Last week, in England, two teenagers were given life sentences for the murder of fellow teen, Brianna Ghey. In an unusual decision, the court released the names of the two perpetrators, despite their young age. They are Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe. Brianna was likely targeted because she was trans as Ratcliffe, at least, held transphobic beliefs. But it was one line in one message fr0m Jenkinson to Ratcliffe that had the UK tabloids frothing.

Scarlett Jenkinson had told Ratcliffe, ‘I love watching torture vids. Real ones on the dark web.’ She went on to boast, ‘I’ve liked this stuff for a while, I’m just happy cos I finally found a good red room.’

The tabloids picked this up and ran with it, reporting not that a psychotic teen had said she found a red room, but that she had, in fact, accessed one for real.

What is a red room?

Well, basically a red room is an urban myth, that grew and adapted from snuff films and the Hostel film franchise by chucking in some webcams. You go to a site on the dark web, pay in crypto and you get to watch – or if you pay enough, direct the action of – a livestream of a (usually female) person getting tortured to death.

There are plenty of examples to be found on the dark web. However, they are designed to part gullible people from their bitcoin. If you pay, nothing will happen. For the laziest of them, there’s no WAY anything could happen. They are static pages that basically say: send bitcoin to this address and a magic portal will open to let you into the show.

Now, it’s impossible to prove that something doesn’t exist, but there has never been the slightest whiff of a genuine red room outside of Hollywood, and there are several reasons discussed below why the chances that Scarlett Jenkinson came across a real one are zero.

Maybe the papers don’t know they’re fake?

One of the newspapers, The Daily Mail, did actually reach out to me. This is how the conversation went:

So The Daily Mail, at least, was put on notice that a murderous teenage girl might be full of shit and her story should possibly be investigated rather than uncritically regurgitated as fact.

Cyber Security Expert No. 1

Surprise! The Daily Mail decided this wasn’t really in the spirit of the story they wanted to tell. Instead they ran this story in which they quote Professor Alan Woodward, an ‘internationally renowned computer security expert’ from Surrey University.

Now, tabloids gonna tabloid, and I’m no stranger to having my views misrepresented by them, but this story certainly makes it sound like Professor Woodward is perpetuating the myth that red rooms exist. It provides direct quotes from him and his dire warnings about the evil lurking within the dark web. ‘Red rooms are where blood is involved, where people are being tortured and either killed or abused physically, where people draw blood,’ he is quoted as saying. ‘Something like a red room, or a torture room, can involve static imagery but sometimes it can also involve live streaming and those are very difficult to get to.’

He also makes claims like ‘’This isn’t like on the ordinary web, where you go onto Google to find them. You have to go searching and when you search you find other people who direct you….You can’t just go on the dark web and say, ”show me a snuff site or someone being tortured or beheaded,” or whatever it is you fancy, she would have had to have been told (where to go).”

No, you don’t have to infiltrate some secret society of people who will lead you further into the dark web. You just go to one of the many Tor search engines and start typing. The phrase ‘red room’ will get you to the sites above. Other phrases will take you to sites where other stuff is shown. It’s odd that a cyber security expert wouldn’t know this.

When tagged in my Twitter thread about it by ultimate dark web mythbuster/skeptic DekuShrub, Woodward responded with a series of tweets distancing himself from the claims:

The 2015 case he is referencing is Peter Scully, who certainly carried out and filmed heinous crimes on children, and who murdered a child. His torture (not murder) videos are hosted on dark web sites. And I don’t want to detract from just how vile and evil Scully is, but they are NOT RED ROOMS.

Cyber Security Expert No.2

The next day, The Daily Mail doubled down with this article by cyber security expert Edward Lucas. Now Lucas also seems to have some decent credentials behind him. He was formerly a senior editor at The Economist. But this piece was a massive piece of steaming scaremongering shit. ‘The twisted sites that any computer-literate teen can access via a phone, tablet or laptop are capable of leaving lifelong mental scars,’ he wrote. Then he goes on to say:

I have seen desperately unpleasant things. Few were worse than the website I was able to find and access within ten minutes of downloading an anonymous Dark Web browser to my home computer last week.

[side note: a ‘cyber security expert’ only downloaded Tor for the first time last week???]

For obvious reasons, I will not name the site. It served up an alphabetic directory of the most virulent pornography, from A for amputees to Z for zombies: images of violent sex involving seemingly helpless, legless and armless people, followed by similar images of skeletal anorexia sufferers— and that was just under A. This isn’t even the worst of what can be found on these sites.

The site he is not naming sounds a lot like the infamous idiot-bait site for those about to be parted from their money, The Hidden Wiki (possibly the least hidden site to have ever existed on the dark web).

Lucas also implies that the hitman sites are (or at least could be) real, and he makes the claim: it is plausible that Jenkinson found a red room.

IT.IS.NOT.PLAUSIBLE.

Again. There has NEVER been an any verified example of anything that even comes close to fitting the definition of a red room. Tor doesn’t have the bandwidth to stream in anything other than the grainiest of stop-start footage.

A Twitter user had a darkly amusing, but accurate take on it:

From way back when I first started reporting on the dark web, there were people screeching “OMG they have human experiments and gladiator fights to the death on there, I’ve SEEN it!” Spoiler alert: no they hadn’t. They’d seen some crappy cosplay sites made with WordPress.

How many errors is too many?

Lucas also makes the claim about having to be inducted into the secret dark web society to find stuff: ‘There is no search engine. Instead, each page has an address of random numbers and letters, like a password. Reaching that site involves knowing where to look — information shared among friends, via social media or in internet chatrooms.’

It’s like these people didn’t even bother to go and LOOK at the dark web before writing these ‘expert’ articles about it. If they did they’d find, you know, search engines.

He goes on to say that the BBC had an .onion site (it does), but ‘this optimistic beginning was soon corrupted. Just as no one a foresaw social media could be used to undermine democratic elections with conspiracy theories, the potential for organised crime and extreme porn emerged only later.’ 

Except that 30 seconds on Google would tell you that the BBC didn’t get its .onion until 2019, a good eight years after the first mass-marketed drugs bazaar, Silk Road, started on there and seven years after Hurt2theCore.

He says ‘Payment for these services is in untraceable digital currency such as bitcoin.’

This is just getting silly. The blockchain is RIGHT THERE. Criminals are getting caught criminalling because of just how very, very, VERY traceable bitcoin is. The tiniest bit of research should at least have you replacing ‘bitcoin’ with ‘monero’ (which has been the preferred currency of many darknet markets for a while now).

Like Woodward, Lucas also backtracked somewhat on his claims when challenged on Twitter/X:

So who should you believe?

Like I said before, tabloids gonna tabloid, but most of the more serious news services reported it responsibly and far less salaciously. But I can’t help wonder why people who seem to be respected in their field go on record to perpetuate a creepypasta myth in a way designed to instil mostly groundless fear.

I have an with the UK tabloids uncritically reporting on the existence of ‘red rooms’ purely because a disturbed 15-year-old girl claimed to have accessed them. There was no attempt to verify or delve into her claim. This misinformation, deliberately put forward by tabloids like the Daily Mail, is great for clicks but leads to very unhelpful moral panic and hysteria around darknets (which are privacy tools) and the dark web, which admittedly is home to some heinous sites, but if the tabloids are to believed is chock-full of hitmen, slave auctions and live-streamed torture-on-demand. This is simply not true.

As journalists and experts in our respective fields, we have a duty to call out this sort of sensationalist and salacious reporting. There’s more than enough misinformation and scaremongering about the dark web out there without adding to it.

But I’m happy to share some tweets of those who can see through the bullshit:

OzFreelancer’s Cheat Sheet to the Dark Web

Things that exist on the dark web:

• drugs markets
• fraud markets
• CSAM (child abuse) sites
• other types of illegal porn/abuse sites
• gore videos of real deaths and torture (which also exist, and are much easier to find, on the clear web)
• spooky-looking sites that edgy teenagers love screencapping
• Mirrors of the BBC, the Guardian and CIA sites so whistleblowers can contact in private

Things that don’t exist on the dark web:

• Red Rooms
• Human Experiments
• Gladiator fights to the death
• Guaranteed ways to double your bitcoin

The post Brianna Ghey’s killer and Red Rooms on the Dark Web appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

The third question of my Silk Road trivia quiz turned out to be a tough one.

The question posed to Reddit and Twitter users was:

TWITTER USERS SAID:

(Only 4 options allowed on Twitter polls)

The post So you think you know Silk Road? Day 3 of Trivia Quiz and answers appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

Today is Day 2 of my Silk Road Trivia Quiz as we count down to the tenth anniversary of the shutdown of Silk Road.

Very few people got the answer to yesterday’s question, but it was a pretty tough one. I thought today’s would be equally tough, but a much higher proportion got this one. Twitter users did better than Reddit users, but that is partly due to Twitter only allowing four options in the poll.

If you want to play along on Twitter or Reddit, please do!

QUESTION 2

Which of the following is NOT a pseudonym used by corrupt DEA special agent Carl Mark Force in his dealings with Ross Ulbricht/Dread Pirate Roberts?

(a) Nob
(b) DeathFromAbove
(c) FrenchMaid
(d) Carla Sophia
(e) AlPacino

ANSWER (SPOILERS AHEAD):

(e) AlPacino

Carl Mark Force IV was a former DEA agent involved in the Silk Road investigation as an undercover who gained the trust of the Dread Pirate Roberts (Ross Ulbricht) by posing as a big-time dealer. He got greedy when he saw how much money was going through Silk Road and abused his position by extorting money from the site and embezzling Bitcoin funds. Force was ultimately arrested, pleaded guilty to charges including money laundering and obstruction of justice, and received a sentence of 78 months in federal prison.

Carl Mark Force used the following pseudonyms on Silk Road:

Nob was his official DEA-sanctioned name, which he used to befriend the Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), acting as a cocaine dealer who wanted to deal in kilograms, and was also the “hitman” who “killed” Silk Road employee Curtis Green.

DeathFromAbove was NOT a DEA-sanctioned name (ie rogue). It was the name he used to extort DPR, saying he knew he had Green murdered and demanding payment “I” know that you had something to do with Curtis Green’s disappearance and death. Just wanted to let you know that I’m coming 3 for you. Tuque. You are a dead man. Don’t think you can elude me.”

French Maid, also not sanctioned, was the name he used to provide DPR with intel in return for Bitcoin. DPR paid $100K in return for the name provided to the authorities by Mark Karpales as the person he suspected to be running Silk Road.

Carla Sophia was the name he said was his real name when he accidentally signed the first of his messages to DPR using the French Maid account as “Carl”:  

“French Maid” wrote to DPR: “I have received important information that you need to know asap. Please provide me with your public key for PGP. Carl.”

Just four hours later, “French Maid” sent a follow-up message to DPR with the subject line

“Whoops!” and a message stating “I am sorry about that. My name is Carla Sophia and I have many boyfriends and girlfriends on the market place. DPR will want to hear what I have to say ;)xoxoxo.”

AlPacino was another person being paid for intel by DPR and was originally thought to be another ’nym of Carl Mark Force, but in fact, turned out to be yet another rogue LE agent.

POLL RESULTS

Twitter said:

Reddit said:

Day 3 question is up on Reddit and Twitter now

The post So you think you know Silk Road? Day 2 of Trivia Quiz appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

(b) teppy

POLL RESULTS

It was a pretty tricky one.

(Twitter only allows for 4 options)

The post Think you know Silk Road? appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

(b) teppy

POLL RESULTS

It was a pretty tricky one.

(Twitter only allows for 4 options)

The post Think you know Silk Road? appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

This is going to be a very long post. The most interesting part is when Variety Jones speaks, about half way down, in case you don’t want to read it all.

I had booked, canceled and rebooked flights and accommodation from Australia to New York half a dozen times when this day finally rolled around. I felt compelled to be there, to watch this chapter close.

The sentencing was to be held before Judge Sidney H Stein. He was the third judge to be assigned to the case – in the years since Clark’s arrest, one had retired and one had died.

Inside the court, representatives from the US Government, as well as Roger Clark and his lawyer, were already at the front of the room. At the US Government’s desk were assistant US attorney Michael Neff, FBI Special Agent Scott Stoner, and IRS Special Agent Gary Alford, the man who found the “rossulbricht” gmail address on the bitcointalk forum that was instrumental in the downfall of Silk Road.

Clark, wearing prison khaki, in ankle shackles, and with the recent loss of four front teeth, was accompanied by his lawyer, Evan Lipton. He looked a lot older and even skinnier than the last time I’d seen him, at Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison.

Above, half a dozen lights hung like giant eyeballs looking down on us. Around the edges of the courtroom were security cameras, actually looking down on us.

Only a few people were in attendance. One of those had a bushy beard that I recognized as belonging to Andy Greenberg, senior cybercrime reporter for Wired, and one of the earlier reporters on Silk Road. Andy and I have admired each other’s work for years but never met before. We both referenced the other in our respective books. If you put him, me, and LaMoustache in a room, between us we know more about the story than anyone whose name is not Ross Ulbricht. Or possibly even more than him. Go and buy Andy’s book, Tracers in the Dark, right after you buy mine.

We all rose when Judge Stein entered the room. And it was time for the Variety Jones Show.

Another adjournment?

After opening remarks, Lipton began with an attempt at yet another adjournment. Clark fought extradition to the United States until he was eventually extradited to the United States in June 2018 and pled guilty to narcotics charges carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison in January 2020. Since then, sentencing has been delayed for: COVID lockdowns, prison blackouts, Clark being injured falling from a bunk, Clark having COVID, Clark’s lawyer having COVID, Clark firing his legal team to represent himself, Clark not having access to his files, Clark only allowed a bendy pen instead of a proper pen, and his legal assistant not being available. There have been three judges assigned to the case during that time (before Stein, one retired and one died).

Judge Stein said he was “not surprised” by this request, given the many previous requests.  “His sentencing has gone from judge to judge. I have the sense Mr Clark does not want this sentencing to proceed,” he said “I don’t know why this is so.” He went on to point out that the conditions in the New York Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), where Clark had been held for the last five years, were much more difficult than the permanent federal prison where Clark would eventually end up, especially for prisoners with health needs. “Why wouldn’t he want to be transferred somewhere his health could be looked after?” the judge asked reasonably. He denied the request, saying “The time has come for his sentencing.”

Sentencing submission: Evan Lipton on behalf of Clark

With that out of the way, it was time for each side to put forth their arguments. Lipton went first, moving to the lectern in the middle of the room. He asked for a sentence of time served (around seven-and-a-half years so far with a combination of his time in Bangkok Remand plus time in MDC). He said that given the harsh and unusual conditions suffered by Clark in both Thailand and MDC, including illness, an unresolved rash, violence-induced PTSD, along with the characteristics of Clark being older and frail, those years should be considered “the equivalent of fifteen years” of normal prison time.

“Mr Clark has a reputation of being very difficult,” admitted Lipton, but said this was due to the harshness of his circumstances, and although it was true that “conversations could be difficult,” Clark was “very intelligent and compassionate”. He pointed to the letters written to the court by family and friends, which showed he had a network of support to return to.

“It’s not true that he lacks remorse,” Lipton said, clarifying that while Clark was not remorseful for saying the DEA should be abolished and the War on Drugs is wrong but was remorseful for thinking there was a safe way to run a drug market, and this is why he withdrew his objection to the relevance of the evidence about six people who died when using drugs purchased from Silk Road. “He will not re-offend,” said the lawyer, pointing out that Clark knew just how bad prison was and wouldn’t want to return.

Lipton said Clark “watched people being raped and tortured right next to him” in Thai prison and he himself was victimized (he did not elaborate on what that meant) which resulted in PTSD. He said Clark had been seen by “an incompetent psychiatrist” who diagnosed him with conditions that could never have been diagnosed in the small amount of time they spent together (bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and cannabis-induced psychosis according to another report).

Lipton went on to discuss the circumstances of the MDC, where Clark found himself “trapped and deprived.” He said that while the US Government could not be held accountable for things like the pandemic and the blackout, it should have been more prepared to deal with such occurrences. He noted that when Clark had a fall while trying to get into his top bunk at MDC which broke his pelvis, he was left in agony on the floor overnight. When he asked for the footage of his suffering, there was none. “Everything at MDC is videoed. Not this,” said Lipton.

The rash that Clark showed up with from Thailand was also left untreated, which became agonizing. The OTC hydrocortisone that could have provided relief was not available to him from the commissary and as a result, his sister had to procure it from the black market for him, costing thousands of dollars and having a profound effect on her financial position.

Lipton also addressed Clark’s time in nursing homes, where he was considered a very difficult patient. The lawyer framed this as Clark getting in trouble for raising genuine issues, which were dealt with a lack of professionalism on the part of nursing home staff, leading to arguments. When he made the decision to get rid of his legal team and represent himself, his work would go missing or be destroyed so that he was unable to represent himself in the way he wanted.

“Roger Clark is more than the person he has been portrayed as. He got involved in Silk Road because of his political beliefs. He believed he was doing the right thing,” Lipton finished up. “He is an older man. His medical care has been horrendous.”

US Government response – Clark is worse than the worst

Assistant US attorney Michael Neff acting for the US Government (USG) opened with a request for an amendment to the guideline calculations from level 43 to level 45. Sentencing guidelines are set out in a matrix that matches the severity of the offense with the offender’s criminal record. Each cell of the matrix represents a “guideline range,” which is a range of sentences, measured in months, that is appropriate for a case falling within that cell. Offense levels range from 1 (least severe) to 43 (most severe). Similarly, criminal history categories range from I (least severe) to VI (most severe). The higher the offense level and criminal history category, the longer the recommended sentence.

Level 43 is the highest, but it can be “enhanced” by additional factors that the court should consider in determining the severity of the offense. The enhancements the USG relied upon to raise the guideline level for Clark were his aggravating role in the offense (being an organizer/leader) and obstruction of justice (he lied to the court when fighting extradition from Thailand). They pointed out that Silk Road was his livelihood, basically his job, where he received at least $1.6 million dollars in two years. Neff pointed out the estimated amount Clark earned was “2000 times the minimum wage for the time.”

The Judge agreed and enhanced the sentencing guideline to category 45. The argument seemed purely academic, as both categories carry the same statutory maximum of twenty years.

Neff said that the USG was looking for twenty years as Clark’s crimes were “exceptionally serious” by any and every measure. He said that nearly every charge was aggravated by over a dozen circumstances, including the profitability of the enterprise, the key roles played by Clark, the use of violence and threats, Clark’s attempts at obstruction of justice, and his eagerness in engaging in criminal conduct. “The $183 million worth of illegal drugs sold by Silk Road alone merits a serious sentence,” Neff said. “But Mr Clark’s leadership role and eagerness to commit violent crimes” made it even more serious. He said his nonchalance over committing murder for hire was frightening, and extreme, “even compared to other killers.”

Neff said nowhere was VJ’s influence over Ross Ulbricht more apparent than when he advocated that he carry out a hit on a Silk Road employee. USG said until then, Ross Ulbricht was just concerned with getting his money back. It was Clark who brought up the idea of murder and convinced Ross that it was a necessary step:

The judge interceded and reminded Neff that Clark had made a submission to the court that the chat logs between “cimon” and Dread Pirate Roberts, where VJ advocated murdering Curtis Green (‘Chronicpain’ on Silk Road) had been doctored by Ross Ulbricht.

Neff responded that this submission had been quickly rescinded by Clark’s lawyer, when it was pointed out that making that submission went against Clark’s plea agreement. Neff also said that it was patently absurd to think that Ross Ulbricht doctored those chat logs in such a way, as they heavily implicated him as well.

However, they said, those chat logs suggested a person who was a cold-blooded killer who would stop at nothing to protect his empire.

Silk Road’s “Variety Jones” aka Mongoose, aka cimon, aka Roger Thomas Clark speaks

The judge then provided Clark with the opportunity to speak on his own behalf, which he did with gusto.

Clark opened with the very dramatic statement, “Everyone in this court should look around, because this is probably the last time you will see me before I get killed.”

He then proceeded to speak at a million miles an hour. The judge had to stop him several times with a request to slow down for the court reporter. Clark would slow down for a few seconds, before ramping it up again. It may have been partly because he might have had a time limit (I don’t know), but he spoke at breakneck speed when I visited him in prison in Bangkok, so it is more likely just the way he speaks all the time.

“I can be difficult, it’s true,” he said, before denying that the many, MANY delays to this day coming were his fault. “I was dressed up ready to come here in 2020,” he said. “Then I got swabbed on my way to point and wham – COVID. That was the beginning of a two-and-a-half-year nightmare.”

n.b. please note that everything Clark says should have the word “allegedly” inserted liberally – these are his words only, with no corroborating evidence or proof.

“I’m sure I’m not telling you anything new when I tell you prison is run by gangs,” he said before launching into details of how the gangs allegedly worked with corrupt Bureau of Prisons (BOP) employees to run a contraband racket in the prison. Drugs and phones were the most common items, but he alleged “anything” was available for a price.

It was after this, he said, that “everything went to hell in a handbasket.” It is not clear how the two were related, but it was around this time Clark “had a dizzy spell” and fell from the top bunk, where he was left lying on the floor of his cell “with a broken pelvis and testicles crushed between my legs” for twelve hours, because prison officers thought he was faking it.

“There’s a thing called the 10:00 mandated stand-up count,” he said. “I’ve never known it to be missed before. But that day, it didn’t happen… outside I could hear prisoners getting their contraband back, and I was laying on the floor thinking I was dying.”

He choked up when he spoke of his father dying in a nursing home due to lack of care and he was afraid it was going to happen to him too. When eventually transferred to a hospital, he said he was allowed no family communication for eleven days during which he was sure he was dying. “I wasn’t allowed to see my wife or my minister, couldn’t see my lawyer, wasn’t allowed to write a last will and testament,” he said.

He said that when he came out the other side (otherwise “someone would be responsible for felony murder”) and was finally allowed to see his lawyer, he couldn’t speak freely to her, as there was always a BOP employee present. When his lawyer tried to subpoena the footage of him being left unattended for twelve hours, “there were sixteen cameras there, but guess what? Footage does not exist”

He said when he made the decision to represent himself (and sacked his entire legal team – one of the myriad reasons for sentencing adjournment), he was prevented from doing so properly, as papers would mysteriously go missing. He said one short-term cellmate (a sex offender) went through his stuff and reported back to other prisoners, who were not happy that he was describing how things worked inside. Clark insisted it was privileged information to his paralegal, but those carefully prepared papers disappeared.

He said all this was “the chilling effect of trying to prepare” and he was “just touching the surface of the corruption of the MDC.”

“After today, there is no safe place for me,” he said.

Judge Stein suggested Clark make a formal complaint to the prosecutors. “They will pursue it,” he said. Clark responded that previous attempts to bring things to their attention had not been successful.

He detailed how harsh COVID, blackouts, and lockdowns were for him. Hydrocortisone which should have been available from the commissary had to be acquired by his sister to be delivered through the black market. “She spent $10,000 she didn’t have on $60 worth of cream,” he said.

The next thing Clark wanted the judge to know was, “I wasn’t doing it for the money.” Acknowledging the $1.6 million that could be traced as having been paid to him, transferred from Silk Road wallets, he said that the money went to expenses, and “almost a million dollars on a special project.” He pointed out that he lived relatively simply in Thailand, a very low-cost-of-living country.

Variety Jones’s “Special Project”

So what was this special project? Well, Clark launched into (still at breakneck speed) the story of his friend “Brian” in Ireland, who was five years older than Clark and had been sexually abused by the clergy as a child. In a meeting in Dublin in May 2013, Brian asked Clark, “what can you do about the child predators on the dark web?”

In response, Clark said he made it his mission to bring down pedophiles. He said he purchased two exploits – a Tor exploit and a VM exploit – from Bangkok-based security expert TheGrugq (to which Grugq said in a DM: “lol. Dude is just making shit up”) and used them to deanonymise people who used both on dark web CSAM (child sexabuse materials) forums. He said he provided the information to the UK National Crime Agency, but apparently the UK Govt said they couldn’t use the illegal means of exposing Tor users.

“I was playing sheriff of the dark web,” he said. “I was waiting for a way to break Tor.”

Clark claimed that, coincidentally, a while later the FBI used “identical exploits” to take down, and take over, Playpen, a massive child abuse site. (It’s not clear how Clark knew which exploits were used. The FBI called its method “using a court-approved network investigative technique”)

This story can be taken with a grain of salt, given Clark’s propensity to spin a tall tale, but it was clear that he was claiming responsibility for Playpen’s demise. “I’m proud of that,” he said “[hundreds of] people are in prison because I spent $675,000, and a year writing the software that caught them.”

“That’s how I spent my money,” he declared. He said there were still three other exploits out there that he hadn’t seen used yet, including a Torchat exploit. As Torchat is used by many people carrying out dark web criminal activity, this could have major implications if law enforcement could deanonymize those chats.

Judge Stein interrupted, “So you’re telling me you spent $1.6 million developing software that would deanonymize child predators, and you made that available to the US Government?”

Clark said it was $675,000, not $1.6 million and he had “not intentionally” made his work available to the US government, but that was the effect after he had provided it to the NCA. He was sure that the FBI used his exploits and programming to bring down Playpen in one of the largest dark web CSAM busts in history.

Six deaths, harm reduction, and the trolley problem

“It’s possible to be proud and ashamed of something at the same time,” Clark said. He described the many harm reduction initiatives undertaken by Silk Road. These included the Uber-style star ratings coveted by drugs vendors, the independent testing and reports undertaken by labs such as Energy Control, and the swift actions in banning vendors found to be selling substances that weren’t what was described in their advertisements.

“I used to think we saved thousands of lives,” he told the court.

“How so?” asked the judge

“Nobody was dying from adulterated drugs.”

He mentioned the six individuals whose families had testified at Ulbricht’s trial, claiming their deaths resulted from drugs bought on the Silk Road. He admitted feeling responsible for those fatalities. He likened their deaths to the classic thought experiment, the trolley problem: There’s a full train hurtling towards a cliff. If you pull the switch, you will save thousands of people on board, but will divert the train to a track where six people stand.

“I pulled the switch and 6 people died,” he said. “Would those six people still be alive if it hadn’t been for Silk Road? I would say yes.”

Choking up as he finished his submission, Clark mentioned the letters of support from family and friends. “The person they wrote those letters about, I strive to be that person,” he said. “I used to pray to be that person. I don’t pray any more. I’ve disappointed my family, I’ve lost my god and my freedom. There’s not much more I can screw up here”

Judge Sidney H Stein’s summing up and verdict

Judge Stein didn’t keep anyone in suspense. He said at the beginning of his summing up that he was imposing a sentence of 240 months (twenty years, as I had to confirm to myself several times). He said Clark was to be evaluated as soon as possible as to whether he should be transferred to a medical facility, and in any event that he should be transferred to a permanent facility as soon as possible.

He accepted that Clark had suffered terribly in both Thai prison and the MDC and that his health complaints were real, but also noted that, but for the statutory maximum of twenty years, the sentence would have been Life. The judge read out a potted synopsis of Silk Road, how it worked, and the massive amounts of crypto involved (it is notoriously difficult to put a value on the crypto that went through Silk Road, but the hundreds of millions of dollars mentioned is probably accurate).

The judge said that Clark’s crimes were serious enough in isolation, but they were exacerbated by his obstructive conduct. His role in Silk Road was significant. He was the right-hand man to Ross Ulbricht and even tried to keep his criminal activities going after Ulbricht’s arrest. He said Clark’s remorse was genuine and heartfelt, as were the letters of support. He said he believed Clark was changing his mind about the need to disband the DEA and make all drugs legal as he had withdrawn his objection to the evidence of the six Silk Road-related deaths being included in the USG’s submission.

He said he wasn’t imposing a fine as he did not believe Clark had the means to pay it and had no assets to speak of.

One final comment he made may well have been facetious, a hint that he didn’t believe the story of Clark’s special project: “If he is prepared to assist the US Government to deanonymize anonymous transactions, I’m sure the government would be interested,” the judge said.

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Since the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, allegedly Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts, conspiracy theories have been coming thick and fast and they range from the plausible to the absurd. A lot of them involve his friend Rene Pinnell, for whom Ulbricht relocated to San Francisco – either that Pinnell is the real DPR and set Ulbricht up for the fall

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WHY PROPOSED INTERNET SECURITY MEASURES WILL DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD

Last month I published a piece in The Age about the ‘dark web’ – sites that can only be accessed through anonymity software. What became lost beneath graphics of demons emerging from computers was a line I wrote in response to proposed legislative changes that could lead to the web history of any device connected to the internet being logged

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I HAVE A NEW PGP KEY…

I have a new PGP key. It can be found in the ‘About’ page of this site. I took may Mac to the Genius Bar recently and the genius decided I need to do a full clean reinstall. I had done a Time Machine backup before going, so I didn’t think much of it. Unfortunately, I foolishly neglected to export

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The post Ten years after Silk Road falls, Variety Jones is sentenced appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

Last week, a certain James Ellingson was charged with drug and money laundering offences connected to Silk Road, and his indictment was unsealed. Known on Silk Road by several handles (the indictment is for James Ellingson, a/k/a ‘redandwhite,’ a/k/a ‘MarijuanaisMyMuse,’ a/k/a ‘Lucydrop,’) Ellingson is another fascinating character in the Silk Road story.

The drugs he is alleged to have sold through Silk Road (more than four kilograms of methamphetamine, more than 100 grams of heroin, more than two kilograms of cocaine, more than six grams of LSD, approximately seven kilograms of MDMA, and more than 19 kilograms of marijuana according to the indictment) are the least interesting part of the tale. Ellingson’s story revolves around one of Silk Road’s greatest scams and is central to those murder-for-hire allegations that have caused so much trouble for Ross Ulbricht (DPR) and Roger Clark (Variety Jones).

The whole saga is way too long and convoluted to repeat here, but a brief recap (and basic Silk Road knowledge is essential to comprehend this): in 2013, a desperate vendor named FriendlyChemist claimed he owed $700,000 to the Hells Angels for LSD that disappeared along with another vendor, Lucydrop. FriendlyChemist decided to blackmail the Silk Road’s owner, Dread Pirate Roberts , threatening to reveal sensitive user information unless he received $500,000 to pay off his debt. DPR, wanting to negotiate with the Hells Angels directly, was then contacted by “redandwhite”, who claimed to represent the aggrieved party.

The situation escalated when DPR, believing that FriendlyChemist was a liability, ordered a hit on him through redandwhite. After sending proof of the execution of FriendlyChemist, redandwhite provided DPR with the name of another Canadian involved in the scheme, Tony76, DPR’s greatest nemesis. DPR ordered another hit on Tony76 as well as his roommates, which redandwhite claimed was carried out successfully, charging DPR a hefty amount in Bitcoin.

However, upon investigation, the authorities found no evidence of the alleged murders. This led to the theory that redandwhite and Lucydrop were the same person, something which has allegedly been confirmed by blockchain analysis.

I always assumed that redandwhite was FriendlyChemist as well, but the indictment treats FriendlyChemist as a separate person (though this just means there’s no blockchain evidence linking them, as there is also no indication that FriendlyChemist exists). What would make it even more epic is if Ellingson is also Tony76, but that might be a bit of a stretch.

In any event, it is pretty clear that DPR was scammed out of a substantial stash of Bitcoin by redandwhite, unknowingly setting himself up for numerous allegations of conspiracy to commit murders that never actually happened.

But where is James now?

Ever since his initial arrest in Canada and the US’s claim that it was seeking to extradite him, there’s been radio silence about the whereabouts of James Ellingson. He was not immediately locked up. However as the DoJ announcement “thanked the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs for their assistance in the extradition proceedings” it sounds like he could be in the United States, possibly even the MCC in New York, but his name doesn’t come up in the BOP Inmate finder.

If anyone knows, drop me a line. I’m hoping to be in NYC shortly to conduct some interviewsin preparation for a re-release of my first book, Silk Road. I recently got the rights reverted to me and plan to update it significantly with ALL the known information, stories, and dramas that we now know.

And on the topic of the new book, if you’d like to help me out with getting there, please consider throwing a little crypto my way:

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*n.b. this is an exchange address – Only ETH deposits via the standard Ethereum network are accepted. Deposits sent from an unsupported network i.e. Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum or KCC etc. will not be received and are unrecoverable

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The post Tying up Silk Road’s loose ends: Redandwhite appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

It’s closing in on ten years since Silk Road shut down, its owner and staff arrested, but still the fallout continues. It’s expected that a few loose ends will be tied up in the coming months, the first of which is the sentencing of one of the most fascinating characters of the case: Roger Clark, aka Plural of Mongoose, aka Variety Jones.

Clark held a pivotal role behind the scenes of Silk Road, advising the Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR). To the majority, he was just a sporadic forum poster and cannabis seed grower. His critical role as DPR’s mentor and his deep understanding of the site’s operations were well-hidden.

The site’s public-facing administrators – Inigo, Libertas, Chronicpain, and Samesamebutdifferent – were blissfully unaware of Variety Jones’ existence, let alone his profound influence over their boss. Variety Jones was the invisible puppeteer, deeply involved in every aspect of Silk Road’s operations, while the admins were given just enough clearance to fulfill their roles.

Ross Ulbricht’s arrest in October 2013 blew the lid off the identities of his key lieutenants, including one Roger Thomas Clark, aka Variety Jones. Clark had a lengthy history in the online drug trade that significantly pre-dated Silk Road. Still, he managed to slip through the December 2013 law enforcement net that caught Inigo, Libertas, and SSBD. In a move that seemed out of character, VJ had uploaded his passport to the site only added a few weeks before Ulbricht’s arrest, despite having been involved in Silk Road almost from the start.

A shocking find in the form of chat logs on Ross Ulbricht’s computer shed light on the extent of Jones’ influence, even suggesting murder as a way to deal with thieving staff and scamming vendors.

On 29 May 2015, Ross Ulbricht received two life sentences without parole, partly due to the content of those messages.

On 3 December 2015, two years after the arrest of the three Silk Road administrators, Roger Thomas Clark, a 54-year-old Canadian, was arrested in a joint operation by the FBI, Homeland Security, DEA, and local Thai police.

Clark put up a fight against extradition to the United States from his Bangkok prison cell, where I paid him several visits. Finally, in June 2018, he was extradited to the United States, where he pled guilty to narcotics charges in January 2020, facing a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Clark’s sentencing has since been delayed for various reasons, from COVID and prison lockdowns, to Clark’s own injuries and illnesses, to legal issues including firing his legal team, lack of access to his files, only being allowed a bendy pen instead of a proper pen, and his legal assistant’s unavailability. The case has seen three judges, and the current one seems to have had enough, pushing for the sentencing to proceed in June.

Clark’s sentencing submission asks for a sentence equivalent to time served. In a twist, he appears to have thrown Ulbricht under the bus regarding the murder-for-hire claims, alleging that the Silk Road boss doctored the chat logs to implicate him.

Quite a turnaround from the promise Jones made to DPR in one of those chats, where he vowed to break him out of prison with a helicopter if it ever came to this.

The numerous sentencing delays has resulted in several cancelled airline tickets from Australia-NYC for me. Hopefully the points flights gods will be good to me this time. If you would care to assist me in getting over there to report ALL the important details, please consider throwing a little crypto my way:

BTC:   1JZedn9TGXzetu8WWhJKeyRkXPmmijtA4s

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*n.b. this is an exchange address – Only ETH deposits via the standard Ethereum network are accepted. Deposits sent from an unsupported network i.e. Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum or KCC etc. will not be received and are unrecoverable

XMR:  45xpcm5EsXR9wetoNwkoCq1cAKdbFnHDwFTSsuXLvWPv38niSL2B23C87TDS69M7axTG6qXScDeX9fpo2TSnqUcM1bgU1E7

The post Tying up Silk Road’s loose ends: Variety Jones appeared first on Eileen Ormsby.

This week, one of the world’s most prolific serial killers, Pedro Rodrigues Filho, known as Pedrinho Matador, or “Killer Petey”, was murdered in Brazil. Despite over a hundred kills, he had been released from prison due to Brazilian laws not allowing anyone to spend over 30 years incarcerated (and even so, he spent more than that in prison).

A few years ago, I wrote a Casefile episode about Filho. I bought his autobiography, watched every interview, hired a Portuguese translater, and even had a brief Facebook Messenger conversation with the man himself.

Here is Killer Petey’s story in its entirety, excerpted from my book, Psycho.com: serial killers on the internet.

PSYCHO.COM PART II: KILLER PETEY

A YOUTUBE SENSATION

The Youtube video shows a pleasant-looking man who looks to be in his late 50s or early 60s. He’s laughing and chatting to the unseen cameraman in Portuguese as he signs copies of his newly-released auto- biography. His job today is to sign 500 copies for his most ardent fans. His Youtube channel has been exploding in popularity and he has over 8 million views and 125,000 subscribers.

Since its humble beginnings 14 years ago, Youtube has become an unstoppable phenomenon. It’s the second-most- popular website in the world, with visitors watching over a billion hours of video every day. The website’s extraordinary reach has been responsible for creating celebrities out of nobodies, launching the careers of people who could never hope for access to traditional broadcast media, and cata- pulting people into superstardom overnight. Sometimes this is for conventional talents, such as singing, speaking or acting. Some people prove themselves as adept tutors of anything from guitar to home renovations to makeup to knitting, building solid fan bases for their tutorials. Some of the most-watched Youtube channels are simply people playing video games. Then there are the fads: everything from people carrying out ridiculous, and often dangerous, challenges to the simplicity of children unwrapping their new toys, a trend known as “unboxing”.

The popularity of such videos on Youtube has created some very unlikely superstars. Who would ever have imag- ined that there would be people becoming millionaires simply by livestreaming themselves playing video games or unwrapping toys? But whilst gamers, unboxers and knitting tutors might seem to be improbable internet stars, they pale in comparison to the first celebrity serial killer.

Serial killers are psychopaths, the ultimate boogeymen. They are often shrouded in mystery and we hear of cruel tortures and victim ordeals that nightmares are made of, ritualistic murders and possibly necrophilia and canni- balism thrown in for good measure.

Serial killers are evil and kill without empathy and remorse. Anyone, no matter how innocent or blameless, could find themselves at the mercy of such a sadistic monster if they fit the murderer’s criteria, and the chances of escape are slim. Serial killers are, without a doubt, Very Bad People.

How is it, then, that a serial killer with over 70 murders to his name, could be legally walking around free? How is it that during his years in prison he could keep on killing, all the while receiving letters of support, love, marriage proposals and special requests for specific murders from people who never met him? How is it that since his release, that same serial killer has become a folk hero, has started his own Youtube channel that has an ever-growing fan base, as networks scramble to work with him to make films and documentaries about his life? How can there be, in this day and age, such a creature as the Superstar Serial Killer?

This is the tale of one such unlikely morbid celebrity. This is the story of Killer Petey.

DISCLAIMER

Killer Petey has been interviewed many times over the years. His official body count is 71, but he claims it is much higher, well over 100. He says there are many murders he was never charged with — mostly gang members in the favelas of Brazil in the late 60s and early 70s.

In interviews, specifics change often and he sometimes seems to confuse his stories from one recount to another. He is prone to exaggeration, as many serial killers are, and boasts of incidents and murders that may or may not have happened. Stories of occurrences that have been independently verified sometimes change in the details.

Recently he released his autobiography, Pedrinho Matador. Right from the start, he seems to be mixing fact and fiction, claiming to be born at the stroke of midnight on October 30, when his date of birth is listed elsewhere as being in either June or July. It seems likely that Killer Petey is trying to create a legend whereby the boogeyman was born at the very beginning of Halloween. His number of siblings sometimes changes between interviews too, as does the tale of his first murder.

All I can do is relay the story as truthfully as possible, using stories told by Killer Petey himself in interviews and his book, along with reports from news sources about incidents at the time they happened. I hired a Portuguese translator and where I have quoted directly from his book, I have been as accurate I can, but some errors or misunderstandings may have slipped through.

A GRIM CHILDHOOD

In 1954, Pedro Rodriguez Filho came into the world with a misshapen skull. The deformity to the little boy came from a kick aimed deliberately and directly at the pregnant belly of Manuela Filho by Pedro Senior in one of the many violent altercations between the two. Pedrinho, as he came to be called, was lucky to be born at all, such was the violence inflicted by his father upon his mother throughout their marriage, including when she was pregnant with Pedrinho and, no doubt, with many of the seven brothers and sisters who came after him.

Pedrinho grew up on a farm located in the Brazilian municipality of Santa Rita de Sapucai, south of the state of Minas Gerais. The family was poor, though perhaps not at the extreme level of poverty that could often be experienced in rural Brazil in the 50s and 60s. Food was neither scarce nor plentiful. The children didn’t have to fight for scraps at every meal, but they had only enough to ensure they didn’t go hungry. However, poverty surrounded them and was generally associated with criminality and high death tolls. Clean water was mostly diverted to be used elsewhere for the crops and a lack of sanitation led to diseases for which there was no money to treat. The poor were often viewed as disposable and life was cheap.

Many people, including Pedrinho’s mother, were devoutly religious. Pedrinho would accompany her to church as often as he could, but he never understood what the pastor was saying and often fell asleep, earning him a thrashing. A common saying in the area was that God must exist because the Devil certainly did.

Pedro Senior worked hard for a meagre salary and was an agreeable man until he started to drink, when he turned into the sort of monster who would violently beat his pregnant wife. Manuela, for her part, ruled the children with an iron fist and a bible; quick to punish and not afraid to administer beatings when Pedro or his brothers were out of line.

Pedrinho lived a grim life with his parents and younger siblings, but he was closer to his grandparents who provided him with much-needed affection. His grandfather, Joaquim, whom Pedrinho described as ‘a simple gentleman’, taught the little boy all the skills he would need to survive: how to swim, plant, harvest, hunt and defend himself. He took the boy to work with him at the butchery, where he taught him how to handle a knife, bone an ox and cut it to pieces. In his autobiography, Pedrinho wrote (translated from Portuguese): ‘He also taught me how to be a worthy, correct and just man. My grandfather loved me. Of all the grand-children I was the dearest.’

His grandmother, he would later claim, taught him that drinking ox blood would give him strength. He told Ilana Casoy, author of the book Serial Killers: made in Brazil: ‘It’s good for your health! My grandfather died 98 years old, still strong’.

Family was everything for the poor in Brazil, because it was usually the only thing you had. As the eldest, Pedrinho felt he had to provide for the littler ones. All the boys in the area worked before, after, or instead of school to help out their families, and before he was ten he was killing feral monkeys for their pelts and meat, and fishing to help feed his family. By the time he reached double figures, he was working in a chicken slaughterhouse, putting to use some of the skills that his grandfather had taught him.

He had grown into a tough, wiry teenager, smaller than most of the boys his age. What he lacked in stature, he made up for in steely determination and a lack of fear. But by far the most defining characteristic of Pedrinho was his sense of fairness and deep resentment of injustice, especially when that injustice was directed at him or his loved ones.

A COUSIN, AN INJUSTICE AND A SUGAR CANE PRESS

By the time Pedrinho was 13 years old, violence was simply a part of his life. He saw it at home, where he tried to divert his father’s rages away from his mother, he saw it in the streets where drug dealers fought for turf, and he saw it at his work, where animals were slaughtered without any regard to humane practices.

It was an incident in 1967 that unleashed a new urge in Pedrinho. He was working with an adult cousin, who he didn’t know very well and who had a horse. Pedrinho took the horse for a ride without asking, though he claimed he had no intention of stealing it. His cousin was angry when he found the boy on his horse and punched him in the face, hard enough to cause him to become dizzy. Shocked, Pedrinho looked his cousin in the eye and said: ‘I’m going to kill you’.

His cousin, older and bigger, merely laughed and then hit him again, piling humiliation on top of the pain. The usual desire for revenge welled up inside Pedrinho, but this time it was more. He felt he had done nothing wrong and the reaction of his cousin, an adult, was excessive and unfair on him, a boy. He didn’t just want to hit his cousin back; he genuinely wanted to kill him. The injustice festered in Pedrinho for weeks. He saw his cousin several times, but there was never an apology or acknowledgment of the pain he had caused. Others in the family heard of the incident and laughed at Pedrinho for being weak.

Sugarcane was the dominant agricultural crop in the area, and Pedrinho’s grandfather sometimes worked the sugarcane mill, where the noisy, smelly method of processing occurred. There were few safety standards applied to the heavy machinery and equipment necessary for the job. Grandfather would occasionally get his grand-sons to come along and help him. On this day, Pedrinho was working with his cousin and the two were responsible for feeding the cane through the sugar cane press, a machine consisting of two rollers that crushed the brown juice out of the long hard stalks. Watching the heavy steel rollers rotating and flattening even the toughest stalks, Pedrinho had an idea.

Not letting on to the rage quietly bubbling inside of him, Pedrinho waited for just the right moment to calmly but resolutely shove his cousin into the sugar cane press, and then lean against him pushing with all his might in an effort to make his entire body pass through the rollers. Pedrinho’s understanding of physics was not very sophisticated, so he was surprised to find that when his cousin’s arm went through up to his shoulder, his body jammed up against the machine, and there was no way to feed the rest of him through. He tried pushing his cousin’s head into the rollers, but the head was the wrong size and shape, so the rollers just spun against his skull without grabbing hold. Worried that he would be spotted before the deed was finished, Pedrinho picked up some pruning shears and began to stab his cousin, hoping to cut him enough so that he would pass through the rollers and come out squashed on the other side.

There was no luck. Pedrinho’s cousin merely remained trapped, his mangled arm on the other side of the rollers. Workers who heard the screams raised the alarm and shortly after, the boys’ grandfather came to his rescue, turning the machine off.

Pedrinho was made to spend a couple of nights in jail, but his family needed him back out to work and provide for them. His grandfather came to the police station and told them the family did not want charges laid, and as the boy was a minor, he was released back into their care. Pedrinho was made to clean the machine of the blood and flesh of his cousin as punishment, a job he said took him four weeks to do properly. He felt no remorse for crippling his cousin. He would often tell the tale, laughing with amusement, saying it gave him pleasure to do it as he had righted an injustice.

The incident had whetted the pleasure of revenge inside of Pedrinho and something more. He wanted to know what it would be like to kill somebody.

PEDRINHO’S FIRST KILL

A year later, when Pedrinho was 14, a calamity hit the family. Pedro Senior was laid off from his job as a night janitor at a local school, with no severance pay. He had been accused of stealing food and stationery from the kitchen during his patrols, which were from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am every night.

Even when Pedro Senior was working, having enough food was not always guaranteed. The loss of the job meant the family definitely went hungry and would also certainly lead to an increase in drinking and the resulting violent outbursts by Pedro aimed at his wife. He told his family that it was not he, but one of his colleagues, the daytime guard, who had stolen the items. When the thefts were discovered, the daytime guard told the bosses that it was Pedro Rodrigues who was the thief.

Pedro Senior had sworn to his employers that he was innocent of the crime, but his entreaties fell on deaf ears. He was fired and branded a thief, which meant he would never get another security guard position. Unemployed, he was unable to provide for his family, who had to get by on the money Manuela made by being a maid and laundress in the homes of better-off people. Pedrinho took to the jungle, hunting monkeys to sell for their pelts, which could be turned into fine leather. His grandfather had taught him to use a rifle, and he enjoyed both the hunt and the kill.

Even with Perinho’s help, things got worse for the family and he would often come across his mother crying. The worst part to Pehrinho was the injustice of it all. Those with the means to feed his family refused to listen to his father’s side of the story. His father had worked there for 12 years, and the headmistress and the deputy mayor, the man with the power to hire and fire the guards at the school, took the word of the other man without analysing the evidence. The familiar feeling of revenge welled up inside of him, but this time he was going to do something about it.

Once again Pedrihno visited the shed where his grandfather kept his firearms. He took the rifle, plenty of ammunition, a machete and a tent, throwing it all into a green army backpack. He went into the mountains and built a camp there, where he could plan what he was going to do. In his autobiography, he wrote: ‘I set up the tent and stayed there for about 30 days. My friends were the animals: monkeys, rabbits, snakes and jaguars; they stayed there close to me, surrounded me, but they didn’t hurt me. During my time in the woods I only killed what I had to eat, what was necessary to survive. I never exploited the woods and I never mistreated the animals. But I didn’t go there to live, or to hide from my problems. When I got the guns, I had a plan and I already knew what I was going to do. I was going to get revenge’.

It was a cold night as Pedrinho lay in wait for the deputy mayor outside his own house, fingers clutched around his grandfather’s loaded 36-calibre rifle. The jeep that rumbled up to the house was the sort of car only rich people drove. The deputy mayor turned in surprise at the sound of the gunshot that rang out as he got out of the car. Pedrinho lifted the gun and shot at him again, killing him instantly. Then he ran.

At 14 years old, Pedrinho Rodrigues Filho had killed a man who had harmed his family. When Pedrinho killed chickens and monkeys, he felt nothing. No compassion, no empathy, just indifference. But this was different.

He felt righteous.
He felt pleasure.
Pedrinho was an avenger, and he would avenge the wrongs done to him and his loved ones.

PEDRINHO CARTUCHEIRA

Although killing the deputy mayor gave Pedrinho a feeling of justice, he still seethed at the unfairness done to his father. One man could have put a stop

to the dismissal of Pedro Senior: that was the day guard, the true thief of the school lunches. If he had confessed, Pedrin- ho’s father would not have lost his livelihood, and the family would not be so poor. But there was the day guard, still working at the school, while Pedro’s family starved.

The second time came easy to Pedrinho. He had done it once; he knew how to use the gun. A month after the first time he killed, Pedrinho went to the school where his father had once worked and his enemy was still employed. He waited in the storeroom where the guard always started his day. When the guard arrived, Pedrinho pointed the gun at him and made him sit in a chair in the middle of the room.

According to the book Serial Killers: Made in Brazil, Pedrinho had decided that from that time on, he would explain to his victims why they were dying. He would make them understand that they had committed a wrong and were being punished for it. In the case of the thieving day guard, he claims to have looked right in the man’s eyes and said: ‘Did you see what you did? It destroyed my family. My brothers are starving because of you. Is it fair that you did this?’

Realising who he was, the guard began to sob, apologise and beg for his life. But the damage had been done and Pedrinho was hell-bent on revenge. Forgiveness was not part of his plan. He shot the guard twice, then piled the furniture and boxes from the storeroom on top of his body and set it alight, before scampering away into the morning.

AFTER THE SECOND MURDER, the heat was on the Rodriguez family and Pedrinho fled to take refuge in metropolitan Sao Paulo at his Godmother’s house. There the teenager met the woman who would be his gateway to drug trafficking, known as Botinha, or “Bootie”, in the local community. She was the widow of a well-known drug trafficker and a gangster in her own right. Bootie used her beauty and influence in the region to attract adolescents and children to the criminal organisation. Pedrinho was young and small, but cut a dashing figure with his mop of frizzy hair and lean, muscular body.

She took the boy into her home in Mogi das Cruzes, in central São Paulo, took his virginity and put him to work in the business, trafficking and dealing drugs. He didn’t have any experience, but his relationship with the crime boss allowed Pedrinho, still a minor, to take on high positions in the drug trafficking hierarchy. Older and more experienced drug dealers were not quick to accept the 14-year-old on their turf and were jealous of his connection with Bootie. The girlfriend of one of his rivals warned the boy that he should watch his back and be prepared for an ambush when he least expected it. From that moment, he was on high alert.

The ambush came at a local lagoon. Pedrinho had been lured to the swimming hole to escape the heat and smoke some weed with the boys. Walking down the incline toward the water, he noted that the others were armed and acting strangely. Before they got to the lagoon, Pedrinho pulled his own gun and made the others drop theirs. He demanded to know why they had been planning to kill him, but they turned and fled. As they ran for their lives, Pedrinho shot at them, killing two and putting the other into hospital.

Whether they had been a genuine threat or Pedrinho was suffering from paranoia, wiping out the competition allowed the boy to mark his territory and show that even though he was young and small, he was not someone to be messed with. He became known as Pedrinho Cartucheira, or “Cartridge Petey” because of his weapon of choice, a two-shot 12-gauge sawn-off pipe shotgun.

Nevertheless, Pedrinho still managed to trust some people. He worked with friends “Gauchinho” and “Zé Capeta” and the three boys had each other’s backs, some- times quite literally as they took turns staying awake as the others slept. The trio carried out numerous crimes including one in Jacareí, an industrial town located between the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. They were supposed to collaborate with a drug dealer who went by the name “China,” but Pedrinho took an immediate dislike to him as a bully and a cheat, and decided to rip him off instead. Pedrinho and his cohorts stole China’s drugs and guns and sold them to another dealer, somebody Pedrinho respected. It didn’t seem like too big a deal at the time, but it was a decision that would come back to haunt Pedrinho.

It wasn’t just rival gang members Pedrinho had to worry about. He had become a prime target of Brazil’s notorious death squads, comprising off-duty police officers and other members of the state security forces, which emerged in the late 1960s in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Essentially vigilantes, they roamed the streets with the stated aim of ridding the slums of crime. This meant killing drug dealers, vagrants and street children, with the covert approval of the military government and invariably without consequences to themselves. Pedrinho became transient, sleeping in cars, cemeteries and churches, as he had to hide from both the police and his enemies.

This phase of Pedrinho’s life came to an abrupt end when Brazilian police executed Botinha during a drug transaction. The police had been tipped off by Botinha’s enemies, and Pedrinho was also wounded in the shootout. Disturbed by the death of one of the few people he cared about, and in bad shape physically, Pedrinho ran to take refuge with some extended family.

BLACK MAGIC

When he arrived on the doorstep of his family, Pedrinho had a request — he wanted them to perform a ritual that would protect his body from his enemies.

The relatives who took Pedrihno in were practitioners of Candomble Macumba, a religion sometimes considered to be witchcraft or black magic. Others referred to it as ‘psychotherapy for the poor’. The highly ritualised belief system encompassed spirit offerings, ceremonial dancing and animal sacrifices. Participants would often report becoming possessed by spirits, and afterwards claim to feel cleansed, both spiritually and physically. The most sacred and symbolic substance in the rituals was blood, which was thought to represent life’s pure essence.

Pedrinho believed that being inducted into the faith would mean the spirits would protect him from his enemies. His uncle and aunt grilled him to ensure he knew what he was getting into. A core belief of their religion was that good and evil were irrelevant. As an adherent, Pedrinho would be taught to fully embrace his life purpose and to steer his life to accomplish that purpose, but to always be aware that any harms inflicted on another person would come back to the person who caused the injury. That philosophy sat well with Pedrinho’s own sense of justice.

When Pedrinho insisted he wanted to go through with the ritual, his uncle made him gather together a coconut, with all of its hair carefully removed, gunpowder and a wick to put in the coconut, an all-black cat and seven stringed beans. The Voodoo-like ceremony took place outdoors, as required by the faith, in a deserted quarry at midnight. Pedrinho had been shaved clean of his hair and eyebrows. The complicated ritual involved Pedrinho killing a cat and drinking its blood and then being covered in the remainder of the blood and entrails, whilst in a trance. The carcass was then filled with seeds and buried by Pedrinho. During the ritual, a dozen members of the religion surrounded the teenager, drumming and dancing. Pedrinho felt himself becoming possessed as the ceremony went on into the small hours of the morning.

He concluded the initiation exhausted but with the firm belief that he had become invincible. Knives would not pierce him and bullets would bounce off him. He did not need to fear his enemies or the death squads.

Exactly a week later he returned to the site, dug up the cat carcass and removed the seeds, which had hardened into beads. His uncle threaded them onto a string which he placed around Pedrinho’s neck, warning him never to remove his new necklace. In his autobiography Pedrinho wrote: ‘From then on, the cops opened fire, but the bullets didn’t hit me. The enemies attacked, and I defended myself with ease. Nothing would stop me. Before, I was afraid, but after [the ceremony] it was as if nothing could affect me.’

From that moment on, according to his autobiography, Pedrinho became a defender of the weak and vulnerable. He hijacked food trucks, which he took into the slums to feed the hungry. He burned the shops of those who cheated the poor. He defended the honour of women, killing the men who cheated or harmed them, and the penalty for cruelty to animals was the same inflicted on the perpetrator.

Pedrinho was 16 years old, and he was invincible.

THE RED WEDDING

Never wanting to stay in one place too long, especially if that meant putting his relatives at risk, Pedrinho moved to Campo Grande, a city in the west of the state of Rio de Janeiro. There he met and fell in love with a girl by the name of Maria Aparecida Olympia. When Maria became pregnant with his baby, Pedrinho moved with her into a modest shack, continuing his newfound career of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and stealing from the bad drug dealers to sell to the righteous ones. Pedrinho believed himself to be a vigilante and justified his crimes as being legally wrong, but morally correct.

The legend of “Cartridge Petey” ran through the slums of Brazil’s largest cities, where he came to be both admired and feared. Those he assisted, or who wanted to curry favour, protected him and warned him when trouble was approaching. But his body count meant that Pedrinho would always have enemies and could never let his guard down.

The sins of his past came back to haunt him when Maria was seven months pregnant. Pedrinho’s world fell apart when he came home to find that someone had come to his house and slaughtered Maria and their unborn child, as well as the man Pedrinho had appointed to protect her. The murderers used Maria’s blood to scrawl: ‘We will get you’ on the wall.

Pedrinho had always felt that he was a righteous avenger, robbing from and killing only those who deserved it. But after the murder of the woman he loved and his unborn child, the need for vengeance burned in him like he never had before. He swore he would track down the murderer and have his revenge.

For more than a year, Pedrinho’s life was spent making enquiries and torturing any people who were not forthcoming but who he thought might have an idea of who killed his wife and unborn child. He had murdered so many people and had so many enemies, he didn’t know where to start looking. His enquiries seemed to be going nowhere until one day he stopped at a bar and was told there was a young woman looking for him. ‘She came from the Valley,’ he was told, and she drove a jeep. The Paraiba Valley was a region in the eastern part of the state of São Paulo and the western part of the state of Rio de Janeiro.

The young woman was the former wife of a drug dealer who went by the name China, a man from Pedrinho’s past. She showed him scars, bruises and burn marks that she said she suffered at the hands of China. The woman told Pedrinho: ‘It was China who ordered your wife’s death.’

As she told her story, Pedrinho was convinced she was telling the truth. China had never forgotten nor forgiven Pedrinho for stealing his guns and drugs stash, shooting one of his men and injuring China and his brother, who had run away cowering. Pedrinho kicked himself for not having realised who the culprit was earlier.

China’s vengeful ex-wife told Pedrinho that China’s brother was getting married the following Saturday in Jacarei, the same place where Pedrinho had robbed the drug dealer two years earlier.

Pedrinho recruited the same two men who had visited Jacarei with him back then, Gauchinha and Zé Capeta, and told them they would be attending a wedding. Pedrinho’s orders were simple: every man at the wedding was to get a bullet, but no women or children were to be harmed. ‘If you shoot them, you are going to have to deal with me,’ he told them.

Half a century before anyone had ever heard of Game of Thrones, Jacaeri in Brazil had its very own Red Wedding.

Pedrinho, Gauchinha and Zé Capeta crept up on the revellers, who ate, danced and drank, unaware of the presence of the teenager hell-bent on revenge outside the venue. As glasses clinked and music blared, the trio slipped in unnoticed, pretending to be invited guests. The unsuspecting wedding party was in full swing when Pedrinho knocked on the door to the reception hall. When an older man answered, Pedrinho told him: ‘I am an honoured guest of China. I believe, the most awaited guest of the night.’

Spotting China behind him, the three burst in and over- powered China’s father, and yelled at the women and children to go upstairs. Pedrinho was brandishing his trademark 12-gauge shotgun — or scattergun as he preferred to call it when China came at him, pointing a .44. Pedrinho shot him straight in the chest, killing him instantly.

The death of China was not enough for Pedrinho however. The men in his family were all gang members, complicit in his business, and as far as Pedrinho was concerned, they were every bit as guilty of Maria’s murder as the drug dealer. He started shooting indiscriminately, using the cache of guns he had brought with him. They shot until they had almost run out of ammunition, keeping only what they might need to make their getaway. Pedrinho and his friends calmly strode through the carnage, ignoring the screaming and begging of the wounded and stepping over the bodies of the dead. They left by the front door and went to a bar to have a drink.

Pedrinho ended up killing seven men and wounding sixteen that night. No children were harmed and the only woman to sustain an injury was China’s mother, to her arm, something Pedrinho said later was her own fault as she threw her arms around her son to try and protect him.

KILLER PETEY

After the wedding massacre, the legend spread throughout Sao Paulo and beyond. It earned the pint-sized teenager the nickname “Pedrinho Matador”, literally “Little Pete the Killer”, or “Killer Petey”. He was the feared psychopath who killed without mercy or hesitation, the wronged man who sought the ultimate revenge for the murder of his lover and unborn child, but he was also the protector of women and children, ensuring they would not pay for the sins of their husbands and fathers.

According to his autobiography, Pedrinho hooked up with a pair of twins shortly after the wedding massacre, and they became a polyamorous threesome. He began to live the lifestyle of a cashed-up gangster. He loved his notoriety as Pedrinho Matador, and his reputation as a fearless killer. He wrote: ‘I had money, morals, respect and power.’ He enjoyed the fear that his presence caused on the street or the moment he entered a building, especially among those he considered scum — rapists, standover men who extorted local businesses and those who preyed on the weak. He worked to make sure those sorts of criminals were more afraid of him than they were of the Death Squads.

On the inside of his right forearm, he tattooed the words: ‘I kill for pleasure’. The phrase was added to the amateurish pictures of snakes, a heart with a dagger through it, skulls, knives, crosses, something resembling a pot plant on his chest, and random words the teen sought to have inked all over his body by friends, or which he did himself.

On his other arm he tattooed Maria’s name, and the inscription ‘I can kill for love.’

Pedrinho would later tell journalist Roberto Cabrini on Conexão Repórter that during this period he killed every day. If a day went by without him having killed someone, he said, he got agitated. He told the reporter: ‘I would summon the devil. It was a ritual. It was like: “It’s yours. This body is yours. This blood is yours”.’

Then he would kill his victim and drink his blood, believing as his Grandma taught him, that the blood of his enemies made him stronger.

But not even the corrupt police in the poor areas of Brazil could ignore that many bodies in a wedding party and a manhunt began to track down those responsible. Brazil is a very large country with many places to hide, but Pedrinho had many enemies and those who would betray him. Both Gauchino and Ze Capeta were killed during this time, the former by the police during a robbery and the latter by a death squad that was looking for Pedrinho. Pedrinho took cover where he could, but his paranoia grew, he could trust nobody and he felt they were closing in on him.

Killer Petey was finally arrested on May 24, 1973. He was having a drink at the bar where the father of the twins worked when they swooped. The twins’ father had ratted him out. Pedrinho was taken down in a dramatic gunfight, badly wounded, passing out to the sounds of men screaming for his death.

When he awoke, he was chained to a hospital bed, surrounded by nurses, police and news cameras, there to capture the moment Pedrinho Matador was charged with murder. At age 18, it seemed, Killer Petey’s murderous ways had finally come to an end.

PRISON

Pedrinho spent 25 days recovering in the hospital, chained to the bed and under 24-hour guard. He was all over the news, with the press fascinated by Killer Petey and his twisted sense of righteousness. When he was well enough to be moved into prison, he was provided with the option of going into protective custody or going into general population, where the friends, brothers and sons of many of the men he had killed waited for his arrival. Pedrinho chose to go into the general population.

He enjoyed his newfound celebrity and was disappointed when he learned that he would only be charged with 18 homicides, telling the court and reporters: ‘Only that? It can not be that little.’ Pedrinho swore he had killed over 100 men. In the end, he was convicted for just 14 that could be properly pinned on him at the time. For those, he received a sentence of 126 years in prison.

When transferring Pedrinho to the jailhouse, the police put him in the back of the police wagon with another criminal, a serial rapist. By the time they got to their destination, there was only one man alive in the back of the truck. Killer Petey really hated rapists.

BRAZILIAN PRISONS HAVE a reputation of being some of the toughest and most violent in the world and during the early 70s, it was even worse. The inhumane conditions were over- crowded, unsanitary, uncomfortable and unsafe. Prisons were breeding grounds for infectious diseases like tuberculosis and dengue fever. Prison guards at the very best were considered insensitive, crude, inaccessible, and indifferent. At worst they were either sadistic monsters or thoroughly corrupt, ready to take a bribe and willing to break any rules for anyone with enough money.

Araquara prison in Sao Paul was one of the toughest. Brutal bashings were a daily occurrence and deaths almost as common. Prison gang warfare pitted criminals from different cities against each other and the resulting battles would often end in prisoners being decapitated or disembowelled in a display of power. There could be dozens of prisoners in a single small cell where there was not even enough room to lay down, wallowing in deplorable, unsanitary conditions. The problems that came with overcrowding were exacerbated by boredom and idleness.

The underpaid and outnumbered staff largely left the prisoners to their own devices, and they could do whatever they wanted within the confines of the walls of the prison. The guards would hand over the keys to internal locks to whichever inmates were running the show, their job confined to securing the outside of the prison. Prisoners organised themselves into gangs, the largest of which wielded enormous power, and they waged brutal turf wars.

For most inmates, the only way to stay safe was to join a gang who would provide protection, a certain amount of comfort, and even money for an attorney. It was child’s play to smuggle in weapons and drugs and even women on occasion.

Pedrinho entered prison young, even by Brazilian standards, where half of all male prisoners are aged between 20 and 29. Average life expectancy of a prisoner in Brazil was low, and it was almost unheard of for an inmate to remain alive in jail for 15 years before being killed by either disease or an enemy.

Even though he must have heard stories of prison all his life, Pedrinho was completely unprepared for what awaited him. In his autobiography he wrote: ‘By the time I went through processing, I began to understand what I would go through. The cell was small, there was no mattress, there was nothing, just the frozen concrete floor. There was no shower, it was just a water nozzle; there was no toilet, there was only a hole in the floor.’ What’s worse, as the newest arrival, Pedrinho’s sleeping spot was on the floor closest to the toilet hole.

He arrived with a huge target on his back. Not only were there members of gangs of the men Pedrinho had killed outside who were hell-bent on exacting revenge on behalf of their brotherhood, but he was also a high-profile celebrity thanks to the media interest both before and after his arrest. Jealousy and the desire for notoriety put Pedrinho in the sights of prisoners from all sides.

His reputation as a killer had already run through prison before he arrived. Pedrinho knew he had to watch his back and keep his wits about him. With the help of a cellmate, he improvised a knife fashioned from spoons sharpened to a deadly blade and made sure to have it with him at all times.

It wasn’t long before the inevitable happened. The prison yard was hushed that day when Pedrinho entered. Five men were involved in the ambush on the killer teenager and when they surrounded him, the crowd turned to look. The inmates were well attuned to keeping to themselves and not poking their noses into others’ business, but it was difficult to look away from what would surely be a bloody massacre.

It is not entirely clear what happened next. Eyewitness accounts are apocryphal and Pedrinho’s own recollections can be muddled or embellished. What we do know is that three of the men in the ambush were killed and the other two wounded badly enough that they did not want to continue the fight and fled. The legend of Killer Petey increased tenfold within the Araquara prison.

It quickly became well known that Pedrihno could and would kill without hesitation for any reason, and he wasn’t afraid of anybody. Sometimes Pedrinho was able to get his hands on a weapon, whether that be a makeshift one such as a shiv fashioned out of any bits and pieces he found lying around the prison, to an illegally-obtained knife or firearm, which was not uncommon in the corrupt Brazilian prison system. Other times, it was his bare fists that were the weapon, with breaking necks a specialty. He taught himself martial arts, punching his cell walls until they were covered in his blood, training himself to withstand any sort of pain.

But Pedrinho was not the sort of person who was simply out of control, unable to curb his rage. Sometimes he had targeted somebody to kill, but for whatever reason it was not the right time. Pedrinho would befriend them, share his food or meagre belongings with them, even hug them. He would gain their trust over weeks or months before striking when they least expected it. Pedrinho’s major advantage was he was completely merciless. There was never any hesitation when he decided to kill someone, nor were there ever any regrets.

When he wasn’t working out, he enjoyed the gambling that went on in the prison, where the stakes were high. He looked forward to the visits of his mother and grandmother, who came every week to check on him. Pedrinho may have had a thousand enemies, but at least he had two women he could be sure loved him no matter what.

THE CRUELLEST KILL

The night his world turned upside down again, Pedrinho had gone to bed early. His cellmates had been drinking, snorting cocaine and gambling, but Pedrinho was feeling relaxed and sleepy, having had a joint straight after a visit from his mother earlier in the day. He had gotten up at one time to go to the bathroom and he noted that some of his cellmates were acting strange. They turned down the radio to a whisper as he passed.

The radio was the prisoners’ lifeline to the outside world. It played non-stop, so the inmates could keep up with a world that had forgotten them. Pedrinho noted the odd behaviour and upon returning to bed, made sure his shiv was easily accessible.

The next day, things still seemed a little off. Pedrinho caught prisoners sneaking glances at him and people stopped talking when he came near them, awkwardly changing the conversation. He went to an area of the yard that was used as a gym, where he filled plastic bottles with water and tied them either end of a broomstick to use as weights, and started his two–hour workout.

He was alone in the eerie silence when a guard came to tell him he was wanted in the Prison Director’s office. He was handcuffed and taken to see the Director, flanked by two guards, sensing the eyes of everyone he passed boring into him. Even though Pedrinho had never attacked any of the prison staff, no doubt this time they wanted safety in numbers, as they were bearing very bad news for him. Manuela Filho had been killed; stabbed to death in her bed as she slept. The news that Pedrinho Matador’s mother had been murdered had made it to the radio, but nobody in the cellblock had wanted to be the one to tell Pedrinho.

Pedrinho found the news hard to take in. He had just seen his mother the previous morning. He warned the jailer that if he was kidding, it was not funny, and the Director was no doubt happy he had his armed backup with him at that moment, even if Pedrinho was handcuffed.

There was another bombshell to come. Pedrinho’s father, Pedro Rodrigues, had been charged with the brutal murder and had been taken into custody.

The Director said they wanted to provide him with the opportunity to see his mother in the morgue before she was buried if he wanted. Pedrinho did want to. They took him, under heavy guard and leaving him in no doubt that if he made the slightest wrong move he would be shot. He viewed his mother’s body in a coffin, completely torn to shreds. When Pedro Sr finally went too far, he went way, way too far. Manuela Filho had been hacked apart with a machete, stabbed 21 times in some sort of psychotic rage.

As he stood over his mother’s coffin, Killer Petey made a vow. He promised his mother that he would kill his father and eat his heart to avenge her death. For anyone else, these would be empty words. But Killer Petey routinely drank the blood of his victims. It was one of his signature moves until the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s scared him out of it.

A week later, Pedrinho was told that his aunt, his father’s sister, had come to the prison and left a cake for him as a peace offering. Pedrinho divided the cake among his cell- mates and gave a little to the stray dogs that some of the prisoners kept as pets. The next thing he knew, one puppy was vomiting and another had fallen over. One of the prisoners who had taken a bite had also started vomiting.

The cake tested positive for poison. Police interrogated Pedrinho and soon after, he was transferred to another penitentiary, the first of many such transfers for Killer Petey.

THE SINS OF THE FATHER

Pedro Rodrigues Sr was convicted of the stabbing murder of his wife. As luck would have it, he was put into the same prison as his son, but in a different section, locked away for his own safety.

Pedrinho Matador has told the story of what happened next countless times. The details sometimes change, but the main facts are undisputed. One day, he called a guard to his cell, claiming illness. Using a large knife he had managed to acquire, he threatened the guard and took away his gun and his keys. He used the gun to shepherd other guards into a cell, which he locked up. He then made his way to the cell- block where his father was being held. Upon opening the cell door the other inmates, seeing who had come in, promptly scattered. Pedro Sr did not attempt to run. He stood in the corner, near the wall. As Pedrinho approached him, he said: ‘You are right, my son’.

Pedrinho didn’t want to hear anything his father said to him. The older man offered no resistance when Pedrinho lunged at him and wrestled him to the ground, straddling him with the knife held high. Pedrinho began stabbing his father, counting as he went. One, two three…the sound the knife made each time it was pulled out kept his rhythm of counting going, as he reached double figures. When the numbers got into the high teens, he concentrated the blows on his father’s chest area, as he worked toward his goal.

At number 22, Pedrinho stopped. His father had stabbed his mother 21 times. Pedrinho wanted to be sure Pedro was stabbed one more time than his mother. As the blade went in the final time, Pedrinho felt an overwhelming sense of relief: it was right and good that his violent murderous father was dead. Killer Petey was the righteous avenger once again.

Then it was time to make good on his final promise to his mother.

Pedrinho dug around his father’s chest cavity until he found his still-beating heart, wrenching the organ away from the warm corpse. He laid his father’s heart on the ground, sliced off a sizeable piece of meat and popped it into his mouth, chewing vigorously.

It was so tough and chewy, he couldn’t bring himself to swallow it, so he spat it out onto his father’s body. He had what he came for: the ultimate insult and the ultimate vengeance.

Pedrinho stayed just a few seconds more with his father’s body, before making his way back to the cell where he had locked up the guards. He released them, handing over not only the guard’s gun but his knife as well and allowed himself to be handcuffed and taken away.

THE PUNISHER

Killing his father did nothing to curb’s Pedrinho’s murderous ways. He figured he was going to be in prison for a very long time, so there was no need to be in prison with people he felt did not deserve to live. Pedrinho was an advocate for the death penalty, and he had appointed himself judge, jury and executioner for carrying it out. His moral code saw him targeting rapists, pedophiles, and the men who murdered women and children. His reputation, both from his life on the streets and then in prison, continued to grow. Some people nicknamed him “The Punisher”, after the Marvel Comics character who employed murder, kidnapping, extortion, coercion, threats of violence, and torture in his campaign against crime.

Pedrinho kept to himself a lot of the time, but occasionally he would befriend fellow inmates. One such man, Claudio, had come into the prison needing protection, and Pedrinho provided it to him. When Claudio was due to be released, he promised Pedrinho that he would help him escape. Pedrinho gave him the address of his grandmother’s house, where he would be welcomed and assisted. There, Claudio met and started dating Pedrinho’s sister, Silvana. However, one night, Pedrino’s brother disrespected Claudio, hitting him and accusing him of helping Pedrinho because he believed the two had had a sexual relationship in prison. In rage and retaliation, Claudio fired shots, killing Silvana and wounding her friend.

When Claudio arrived back in prison, Pedrinho reassured him that he bore no grudge and it was understandable that the brother’s words and actions set him off. The two had been close friends and Claudio relaxed in relief that Pedrinho would continue to protect him.

A short time later, Pedrinho visited Claudio in his cell. Claudio was studying and lifted his pen as his friend entered. Pedrinho wordlessly pulled Claudio’s head back by the hair and went to work on his throat with his knife, stab- bing, cutting and sawing until he was able to lift Claudio’s decapitated head high in the air. He felt nothing, but his sister had been avenged.

‘He was my friend, but I just had to kill him, I’m justified,’ he said later in an interview.

When he wasn’t killing people, Pedrinho lifted weights and practiced martial arts, but most importantly he finally learned to read and write. Once he learned to read, he became an enthusiastic visitor to the library. He devoured the books of trashy fiction author Sidney Sheldon, but his favourite book was Roots, the classic and depressing story of a teenager sold into slavery.

His new skill also meant he could read the letters he received from the public about men who were locked away with him. People on the outside were requesting the help of Killer Petey to avenge the wrongs his prisonmates had done. If the writer seemed genuine enough, sometimes Pedrinho would carry out their request, but he refused to kill for money. He enjoyed choosing a victim and luring them into a trap, and had no problem pretending friendship right up to the moment when he would strike. He would either club them to death, stab them or break their necks. He threw one man down an elevator shaft because he had extorted the relatives of prisoners. His twisted form of celebrity spread throughout Brazil and beyond. He relished his reputation as the most feared and dangerous man in the history of the Brazilian prison system.

The letters of requests for murders turned into requests for relationships. Pedrinho claimed to get up to fifty letters every week: fan mail and love letters. He even received several marriage proposals. He was bemused that people would write to him and found it odd that women were attracted to someone like him. Mostly he ignored them, but he did strike up a relationship with a woman who was also in prison. They wrote to each other regularly over the years, and when she was released she would come to visit him.

The prison sent in psychiatrists to evaluate Pedrinho and they diagnosed him as a psychopath, incapable of feeling remorse or sympathy, with the added complications of paranoia and anti-social personality disorder. Psychiatrists who evaluated Pedrinho in 1982 wrote that the greatest motivation of his life was ‘a violent affirmation of self.’ Like most serial killers, Pedrinho kept all the newspaper clippings about his life and crimes that he could lay his hands on.

When he went before a judge for the murders he carried out inside the prison, the judge asked him for reasons for the killings. Pedrinho said: ‘I did not like his face’ for one and ‘He snored too much’ for another.

The press always attended court hearings of Killer Petey and the story of the serial killer murdering a cellmate for the crime of snoring too much entered into folklore. Many years later, he would tell reporter Roberto Cabrini that he was just being droll with the court and this wasn’t true. He said that the real story was that after a riot in the prison, Pedrinho was put into a private room in a hospital. Due to overcrowding, it was necessary to place another inmate with him, and Pedrinho assured the guards that there would be no problem. A couple of days later, Pedrinho received a visit from his girlfriend. As the couple became amorous, he noticed that the second prisoner was staring at them. It was his disrespect and rudeness that got him killed, not his snoring.

Pedrinho’s innate propensity to violence and his psychiatric problems were not helped by the Brazilian prison system. The conditions of squalor and boredom only exacerbated his issues and fed his paranoia, which meant his killing became for increasingly pointless reasons. Every time he was transferred — to nine different institutions — Pedrinho committed more crimes.

The story of Pedrinho Matador’s most extreme incident is sketchy. He told the tale of breaking his own record of murders in one day in an interview with Roberto Cabrini for Conexão Repórter, but there doesn’t seem to be any public record of the event in any other news sources.

The reporter said: ‘Pedrinho, tell me about the transsexuals night.’

Pedrihno Matador told Cabrini that a transgender prisoner had been in love with a friend of Pedrinho, who did not return the affections. The prisoner spread a rumour about Pedrinho’s friend, which resulted in him being killed. Pedrinho swore vengeance and rampaged through the section where the transgender prisoners were housed, stab- bing and killing indiscriminately, until sixteen inmates lay dead. He told the reporter he had gone crazy “killing faggots” and was deaf for three days from all of the blood- curdling screams of the unsuspecting prisoners.

By this time, Pedrinho’s official body count was 71, and that was just the ones that could be confirmed and pinned on him. His cumulative sentence was now 400 years. The authorities decided enough was enough. Pedrinho was sent into a psychiatric ward, with orders that he was not to have contact with any other prisoners.

MAXIMUM SECURITY

In 1985, Pedrinho was transferred to Taubaté Maximum Security Prison and Psychiatric Treatment Centre about 80 miles outside Sao Paulo. The centre had a custom-built annex, known as the “Piranhão” that was designed to house prisoners considered so dangerous they could not be kept in the somewhat loose general prison system. At Taubate, Prisoners lived in individual tiny cells, where they spent most of their day. They were allowed outside for exercise and out of their cells for meals only under strict supervision.

The methods of the prison were effective. Killer Petey stopped killing. Pedrinho distracted himself by reading, writing letters, playing solitaire and repeatedly punching the cell wall until he was allowed to have a bag of sand to punch instead.

At night, sometimes the people he had killed would return to Pedrinho. Into his dreams came an array of different creatures — panthers and tigers, rats and monkeys, but mostly snakes — and they would talk to him. Pedrinho always knew exactly which man it was who had come to him in disguise. And he would kill them again.

The one who returned most often was his father. Pedrinho told reporter Roberto Cabrini: ‘Sometimes I kill him again when he appears on my dreams. He would appear in the form of a snake, speaking… He would appear to be a snake and, in my dream, he attacked me, biting me, and I would hold him and tell him: “I killed you, that’s right, and I will kill you again”. And I would crush the snake that was speaking. It was a snake but it was my father, speaking.’

In the early 1990s a new prisoner was transferred to Tabaute. Former plastic surgeon Hosmany Ramos had been sentenced to 53 years in prison for theft of airplanes, car smuggling and the murder of his personal pilot and a stewardess.

According to Pedrinho, Ramos had lagged to the wardens about a plan by a younger prisoner to escape. When Pedrinho approached him about it in the lunch room, Ramos hit him in the mouth. The next moment, Ramos was on the ground with Pedrinho’s foot on his neck. Ramos was saved from death when the guards intervened.

From then on, Pedrinho ate in his cell.

A private war between Pedrinho and Ramos began. Some time later, Pedrinho claims to have received a cake through the bars from a fellow prisoner. When he bit into it, he started to bleed from his mouth and was only saved after swallowing a whole can of powdered milk to detoxify. Pedrinho was sure it was Ramos who had sent the cake, but he never had another chance to see the other man. Ramos was eventually released and went back to practising surgery.

From 1992 to 2002, Pedrinho was completely isolated, in a kind of solitary, where he only had contact with the jailers. Other prisoners were allowed in the yard together for their hour of exercise, but Pedrinho was only allowed the company of two guards, who were ready to shoot him if he made a single move out of place. For a decade, Pedrinho’s only human interaction was with the guards, to whom he was always polite and respectful, and the journalists who dared visit to interview him. He told one interviewer that the staff of the prison had nothing to fear from him because, he said, ‘I only kill scoundrels.’

The interest by the press in Pedrinho Matador had not waned. In August 1996, journalist Eduardo Faustini visited him in prison for an interview, which was recorded for TV. In it, the journalist asked Pedrinho if he was released, would he kill again. Pedrinho said calmly: ‘Yes, I would have to. To put it simply, I’m a murderer. I always have been.’

In 1998, another notorious inmate arrived at the prison. “Motoboy” Francisco de Assis Pereira, better known as the Park Maniac, had been accused of raping, torturing and murdering eleven women in the State Park in Sao Paulo. Nine other women had been raped but not killed during his reign of terror. The Park Maniac found his victims by posing as a talent scout for a modelling agency. He was sentenced to 268 years in prison.

When asked about Motoboy by a reporter for a TV channel that had come to interview him, Pedrinho said: ‘Today my biggest dream is to be alone with him. My dream is to break that neck. What he did should not be done. He killed a lot of helpless girls. I hate rapist murderers.’

Pedrinho’s declaration that he would kill the Park Maniac made headlines all over South America and won him even more fans. The director of the prison had to make a statement assuring the public that, no matter how popular the idea was, there was no way Pedrinho was going to be able to keep that promise. Pedrinho was kept completely isolated, spending 23 hours a day in his cell, and using the exercise yard alone. The director told the press: ‘Even if Pedro can get out of the cell, he will not know where to find Francisco. In addition, the two are always accompanied by prison guards.’

On December 17, 2000, during visiting hours, an inmate of Taubate Prison opened fire on prisoners from a rival gang with a gun that had been smuggled in. Amid the ensuing confusion, the prisoners took control of the facility and took 23 hostages, including four children.

The inmates had taken over the asylum.

During the standoff, prisoners negotiated for the transfer of ten inmates to another facility in return for releasing the hostages. Through tense negotiations, hostages were released in small groups. At the same time, news started to filter through that prisoners were being murdered, mostly as a result of rival gangs taking advantage of the situation to exact revenge on their enemies. One of those reported dead was the Park Maniac, a story swiftly seized upon by news networks. Everyone knew of the threat by Pedrinho Matador, and it looked like he had come through and killed one of Brazil’s most notorious serial killers in Brazil’s highest security prison.

The rebellion finished just one day later, with all of the hostages released unharmed. They told the authorities that they had been treated well by their captors throughout the ordeal. Some were excited to reveal that Pedrinho Matador himself had been in charge of bringing food to them and keeping them comfortable.

The next day the authorities reversed their initial report that the Park Maniac had been killed during the uprising. The Sao Paulo State Prison Administration Department said that Francisco Assis Pereira had not been killed. Prison authorities said they had initially believed Pereira was dead because he had received frequent threats from other prisoners and was missing from his cell when the uprising began.

Pedrinho would later tell reporters that he wanted to kill the Park Maniac during the rebellion, but he had been busy looking after the hostages. His failure to carry out his promise was met with disappointment from much of the public.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE KILLER PETEY?

In the early 2000s, the Brazilian authorities gathered to discuss a rare, but very big, problem. Article 5 of the Brazilian Constitution provides that “there will be no penalties of a perpetual character”. In other words, nobody in Brazil can be sentenced to the term of their natural life in prison. The Brazilian Penal Code, created when life expectancy in Brazil was 43 years old and not since updated, puts the maximum prison sentence that can be served for any individual at 30 years for all their crimes combined, no matter what sentence they have been given. The 30-year rule in Brazil means that, unless they die before their sentence is up, all prison inmates will be released at some point. It also means they will invariably be readmitted because they come out brutalised by their experiences, lacking any employable skills and generally ostracised by society. It is rarely required, however, as very few prisoners last in the Brazilian prison system for even half that length of time before being killed by disease or their fellow prisoners.

So it was that Pedrinho Matador, sentenced to a cumulative 400 years, came to be eligible for parole in 2003.

Officially, Pedrinho had been convicted of 71 murders, but he claimed to be responsible for many more, over 100. However, in a 2003 article, “A Monster of the System”, journalist Ricardo Mondonca wrote: ‘He likes to bolster his fame by telling other stories, many of which we can not be sure whether they happened or not. Like many serial killers, his tales often blend reality and fantasy, and most of the corpses he is proud to have produced were never found.’

However, Mondonca goes on to say that prison record- keeping in Brazilian prisons in the 1970s was “chaotic” and both authorities and journalists had to rely on spoken testimony to piece together what happened with certain homicides. The article concluded: ‘Therefore, it is probable that Pedrinho has killed less than he says, but more than appears in his file, in a display of inefficiency of the police and the Judiciary.’

The psychiatrists brought to the prison to meet with Pedrinho concluded there was no doubt: Killer Petey was a psychopath. He felt no remorse and no regret for his crimes. Indeed, he didn’t even pretend, telling reporter Eduardo Faustini in 1996: ‘The things I do are good for society, in my opinion. I’m killing my enemies and people who rape, who kill children, who kill family men because of some trainers… Do they deserve to live? Tell me! They don’t.’

Psychiatrist Antonio Jose Elias Andraus, one of the doctors who analysed the serial killer said: ‘Pedrinho is a cold psychopath who speaks naturally about the deaths, without any remorse.’ However, the doctor admitted that most people did not need to fear him, saying: ‘You would enter the cell alone with him and he would never raise a hand. He spoke very well and sounded well educated. Never, as far as I know, has he raised his hand to anyone who worked there. But with the bandits he meted out justice. As he himself said, “I could see a dying face and laugh. I did not feel anything”.’

In the year leading up to his proposed release date, Pedrinho was returned to the State Penitentiary, where he behaved as an exemplary inmate. He became the coordinator of cleaning and gravely stated that he had no enemies and did not plan to kill anyone. Unless he came across the Park Maniac; him he would kill, just as he had promised.

Unaware that police, prison authorities and politicians were meeting to discuss what they could do about him and if there was any way they could keep him locked up, Pedrinho was looking forward to his release. He still looked young, thanks to two hours of exercise every day, and had family to go to, even though they had not visited for several years. To earn a living when he got out, he figured he would go back to working in a slaughterhouse as he had when he was a boy. He was the first to admit that he didn’t know how to do anything else.

The Brazilian prison system did not provide for any sort of re-socialisation. Recidivism for even normal prisoners ran to at least 70%, and Pedrinho had been in prison his entire adult life. His enormous strength was enhanced by his high level of adrenaline and his ignorance of fear. He was a killing machine, and they had to let him back out into the world.

At the eleventh hour, a judge found an item in the Criminal Code that could be interpreted to say crimes committed after the commencement of a sentence could be considered as new and separate. If so, Pedrinho’s sentence could be extended to 2017. This interpretation could, however, be challenged in higher courts. Unfortunately for Pedrinho, he did not have a lawyer and remained blissfully unaware that the authorities were plotting against his liberation.

When journalist Ricardo Mendonca visited him the month of his proposed release, he found he was in the awkward position of apparently knowing something Pedrinho did not. He wrote: ‘He believes he will be released on the 25th. In fact, this will not happen. His sentence was extended because of the crimes he committed behind the bars. Pedrinho could even appeal the decision, but he doesn’t know about it.’

There’s no record of how Pedrinho took the news that he was not getting out when he thought he was, but no doubt it was in the same wooden, emotionless way he reacted to even the most probing and impertinent questions from interviewers over the years.

RELEASE

Someone must have helped Pedrinho appeal, because he was released from prison April 24 2007 after serving 34 years; four more than the law permitted. There is no monitoring of prisoners once released in the Brazilian system, so Pedrinho was turned out to fend for himself. He took himself off to a part of the country where he could be away from the prying eyes of the law. He moved into a pink cottage, surrounded by greenery and acquired a Labrador.

It took him a while to readjust. Everything was completely foreign to him and he had to ask for help for the simplest of tasks. He had no idea how to catch a train, buildings seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere, and the technology and machinery on farms were completely different to what it had been before he went in. TV was in colour. Although he had seen plenty of mobile phones that had been smuggled into the prison over the years, the internet was a mystery to him.

He led a quiet life, attending church in a village where most people knew the story of the man who claimed to have killed more than 100 people and served 34 years in prison. He got a job as a caretaker on a farm, and his neighbour later told reporters Pedrinho was a hard-working, serious and religious man.

There’s not much to go on around this time, but it seems that the authorities had wanted to re-arrest Pedrinho almost from the moment he was let out, but did not know where to find him. He was arrested on September 15, 2011 at around 11 o’clock in a farmhouse on the General Road of the Apes in Camboriú after an anonymous tip-off to Civil Police Division of Criminal Investigations.

Pedrinho was charged in relation to six riots whilst he was in prison and deprivation of liberty of a prison officer during one of those riots. Police seized a loaded 38-caliber revolver that he wasn’t supposed to have, and he was charged with that too. He did not resist arrest and entrusted his Labrador to his neighbour to look after.

The media was waiting for him at the police station. He gave a press conference standing against the Police banner where a dozen reporters shoved microphones at him. He calmly answered all their questions, many of which seemed designed to elicit sympathy for the killer.

‘Do you think you’ve already paid for your crimes?’ they asked.

The prisoner nodded. ‘I’ve paid for my crimes,’ he said quietly.

Pedrinho fell back into the familiar routine of prison, working out, reading and feeding his celebrity status. The fan letters came thicker and faster than ever and news outlets sent a constant stream of reporters to interview him.

Inevitably, he was compared to Dexter, the serial killer in the TV series who only killed killers. Like Dexter, Pedrinho claimed he was a vigilante dispensing justice where the system had failed to do so and preventing more deaths of innocent people. He told reporter Roberto Cabrini: ‘I only killed those who were no good, if I didn’t kill them, they would kill me and they would kill others who didn’t deserve to die.’

In another prison interview in 2012, Marcelo Rezende asked him: ‘Is there anyone you kill that you regret killing, that you think maybe you shouldn’t have?’ Killer Petey answered there was not. He didn’t believe in regrets.

Thanks to the internet, the story of Killer Petey spread beyond Brazil. The pop-culture references to Dexter and serial killer’s odd but fierce adherence to his morals served to permit people to support him. If you didn’t look too hard and took the headlines on face value, this was a serial killer we could all get behind. He was The Punisher, the guy you needed when the only person who could properly deal with a baddie was another baddie. People conveniently forgot about the stories of those who were killed for the slightest and most mundane reasons. With his twisted logic, Killer Petey reasoned that if they were in prison, they were already guilty, so they deserved to die if he targeted them.

This time he had new visitors in addition to the constant procession of journalists. Film-makers who wanted to document his life. Authors who wanted to help him write his biography. People who wanted to be there when he got out to help him capitalise on his bizarre but undeniable celebrity status.

KILLER PETEY, SOCIAL MEDIA STAR

On December 6, 2017, Pedrinho Matador was once again released. At 64, he still looked youthful, thanks in part to his strict fitness regime that started every morning at 4 o’clock. After making his bed, he would get straight into jumping rope, then on to stretching and holding the plank position for as long as he could. There were no more murder convictions in that time, although he told Roberto Cabrini of Conexão Repórter in an interview after his release that the last murder he carried out was “about five years ago.” However, he also said it was outside, not inside prison, which would have put it between 2007 and 2011. When pressed about that murder, Pedrinho didn’t want to talk about it, saying: ‘It’s kind of complicated, all right?’

In that same interview, Pedrinho also said he was done with killing unless someone were to harm his family. He remained close with his sister Clarice, his niece Jaqueline and her husband, catching up for regular family dinners. He would like a family of his own, a wife, a son and a daughter. He attended church regularly and was certain that God had forgiven him his sins. He still had his enemies — a few months after his release, he was almost killed in Santa Catarina. Enemies were surprised to find him there, but with Killer Petey’s reputation, they decided to go for reinforcements. By the time they returned, he had escaped to his sister’s house. Pedrinho did not seek revenge. At least, that’s what he said.

The world was still a foreign and crazy place to Pedrinho, but he came to embrace social media, where his story had taken on a life of its own. They called him the “Dexter Serial Killer”, and his followers saw his crimes the way he did — that he was ridding the world of evil and protecting those who could not protect themselves. He became the vigilante many Brazilians believed they needed in a country where less than ten percent of murders are solved.

Pedrinho has amassed over 4200 friends on Facebook, where he posts motivational quotes, videos of him showing off his culinary skills and pictures of his new tattoos. Piece by piece, he has been covering up the homemade and jail- house tattoos with professional artwork. He covered up his most infamous tattoo, the one that said ‘I kill for pleasure,’ with a picture of a scorpion. He covered up the tattoo that said “Revenge” with one that said “Love”. The devil on his bicep was covered by a tribal tattoo. The wonky cross on his back became a picture of Jesus and cherubs. Maria’s name was tattooed over by a feather. ‘I erased it because she no longer exists. She is no more,’ he told Roberto Cabrini. He lists himself on Facebook as “Single”. The comments are filled with heart and flower emojis from female fans.

He has written and released the first part of his autobiography, which he sells through his social media platforms. Someone else has written a rap song about him. He’s working on a documentary about his life with director Bruno Santana. He’s available for motivational talks and interviews

He claimed that he wanted to leave Pedrinho Matador, “Killer Petey” behind. He told reporter William Cardoso, ‘I do not want to be known by that name anymore’ But Killer Petey has become his brand. His Youtube channel, which has over 125,000 subscribers and more than eight million views, is called “Pedrinho Ex-Matador”. His promo video is set to The Driving Force by the Jingle Punks, an uplifting soundtrack suggesting excitement and adventure. The wording lives up to the promise: ‘In this channel you will know and follow the life of the Greatest serial killer in Brazil. Pedrinho Matador was sentenced to the largest penalty ever seen in Brazil. He beat the record for survival in jail and beat the record time arrested. There had never been another detainee spent so much time behind bars.’

He is a prolific uploader, often adding several videos a day, sometimes live streaming. The videos are produced by 30-year-old Pablo Silva. They are messages from Pedrinho about crime and God, archive footage of old interviews, reports on the sorts of crimes that he is morally opposed to, lessons for youth that crime doesn’t pay, publicity for his book, and snippets of his day-to-day life: cooking, socialising, getting a haircut or a tattoo. He warns the kids of today that it is not just drugs that start trouble; things like vandalism, skateboarding, disrespecting older people and lying to parents about where they are going are all against his code of conduct.

He often gets stopped when he is out and about by fans keen for a selfie with the infamous killer. He is a genuine celebrity in his home town. Nowadays when a policeman stops him on the street, it is to shake his hand and congratulate him. He is perhaps the first superstar serial killer.

Pedrinho Matador claims he craves the quiet life, living on a farm with a dog, surrounded by trees and animals. He sleeps through the night. He no longer has nightmares where the men he has killed return to him as animals that he must kill over and over again. He believes he is proof that psychopaths can be cured.

‘In this world, where we are now… I’m not taking anyone’s life… I’m cured,’ he told Roberto Cabrini of Conexão Repórter in 2019. The hour-long interview tried to find some degree of humanity and repentance in Pedrinho, but he remained emotionless throughout. It came across that this man was, indeed, a psychopath, who feels no remorse. It’s like he wants to regret it but can’t. He told the reporter: ‘I don’t regret it because the people I killed weren’t worth a shit. The people I murdered weren’t even worth the food they eat. If I didn’t kill them, they would kill me, they would kill other people who didn’t deserve to die.’

Cabrini asked: ‘Do you sometimes feel like a temptation, a will to kill?’

To which Killer Petey replied: ‘Yes, but it fades away.’

EXCERPTED FROM PSYCHO.COM: SERIAL KILLERS ON THE INTERNET

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