such as house arrest. Critics noted that it could benefit people convicted of human-rights crimes as well as other serious offenders. Then Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo argued that it could open the door to Pérez Silva finishing his sentence at home and criticised the senators who had voted for it. The bill still faced amendments and further votes.

Why the case matters

At the time of the final ruling, a victims’ foundation called Pérez Silva the most dangerous serial criminal in Chile’s history. Yet the case is remembered just as much for how institutions treated poor families reporting missing daughters: a public lesson in how prejudice about class and young women’s lives can delay a search.