The host of a Brazilian TV crime show has been accused of ordering a series of murders to snuff out rival drug traffickers — and boost his own ratings. Police said Wallace Souza, a former policeman who built a political career as the scourge of crime, would feature the killings on Canal Livre show.
For years, the show had an uncanny knack for being the first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victims. Souza says it relied on good journalism. But police, investigating Souza on suspicion of commissioning at least five murders to give his show a ratings lift, say its success was too good to be true.
“The order to execute always came from the politician and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police,” Thomaz Vasconcelos, head of intelligence for the state police force, said.
Souza denied all the allegations and called them absurd, insisting that he and his son were being set up by political enemies and drug dealers who resented his two decades of crime coverage on TV. “I was the one who organised legislative inquiries into organised crime, the prison system, corruption, drug trafficking by police, and paedophilia,” Souza said.
Vasconcelos said the accusations stem from the testimony of several former employees and security guards who worked with the Souzas, allegedly as part of a gang of former police officers involved in drug trafficking. A raid on the TV host’s house uncovered a number of guns and assault rifles and more than $100,000 in cash.
Souza started Canal Livre two years later on a local commercial station in Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s largely lawless Amazonas state. The show featured Souza, in a studio, railing against rampant crime in the state, punctuated with often exclusive footage of arrests, crime scenes and drug seizures.
Souza denied any role in killings and claimed that his reporters got to crime scenes so quickly because of tip-offs and information from police radio dispatches.
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