page_title: Tim Lopes
section_title: Kidnapping
hierarchical_section_title: Tim Lopes / Kidnapping
caption_attribution_description: Português: Prédio da Rede Globo, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
context_page_description: Tim Lopes was a Brazilian investigative journalist and producer for the Brazilian television network Rede Globo. In 2002, the media reported him missing while working undercover on a story in one of Rio's favelas. It was later learned that Lopes had been accosted by drug traffickers who controlled the area, was kidnapped, driven to the top of a neighboring favela in the trunk of a car, tied to a tree and subjected to a mock trial, tortured by having his hands, arms, and legs severed with a sword while still alive, and then had his body placed within tires, covered in gasoline and set on fire—a practice that traffickers have dubbed micro-ondas.
  The details of Lopes's death received substantial attention in Brazil's media because of the barbarity of the crime and due to it highlighting the existence of poder paralelo within Rio—meaning criminals controlling areas of the city with impunity.
context_section_description: On the afternoon of June 2, 2002, 51-year-old Tim Lopes left his apartment in a middle class section of Rio's Copacabana neighborhood.
   He was heading to the Vila Cruzeiro favela after first stopping by his office at Rede Globo, where he had been a broadcast producer since 1996. César Sebra, the man who was Lopes's boss for six years at Rede Globo, recalled: "Most of the journalists working at Globo's offices are middle-class. Only a few people live like Tim used to live in the favelas."
  Lopes had heard that the gang of drug traffickers who controlled Vila Cruzeiro were putting on a baile funk that night. Lopes was tipped off by local residents of the area that traffickers were promoting child prostitution at the bailes funk in Vila Cruzeiro.
  Days before this night, Lopes had confided to colleagues that he was feeling tired and wanted to take a break from the agitation and violence of the city and find a rural retreat somewhere where he could recuperate. "The deeper in the jungle the better," he told them. His awareness of drugs and crime plaguing the city, and the lack of social services for youth to deal with these problems, seemed to drain him of energy.
  Rio's poor communities, the favelas, had been neglected for decades and were considered outside the control of the State. Filling in this power vacuum were young drug traffickers, who patrolled the favelas with automatic weapons. In addition to drug selling, in certain favelas, traffickers were sexually exploiting minors from the community at their baile funk, sometimes forcing girls to put on explicit shows by having sex out in the open against a wall at these events.
  Residents were telling Lopes that girls from the local community who didn't participate in the baile funk were targeted for reprisals. Since residents could not go to the police for redress, they instead reached out to Tim Lopes for help. Nassif Elias Sobrinho, president of the Rio journalist union, recalled: "Tim Lopes was called because there was no one to hear their problems. The community told the police many times and nothing was done."
  After leaving his office that afternoon at the Rede Globo television studios, where he left his "cell phone, wallet, and dress shirt," Lopes went to the Penha Shopping Mall where he rigged himself with a hidden camera. He was using a micro-camera concealed within a small pack at his waist. One of the purposes of this baile funk was to draw crowds from other neighborhoods, so Lopes's presence there would not have made him a target in and of itself. However, the "Feirão das Drogas" report from the previous year had received a lot of attention and led to numerous arrests. Furthermore, after Lopes and his team had been granted the Prêmio Esso, his image was subsequently broadcast all over Rio.
  On the afternoon of June 2, 2002, Lopes decided to film at a boca de fumo (a drug-selling location) along Rua Oito (Eighth Street) in the Vila Cruzeiro favela. Lopes's aim was to obtain footage of drugs and weapons, as he had in 2001 in the favela da Grota within the Complexo do Alemão. It was later learned that before this night, Lopes had recently filmed in Vila Cruzeiro three different times.
  Inside Vila Cruzeiro, Lopes went to a bar and bought a beer, then walked across the street and hung out on the sidewalk while filming armed traffickers driving by on motorcycles. Lopes was accosted by two members of the criminal faction who controlled Vila Cruzeiro and most of the Complexo do Alemão (often just referred to as "o Complexo"), André da Cruz Barbosa and Maurício de Lima Matias. As is common in the criminal underworld, the traffickers were known by their nicknames: André Capeta (André Devil) and Boizinho (Little Ox). A young boy had earlier approached Lopes when he was at the bar, and he did not know that the boy was a lookout for a drug dealer. The traffickers became suspicious when someone noticed a small light coming from the pack at Lopes's waist, where his camera was concealed, and reported it to one of the armed traffickers.
  Upon being confronted, Lopes stated that he was
caption: Rede Globo headquarters in Rio's Jardim Botânio neighborhood, where Lopes began working in the broadcast news division in the mid-1990s as an investigative journalist and producer.
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