The black car pulled up without warning. Two men stepped out, guns drawn. They looked at the witness sitting nearby and said calmly, “This has nothing to do with you. Take your daughter and go inside.”
The woman obeyed. Moments later, gunshots rang out. Then one of the men walked over to the body slumped in the chair, pulled out a kitchen knife, and slit the victim’s throat. They got back in the car and drove away.
The victim was Pedro Rodrigues Filho—a man who’d spent his entire life killing people. By his own count, he’d murdered over 100 criminals: rapists, drug dealers, and murderers. In Brazil, some called him a hero. Others called him what he really was: a serial killer with a convenient excuse.
On March 5, 2023, someone finally gave Pedro the same treatment he’d given so many others.
The Boy Who Was Born Violent
Pedro Rodrigues Filho entered the world already damaged. Born on June 17, 1954, in southeastern Brazil, he suffered a traumatic brain injury before he even took his first breath. His father—also named Pedro—had kicked his pregnant mother in the stomach during a fight, bruising the baby’s skull in the womb.
When his grandmother delivered the infant, she immediately noticed the damage. That injury would follow Pedro his entire life, affecting his impulse control and potentially setting the stage for the violence to come.
Brain injuries appear frequently in the backgrounds of serial killers. Damage to the frontal lobe—the part of the brain responsible for decision-making and impulse regulation—can create a person who acts without thinking, who can’t control their rage, who lacks the internal brake system most of us have.
Pedro grew up as the oldest of eight children in a chaotic, violent household. Money was tight. His father was an alcoholic who swung between loving kindness and terrifying brutality. His mother ruled with an iron fist, beating her children without hesitation. Pedro didn’t go to school—he was forced to work from a young age to help feed the family.
By age 13, he said he already felt the urge to kill.
The First Murder: Protecting His Father’s Honor
When Pedro was 14, his father was working as a night security guard at a local high school. One day, the deputy mayor accused him of stealing food and stationery from the kitchen. Pedro’s father insisted he was innocent and blamed the daytime security guard. It didn’t matter. He was fired on the spot.
For a family already struggling financially, this was devastating. But for young Pedro, it was something else: a betrayal that demanded revenge.
He stole his grandfather’s shotgun, waited outside city hall, and shot the deputy mayor in broad daylight. Then he tracked down the security guard his father had accused and killed him, too.
A 14-year-old boy had just committed a double homicide. And he was only getting started.
Pedro fled to São Paulo, where he met Maria Aparecida Olympia—a woman considerably older than him, possibly in her late 20s or early 30s. She had a nickname: “Botinha,” which means “booty.” She was a known drug trafficker who recruited teenage boys to work for her by seducing them.
Pedro became her protégé, her hitman, her lover. He moved drugs, robbed rival criminals, and killed three ex-gang members on her orders. The media gave him a nickname: Pedrinho Matador—”Little Pedro the Killer.” They called him a vigilante, a celebrity criminal cleaning up the streets.
He was 15 years old.
The Murder That Changed Everything
Maria became pregnant with Pedro’s child. They got engaged. For a brief moment, it seemed like his life might stabilize. He had someone he loved, a baby on the way, and a decent income from his criminal work.
Then everything fell apart.
Pedro had recently robbed a rival gang leader named China, stealing his weapons, money, and drugs. China wanted revenge, and he got it in the cruelest way possible. His gang murdered Maria while she was pregnant, writing on the walls in her blood: “We will get you.”
Pedro was devastated. For an entire year, he tortured and killed anyone he thought might have information about Maria’s murderer. Finally, China’s ex-girlfriend—angry at her former lover—told Pedro the truth: China had ordered the hit.
Pedro found out China would be attending a family wedding. He and two friends crashed it and went on a rampage, killing seven people and injuring 16 others.
This wasn’t justice. This was a massacre.
The Moral Code of a Psychopath
After Maria’s death, Pedro developed what he called a “moral code.” He would only kill people who deserved it: rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers, murderers. He robbed food trucks and gave supplies to the poor and burned down businesses that laundered drug money. He targeted men who hurt women.
It sounds almost noble when you say it that way. Like a real-life Robin Hood. Like the character Dexter from the popular TV series, a serial killer with a conscience.
But Pedro’s “moral code” was conveniently flexible.
When his favorite cousin got pregnant and the father refused to marry her, Pedro’s solution wasn’t to help her raise the child as a single mother. It was to murder the father. When he borrowed his older cousin’s horse without asking, and the cousin called him weak, Pedro tried to crush the man’s head in a sugarcane press. When a fellow inmate snored too loudly, Pedro killed him.
These weren’t criminals deserving punishment. They were people who annoyed him.
At age 19, Pedro was arrested following a gunfight with police. Authorities accused him of 18 murders. He was outraged—not because the number was too high, but because it was too low. “I haven’t killed 18 people,” he shouted. “I’ve killed at least 100.”
He was convicted of 14 murders and sentenced to 126 years in prison.
Prison: His Personal Hunting Ground
You’d think being locked up would stop Pedro from killing. You’d be wrong.
During transport to prison, handcuffed in the back of a police van, Pedro killed his fellow prisoner. Police didn’t even notice until they opened the doors. Pedro claimed the man was a rapist, so he deserved to die.
Then things got even worse. Pedro discovered that his own father—the man he’d committed his first murders to defend—was also in prison. His father had murdered Pedro’s mother with a machete, dismembering her body.
Pedro faked being sick. When a guard came to check on him, he grabbed the man, held a knife to his throat, and forced him to hand over his gun and keys. He walked into his father’s cell and stabbed him 22 times—one more stab than his father had given his mother.
But that wasn’t enough. Pedro cut out his father’s heart, bit off a piece, chewed it, and spat it onto his father’s body.
He then calmly returned to his cell, released the guard unharmed, and handed back the gun and keys.
Over his prison career, Pedro murdered 47 fellow inmates. He killed three men during an ambush meant to kill him. He somehow gained access to a protected wing of the prison—a section reserved for vulnerable inmates like sex offenders—and murdered 17 people in one night.
He later said the ordeal left him deaf for three days. Not from being hit or attacked, but from all the victims screaming.
The “Perfect Psychopath”
Finally—finally—after 47 prison murders, authorities sent Pedro for a psychiatric evaluation.
The psychiatrist’s diagnosis? Pedro was “the perfect psychopath” who was “incapable of feeling remorse.” The reasoning? He never killed innocent people.
This is nonsense. There’s no such thing as a “perfect” or “moral” psychopath. Psychopathy is defined by a lack of empathy, remorse, and regard for social rules. A psychopath who chooses to kill criminals instead of random people is still a psychopath—he’s just found a way to justify his bloodlust.
Pedro himself admitted in a 1996 interview that he got “a thrill and a joy” out of killing criminals. His favorite method was stabbing or hacking with blades—brutal, intimate, up-close murder where he could watch his victims die. He had tattoos of daggers on his body alongside the phrase: “I kill for pleasure.”
That’s not justice. That’s not vigilantism. That’s a serial killer who found a hunting ground full of people society wouldn’t miss.
Freedom and a YouTube Career
Brazilian law at the time stated that no prisoner could be held for more than 30 years. Despite being sentenced to 400 years for all his murders, Pedro was released on April 24, 2007, after 34 years behind bars.
He got a job as a night watchman. Four years later, he was arrested again for threatening people, illegal weapons possession, and participating in riots. He was sentenced to eight more years but released on good behavior in 2018 after seven years.
This time, Pedro decided to go digital. He created a YouTube channel called “Pedrinho Ex Matador” where he commented on modern crimes and campaigned against gang violence. He told viewers not to be proud of criminal acts—this from a man with over 100 murders to his name.
The channel gained over 250,000 subscribers and 36 million views. He was also active on TikTok with more than 314,000 followers. He was making money, enjoying fame, and presenting himself as a reformed man trying to help society.
When asked if he would ever kill again, his answer was revealing: “No, I would only kill again if someone came to take my life or the lives of people I love.”
So… yes. Yes, he would kill again. For a pretty broad definition of self-defense that could apply to almost any situation.
The Final Chapter
On March 5, 2023, at 10:00 a.m., Pedro Rodrigues Filho was sitting in a chair in Mogi das Cruzes when a black car pulled up. Two men got out, warned a witness to go inside with her daughter, then shot Pedro multiple times. One of them walked over and slit his throat with a kitchen knife before they drove away.
Read more: Charles Cullen: The Nurse Who Murdered Up to 400 Patients
No arrests have been made. The case remains unsolved. Some speculate it was revenge from a victim’s family. Others think it was a rival criminal. Either way, Pedro died exactly the way he’d killed so many others: suddenly, violently, and without mercy.
Hero or Monster?
In Brazil, Pedro Rodrigues Filho occupies a strange place in the cultural consciousness. Some see him as a folk hero who cleaned up the streets by eliminating criminals the justice system couldn’t touch. In a country where only 10% of homicides are brought to justice, there’s a certain appeal to the idea of someone taking matters into their own hands.
He’s reportedly the inspiration for Dexter Morgan, the protagonist of the hit TV series about a serial killer with a code. The show was wildly successful, proving that audiences are fascinated by the idea of a “moral” killer.
But here’s the problem: Pedro wasn’t moral. He was a psychopath who found a socially acceptable outlet for his violence.
He killed his cousin’s boyfriend for refusing to marry her. He tried to crush another cousin’s head for calling him weak. He murdered a cellmate for snoring. He slaughtered 17 people in a prison wing in one night. His “code” was whatever justified his next kill.
The childhood trauma was real—the brain injury, the abuse, the violence he witnessed. Those factors absolutely contributed to shaping him. But they don’t excuse what he became. Plenty of people experience horrific childhoods without becoming serial killers.
Pedro Rodrigues Filho sits at number six on the list of serial killers with the most confirmed victims. He confessed to over 100 murders and was convicted of 71. He spent decades killing with impunity, first on the streets, then in prison, and he died before ever truly facing justice.
Was he a vigilante hero fighting for the downtrodden? Or was he just a killer who found a way to make his violence feel righteous?
The answer should be obvious. But the fact that it’s even a debate tells us something disturbing about how willing we are to excuse violence when it targets people we think deserve it.
