Notorious Heart Eating Cannibal Serial Killer ‘Lil’ Pedro’ Walks Freely!

A notorious cannibal serial killer who is said to have killed 100 people and who ate his own father’s heart while it was still beating – has been set free!

A true-crime tale to rival the most brutally depicted murders on the silver screen, “Lil’ Pedro’s” cannibalistic killing spree made Hannibal Lecter look like a boy scout in comparison.

Pedro Rodrigues Filho, nicknamed ‘Lil’ Pedro Killer,’ was convicted of 71 murders, but personally claims to have slain more than 100, many of them fellow inmates in prison.

The Brazilian’s 36-year crime spree began when he was just 13 years old when – in his words – he felt his first “urge to kill.”

After getting into a row with his older cousin, he attempted to murder the teenager by pushing him into a sugar cane press. The cousin survived, but Filho would be successful just a year later.

When he was 14, his father was accused of stealing food from a school kitchen where he worked as a security guard and was fired as a result. In an act of vengeance, Filho murdered the man who fired his father with a shotgun.

A month later, he killed another guard that he believed was the real thief, before fleeing to the city of Sao Paulo.

Two down – dozens more to go.

While living in Sai Paulo, he met a woman, Maria Aparecida Olympia, and proposed to her – while continuing his crime spree by robbing slums and murdering a drug dealer.

But one day, his pregnant fiancée was brutally murdered by the dealer’s fellow gang members, and Filho launched a fresh wave of terror against the rival gang. Desperate to track down her murderers, he tortured and killed a number of people until he had their names.

Before he was even 18, he was sent to jail following a string of brutal killings, tortures, and dismemberments.

But his most notorious crime was still to come when, while in jail, he slaughtered his own father with a machete in vengeance for the killing of his mother.

In a final grotesque twist, he cut out his father’s still-beating heart and took a bite out of it. While in prison, he is believed to have killed at least 47 fellow inmates, often targeting criminals whose crimes he thought were particularly evil, such as rapists.

However, in 2007, he was freed from prison due to a Brazilian law about the maximum amount of time a person can serve in jail.

To this day, the 67-year-old Filho remains free and even has a YouTube channel where he documents his life as a serial killer.

A Violent Upbringing and Brutal Patricide

You might say that “Lil Pedro” was born to be a serial killer.

The tone for his violent upbringing was set before he was even born when his father kicked his pregnant mother in the belly during a fight. Filho’s skull was bruised and permanently damaged as a result of the incident, and his father’s volatile actions would become a standard feature of his childhood.

Filho’s father had always been a violent spouse and had a history of beating his wife. After believing she had an affair, he murdered and dismembered her with a machete; he was sent to a jail where, coincidentally, his son was also already being held.

Speaking on Cometa Podcast last year, Filho explained what happened next.

He said,  “He was afraid of me. He was afraid that I would take his life, so the bastard waited for me to go to prison to kill my mother.”

Filho said that he was given day release to go to his mother’s funeral, as the cemetery was close to the prison.

In handcuffs, he said, “I swore revenge in front of my mother’s coffin.”

He said, once back in the prison, he found a way to get to his father’s cell, where he enacted his horrific revenge. Filho stabbed his father a total of 22 times, before carving out his heart and biting a piece out of it.

Of this gruesome act, he said, “It was warm, and it was still beating. I just chewed it. I cut out a piece of his heart. I chewed it.

“Because I had said I was going to eat his heart. That’s what I did, it was revenge.

“But I didn’t swallow; I chewed and threw it over the body.”

Filho was originally sentenced to almost 130 years in prison, later extended to 400 years.

However, under Brazilian law at the time, the maximum prison sentence an inmate could serve was 30 years.

Although he ended up serving 34 years, in 2007, he was freed.

Asked in another podcast in 2020 if he would kill again, Filho replied, “No. I would only kill again if someone came to take my life or the lives of the people I love, who are my family.”

On his YouTube channel description, he writes, “I am not the monster.” He goes on, “Even those seen and stigmatized as evil can find their light.”