Brazilian serial killer Pedro Rodrigues Filho, who was known as Pedrinho Matador (Killer Pete), claimed to have murdered more than 100 people over five decades
Pedro Rodrigues Filho, known as Pedrinho Matador or “Killer Pete”, was his country’s most infamous serial killer and the inspiration behind one of television’s most complex anti-heroes.
Claiming to have taken the lives of over 100 people across five decades, he was officially convicted for 71 murders.
Having served more than 40 years in prison, he gained a reputation as a sort of “Robin Hood” figure, targeting drug dealers, gang members and other criminals.
Born on 29 October 1954, in a rural town in Brazil, his life was marked by violence from the start – his skull was fractured before birth when his father kicked his pregnant mother during an argument.
This early exposure to violence, according to Pedro himself, shaped his future actions, reports the Express.
At the tender age of nine, Pedro fled home, initially staying with relatives before drifting to São Paulo where he began a life of theft and homelessness.
By his early teens, he claimed to have committed his first murder – pushing a cousin into a sugarcane press and later attacking him with a machete.
While this early act of violence was never confirmed, his pattern of violent behaviour soon became real and well-documented.
In his teenage years, he shot and killed a local drug dealer in São Paulo, reportedly in retaliation for a dispute involving his family.
Pedro didn’t stop there – he tracked down and murdered the man’s brother and brother-in-law too.
He confessed to journalists these early killings gave him a “feeling of power”, and his victims were always those who had “done wrong.”
In his late teens, Pedro relocated to the outskirts of São Paulo, where he became embroiled in the neighbouring town’s narcotics trade. He lived with a woman called Botinha, the widow of a dealer, and assumed control of her dead husband’s operations.
When she was killed by police, Pedro sought vengeance by tracking down those he held responsible for her demise.
His killing spree lasted until 1973, when he was apprehended at just 18. By that stage, he had already left behind a string of corpses – from pushers and gang associates to alleged rapists.
He received a 128-year prison sentence, though that figure would escalate dramatically as he carried on slaying fellow inmates.
Behind bars, Pedrinho Matador transformed into a notorious figure. He boasted of murdering scores of prisoners – many of them convicted of assault or sexual violence.
“I only kill people who don’t deserve to live,” he told journalists. On his arm, he inked the words “I kill for pleasure.”
In his twenties, Pedro claimed he slaughtered his own father, who had been imprisoned for butchering his mother with 21 knife wounds. Pedro alleged he exacted retribution by stabbing his father 22 times – and, according to his own account in a television interview, carved out the man’s heart, sank his teeth into it, and expelled it from his mouth.
“It was vengeance, not hunger,” he said.
By the mid-1980s, estimates suggested he had killed more than 40 fellow inmates within Brazil’s most secure penitentiary. Reporters who encountered him portrayed him as composed, eloquent, and peculiarly confident.
Despite being handed more than 400 years in total, Pedro walked free in 2007 thanks to Brazil’s legal cap on jail time.
By that stage, he had served 34 years in prison.
Within just a few years, he found himself back behind bars for his role in a prison riot but was freed once again in 2018.
Pedro Rodrigues Filho was then 64, insisting he was a reformed character.
He said he had found Christianity, branding himself “reborn through Jesus Christ.”
He set up a YouTube channel dubbed “Pedrinho, Former Killer with Jesus”, where he warned viewers about the perils of criminality and the importance of redemption.
“The crime is not a game,” he said in a 2018 interview with Folha de S.Paulo. “Many enter it because they see fame and money. But they don’t see the roots – prison and death. It’s like the devil: gives with one hand and takes with the other.”
His channel rapidly attracted tens of thousands of subscribers.
In clips, he recounted tales from his violent past, consistently mixing confession with caution.
“There is no glory in crime,” he warned followers. “Only destruction.”
On March 5, 2023, Pedro was gunned down outside a family member’s house in Mogi das Cruzes – the very city where he had once dominated the criminal underworld.
Two hooded gunmen riddled him with bullets before slicing his throat with a kitchen blade.
He was 68. Pedrinho’s story, which gained international attention, was likened to that of fictional characters.
His unique moral code – only killing those he believed deserved it – served as one of the inspirations for Jeff Lindsay’s 2004 novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter and its subsequent TV adaptation Dexter, featuring Michael C. Hall.
