Elias Maluco

Elias Pereira da Silva (23 May 1966 – 22 September 2020), also known as Elias Maluco (in English: Crazy Elias), was one of Rio de Janeiro's most powerful drug traffickers. Maluco, a member of the criminal faction Comando Vermelho, commanded drug trafficking in thirty slums near Complexo do Alemão and Penha, Brazil. He was accused of killing over sixty people.

Elias Maluco was held responsible for the waves of violence that shook Rio de Janeiro between December 2006 and November 2010. He was arrested on 19 September 2002, after a three-month manhunt.

Murder of Tim Lopes On 2 June 2002, journalist Tim Lopes was kidnapped by a group of drug dealers led by Elias after being found with a camera which he was using for his reporting on sexual abuse of minors and drug trafficking in clubs in the Vila Cruzeiro favela. According to testimonies from drug traffickers linked to Maluco, who was arrested a few days later by the police, Maluco had tortured Lopes by burning his eyes with a cigarette and hitting him with a katana, After intense searches, the charred remains of Lopes' body were found on 12 June 2002, in a clandestine cemetery in the Favela da Grota. and motivated demonstrations against violence and defense of press freedom in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil was named as the third most dangerous country for professionals in this field in the Americas by the Inter-American Press Association Impunity Commission (IAPA). On 10 November 2003, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison by the 23rd Criminal Court of Rio de Janeiro for the same crimes in the context of another process.

Maluco was imprisoned in a Brazilian prison complex following his arrest

Death In the late afternoon hours of 22 September 2020, the Paraná Penitentiary Department (DEPEN) informed the press that Elias Maluco was found dead in his cell at the Catanduvas Federal Penitentiary.

Police chief Daniel Martarelli da Costa, from the Federal Police of Brazil, responsible for the investigation, classified the case as a "classic suicide". In his cell, agents found letters left for his family.

Others, such as Elias' daughter Julia Fernandes, however, believe that he was killed in prison and that the alleged assassins made it look like he killed himself in his cell. A possible reason for his possible murder was the fact that he had argued and angered the gang leaders (like the aforementioned Marcinho VP, quoted above) a month before he was killed, which made the top echelon of the Comando Vermelho realize that Elias Maluco became a big problem for the gang, ordering his execution and thus disguising it as a suicide, thus eliminating someone they considered a dead weight for the criminal organization.