Kidnapping
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’ 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 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. Lopes was using a micro-camera concealed within a small pack at his waist. One of the purposes of this funk baile was to draw crowds from other neighborhoods, so Lopes' presence there would not have made him a target in of itself – except the "Feirão das Drogas" report from the previous year had received a lot of attention and led to arrests; and when Lopes subsequently won the journalism prize his image was 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' 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 filmed in Vila Cruzeiro three different times during a recent time period.
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 traffickers driving by on motorcycles with guns. 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 look-out for a drug dealer. The traffickers became suspicious when someone noticed a small light coming from the pack at Lopes' waist, where his camera was concealed, and reported it to one of the armed traffickers.
Upon being confronted, Lopes stated that he was a journalist from Rede Globo. They asked for his journalist credentials, which Lopes did not carry when working undercover. Lopes was subsequently beaten at the scene. Using a Nextel radio, the traffickers called the head drug lord, Elias Pereira da Silva, known by his nickname, Elias Maluco (meaning "Crazy Elias" or "Madman Elias"), at the faction's headquarters at the favela da Grota within the Complexo do Alemão for instructions. They were told to wait for a car to pick them up to transport Lopes from Vila Cruzeiro, across the hills to the top of the Grota in the Complexo do Alemão where Elias Maluco was waiting for what he viewed as the captured "trophy". Before putting him into the trunk of a stolen Fiat Palio, the traffickers shot Lopes in either his feet or legs and tied his hands behind his back.
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