Murder for ratings: Brazilian crime show host 'went on killing spree to boost viewing numbers'



A TV presenter in Brazil is being investigated for allegedly running a ruthless death squad to boost his show's ratings.

Wallace Souza, 58, is accused of ordering murders before alerting TV crews to get to the scene before detectives.

The ex-policeman turned state senator also ran a drug smuggling ring and used his killers to eliminate his rivals, police say.



Accused: Wallace Souza, centre, speaks during a news conference in Manaus, Brazil, yesterday. He is accused of at least five murders committed in order to boost the ratings of his TV show

Last night his 25-year-old son Rafael was under arrest charged with homicide, drug trafficking and illegal gun possession.

Under Brazilian law Souza cannot be arrested because he is a politician, but state judicial authorities are to meet to decide whether the case goes ahead.

Souza's show, Canal Livre, has been running on a channel in Sao Paulo for 20 years.

He said the allegations were absurd and that he and his son were being set up by political enemies and drug dealers under threat from his relentless crime coverage and crusading legislative probes.



Brazil's police show arms, munitions and money allegedly confiscated from Wallace Souza's home during a press conference in Manaus in April

He added that his news crews got to murder scenes first by using police informants and radio scanners monitoring police channels, and by following the coroner's van from the city mortuary.



'I was the one who organised legislative inquiries into organised crime, the prison system, corruption, drug trafficking by police, and paedophilia,' Souza said.

In one murder after another, the Canal Livre crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim.

Too uncanny, say police, who are investigating the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash with violent crime.



'The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police,' state police intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos charged.

The killings of competing drug traffickers, he said, 'appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase the audience of the TV show.'

Souza's lawyer, Francisco Balieiro, said that the only witness is a disgraced police officer hoping for leniency in nine murders he is charged with.

'There is not one piece of material proof in these accusations,' Balieiro said.

Vasconcelos said the accusations, which have made headlines in Brazil, 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.

Souza became a media personality after a career as a police officer that ended in disgrace, according to Vasconcelos.

He said the lawmaker was fired for involvement in scams involving fuel theft and pension fraud.

Video report: Brazilian anchorman 'ordered killings for ratings'



Souza denied those allegations, but said he was forced to leave the force in 1987 after being wrongly accused of involvement in a college entrance exam fraud scheme that he was investigating.

He started Canal Livre two years later on a local commercial station in Manaus, the capital of Brazil's largely lawless Amazonas state. It became extremely popular among Manaus' 1.7 million residents before going off the air late last year as police intensified their investigation.

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.

'When I became a police officer in 1979, bandits weren't raised in this city - no way,' he told the audience in one show. Brazil was then a dictatorship, whose police ruthlessly targeted criminals with little concern for civil rights.

One clip showed a reporter approaching a freshly burned corpse, covering his nose with his shirt and breezily remarking that 'it smells like barbecue'. Police say the victim was one of the five allegedly murdered at Souza's behest.

Souza denied any role in that killing and explained how his reporters manage to get so quickly to crime scenes, using well-placed sources and constantly monitoring scanners for police radio dispatches.



The show also posted workers at police stations, and at the Manaus morgue, where word often came first about newly discovered bodies.

'To say that a programme that has had a huge audience for so many years had to resort to killing people to increase this audience is absolutely absurd,' Souza said.

Souza parlayed his TV fame into a career in the state legislature, getting elected three times - twice with the most votes of any lawmaker in the state. At the same time, he remained a fixture on television.

Souza's biography on the state legislature's Web site says the show, which he ran with his brother, was investigative journalism aimed at fighting crime and social injustice.

'The courageous brothers, as they're known, bring hope to the less fortunate,' reads the description, 'showing a 'naked and raw reality' to call authorities' attention to social problems.'

