Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and in this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m taking you into one of the most complex and controversial cases I’ve ever explored, the story of Pedro Rodrigues Filho, also known as the Brazilian “Dexter”. This is not your typical serial killer case. Pedro didn’t just target innocent victims, he claimed to hunt criminals. Murderers. People he believed deserved to die. Over the course of his life, he confessed to dozens of killings, many of them carried out inside prison walls. And somehow, instead of fading into obscurity, he later reemerged as a public figure, sharing his story openly, even building a following online. But here’s the question that sits at the center of this case… Was he a vigilante delivering his own version of justice?Or simply a serial killer rewriting his narrative? In this episode, I walk through his early life, the violence that shaped him, and the psychology behind someone who blurs the line between revenge and murder. As a forensic death investigator, I also look at what cases like this reveal about motive, trauma, and the dangerous territory between justice and personal vengeance. Because when someone decides who deserves to live or die…we have to ask, where does that end? This episode contains discussions of violence, homicide, and moral ambiguity. * Listener discretion is advised. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 00:06   Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.   00:24   Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Pushing Up Lilies. My name is Julie. Again, I’m your host and I have my voice back, I think almost completely. I may be still a little bit squeaky, but hopefully you can tolerate me this time.   00:46   Super excited leaving Friday to go to Beyond the Crime, which is a true crime convention. And it happens April 11th and 12th in Albuquerque. And it’s going to feature advocacy for families of the missing and also feature several podcasts.   01:07   While I’m there, I will be part of the podcast Mingle, which is the first night we’re there. We’re going to get to visit a lot of the guests and the guests will get to meet all the podcasters that are there.   01:19   And we’ll be selling our merch at the merch tables. And then on Sunday, I will be doing a live podcast on the podcasting stage. So super exciting. We’re really gung-ho on going. We decided to fly. So I’m going to have luggage full of merchandise and I just hope I can get it all in there.   01:39   It’ll be fun. We’re really excited to go. This is our first event. And so traveling out of state is a really big deal for us. And so I’m looking forward to this and hoping for many more. I’ll be attending CrimeCon at the end of May.   01:53   And that’s an even bigger event. But I’m excited about this. There will be attention brought to some missing persons cases and some of the keynote speakers. Super interesting. There’s over 30 guest speakers, including the mothers of Gabby Petito and also the death row defense attorney for John Wayne Gacy.   02:18   It’s going to be interesting. It is ticketed. I’m excited. So I’d like to see who’s going. And if you are going, I would love for you to stop by and visit. I want to talk to you this week about the man who killed killers.   02:34   And I don’t know if y’all have heard this story before, but a lot of killers become infamous because of the number of people that they kill. But a lot of them become notorious because of how cruel or unpredictable their crimes are.   02:49   Ever so often, a criminal will emerge whose story unsettles people in a different way. And that’s not because the violence is random, but because it seems, at least on the surface, intentional and targeted.   03:05   Now, Pedro Rodriguez Filho was one of those men. Over the course of his life, he would kill at least 70 people. Some stories state that there were at least 100, but possibly more than 100. And many of his victims were criminals themselves, drug dealers, rapists, murderers.   03:27   And because of that, some people saw him not as a monster, but as a vigilante. Others believed he was simply a killer who tried to justify his actions with some sort of twisted moral code. But either way, his story would eventually earn him a nickname that echoed around the world as the real-life Dexter.   03:50   And many of you know about Dexter. Dexter aired from 2006 to 2013. It was set in Miami, and it was centered on Dexter Morgan. And he was a forensic technician who specialized in bloodstain pattern analysis for a fictional police department.   04:08   He led a secret parallel life as a vigilante serial killer, and he hunted down murderers who really weren’t adequately punished by the justice system. So this is the real life Dexter. Now, what makes this story so disturbing is not really just the number of people that he killed, but the way violence kind of shaped every stage of his life.   04:35   From the moment he was born, brutality surrounded him. It was present in his home, in his relationships, in his decisions, and then ultimately in his identity. To understand how Pedro became one of the most feared criminals in Brazil, we have to really begin at the beginning.   04:55   Before his first crime and before his first arrest and even before his first breath.