Pedro Rodrigues Filho, also known as Pedrinho Matador, claimed to have murdered more than 100 people over five decades
04:00 ET, 31 Oct 2025
Pedro Rodrigues Filho, infamously known as Pedrinho Matador or “Killer Pete,” was his country’s most notorious serial killer. His chilling story later inspired one of television’s most complex anti-heroes.
Born on October 29, 1954, in a rural Brazilian town, Pedro’s life was marked by violence from the start. His father kicked his pregnant mother during an argument, fracturing Pedro’s skull before he was even born.
This early exposure to violence would shape his future.
At the tender age of nine, Pedro ran away from home. He initially stayed with relatives before drifting to São Paulo, where he began a life of crime, stealing and living on the streets.
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 murder was never verified, his pattern of violence soon became real and documented, reports the Express.
By his teenage years, Pedro had already shot and killed a local drug dealer in São Paulo, reportedly in retaliation for a dispute involving his family. He didn’t stop there; Pedro later tracked down and murdered the man’s brother and brother-in-law as well.
Pedrinho Matador later found faith in Christianity and led a Youtube channel against crime(Image: G1)
He confessed to journalists these early killings gave him a “feeling of power” and his targets were always those who had “done wrong.”
Pedro Rodrigues Filho, better known as Pedrinho Matador (“Killer Pete”), claimed to have murdered more than 100 people over five decades. Officially convicted of 71 killings, he served more than 40 years in prison, earning a reputation as a “Robin Hood” figure who targeted drug dealers, gang members and other criminals.
During his teenage years, Pedro relocated to São Paulo’s outskirts, where he became entangled in the local drug trafficking scene. He shacked up with Botinha, a trafficker’s widow, and assumed control of her deceased husband’s criminal enterprise.
Following her fatal encounter with police, Pedro embarked on a vengeful mission to eliminate those he held responsible for her demise.
His killing rampage persisted until 1973, when authorities apprehended him at the tender age of 18. By this time, he had already accumulated a horrifying body count – spanning drug dealers and gang associates to suspected rapists and betrayers.
The courts handed down a 128-year prison sentence, though this figure would balloon substantially as his murderous activities continued within the penitentiary walls.
His crimes are said to have inspired the TV show, Dexter(Image: Getty Images for Paramount+)
Behind bars, Pedrinho Matador achieved notorious status. He boasted of slaughtering numerous fellow inmates – predominantly those convicted of assault or sexual crimes.
“I only kill people who don’t deserve to live,” he declared to media outlets. He permanently marked his arm with the chilling tattoo: “I kill for pleasure.”
During his twenties, Pedro confessed to murdering his own father, who had been incarcerated for brutally stabbing his mother 21 times. Pedro claimed he sought retribution by plunging a knife into his father 22 times – and, based on his own televised testimony, extracted the man’s heart, took a bite, and expelled it from his mouth.
“It was vengeance, not hunger,” he explained.
By the mid-1980s, media reports suggested he had eliminated over 40 fellow inmates within Brazil’s most secure correctional facility. Reporters who encountered him portrayed him as composed, well-spoken, and disturbingly confident.
Despite receiving a sentence totaling more than 400 years, Pedro walked free in 2007 because of Brazil’s legal cap on imprisonment time. At that stage, he had served 34 years locked up.
Pedrinho spent 34 years behind bars(Image: G1)
Within several years, he found himself arrested once again for participating in a prison uprising but gained his freedom yet again in 2018.
By that time, Pedro Rodrigues Filho had reached 64, insisting he was a transformed individual. He declared his conversion to Christianity, calling himself “reborn through Jesus Christ.”
He created a YouTube channel titled “Pedrinho, Former Killer with Jesus”, where he addressed audiences about crime’s perils and the importance of redemption.
“The crime is not a game,” he stated 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 his videos, he recounted tales from his history, consistently mixing admission with caution.
“There is no glory in crime,” he TOLD his audience. “Only destruction.”
On March 5, 2023, Pedro fell victim to an ambush and was murdered outside a family member’s residence in Mogi das Cruzes – the identical city where he had previously dominated the criminal landscape. Two disguised gunmen fired at him repeatedly before cutting his throat with a kitchen blade.
He was 68. Pedrinho’s story has drawn international attention and comparisons to fictional characters.
His unique moral code, which involved 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.
