solved
Serial killer
December 28, 2006
Perpetrator
Pedro Pablo Nakada Ludena
Peruvian serial killer born in Lima on February 28, 1973, nicknamed 'El Apostol de la Muerte' (The Apostle of Death). He claimed that God had commanded him to cleanse society by killing drug addicts, prostitutes, thieves and other people he deemed undesirable. He confessed to 25 killings but was convicted of 17 and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Known Victims
At least 17 total
Summary
Peruvian serial killer who claimed God ordered him to eliminate 'undesirables,' killing at least 17 people in and around Lima before his 2006 arrest.
Details
Pedro Pablo Nakada Ludena targeted people he considered social undesirables, including alleged drug addicts, prostitutes and criminals, claiming a divine mandate to purge society. He shot victims with 9mm pistols fitted with homemade rubber silencers fashioned from slippers, operating mainly in the Lima metropolitan area between 2005 and 2006. He was arrested on December 28, 2006, after a shootout with police at his workplace. Though he confessed to 25 murders, he was convicted of 17 and sentenced to a maximum term of 35 years in prison.
Overview
Pedro Pablo Nakada Ludeña, widely known by the Spanish nickname "El Apóstol de la Muerte" ("The Apostle of Death"), is a Peruvian serial killer active in and around Lima in the mid-2000s. He was convicted of 17 murders, though he claimed to have killed as many as 25 people. His killings targeted individuals he characterized as social undesirables, including people he identified as drug addicts, criminals, sex workers, and homosexuals.
What set the case apart was Nakada's stated religious justification. He claimed that God had commanded him to cleanse the earth by eliminating those he deemed sinful or worthless, framing his crimes as a divine mission. He was arrested in December 2006 after a confrontation with police and was subsequently sentenced to a lengthy prison term. The case remains one of the most notorious in modern Peruvian criminal history.
Background and Identity
Nakada was born on 28 February 1973. He did not begin life with the surname Nakada; he was originally registered under a different paternal surname. According to widely reported accounts, in 2003 he arranged to be adopted as an adult by a Japanese citizen, reportedly paying a modest sum, in hopes of being recognized as a person of Japanese descent and migrating to Japan. Through that adoption he took the surname Nakada, by which he became publicly known.
His family later drew renewed international attention. His younger brother, Vayron Jonathan Nakada Ludeña, moved to Japan, where in 2015 he was arrested after a multi-day stabbing rampage that left several people dead. The fact that two brothers were each implicated in multiple killings, on different continents, became a recurring point of media commentary about the case.
The Killings and Method
Nakada's murders took place in and around Lima, Peru's capital. He is reported to have used firearms, specifically 9mm pistols, to carry out the killings. Accounts of the case describe him fashioning improvised suppressors from rubber materials, including slippers, to muffle the sound of his gunfire while operating in urban settings.
According to his own statements, his victims were chosen because he regarded them as belonging to groups he wished to eliminate. He described his targets in terms that included criminals, drug users, sex workers, and gay men. This selection pattern, combined with his claimed religious motive, led commentators to characterize his crimes as a form of self-appointed moral vigilantism rather than financially or personally driven killing.
Stated Motive
The defining feature of Nakada's public profile was his insistence that he acted on divine instruction. He described himself as an instrument of God tasked with ridding society of people he considered impure or harmful, a self-image reflected in the nickname "The Apostle of Death." In statements attributed to him, he expressed no remorse, instead framing the killings as a righteous duty.
Investigators and commentators have generally treated these claims as the rhetoric of a killer rationalizing predatory violence, and his mental state was a subject of discussion in coverage of the case. The specifics of any formal psychiatric evaluation are not consistently detailed across reliable English-language sources, so claims about a clinical diagnosis should be treated with caution.
Arrest, Trial and Sentence
Nakada was arrested on 28 December 2006. Reports describe the arrest as occurring after a shootout with police at his workplace, during which an officer was reported injured. His capture brought an end to the series of killings attributed to him.
Although Nakada is said to have confessed to as many as 25 killings, he was ultimately convicted of 17 murders. He was sentenced to a 35-year prison term, described in coverage as a maximum-length sentence under the applicable framework. Some sources note that the legal proceedings were not entirely straightforward; at least one report indicates that an early sentence was annulled and a retrial ordered, reflecting procedural challenges in the case. Because details of the appellate history vary between sources, those specifics are flagged as less certain.
Legacy
The case of Pedro Pablo Nakada Ludeña is frequently cited in surveys of South American and Peruvian crime as one of the country's most prominent serial murder cases. The combination of a high victim count, a stated religious justification, and the targeting of marginalized groups made it a subject of lasting public and media interest.
The later arrest of his brother in Japan amplified international attention, prompting articles that examined the two cases together. As with many crime cases that attract sensational coverage, some peripheral details have circulated with varying reliability; the core facts, his conviction for 17 murders, his 2006 arrest, his stated divine motive, and his 35-year sentence, are the most consistently documented elements of his story.
