Maluco, a member of the criminal faction Comando Vermelho, commanded drug trafficking in thirty slums near Complexo do Alemão and Penha, Brazil.

[1][4][5] On 2 June 2002, journalist Tim Lopes was kidnapped by a group of drug dealers led by Elias[4] and was taken to the Favela da Grota slum in Complexo do Alemão.

Lopes was tortured and killed[6] after being found with a camera which he was using for his reporting on sexual abuse of minors and drug trafficking in clubs in the Vila Cruzeiro favela.

[7] On 16 September 2002, after a three-month manhunt led by the Rio de Janeiro security summit,[4][6] the police launched "Operation Sufoco" and surrounded Complexo do Alemão with the aim to capture Maluco.

[11] On 25 May 2005, he was sentenced to 28.5 years in prison by the 1st Rio de Janeiro Jury Tribunal for the crimes of triple-qualified homicide, conspiracy, and concealment of a body in the case of the murder of Tim Lopes.

He didn’t report anything about threat or motivation.Elias' death is surrounded by controversy: many believe that he killed himself, for having lost his leadership within the Comando Vermelho (a month before he died, he had a fallout with the leader of the criminal faction, Márcio dos Santos Nepomuceno (known as "Marcinho VP"), leading to him being demoted from the organization's hierarchy).

A possible reason for his possible murder was the fact that he had argued and angered the gang leaders (like the aforementioned Marcinho VP, quoted above) a month before he was killed, which made the top echelon of the Comando Vermelho realize that Elias Maluco became a big problem for the gang, ordering his execution and thus disguising it as a suicide, thus eliminating someone they considered a dead weight for the criminal organization.