Canal Livre

The program was a variety show with popular content such as music, interviews and humor but was also a news program about crime.

Canal Livre detailed the murders of various criminal figures, with the camera crews regularly arriving on the crime scene before police.[4] It is this which drew suspicion from detectives who investigated the role of the show in these deaths.[4] Souza's role was as a studio presenter preaching about crime and broadcasting what was deemed "exclusive" coverage of crimes.[4][5]

However one of the things that more even leveraged the success was Gil, a stage entertainer and sfiha seller (who suffered bullying constantly being called as Rogério and subject to homophobic slurs) and their fights with the puppet Galerito. In early of 2016 these scenes showing the fights between Gil vs. Galerito eventually become an Internet meme, mainly in YouTube.[8]

One of the crimes reported on the show involved a reporter walking through a forest to examine a burning corpse, telling viewers: “It smells like a barbecue. It is a man. It has the smell of burning meat. The impression is that it was in the early hours... it was an execution.” Suspicion arose from this when questions were raised about how the reporter knew the time of the murder.[3]

Investigators were disrupted by Souza and some had their lives threatened.[3] Souza, however, denied any complicity in the deaths, describing the allegations as "absurd" and saying he tried to fight corruption and paedophilia among other crimes.[4][5] Until October 2009, he was not charged with murder because his position as an elected state official granted him parliamentary immunity.[6][9] But after being expelled from the assembly, he was indicted on multiple charges.[10] Vanessa Lee, the former producer of the program, was arrested in December 2009.[1] Souza hid from the police at first, but later turned himself in. He died of a heart attack in 2010 while awaiting trial.