‘Crime doesn’t pay’: drug gangsters turned podcasters send message to Rio’s youth
A group of Brazilian ex-criminals with many grisly stories have made life lessons into a startling listen
Patrick Salgado Souza Martins sat at the crest of the hillside favela he once ruled and described the dream that changed his life.
A choir of angels surrounded the convicted drug lord as he dozed in solitary confinement. Glistening water bubbled up from the ground. “I woke up in panic, covered in goosebumps,” said Martins, then one of Rio’s most infamous criminal minds.
Bewildered, the maximum-security prisoner opened his Bible to the Book of Isaiah. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow … But if you turn away and refuse to listen, you will be devoured by the sword of your enemies,” he read.
During outdoor time in the prison yard, Martins summoned his jailmates and, to their perplexity, announced he was leaving the faction. It was a decision that almost certainly saved Martins from becoming yet another statistic in Rio’s brutal four-decade drug conflict.
TANIKO Madagascar 