The unusual life story of Pedrinho Matador, Brazil’s biggest serial killer who killed over 100 including his own father

Before the age of 18, he had killed 10 people. Known as “Pedrinho Matador,” or “Little Pedro the Killer,” Pedro Rodrigues Filho became famous in Brazil for claiming to have killed more than 100 people. People called him “Brazil’s biggest serial killer” but this was a serial killer who targeted mainly rapists, drug dealers, and other criminals. He said in an interview that he killed people who had also committed crimes or had done him wrong.

He had a tattoo saying “I kill for pleasure” but Pedro never told the world why he always had the urge to kill; he only mentioned that he was born with an injured skull due to a beating his pregnant mother took from his father. Born in 1954 in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Pedro’s first victim was his town’s mayor who he killed when he was just 14. The mayor had sacked his father from his job as a night watchman at a local school after being accused of stealing food from the school.

Pedro shot the mayor to death in front of a city hall and soon killed the man who was believed to have been behind the school food theft. Pedro then fled to Mogi das Cruzes, a city in south Brazil, near São Paulo, where he killed a drug dealer and engaged in some robberies before getting married. But his wife was later killed by gang members, causing Pedro to go on a killing spree in his quest to find the gang members who killed his wife.

The next victim was his own father, who had killed Pedro’s mother and was in jail. Pedro visited his father in jail and stabbed him to death. Other accounts state that both Pedro and his father were serving time in prison when Pedro killed him. “I arranged a well-thought-out plan and I turned up at my father’s cell,” he said in an interview. “I had promised revenge on my mother’s coffin.”

After stabbing his father 22 times to death, Pedro cut the tip of his father’s heart off and chewed it before throwing it on top of his (father’s) body. 

His initial arrest and murder he committed in a police vehicle

Reports say that during Pedro’s first arrest on May 24, 1973, he killed a rapist who was with him in a police vehicle. He then committed a series of murders while in prison, killing around 47 of his fellow prisoners either by stabbing or hacking them with blades, according to allthatsinteresting.com. The platform said that the notorious serial killer was initially given 128 years in prison, but his crimes while behind bars raised the sentence he was given to 400 years.

Per Brazilian law, the maximum prison sentence is 30 years so Pedro served that plus four more years for the killings he committed while in prison. In 2007 when he was released, he worked as a night watchman but he was arrested again in 2011 for participating in riots, threatening people, and illegally possessing weapons. The one-time mass murderer was released in 2018.

Three months ago, 68-year-old Pedro was fatally shot while outside a family member’s residence near Sao Paulo in Brazil. The suspects fled after the scene. Pedro, also called “Brazilian Dexter,” for the U.S. series about a vigilante serial killer, had become an anti-crime crusader when he was killed. He created a YouTube channel after his 2018 release, where he advised young people to stay away from crime.