Julio Santana grew up in a poor fishing family in Brazil. At the age of 17 he killed his first man. His payment: food for his family.
In the course of his career as an assassin, Julio was to murder more than 490 people across the length and breadth of Brazil. Klester Cavalcanti, perhaps Brazil's greatest investigative journalist, became fascinated with the story of a normal man who became one of the world's most prolific murderers. Over the course of seven years, Cavalcanti interviewed Santana by phone, and used his skills as a journalist to trace the path of his life and infamous career. The result is an extraordinary insight into a killer, and the almost unimaginable scale of his crimes.
The Name of Death has been adapted into a major motion picture produced by Fernando Meirelles (director of City of God, Blindness, and The Constant Gardener) and Globo Filmes, released in Brazil in July 2017 and to be distributed globally in 2018.
