Brazil’s Deadliest Vigilante: Pedro Rodrigues

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

The kid born damaged by a kick grew into Brazil’s most infamous vigilante, hunted monsters across prisons and streets, then chased redemption on YouTube before a ruthless end.

Violence Sells, Even When It Horrifies

Taking human life is an unnatural act. We talk about it all the time. Most every week in this space I endeavor to wax eloquent about something that is, at its heart, quite very horrible. While this undoubtedly objectifies violence, it is also reliably titillating.

For this same reason, stylized depictions of violence form the basis for most television, cinematic drama, and a great many video games. Leftist actors lecture us until the sun burns out on the evils of firearms, yet gladly accept zillions of dollars to shoot people with firearms in movies. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Alec Baldwin and Mark Ruffalo. In Baldwin’s case, he even shot somebody for real.

Murder, theft, and rape are all adequate to get you locked away in the real world. However, hyper-realistic depictions of exactly the same stuff on screens both large and small are simply discounted as entertainment. It’s all honestly kind of weird if you think about it.

The Psychology That Builds a Psychopath

I’m a writer by trade. While I do love these historical pieces, my real passion is fiction. Track down my website below for a few examples. If the wind is in my sails, I hope to polish up a novel or two here directly. I can attest from personal experience, it is quite easy to depict violence in the guise of recreation. Actually doing it for real is another thing altogether. However, not everybody possesses that intrinsic sense of restraint.

Those rare souls are the true psychopaths, the stuff of legend in both literature and film. The textbook definition of a psychopath is an individual with a personality disorder characterized by a severe lack of empathy and remorse, superficial charm, impulsivity, manipulativeness, and antisocial behavior. That lack of empathy is the key. The practical psychopath is intellectually incapable of perceiving another person’s pain. Some folks with this lamentable affliction come from the factory that way. Others, like Pedro Rodrigues Filho, are created.

Origins of a Vigilante: How the ‘Monster’ Was Made

Pedro Rodrigues Filho was born on 29 October 1954 in Santa Rita do Sapucai, Minas Gerais, Brazil. In Portuguese, the word “Filho” means “son.” It is a generational suffix much like our own “Junior.” Tragically, Pedro Rodrigues was dealt a pretty sordid hand before he even took his first breath.

Pedro’s dad was a proper beast. He had a falling out with the boy’s severely pregnant mom and kicked her viciously in the belly. He paid for that later, but his attack left the unborn child with head trauma in utero. It has been postulated that this antepartum insult might have been the precipitating factor behind Pedro’s subsequent curious malady. This kid entered the world a cold-blooded killer.

First Blood: A Thirteen Year Old’s Threat

Pedro Rodrigues was never quite right. At age thirteen, he got into a fight with an older cousin. The cousin punched him in the face and knocked him down. Looking up, beaten and battered, Pedro stated flatly, “I’m going to kill you.”

These were just kids. The cousin laughed it off. Soon thereafter, Pedro and his cousin were working around a sugarcane press. When the opportunity arose, Pedro shoved his relative into the machine, very nearly tearing his arm off. With the bully now immobilized, Pedro drew a knife to finish the job. Family members heard the older boy’s screams and arrived in time to prevent the murder. However, this was just the beginning.

Finding His Stride in Blood: Teen Vigilante Emerges

Pedro’s dad was a school security guard, and times were hard. The local deputy mayor falsely accused the senior Rodrigues of stealing food and fired him before having him thrown in jail. When Pedro heard the news, he retrieved his grandfather’s shotgun, tracked down the actual thief, and blew him away. He then confronted the deputy mayor and killed him as well. Pedro was 14 at the time.

With the law on his trail, young Pedro fled to Mogi das Cruzes, Greater São Paulo. However, he didn’t know anyone and had few marketable skills. Facing destitution or worse, Pedro Rodrigues tapped into the one thing he was really good at. To make ends meet, he began hunting drug dealers. These he summarily executed before cleaning out their cash reserves. It was an unconventional profession, but the money was good.

Along the way, he met a woman named Maria Aparecida Olympia. Her nickname was Botinha. Botinha was a widow who had previously been married to a local drug lord. I could not ascertain if Botinha’s better half was one of the scumbags that Pedro had liquidated. Regardless, the two fell madly in love. Pedro subsequently assumed the marital responsibilities of the demised criminal. Botinha became pregnant in short order. As near as I could tell, Pedro should have been all of sixteen at the time.

Escalation and Loss: The Killings That Changed Him

Pedro’s new job placed him atop a modest criminal empire of his own. In this new role, the teenage psychopath murdered three former coworkers to cement his position in the gang. However, this job had a pretty sucktastic retirement plan. The leader of a rival gang attempted to assassinate the criminal phenom. Pedro narrowly escaped, but Botinha was killed. Pedro did not take this well.

Pedro set his drug-dealing enterprise aside for a bit in favor of full-time bloodletting. Meticulously and over time, he hunted down the gang that killed his woman and murdered them, every single one of them. This earned him the attention of local Law Enforcement.

Prison Turns Him Into a Legend

Rodrigues was arrested for the first time on 24 MAY 1973. It’s not like he made any great secret of whacking all these scumbags. The evidence was incontrovertible.

Once, while incarcerated, Pedro was being transported alongside a second inmate convicted of rape. The two men got into the van together. By the time they arrived at their destination, the rapist was dead. Pedro admitted to killing him, explaining that he did it because he was a rapist. Pedro Rodrigues had a weird code, but he took it really seriously. He earned a total of 126 years behind bars.

Despite the astronomical sentence, there was a rule in Brazil that stated that no one should be imprisoned longer than 30 years. This number was later revised upward to 40 years for just such characters as Pedro Rodrigues. 34 years later, Pedro breathed free air again.

Rodrigues secured a job as a caretaker, but that didn’t last. In September 2011, he was arrested a second time, apparently for murders committed while in prison. He then served a further seven years, getting out on 10 December 2018. Here’s where the story gets really strange.

Rebrand to Influencer: ‘Ex Killer’ on YouTube

After getting out of prison the second time, Pedro Rodrigues announced to the world that he was a reformed vigilante. He hung up his cape and declared himself a new man. To celebrate his fresh persona, Pedro did what any of us might do if we had decided not to be psychopaths anymore. He became a YouTube personality.

Pedro’s YouTube channel was called “Pedrinho EX Matador.” This literally translates to “Little Peter the Former Killer.” Pedro’s videos discussed infamous crimes and denounced gang activity. His recurring theme was encouraging the public not to glorify violence. He asserted that criminality was not something of which to be proud. Portuguese-speaking folks couldn’t get enough. At his apogee, Pedro had more than a quarter million subscribers. His videos have been viewed more than 36 million times. Pedro earned YouTube creator awards for his work.

Throat Cut in Broad Daylight: The Final Hit

Around 10 in the morning on 5 March 2023, three men drove up to Pedro Rodrigues in a car and shot him to pieces. One of the assassins leapt out and cut his throat just to make sure the job was done. In his haste, however, the assailant very nearly chopped Pedro’s head off. Local police later found the vehicle, but the murderers were neither identified nor apprehended. Pedro was 68 years old at the time of his death.

We’ve glossed over a great deal of this tale. Pedro Rodrigues was formally charged with a whopping 71 counts of murder to include that of his own father. More than half of these were committed while in jail. His total body count was suspected of being well over 100. He spent 41 of his 68 years in prison. However, as we discussed previously, he obviously started young.

From Dexter to Pop Culture: The Aftershock

Pedro’s tale did not actually end there. After his first 2003 release from prison, novelist Jeff Lindsay penned a 2004 book series loosely based on his life and exploits titled Dexter. James Manos Jr adapted the book into a popular TV show of the same name in 2006. The series spanned eight seasons and 96 episodes.

I don’t watch much TV myself, but I did knock out the first two episodes while researching this piece. It was bloody, profane, and gruesome, as one might anticipate. The protagonist, Dexter Morgan, is a proper psychopath, a serial killer incapable of empathy who hunts, tortures, and kills violent criminals. Despite my best efforts, I found it quite engaging.

I’ve never really understood society’s aversion to vigilantes. I mean, it’s pretty obvious who the hero is in Batman. In the case of Pedro Rodrigues, this unfortunate broken kid devoted his entire life to cleansing his world of the worst of the worst. We certainly won’t all agree with his approach, and I’d not be too keen on having him as a next-door neighbor. However, by his strange calculus, he was, in a manner of speaking, kind of the good guy. In this case, art really does imitate life.

Case File Snapshot: Pedro Rodrigues Filho

Not a Firearm Review	Specs not applicable; archival true crime feature
Birth	29 October 1954
First Arrest	24 MAY 1973
Charges	71 counts of murder
Alleged Total Kills	Well over 100
Years Imprisoned	41
Death	5 March 2023

Pros and Cons of This Wild True Crime Ride

• Pros: Unflinching history, gripping pacing, sharp character study, pop culture tie-in to Dexter, high stakes from first scene to last.
• Cons: Graphic content, moral ambiguity, bleak subject matter, zero neat endings.

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