Roots of Crime

Pedro Rodrigues Jr was born on July 17, 1954 in Santa Rita do Sapucaí in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.

One of 14 children – 10 boys and 4 girls – Pedro, or Petey as he is still called today, lived with his family in a grass hut made of clay and straw where Pedro Senior would inflict drunken beatings upon his wife Manuela. The only place the children felt safe was outside.

One fight between his parents ended in Pedro Sr kicking a pregnant Manuela in the stomach and as a result, Pedro Jr was born with a fractured skull and left with scar on his forehead (still visible today).

Perhaps while hiding from his father, Pedro accompanied his cousin at work extracting sugar cane syrup by way of a sugar cane press.

The older variety of this machine consists of two large metal reels that spin when cranked. Two people crank one lever while one person feeds the sugarcane between the reels extracting the syrup.

This piece of machinery is known not to be messed with. In times of slavery, many men would lose limbs to the press, if they were rushed and their fingers were caught in the reels, by the time the machine stopped their hand would already be gone.

While arguing with his cousin, whose job was to feed the sugarcane between the reels, Pedro pushed the boy into the press.

While reports say Pedro’s cousin only lost his arm - having his limb reeled up to the shoulder before the machine stopped - Pedro himself claims that once his cousin was trapped and the other workers ran for help, he killed the boy with a machete.

He was 13 years old and, at this time, was a student at the local school where his father worked.

Pedro Sr. was the night’s security guard for the school and Petey would sometimes accompany his father in his shift. To this day, Pedro maintains all they consumed during the shift was chocolate milk.

Still, the school’s principal accused Pedro Sr. of stealing food and it was the mayor’s decision to fire him, leaving a family of 14 children with virtually no income.

Petey took on the responsibility of fishing and hunting to provide food for his family. Even hunting chimps and selling their carcass for the skin to be manufactured as leather and clothing.

But his efforts were not enough. After spending the day in the woods, Pedro returned home to his siblings crying of starvation.

At 14 years old, Pedro stole his grandfather’s shotgun, made his way to the mayor’s house and waited. Once he saw the man who caused the misery of his family, Pedro shot and killed the mayor of his town in front of his own house. The boy ran back into the woods, where he hid for about a month.

Once the dust settled, Pedro decided to act once again. With the shotgun in hand, Pedro went back to the school where his father was once employed, jumped the fence and waited inside for the morning’s security guard, the man who – according to Pedro - was the real culprit of stealing from the school.

Once the guard arrived, Pedro cornered the man and told him “you ruined my family”. The guard jumped at Pedro, who fired the shotgun twice, killing his second confirmed victim. He then broke a few desks, piled the debris over the dead body and set it on fire.

Pedro broke the shotgun and buried it in the woods along with the machete he had also stolen from his grandfather.

After the murders, Pedro fled from his native Minas Gerais to the small town of Mogi das Cruzes in the state of São Paulo.

There, Pedro began robbing drug-dens, killing the drug-dealers whom he deemed weak and re-selling their product. He claims to have killed 50 people while building his reputation on the streets.

During his time, Pedro met the widow of a drug lord nicknamed Botinha (Little Boot). They fell in love and quickly moved in together. Pedro took over Botinha’s deceased husband’s business and murdered three of his new rivals.

Pedro and Botinha lived together until her death by the hands of the police. He managed to escape the same fate as his lover and fled the small town. With his knowledge on dealing drugs, Pedro started his own cartel.

His next romantic affair was with a woman named Maria Aparecida Olímpia. Pedro would say he truly loved Maria but never got a chance to start a family. Soon after Maria suffered a miscarriage, Pedro found her shot to death, this time, by a rival drug dealer.

To find Maria’s murderer, Pedro tortured and killed whomever he thought had any information he could use. Eventually, Pedro traced the murder back to a rival he had earned due to his “kill and take over” antics.

With four of his men in tow, Pedro crashed a wedding party where he found his target. He avenged Maria’s death by leaving her murderer and six others dead and sixteen wounded. He was still under age.

Pedro developed his own code of conduct that would determine his potential victims. He particularly disliked young people who did not respect elder citizens or public property.

The trail of death earned him a reputation in the streets and with law enforcement. Killer Petey’s first arrest was on May 24th, 1973 when he was 18, the age of majority in Brazil.

The young man received a sentence of 128 years in prison and it was behind bars that Killer Petey’s murdering career truly began.

During a prison transfer, Pedro sat handcuffed in the back of a police van with another inmate. He managed to murder the other man and later claimed his victim admitted to being a rapist.

Pedro refers to his victims as “bad men” and says he only killed rapists and murderers. He would normally stab his victims to death but estimated he killed 10 by breaking their necks.

According to Época magazine, Pedro murdered other inmates in the prison yard, canteen, their own cells and in the police cars during transfers to a total of 47 victims.

One of his victims was the man accused of killing one of Pedro’s sisters. The man, who knew Pedro, met his fate at the receiving end of a dull knife. About the murder, Pedro shrugged and said: “He was my friend, but I had to kill him”.

Despite his claims of “justified murder”, Pedro has admitted to killing one inmate simply for not liking the “cut of his jib” and the murder of a cellmate for “snoring too much”.

He eventually got the phrase “I kill for pleasure” tattooed on his left arm, and “capable of killing for love” on his shoulder (the word “capable” misspelled).

One night, as Pedro practiced boxing in his cell, the warden called for him. In the warden’s office, Pedro learned his mother Manuela had been murdered.

The morgue where her body laid sat cross the street from the jail and the warden offered to take Pedro to see his mother.

The sight of his mother’s body brought such dreed upon Pedro that he lost the will to live. He swore revenge and swore to eat the heart of the man who had taken his mother’s life.

The search for Manuela’s murderer led Pedro to his most notorious murder.

The killer was serving his sentence in the very prison where Pedro served his. Killer Petey claims he trapped an officer in a jail cell and stole his gun. His intention, however, was poetic revenge.

Pedro Rodrigues Sr. stabbed his wife 21 times with a machete so, Pedro Rodrigues Jr stabbed his father 22 times with a fishing knife. He was 20 years old.

About the rumors that spread after the murder regarding his promise of cannibalism, Pedro said: “people say I ate his heart. I didn’t, I only cut it off. It was revenge wasn’t it? I cut off a piece, chewed it and spat it out”.

In 1982, psychiatrists Antonio José Elias Andraus and Norberto Zoner Jr. conducted an evaluation of Pedro’s psyche; they determined him to be of paranoid and anti-social character and added in their report that Pedro’s main motivation in life was “a violent assertion of himself”.

Criminology expert Ilana Casoy said on an interview that Pedro is not a vigilante but an avenger, considering his victims were people he deemed to be the worst society has to offer. She added that his crimes reflect the reality of Brazilian society, where only 10% of homicides are solved. “People are fascinated by a distorted vision of justice.” Casoy said “The problem is, Pedro’s victims did not have a lawyer like he did”.

Even though Pedro received a sentenced of 128 years in prison – with the added sentences for the crimes committed while incarcerated totaling 400 years – the Brazilian Penal Code declares every sentence of “perpetual character” to be illegal. This means not only is the death penalty illegal, but so is the sentence of life in prison. The maximum legal sentence for jail time in Brazil is 30 years.

When the Penal Code was ratified in 1940, the life expectancy in Brazil was 43 years. If an 18 year old received the maximum sentence, they would have a short life if they ever made it out of jail at all. Today, the life expectancy exceeds 70 years and the Penal Code has not been updated.

2003 marked the end of Pedro’s 30 year sentence but, again, due to the crimes committed in jail, authorities were able to delay his release.

After 34 years in prison, Pedro was released on April 24th 2007 and was believed to have moved to the northeastern state of Ceará.

His freedom was short lived, however, for on September 15th 2011 it was announced Pedro was once again under custody. He was arrested in the southern state of Santa Catarina where he had been working as a housekeeper and was sentenced to 8 years for the crimes of riot and private imprisonment, both committed while he served his first sentence.

It was at age 64, after spending 42 years behind bars, that Pedro was released for good in 2018. Having converted to Christianity, Pedro claims to repent his crimes.

Pedro served time for the murder of 71 people between 1970 and 1980. By his own account, his victim count surpasses 100.

Today, Pedro works as a contractor and wishes to live the remainder of his life with his head held high. He can be found on YouTube under his channel Pedrinho Ex Matador & Pablo Silvia 2p (Petey Ex Killer).

On an interview to the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Pedro was quoted as saying: “Crime is no joke. People get into it by looking at the branches: fame and money, but don’t see the roots: prison and death. It’s like the Devil: The one hand giveth; the other hand taketh away. There are many young people that get involved and by the time they want out, it’s too late”.

On a more recent interview with journalist Geraldo Luís, Pedro claimed to never have taken any medication for mental illness: “every time I’d kill someone they’d send me to a psychiatrist and they gave me a pill. I’d pretend to swallow and throw it away.”

He also revealed, on the same interview, that for 20 years, his victims haunted his nightmares in the form of animals (such as snakes) and he had to kill them all over again. He claims to be nightmare free for about 5 years.

When asked what he’d say to family’s of his victims, Pedro answered: “if I didn’t kill I’d die” and added “look at the things they did (…) if I killed people for nothing, I would be long dead”.