'I've seen so many people die' Drug lords turned podcasters send a message to Brazil's youth

Patrick Salgado Souza Martins sat at the crest of the hillside favela he once ruled and described the dream that changed his life.

- Tom Phillips

A choir of angels surrounded the convicted Brazilian drug lord as he dozed in solitary confinement.

Glistening water bubbled up from the ground. "I woke up in panic, covered in goosebumps," said Martins, then one of Rio's most infamous criminal minds.

Bewildered, the maximumsecurity prisoner opened his Bible to the Book of Isaiah. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ... But if you turn away and refuse to listen, you will be devoured by the sword of your enemies," he read.

During outdoor time in the prison yard, Martins summoned his jailmates and, to their perplexity, announced he was leaving the faction. It was a decision that almost certainly saved him from becoming another statistic in Rio's brutal four-decade drug conflict.

Now, the rehabilitated drug baron is telling his story for the first time as part of a podcast series intended to stop younger generations following the same path. "My past isn't a good example for anyone... I've seen so many people die in this war," Martins said during a tour of his former domain, a cascade of redbrick housing above one of Rio's most expensive beach districts. In his gangster days, the 51-year-old father of 12 was known as "Patrick do Vidigal".