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March 5th, 2023, Mogi das Cruzes, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It was just after dawn on a quiet Sunday and a man sat outside his sister's house in a calm residential neighborhood because he was visiting for the weekend.
And nothing about the scene really stood out until a car slowed down to a stop along the curb.
And inside the car were multiple hooded figures whose faces were hidden and whose weapons were ready.
And in seconds, they sprang from the vehicle and opened fire.
Gunshots just tore through the morning stillness, hitting the man at close range.
Then he would collapse on the pavement, no time to react, just riddled with bullets.
But it wasn't over, because one attacker would step forward and in a final act of brutality, he would slit the man's throat so deep that police later described it as near decapitation.
Police would also describe it as an execution, a professional hit.
And given who the victim was, few were surprised at all.
Because this man had made enemies in every corner of the underworld.
Men with long memories and violent grudges.
So some said it was revenge and others said that it was inevitable.
Because this wasn't just a murder.
This was the final chapter in one of Brazil's darkest legends.
And the man laying dead now on the sidewalk was once known as Pedrinho Matador.
But who really was Pedrinho Matador and why was he killed?
Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder.
All things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick twisted beautiful, intellectually minded freak.
Today we are doing just that.
We are deep diving into one of the most prolific, vigilante serial killers in the world.
Actually, the most prolific vigilante serial killer in the world.
The kill count is insane, and this guy's backstory is even more insane.
So, without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go Mach 5 down the highway, slam on the brakes and bust through this windshield into this vigilante serial killer together.
Pedro Rodriguez Filho was born on June 17th, 1954.
And there is some discrepancy on his birth date.
So it's either this or October 29th, 1954.
But alas, he was born in the rural town of Santa Rita do Supacai, Brazil.
And his life would begin in violence.
Because, while still in the room, Pedro's mother Manuela, was kicked in the stomach by her husband, Pedro Sr, during one of many brutal beatings.
And that kick would leave Pedro with a permanently dented skull just a physical marker of the rage he was born into.
And his father, though insane, worked really hard when sober, but alcohol just turned him into a complete monster, prone to explosive rages that terrified the entire household.
And Manuela, for her part, ruled the children with an iron fist and a Bible.
She was very quick to punish and had no hesitation when it came to beating her sons.
So it was kind of like a domino effect in the household.
And Pedro was actually the oldest in what ended up being at least eight siblings.
And he took that position very seriously because family was all that the poor had in Brazil, so it was everything to him.
And in a home dominated by fear, he believed it was his responsibility to look out for the smaller siblings.
So that sense of duty would become central to his whole identity and later his violence.
So the family wasn't necessarily starving, but life was really hard because clean water was often diverted to the fields and medical care was very scarce and disease at this point was very rampant and the poor were treated as disposable.
And there was only one place that Pedro really felt safe, and that was with his maternal grandparents.
His grandfather Joaquim, was a butcher and actually taught Pedro how to hunt fish, plant crops and slaughter animals with great precision.
Some foreshadowing for you.
And at the butcher shop Pedro learned how to bone an ox and how to use a blade and just generally how to kill.
Some more foreshadowing for you.
But Joaquim also tried to instill in Pedro a sense of morality and what it means to be just.
He would go on to say, he also taught me how to be worthy, correct and just man.
My grandfather loved me.
Of all the grandchildren, I was the dearest.
And Pedro's grandmother had her own beliefs.
She told him that drinking ox blood would make him strong, and Pedro believed her.
And by the time he was 10, Pedro was actually working at a chicken slaughterhouse, using the very tools and methods that his grandfather had taught him.
And he also hunted monkeys for meat and pelts.
He fished and helped provide for his family in any way that he could.
At the ripe age of 10 years old, no less, like, what was I doing when I was 10, man?
Was I doing just like...
Sniffing markers, maybe?
Yeah, I mean, I was definitely doing that.
Don't remember a lot from back then, probably because I was sniffing markers so much.
Anyway, but the lessons he learned were clear.
Survival was earned and justice wasn't given, it had to be taken.
And Pedro as a child was very small, wiry, but very serious as well.
He was a bit of an old soul.
And what he lacked in size, he made up for with intensity.
He was fearless, kind of dangerously so.
And he showed early signs of deep sensitivity to injustice, especially when it involved his family.
He was like the ultra final boss empath, if you will but also not because he ended up killing people.
But you know what I mean?
But that sensitivity curdled into something much darker in 1967, when Pedro was only 13 years old.
He had taken his cousin's horse for a short ride without permission.
Just an impulsive act that he really didn't think much of.
He didn't think that his cousin would care.
But when his cousin found him, the other boy actually had punched Pedro hard across the face.
And Pedro on the ground and completely dazed from getting basically knocked out, looked up at him and said I'm going to kill you.
And his cousin laughed and would just proceed to punch him in the face again.
Poking the bear, if you will.
And Pedro, he wasn't laughing and he also didn't forget.
So weeks would pass and the cousin wouldn't apologize.
And other relatives heard about the incident and kind of mocked Pedro for being weak.
Different times.
And inside him, something began to fester.
And this wasn't just anger, it turned into an obsession.
And the opportunity for revenge came at the sugar cane mill, where Pedro and his cousin were assigned to feed cane stalks into an industrial press.
Yeah, foreshadowing.
And the press is basically two giant steel rollers that crush the stalks into a pulp.
So Pedro would do his job and also wait for his moment.
And then without any warning, Pedro would shove his cousin into the rollers.
And his cousin's arm would get stuck into the press and it would crush it all the way up to his shoulder until the machine just completely jammed out.
And Pedro, still not being satisfied with this revenge, would proceed to pick up pruning shears and stab his cousin repeatedly.
Just trying to reduce the body enough so it could still push through the press.
Just, I mean...
Foul.
Terrifying.
But the attack would be interrupted by workers who heard the screams.
And his grandfather would turn up just in time to actually turn off the machine before his cousin could get fully pulled into this press.
So Pedro would naturally be arrested, but only as a minor.
And with pressure from his grandfather, he would actually be released within days.
So his only punishment was that he was ordered to clean the machine of the blood and flesh.
And that would take him about four weeks.
That's not a punishment.
If I said shut up to my mom, I would get more of a punishment than that.
What the .
And Pedro, later in life, would retell the story with just pure amusement, laughing as he described the attack.
Because he felt no remorse for his cousin, because his cousin had wronged him and he was bringing him to justice in his mind.
The balance had been restored basically.
And with that, Pedro Rodriguez Filho felt his first taste of justice and of something else too, which was pleasure, and the urge to kill had awakened.
So, in 1968, Pedro was 14 years old, and this is when his life would take an irreversible turn, Because his father, Pedro Senior, had worked as a night janitor at a local school but was abruptly fired without severance after being accused of stealing food and supplies during his shift.
And though Pedro Senior denied all allegations, his word was dismissed in favor of a daytime guard who claimed Pedro Senior was responsible for it.
And the consequences were devastating for the family.
Because with his father jobless and branded as a thief, the Rodriguez family spiraled into poverty.
And Pedro would watch as his siblings just went hungry and his mother, Manuela, cried in silence.
And Pedro believed that his father had been wronged.
Because although Pedro Sr. was kind of a piece of shit, he didn't steal.
So Pedro believed that the balance once again needed to be restored and someone had to pay.
So Pedro would just retreat into the wilderness armed with a 36 caliber rifle, a machete and a green army backpack.
And he built a makeshift camp in the forest.
He just went full feral mode and he would live here For months, surviving off wild game.
He's 14 at this time.
He's disappeared and started just living off the land, just planning and waiting.
Because this wasn't a retreat.
He was just meticulously planning something.
And one night, Pedro laid in wait outside the deputy mayor's house.
The very man who had authorized his father's dismissal.
And when the deputy arrived in the Jeep, Pedro raised his grandfather's rifle and fired.
And he would shoot the man and he would die instantly.
And that's when Pedro would just flee into the dark.
And this would be the first man that Pedro had killed, because his cousin didn't die in that incident somehow.
I don't know how he didn't die, but he didn't.
But this would be the first man that he would kill and he would not be the last.
But he said when it was done, he felt no remorse.
He felt satisfaction and he felt righteous.
But the injustice hadn't been fully avenged at this point.
Not yet.
Because there was still someone responsible for the pain his family was facing.
So he allegedly told himself, moving forward, he would tell the victims why he was going to kill them.
Sound like anybody we know?
Tonight's the night.
So Pedro would wait for the right time to strike his next victim.
And it would be a month later when Pedro returned to the school where his father once worked.
And his next target, the day guard.
The man he believed had falsely accused Pedro Sr. and ruined his entire family's life.
So Pedro would wait outside the storeroom where the guard usually began his shift.
So when the man arrived, Pedro would again lift his gun, but he wouldn't shoot just yet.
He would actually force the man into a chair.
And then he told him exactly why he was going to die, saying...
Did you see what you did?
It destroyed my family.
My brothers are starving because of you.
Is it fair that you did this?
And the guard would just sob and break down and beg for his life.
But Pedro wouldn't have it, and he just shot him twice.
And then he would pile boxes and furniture over the body and set it all on fire before fleeing the scene once again.
Do not wrong this guy.
My lord.
And he's 14 at this point.
So with the authorities now closing in, Pedro just went into hiding.
And he would completely flee metropolitan Sao Paulo, taking refuge in a home with his godmother.
And it would be there that he met a woman that would change his life.
And that woman was Botinha.
And Botinha was a widowed drug trafficker known for her beauty, influence and iron fist of control of a local criminal organization.
And she would just take Pedro in and she would actually become his lover, which I'm not sure of the age of her, but she was definitely a lot older.
But she would have a lot of influence over him and she would actually start to work him in the drug trade.
And though Pedro was still a minor, obviously his relationship with Botinha granted him unusual status and power within the gang.
But his rise in this power kind of stirred resentment from older traffickers who saw him as just an upstart.
And according to one of the rival's girlfriends, Pedro had been targeted for assassination at this point.
And after she told Pedro, he constantly kept one eye open.
And soon after all this, Pedro would actually be invited to a lagoon, supposedly for a swim.
Just to smoke with the boys.
But as they started walking towards the water, Pedro would slowly become more and more suspicious, because the others were acting kind of strangely and they were armed.
So Pedro, being Pedro, would pull his gun first and he would order them to disarm themselves.
And instead of listening to the child, they ran away and that's when Pedro would just light them up.
He would open fire, killing two and hospitalizing a third.
And whether it was paranoia or legitimate self-defense, it didn't matter.
What mattered was that Pedro survived, and now he completely ruled through fear.
And from that moment on, Pedro's reputation just exploded.
He became known as Pedrinho Cartucheira, which means cartridge PD, which is a reference to his favorite weapon, a two-shot sawed-off shotgun.
And he would work with a trusted pair of partners.
Gausenio and Ze Capeta.
And the trio would carry out multiple crimes across cities like Jicarra, even double-crossing rival dealers.
Pedro was just known to live on the edge, not to be fucked with, if you will. he slept in cars cemeteries and churches and he hid from both police and death squads who were basically notorious vigilante groups made up of off-duty cops who executed suspected criminals with impunity so he would be doing his thing living on the edge doing crime and then one day karma would get him back and he would be ambushed and during this ambush botinia would be killed and pedro would be wounded So Pedro just shattered and completely in poor health now, sought refuge again with his family, because he just lost the love of his life.
And you know, the person that introduced him to this whole crime world basically groomed him and he was wounded.
So he would seek refuge with his family, but this time his relatives practiced Candomblé Macumba, which is an Afro-Brazilian religion involving spiritual possession and ritual sacrifice, sometimes referred to as black magic.
And they put Pedro through a ceremony involving him drinking the blood of a black cat dancing drumming, and a ritual burial of the carcass with seeds inside.
And a short time later, Pedro would actually go to retrieve the seeds from the buried carcass and wear them as a necklace.
And this represented being a spiritual talisman that he believed would make him completely invincible.
And he would go on to say, from then on, the cops opened fired, but the bullets didn't hit me.
He claimed, nothing would stop me.
So after this his crimes would escalate, his methods grew bolder and he would not just be known as Cartridge Petey.
He would be called something new, but only after he had committed his most violent offense to date, something that would turn him into the legend he's known as today.
So, after the bloodshed, betrayals and rituals that had defined his early teens, Pedro would find something very unexpected, and that was love again.
And while living in Campo Grande, a city just west of Rio de Janeiro, Pedro met a young woman named Maria Aparecida Olympia.
And for the first time, the boy who had killed his way through the slums of Sao Paulo seemed to have a future beyond just vengeance.
And Pedro and Maria fell in love.
And soon, Maria would become pregnant.
So they moved into a small shack and Pedro kept supporting them the only way he knew how by operating outside the law.
So he would continue stealing from corrupt traffickers, robbing from businesses who cheated the poor and reselling stolen goods to dealers he believed were just fine.
So everything he's doing, even though it's against the law, he's like kind of doing it like Robin Hood, like anybody that's bad, he would steal from and then he would give back where he could.
So he was like the good bad guy, if you will, the vigilante.
And Pedro saw himself as a vigilante and not a criminal.
But in his mind, he was doing moral work.
He protected the weak and he punished the wicked, and he provided for the woman he loved and the child they were expecting.
But that illusion of peace wouldn't last because Pedro at this point had made a fuckload of enemies.
Enemies that would not forgive.
So one day after...
Pedro would return back to his shack that he shared with his love and he would find it to be silent.
And inside he would find Maria, his pregnant girlfriend, dead.
Murdered along with the man Pedro had asked to protect her while he was away.
And the scene was horrific because the killer had actually used their blood to write a message for Pedro on the wall saying we will get you.
And at this point she had been seven months pregnant.
And at this point Pedro's life had already been drenched in blood, and now he was just consumed in rage, because now it wasn't just justice he needed to serve, it was fucking personal.
So Pedro would set out and he would spend over a year hunting.
He would interrogate anyone he thought might have information.
He tortured people who didn't give answers fast enough.
But for a long time, he would kind of come up with nothing.
And he killed so many, wronged so many that he no longer knew where to begin.
And then one day at a bar, someone would approach him and it would be a woman.
And she said she had actually been looking for him because she was the ex-wife of a man named Chena.
And Chena was a drug trafficker.
Pedro had betrayed year earlier, stealing his drugs and guns and selling them off to a rival.
And Gina had never forgotten this.
And according to her, Gina had actually ordered for Maria's murder.
And the woman who came up to Pedro in the bar would go on to show him her bruises and scars from Gina.
And Pedro believed her.
And she would actually tell him something else.
And that was that Gina's brother is actually getting married that weekend.
And she would tell him exactly where.
You guys ever heard of the red wedding?
So Pedro would call up his old allies Guachino and Zacapetta and he would tell them quote unquote, We're going to a wedding.
Every man there gets a bullet.
But if you shoot a woman or child, you'll have to answer to me.
Which, listen, I know this guy is a really bad guy, but a straight up action movie line right there.
That, like, pluck that out, put that into a movie.
He's a piece of shit.
He kills people.
But, you know, like that, that goes hard as a line by itself.
So Pedro and his compadres would go to this wedding and the venue was full and the guests were drinking and dancing and toasting the groom and bride, and Pedro and his men slipped inside completely undetected.
And Pedro would approach the doorman claiming to be an honored guest of Chena.
And moments later, Pedro spotted Chena and raised his 12 gauge sawn off shotgun.
And he would fire right into Chena's chest, killing him instantly on his wedding day.
And the rest was complete chaos.
Pedro and his crew opened fired on male guests, sparing only women and children.
And seven men would be killed and 16 more would be wounded.
And Chena's mother was actually hit.
But Pedro would later say that was her own doing as she tried to shield her son.
And after the massacre, the trio would just walk out the front door, just calmly and confidently.
And they would even go to a nearby bar to get a drink to Selly.
And from that day on, he was no longer just a teenage killer.
In the streets, he was now known as...
Padrino Matador, which means Little Petey the Killer.
And that name was everywhere.
He was like a mythic figure, the boy who avenged his unborn child.
It was like movie shit to people.
The man who massacred an entire wedding party in the name of justice and to claim to be guided not by impulse but by a moral code.
Sounds like somebody else we know.
There were so many lessons in the vaunted code of Harry.
So the wedding massacre would send shockwaves through the criminal underworld.
Seven men lay dead, 16 wounded, and none of them were innocent in Pedro's eyes.
But to law enforcement, it was a complete bloodbath.
And after the wedding, Pedro didn't go into hiding.
He just leaned into the myth.
And he would actually go on to take up a pair of twins in a polyamorous threesome relationship and begin to live like a complete gangster, because now he had notoriety, money and respect.
And he even got tattooed across his arms the words I kill for pleasure.
Which, oh my God, is this guy real?
How is this guy real?
And on the other, he tattooed the name Maria and beneath it, it says, I can kill for love.
Like who wrote this guy's lore?
Who?
But Pedro claimed that he killed daily and he would say, I would summon the devil.
It was a ritual.
It was like, this body is yours.
This blood is yours.
Then he would find a man, someone who'd beaten a woman or prayed on the week, and he would, you know, drink their blood, because that's what he grew up thinking he had to do.
Just as his grandmother had once told him would make him stronger.
But mere months after avenging Maria, another personal grievance would arise.
And this time it would involve his cousin.
Pedro would discover that his favorite female cousin had become pregnant, but his boyfriend disgracefully refused to marry her.
And he would just abandon her and his unborn child.
So Pedro, naturally enraged by the mistreatment of his cousin, took it upon himself to retaliate.
And he would hunt down the boyfriend and shoot him in the head in cold blood as punishment for dishonoring the family.
Don't fuck with this guy.
But in Pedro's eyes, this was just another righteous kill.
The man had wronged his flesh and blood, so lethal vengeance was warranted in Pedro's mind, not mine.
And this incident would just add to the growing tally of Pedro's victims, proving that no perceived injustice against his family would go unanswered, even relatively minor domestic ones.
So Pedro's reputation would continue to grow and grow.
And he was now a fully wanted man, hunted by both the police and the death squads that we talked about before.
But even the death squads kind of hesitated around Padrino Matador, because his name carried weight and his reach extended farther than most knew.
But luckily legend is no shield and the myth doesn't protect against betrayal, because Pedro's inner circle began to unravel.
His two buddies.
The men who stood beside him at the wedding massacre were both killed, one by police and one by a death squad.
And though Pedro had kind of always lived as a loner, paranoia began to set in, and justifiably so, because his twin lover's father owned a bar in Sao Paulo.
And Pedro would visit this bar pretty often.
And one day, while he sat drinking at the bar, the police would come in because the twin's father had tipped them off.
So Pedro would be ambushed in a very dramatic raid.
It was just a hail of bullets and screaming voices.
And he was actually very badly wounded in the firefight, collapsing to the ground and starting to bleed out.
And he would pass out to the sound of officers yelling for his death.
But when he woke, he was actually chained to a hospital bed, surrounded by nurses, police and television cameras.
The vigilante killer was caught and the myth had been subdued.
And Brazil's most feared teenage executioner was about to enter a place even more violent than the streets, which was Brazil's prisons.
So Pedro would spend 25 days recovering, shackled in place before being transferred to prison.
And the guards gave him a choice either protective custody or gen pop general population in the prison where the friends, brothers and sons of victims of Pedro's were waiting in wake.
But Pedro didn't give a fuck and he went to Gen Pop, which is crazy because there's just lines of people waiting to kill Pedro.
So he entered a system notorious for its brutality, overcrowding and corruption, and where guards often handed over power to the inmates and violence ruled everything one of the scariest places you can go on earth.
And on the ride to prison, pedro was chained inside the transport truck with another man, and this man was a serial grapist, just the lowest of the low.
By the time they got there, only one man was left alive in the back of the van.
So from the moment he arrived, pedro sent a message he would not be intimidated, And within days, five men tried to ambush Pedro in the yard.
But when it was over, three were dead and two ran off bleeding.
And Pedro, he walked away basically unharmed.
Pedro had quite literally entered one of the most violent prison systems in the world.
And he just mated his bitch.
Because he would just turn anything into a weapon.
Spoons, wires, shivs, just bare hands.
And when he couldn't find a blade, he just relied on his fists or his specialty, breaking necks.
How is breaking necks a specialty?
That's a very hard thing to do.
They make it look so easy in movies and stuff.
They just go, that's a really hard thing to do.
Not that I would know.
I just know because I'm not going to talk about it.
Nevermind.
I've literally asked doctors because i was curious.
I'm like everybody makes it so easy, like to break necks in movies, and they're like no, it's really hard, you need brute force to do that anyway.
I'm digging a hole right now.
But to maintain this type of strength, you know to be a break necking specialist.
He would maintain his strength daily, punching the concrete cell walls until they were slick with his blood, also building his pain resistance like armor, and he would learn martial arts in prison.
And he would lift homemade weights made from water bottles and broomsticks.
But pedro wasn't impulsive.
Sometimes he would even befriend his victims, gain their trust, eat meals with them, even hug them, only to kill them months later once they were comfortable.
He was just like a meticulous planner.
Like, unfortunately, he was very smart.
Reminds me a lot of Ed Kemper in a way.
Like, he was very patient, and he observed, and he learned.
But Ed Kemper is just like a whole other stream.
He was not a vigilante.
He's just a fucking monster.
If you want to know more about that one, you go to this video over here.
But anyway, Pedro stood on a pedestal of fucked up morals basically, but he believed in execution and not emotion.
He didn't have regret after he killed somebody and he didn't hesitate when he did kill someone.
And in time, pedro became the boogeyman behind bars.
Other inmates feared him, guards learned to stay the fuck out of his way and still he kept killing.
So pedro would just thrive in this environment and he did so through murder.
Bad guy, i cannot say enough.
This is a bad guy.
Okay, i know i'm saying this like he's like dude, look at well, this is crazy what he did.
I mean, it is, it's fucking crazy.
This whole story sounds like it's straight out of a movie.
It's not.
He's killing people.
He's bad, he's a piece of shit.
Are these bad people that he's killing?
Maybe, maybe do they deserve to live?
Probably not, but that's not for me to say okay.
And that's not for a human that has no just or right to kill someone to decide, you know?
So I'm just putting that out there.
I'm just telling a story, a real story that's fucking insane.
But anyway, back in prison, not all of his killings were actually driven by revenge.
And in one case, that became folklore in the Brazilian press.
Pedro claimed to have killed a cellmate simply because the man snored too loudly.
Just, that's like You can't get on this guy's nerves.
I swear.
Oh my God.
But later he would clarify that the truth was much darker, because during a hospital transfer, Pedro had shared a room with a prisoner who watched him too intently, while he was being intimate with his girlfriend during a visit.
And Pedro would say that he disrespected me.
He stared.
That's why I killed him. and he would slit the snoring man's throat.
It probably also was a little bit because he was snoring.
It was probably like twofer for Pedro because he's crazy.
And then there's Claudio, the traitor.
He was actually a former friend of Pedro who Pedro had actually protected on the inside.
And Claudio was eventually released and welcomed into Pedro's family.
And he would even begin a relationship with Pedro's sister.
Good luck, dude.
What the... Don't do that.
But after an altercation with Pedro's brother, Claudio shot and killed Pedro's sister, Silvana.
Run!
Actually, don't run.
I mean, you're a piece of shit.
You killed an innocent person, so you should go back to jail.
But also...
So when Claudio would naturally return to prison for killing Pedro's sister, he expected some serious fucking vengeance for Pedro because he's been around the block.
So day by day would go by and he would just be looking over his shoulder waiting for Pedro to get his vengeance.
Oh, one day he did.
Because while Claudio was studying in his cell, Pedro would waltz in.
And he would grab him by the hair and cut through his throat with a knife, completely decapitating him.
Pedro would go on to say, he was my friend, but I just had to kill him.
I'm justified.
He killed his sister, which again, no, killing is bad.
Killing is really bad.
But what?
You poked the bear of bears.
So, as his infamy grew, Pedro began receiving letters from people on the outside begging him to kill specific inmates.
He was becoming like a bounty hunter within jail.
Anyone from grapist to child essayers or extortionists, men who had harmed the innocent scum of the earth basically.
And sometimes Pedro would oblige, but he did refuse to kill for money.
So technically he wasn't like a bounty hunter.
He was like a pro bono bounty hunter, I guess.
But he evaluated each case meticulously to make sure that it was justified to do so.
He was like a kind of a responsible killer.
The morals are kind of all over the place.
It's really hard.
He's a bad guy, but...
So are grapists, you know?
But in his own mind, if he deemed the man guilty enough, he would strike.
Similar to Dexter.
And sometimes he would beat them to death.
Sometimes he would stab them to death.
And sometimes he would throw you down an elevator shaft.
You never knew what was coming with Pedro.
Kind of a surprise guy.
And he even described luring his victims into false friendships.
Kind of like we talked about before sharing food, talking kindly before striking with absolute ruthlessness.
I can't imagine just being like best buds with Pedro and just like skipping through the halls of prison and eating food, only to get, like a fucking sandwich, shoved down my throat along with a fist.
And Pedro would even go on to later tell a TV reporter about the day that he set a personal record, a PR 16 people killed in violence.
One day.
But the story is kind of murky and unconfirmed by public records.
Low key, believe it.
After everything I've heard about him so far.
But Pedro claimed that a prisoner spread a rumor that led to the death of Pedro's friend.
And in retaliation, he said he entered their ward and went on a stabbing spree.
Claiming afterward that he actually couldn't hear for three days from all the screaming.
So whether true or mythologized, it fit the image Pedro had cultivated.
A relentless executioner who claimed to purge prison of those he deemed unworthy of life.
Guy was the grim reaper of prison.
And his official body count was 71 confirmed kills at this point, but he insisted the number was much higher.
And again, low key, believe him.
So the state had given him a cell and Pedro turned it into his killing fields.
But it's just crazy to me that they didn't separate him from Gen Pop after he killed I don't know one person, maybe two.
They were like, hey, maybe we should put this guy in his own place.
Maybe we should put this guy in solitary confinement and not with other people, because he tends to.
Kill everyone that wrongs him.
And in prison, that happens a lot.
So I don't know.
Brazil prisons are just like, just otherworldly insane.
So I don't know how you fix that.
But anyway, they didn't.
And he killed a lot of people.
But none of the murders Pedro committed in prison would compare to the one that hit Brazil closest to home.
Because one day, the guards called him to the warden's office and he was just surrounded by officers with drawn rifles as they delivered the news to him, which was that I get chills even saying it because I'm scared for everyone involved but that his mother Manuela, was murdered, and that she had been stabbed 21 times and that her body was ripped apart with a machete.
And the killer was her own mother. husband, Pedro's father.
I have so many chills saying this right now because I know what's gonna happen next and I'm still scared.
So Pedro's father was arrested and was now in custody at the same prison where Pedro was serving time.
And when Pedro was given the news, he was completely silent and he would actually ask to attend the morgue viewing.
And the guards, watching him carefully, did allow it.
And standing over his mother's mutilated body, he would make a promise to her.
And that promise would be that he would kill his father and he would eat his heart.
In that chance, came not long after because Pedro would fake an illness.
And by doing so, he would lure a guard into his cell, overpower him, and steal his gun and his keys.
Pedro was just seeing red after he got that news.
And he would continue to see red during this whole ordeal.
So he'd move on to other guards, lock them up and then walk to the wing where his father was being held.
And when he entered that wing, all the inmates fled because they knew what was about to happen.
But the only person who didn't flee was Pedro Senior, who was just standing there completely still.
And he allegedly said to Pedro, you are right, my son.
But Pedro didn't reply.
Pedro would just lunge forward and plunge a knife into his father and begin counting the stabs that he plunged into his father out loud.
One, two, three.
And he would go on to count 22 times.
One more than the amount of times that his father stabbed his mother because he wanted to do it to his father once more.
Then he would rip open his father's chest and tear out his still beating heart and bite into it.
But the flesh was too tough for him to eat, so he just spit it back out onto the corpse of his father.
And then he returned to the guards, handed over the gun and knife, and submitted to arrest.
Y'all right?
I'm not.
What?
Duh.
Pedro had now delivered the justice he felt the system never could.
And for the Brazilian justice system, Pedro Rodriguez Filho was an anomaly.
A man who broke the system simply by surviving it.
He had been convicted at this point of 71 murders with unofficial estimates claiming more.
And for those deaths, both on the streets and inside the prison walls, Pedro was sentenced to nearly 400 years behind bars.
His initial conviction alone was 126 years.
And additionally, killing inside prison pushed his sentence to well over three centuries.
But in Brazil, sentencing wasn't so simple.
Under the law at the time, no individual could actually be imprisoned for more than 30 years, no matter how many crimes they committed, which is insane yawned, fucked up.
So the rule meant that even a man who killed dozens could, in theory, just walk free after 30 years.
So by 2003, Pedro had reached his 30 year mark.
So he had technically served his time.
And the authorities, just rattled by his infamy and the public outcry, scrambled for ways to delay his release.
And, through legal maneuvering, they extended his imprisonment for four additional years, citing his continued violence and danger to society.
But they could not hold him forever, because there were now whispers of using a now repealed public security decree, one that allowed indefinite psychiatric confinement for those deemed mentally unfit.
And Pedro had, after all, being diagnosed by multiple psychiatrists as a psychopath, which...
And he was incapable of remorse and driven by violent self-affirmation.
But unfortunately, that loophole was gone.
And by law, even Brazil's most prolific serial killers could be set free.
And on April 24th 2007, after 34 years in prison, Pedro Rodriguez Filho walked strolled fucking, danced out of prison because the system had done all it could and it still wasn't enough.
But the world Pedro had stepped into was unrecognizable.
His technology had changed, cities had changed, and even the people looked different.
Pedro didn't know how to ride a bus, use a cell phone or operate modern farm equipment.
Who once ruled the prison yards had to ask strangers how to navigate everyday life.
So Pedro would move into a small pink cottage surrounded by trees reportedly located in Fortaleza in Ceará, and he would take a job as a farm caretaker.
And he would acquire a laborer and begin attending church regularly, attempting to reshape himself into something new, something more peaceful, trying to turn a new leaf.
You know from killing nearly 100 people.
You know as you do.
So at this point, there were no signs of violence and there were no signs of bloodshed.
But yet even here, he wasn't entirely safe because enemies from the past caught wind of his release.
And one day in Santa Catarina, a group of men would recognize him in public.
And they went to gather reinforcements because they knew they couldn't take this guy on one-on-one or even 5v1, as we know from the prison yards.
But Pedro would escape just in time and he would flee to his sister's house before they would return.
But this time he didn't seek revenge.
At least that's what he said, so.
But patterns be patterns and the peace wouldn't last.
And on September 15th 2011 at around 11 am, a police raided a farmhouse in Cambo Rio, acting on an anonymous tip.
And Pedro just happened to be there.
And he offered no resistance and officers would find a loaded 38 caliber revolver and a legal weapon and took him into custody.
But this time the charges were different.
He was accused of involvement in six prison riots during his earlier incarceration and for the unlawful imprisonment of a guard during one of them.
And a possession of a revolver just added another charge to that list.
And as reporters swarmed around the station, Pedro stood before the press.
And he was calm and measured and very soft-spoken.
And a reporter would ask him, do you think you've paid for your crimes?
And Pedro would nod slowly and say, I've paid for my crimes.
So he would hand his Labrador over to his neighbor, and he would return to the one place that had shaped him more than any other.
And that was prison.
But this time he was sentenced to eight years.
So on December 6th 2017 Pedro, once known as the Pendrinho Matador, Brazil's most feared killer, was released from prison a final time.
And he was 64 years old, but still looked younger than his years.
Because a lifetime of prison workouts beginning at 4 am every morning had kept his body lean and strong.
So the legend had aged, but the presence remained what seemed unchanged.
And this time, Pedro had claimed he was really different.
He said that he no longer killed, that he did want peace and that he just wanted to spend time with family.
His family being his sister Clarice, his niece Jacqueline, and her husband.
And he would go to church.
He preached about forgiveness and he talked about a future that didn't involve violence.
But he also admitted in interviews that the urge still flickered within him.
And he was allegedly asked if he still felt that temptation to kill, where he responded yes, but it fades away.
And he said that the last time he killed was around five years earlier, between his first and second release, but he wouldn't elaborate.
And he claimed that it was complicated.
And with Pedro no longer killing.
Allegedly He had found another outlet, a similar one to what I found, which is fucking weird.
And that is YouTube.
I didn't kill anyone though.
So a little bit of a difference there.
The channel was called Pendrino X Matador, Little Petey the X Killer.
Just a great username.
And Pedro uploaded often, sometimes even several times a day, with the help of a younger producer named Pablo Silva.
And his videos were kind of a mix of anti-crime commentary, personal stories, culinary tutorials guy was a chef, motivational talks, footage of him getting tattoos, cooking or getting haircuts and even warned kids about drugs, lying to their parents and even vandalism, saying all of it was against his moral code.
And he tried to just brand himself as a reformed man, telling people that crime does not pay.
And his audience kind of grew.
People recognized him in the streets and fans asked for selfies, and even police officers shook his hand.
And Pedro had became something previously unthinkable, which was a social media star.
He really did turn a new leaf.
And as his online presence just exploded, so did public fascination.
And people drew comparisons between Pedro and you guessed it Dexter Morgan, a fictional serial killer from American television who hunted other murderers or other people who committed terrible crimes.
And Pedro just kind of leaned into that comparison.
And he reportedly said, I only killed those who were no good.
If I didn't kill them, they would kill me.
And they would kill others who didn't deserve to die.
And he continued to give interviews and even released an autobiography.
And he would start collaborating with filmmakers and musicians, even appearing in a rap song about his life.
But as he attempted to rebrand himself as a man of peace, he also covered up his past.
Like literally, because he began replacing his old tattoos.
Like, you know, I kill for pleasure became a scorpion and revenge became love.
And a crude devil tattoo became a tribal symbol and an odd cross on his back transformed into Jesus and cherubs.
And even Maria's name was covered with a feather.
So he was literally trying to erase his past but at the same time owning up to it with all of his videos.
And he would even go on to list himself as single on Facebook.
And in the comments, women filled his posts with hearts, roses, and marriage proposals.
So Pedro, once the terror of Brazil's prisons had become a brand.
To some, he was a completely redeemed man, but to others, he was kind of a walking contradiction.
And to many, he was something even stranger, which was an icon.
But then March 5th, 2023 would come.
And it was a quiet Sunday morning in Magi das Cruzes, a suburb on the Eastern edge of Sao Paulo.
And the sun had already begun to rise, burning off the morning fog that hung over the streets like a breath on a glass.
And it was warm, humid, the kind of heavy air that sticks to your skin before noon.
Pedro Rodriguez Filho was now 68 years old.
His wild youth was long behind him.
And these days he was known more for cooking videos and crime commentary on YouTube than the trail of bodies he'd left behind.
And that morning he was visiting his sister at her home.
And to neighbors.
He was just a quiet old man who helped with chores and made strange rambling videos online.
But on that day Pedro would walk out of his sister's house, possibly to get some air and just enjoy the day.
Maybe he was reflecting on the strangeness of the still being alive after everything.
And maybe he felt untouchable having escaped countless ambushes, shootouts, and betrayals.
And maybe he didn't feel anything at all.
But what happened next... only took seconds.
A car would pull up to the curb, windows tinted, engine low and inside were at least three men, faces hidden under hoods.
And then the doors would fling open and the gunmen burst from the vehicle.
And before Pedro could speak at all, move, or even raise a hand, the bullets would fly.
And the men would shoot Pedro in quick succession, close range, deliberate, and coordinated.
And then Pedro would collapse on the sidewalk, bleeding out in the open air, just steps from his family's doorstep.
But one of the killers wasn't finished and would step forward, kneel over Pedro's twitching body and, with a knife, slash his throat so deep that police would later say that it was tantamount to beheading.
And the message was unmistakable.
This was an execution.
And the assailants would flee in the same vehicle, and tires would screech as they vanished into the narrow maze of city streets.
And Pedro's neighbors hearing the gunfire rushed outside.
And what they found was completely grotesque.
A man just laid there riddled with bullets and his neck nearly completely severed.
And his blood was just pooling in the gutter beneath him.
By the time the paramedics arrived, Pedro was already dead.
And in his final seconds, lying in the sun, lungs collapsing and heart slowing, it's hard to know what Pedro might've felt.
Maybe shock, rage, recognition, or perhaps nothing.
And perhaps, like he always said, death didn't scare him.
It was just the cost of the code he had to live by.
A killer who once claimed to kill only those that deserved it had been killed by the same fashion.
Clean, cold, and without mercy.
And the murder bore all the hallmarks of a professional hit.
And police immediately suspected revenge.
Some speculated that it was retaliation from an old drug ring that Pedro had wronged decades ago.
And others believed it came from one of the many families he'd shattered through his brutal brand of justice.
But by mid 2023, three suspects had been identified, but no arrests had been made.
And the killers had disappeared into the same criminal underworld Pedro once ruled.
And so, after surviving decades in the most violent prisons, escaping death squads and outliving his enemies, the man who wants declared himself invincible, was gunned down on the street.
Like so many of the men he had executed himself.
So his story had came full circle.
The vigilante killer had become the target of vigilante style killing.
Some say it was poetic and some say it was irony.
But Pedro Rodriguez Filho will forever be remembered for the sheer number of people that he killed.
By official records, he was convicted of 71 murders between the years 1968 and 2023.
But according to Pedro himself, that number was conservative.
He claimed the true count was well over 100.
And 47 of his confirmed victims were inmates.
And most of them were convicted murderers, grapists, and thieves.
And the rest included drug traffickers, gang members and individuals he executed during his teenage vigilante years.
And a handful, as we know, were personal.
And at the end of the day, Pedro was diagnosed as a textbook psychopath.
He was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, exhibited paranoid delusions and possessed a chilling absence of empathy or remorse.
And Brazilian psychiatrists even labeled him as the perfect psychopath.
He could be calm, intelligent, and even charming.
But underneath that surface was a man who had normalized murder as a way of life.
And criminologist Elania Casoy even called him a rare avenger type serial killer.
Someone who built his entire identity around eliminating evil, with pride in the precision of his kills.
And Pedro's sharp memory and strategic cunning made him even more than just violent.
He was calculated.
And his background also played a role.
He was born with that skull deformity caused by abuse in the womb.
He was raised in a household full of chronic violence, learning to kill animals for food by age of 10.
And experts believe the combination of head trauma and early exposure to brutality kind of shaped a brain that was simply wired to kill.
So nature and nurture were clearly at play.
And when debates arise over the ethics of vigilante justice, Pedro is cited as the most extreme example of what happens when one man decides he knows who deserves to live or die.
So was he a hero?
Was he a monster?
Was he a symbol of justice or a warning of what happens when morality becomes personal?
And the answer obviously depends on your perspective.
But one thing is certain, Pedro Rodriguez Filho didn't just kill people.
He forced a country, and eventually the world, to confront how thin the line is between justice and murder, especially when fiction and reality looks so much alike.
And that concludes today's video.
I know it was a longer one, but my goodness, it was pretty crazy.
I'd love to hear what y'all think down below.
I'm very curious.
I know it's just a... all over the place case.
I had not heard about him previously and in reading about him, I'm just mind blown about it all.
But anyway, I appreciate you being here and I appreciate the support and I hope y'all stay safe and let me know what else you guys want to see down in the comments below.
I do love reading your comments.
Until next time, I will see you beautiful face, okay?
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