Pedro Rodrigues Filho
Written By: RA
Edited By: Grave Reviews Staff
The world is a cruel place. To compensate, we put up various laws and social structures – all in an attempt to keep order and justice among two divisions of people: the abusers and their potential victims. For Pedro Rodrigues, a man who was dubbed as Brazilian Dexter, justice was something he could enact himself – in the form of bloody punishment. After being caught for several murders, including that of his father, he went on to commit majority of his recorded killings within jail; a place where he was stuck with a large number of criminals who he felt did not deserve to live. Because of his string of murders which includes even highly-skilled serial killers, Pedro Rodrigues was also called Pedrinho Matador or Killer Petey.
A taste for vigilante justice
Born in 1954, Pedro came out with a deformed skull due to his father physically abusing his pregnant mother. Even as he grew up, his father continued to physically abuse him. But the first time he felt tempted to kill happened during a fight with an older cousin when he was 13 years old. He claimed that he pushed his cousin into a sugar cane press in anger and nearly killed him.
In his formative years, Pedro had an early brush with injustice which prompted his first actual killing. It was related to his father being fired as a school guard after being accused of stealing goods from the school cafeteria. Pedro shot the deputy director of Santa Rica Do Sipucai for firing his father, then later found and murdered the actual thief: a security guard on the premises. Pedro was 14 at the time.
He migrated to Mogi das Cruzes, where he raided drug dens and killed traffickers. It was here that he eventually met Maria Aparecida Olympia who would become his fiancé. They lived there until she was killed in a gang-related crime – along with Pedro’s unborn child. Pedro, once again taking on the role of Punisher, tracked down and murdered gang members in his search of the culprit that murdered his family.
Upon discovering the people responsible, he and four other members of his group stormed a wedding party to exact revenge. They left a total of seven dead bodies and sixteen injured people in their wake.
All of these crimes occurred before he turned 18.
Continuing the role of executioner
Still in Mogi, Pedro went to the city jail to visit his father – not to play the role of son, but of Pedrinho Matador.
His father had dismembered and killed his mother with a machete, which prompted Rodrigues to head over to where his father was incarcerated and execute the old man by stabbing him 22 times. In an even more violent turn, he took out his father’s heart to chew a piece of it and spit it out.
Eventually on May 24, 1973, he was caught and brought to prison in Sao Paolo to serve 126 years of jail time.
But his taste for bloody retribution did not waiver, it instead flourished in prison where he committed 40 more murders.
As he was being transferred on the back of the police car with two other criminals, the police were shocked to find one of the criminals murdered when the car doors were opened. Pedro justified the killing, saying that the criminal was a rapist and deserved it.
Despite the additional years added to his sentence due to the murders in prison, the maximum amount of years to be incarcerated in Brazil is 30 years. He was released multiple times after his first arrest in 1973.
Becoming the “perfect psychopath”
Pedro was described by psychological reports as the “perfect psychopath” with “paranoid and anti-social traits.” Criminology expert and writer Ilana Casoy says that Pedro is an “avenger” who only takes down those who have done wrong in society.
During his string of murders, Pedro was identified with an M.O. that made use of blades. But to avoid arrest and deflect investigation, he would instead use the M.O. of his last serial killer victim.
Pedro Rodrigues Filho was released in 2018 and made a YouTube channel to commentate on modern crimes.
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