Serial killer nicknamed Lucifer murdered 48 inmates during his 25 years behind bars

Marcos Paulo da Silva is known in São Paulo’s prison system as Lúcifer, after the words “Lúcifer meu protetor” tattooed on his body. His other tattoos include tridents, demons, skulls and a swastika. He went into custody in his late teens for theft and robbery. According to the state prison administration (Secretaria da Administração Penitenciária, SAP), he is now serving sentences totalling 217 years and three months, almost all of it for crimes committed behind bars. He founded the Irmandade de Resgate do Bonde Cerol Fininho, a prison faction whose statute requires its members to behead enemies, remove their viscera and write the faction’s name in their blood. He has told a judge he killed 48 prisoners. The official record is narrower: six homicides and two killings he is held to have ordered.

From Robbery to 217 Years

Most accounts, including Veja São Paulo, Diário de Notícias and Metrópoles, say Da Silva was first jailed in 1995, aged 18, for theft and robbery. A 2015 R7 report republished by Gazeta Digital put his entry into the system at 1998. At 19, a year after he went in, he joined the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the faction founded by prisoners in São Paulo after the Carandiru massacre, in which police killed 111 prisoners. RIC reported that within a year he was considered an important figure in the faction inside the prison system.

His sentence grew with each new case. BNews, citing the SAP, said the total reflects all the crimes he committed inside the system, including homicides and damage to property. Veja São Paulo, citing the SAP, said he had been charged with six homicides and with ordering the deaths of two other prisoners.

Breaking With the PCC

Da Silva says he left the PCC because it had come to care “only about capitalism and profit” and had abandoned the cause of the prison population. Veja São Paulo and BNews date the break to 2008; Metrópoles and RIC put it in 2013, the year the new faction is usually said to have been founded. In a statement to the court he said the PCC had used him to exterminate prisoners. “But I don’t regret killing those people because the fight was just,” he said. “There were many rapists and thieves who robbed prisoners inside the jail.” Metrópoles quoted Ivana David, a judge of the São Paulo state appeals court (Tribunal de Justiça), as saying he came to see the PCC as an enemy to be exterminated.

Cerol Fininho

The faction’s name refers to cerol, the mixture of glue and crushed glass that kite fighters put on their lines to cut a rival’s string. Veja São Paulo called it one of nine violent factions created inside São Paulo’s prisons. Diário de Notícias reported that Da Silva wrote its statute by hand in his cell. The motto is “loyalty, justice, war and death.” Its mission is “to crush with strong hands the tyrants who use their strength to oppress the weakest, above all PCC, TCC, ADA and SS.” The statute says enemies, especially PCC members, are to be beheaded and disembowelled, and that the killer must write “Cerol Fininho” in the victim’s blood on the cell or yard walls.

In February 2015, R7 reported that the faction had about two years of history, that prison officers attributed at least 13 killings to it, and that it had been identified in units in at least nine interior cities: Andradina, Balbinos, Guareí, Itirapina, Presidente Prudente, Presidente Venceslau, Serra Azul, Sorocaba and Tupi Paulista. Intercepted messages suggested about 1,000 prisoners belonged to it and that it wanted a prison of its own, threatening to take staff hostage if it did not get one. Some members had “Lúcifer” tattooed on their own bodies. One of them was sentenced in September 2014 to 32 years for killing and disembowelling Anderson de Castro Moraes Borges at the Andradina penitentiary in 2013, one of the first crimes attributed to the faction.

Avaré, 2004

According to a court case in the Avaré district cited by R7 in 2015, in 2004, while held at Penitentiary 1 in Avaré, Da Silva cut his own arm and smeared blood on his shirt to fake his death. When officers opened the cell door to help him, he jumped up and tried to attack one of them with a home-made blade. The officers locked the cell. A disturbance followed as other prisoners banged on their doors, believing medical help was being refused. It lasted at least two hours.

Serra Azul, September 9, 2011

The killings most associated with him took place during a riot at Penitentiary II of Serra Azul, in the Ribeirão Preto region, on the afternoon of September 9, 2011. According to the prosecution, as reported by G1 and Estadão, two prisoners overpowered three officers, threatened them with blades and forced them to release the other accused and open the cells of five men from a rival group. The five were in the protected “seguro” wing because they had been convicted of sexual crimes. The penitentiary’s technical director testified that the accused treated them as enemies. About 60 prisoners took part in the riot.

The dead were Anderson Aparecido Rodrigues, Fernando Gonçalves de Oliveira, Roberval Bernardo de Lima, Élson Antonio dos Santos Junior and Leônidas da Silva. The prosecution said the first victim was taken to the yard and killed by Da Silva with scissors, a blade and the iron tip of a fire hydrant, then beheaded, and his head shown to prisoners and to the officers held hostage. Da Silva then demanded that the others kill the rest the same way, and he beheaded two more bodies. At each death, according to the case file, he celebrated: “how I like this, it’s too few, let’s kill more prisoners.” A hostage officer told the court: “First he hit with the hydrant nozzle. Then he cut off the head with the blade.”

On November 23, 2017, after a two-day trial under heavy security, the First Jury Court of Ribeirão Preto convicted four men. Douglas Ricardo de Oliveira got 145 years, Albério de Souza Santos 130 years, and Danilo de Arruda 116 years and eight months. Michel Jucá de Brito, found responsible for one death, got 24 years and three months by G1’s account and 25 years by Estadão’s. Two others were acquitted. Da Silva, accused of carrying out the beheadings, was not tried that day: G1 and Estadão reported that his case had been severed from the others, to be tried on a date not yet set.

Presidente Venceslau, February 2015

From late 2014 Da Silva was held at Penitentiary 1 of Presidente Venceslau, a prison R7 described as a “powder keg” holding PCC, CRBC, ADA and Cerol Fininho prisoners in different wings. On February 2, 2015, Francinilzo Araújo de Souza was found dead in cell 124. On February 15, Cauê de Almeida was found in cell 145. Both had been strangled and their abdomens cut open and organs removed. In both cases the cellmate was found next to the body. The SAP said Almeida’s cellmate admitted the killing.

The police concluded that Da Silva was not directly involved. Two Cerol Fininho members, Marciano Ribeiro Araújo and André Ribeiro da Silva, were named as the killers, and investigators were still examining whether Da Silva had ordered the deaths. He was moved within days into the RDD, the state’s harshest disciplinary regime, with two hours of sunlight a day and the rest in an isolated cell. It was at least his fourth time in it. Diário de Notícias, citing UOL, later reported that the Venceslau killings earned him his sixth RDD placement and his 30th serious disciplinary offence, and that he was held to have ordered them.

The Federal System

In 2015 the SAP asked for his transfer to the federal prison system. He passed through federal prisons in Porto Velho, Campo Grande and Catanduvas, in Paraná. At Catanduvas he cut his arms, legs and stomach and had to be handcuffed to a stretcher for treatment. He was sent back to São Paulo in January 2018 and returned to Catanduvas that November, Veja São Paulo reported. RIC, citing Metrópoles, said he was at the federal prison in Campo Grande in 2024 when a judge at a video hearing asked whether he missed freedom. “Physically imprisoned, but spiritually free,” he answered. “Freedom is not only physical.”

In 2017, investigators in Operação Echelon, which arrested 75 PCC leaders in 14 states, found that the PCC itself had tried to hire him. The target was José Roberto Fernandes Barbosa, known as Zé Roberto da Compensa, head of the Família do Norte, the PCC’s rival in Manaus, while both men were held at Campo Grande. One intercepted note read: “Regarding the ideas of trying to use Lúcifer to get Zé Roberto, that’s right.” It promised he could return to the PCC “as a companion.” Barbosa was moved to another cell before Da Silva received it. Police also recovered notes from the prison sewer asking for his services against José Felício, known as Geleião, a rival of PCC leader Marcos Camacho.

Diagnosis

Psychologists at Catanduvas reported that he has a personality disorder and psychosis and needs treatment by a specialist multidisciplinary team, which federal units do not have. Psychiatrists in the São Paulo system concluded, as reported by Diário de Notícias, that “Lúcifer’s high dangerousness does not result from mental illness but from antisocial personality disorder.” BNews reported a history of self-harm. A Presidente Venceslau prison officer told UOL: “When he arrives at a prison it is a matter of time before he kills, beheads, commits acts of barbarity again against prisoners, visitors and staff.”

What the Record Does Not Settle

The figure of 48 killings, sometimes reported as 50, is his own claim, made in a statement to a judge. BNews wrote in 2025 that most had been confirmed by authorities, but no source reviewed lists them. The documented cases are the six homicides charged and the two killings he is held to have ordered. The sources also differ on when he entered custody (1995 or 1998) and when he left the PCC (2008 or 2013). Diário de Notícias described the Serra Azul hostage officer testifying at the Ribeirão Preto jury where Lúcifer and others were tried, but G1 and Estadão reported that his case was severed from the November 2017 trial. No fetched source reports the verdict in his severed case.

Legal Status

Marcos Paulo da Silva is in custody in the prison system, serving accumulated sentences of 217 years and three months, according to the SAP as reported by Veja São Paulo, RIC and BNews. RIC reported in September 2024 that he was living in an isolated cell at Penitentiary 1 of Presidente Venceslau and is frequently transferred for security reasons. Metrópoles reported that he is held in a São Paulo prison.

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