Palma was gunned down by two unidentified men on a motorcycle outside his home in Miguel Pereira, a suburb to the south of Rio de Janeiro, and died at the scene, according to news reports. Palma was the owner of the local weekly newspaper Panorama Regional, which was circulated in several nearby municipalities.
News reports said the paper frequently alleged corruption in the local government. A friend of the publisher told the daily O Globo that Palma had received threats but had not taken them seriously. The journalist’s wife also said he had received threats but said she did not know who had made them.
In an issue of Panorama Regional published after Palma’s death, his colleague and friend Belisa Ribeiro wrote that he had told her he received threats but didn’t say in relation to which report. In the article, Ribeiro said it did not appear that Palma had been investigating a big political scandal but that he had regularly denounced typical small town problems, such as faulty infrastructure and negligent local policies. If this was all it took to get him killed, she wrote, "[then] I am scared."
The police did not give any details about the investigations, saying only that Palma’s case had been sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Ten years later, no one has been arrested in the case. CPJ, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and Free Press Unlimited released a November 2023 report called The Case for Transparency: Opportunities for Justice in the Case of Pedro Palma and Beyond, which found that official investigations into the murder suffered from delays, lack of transparency, and violations of the chain of custody.