Between December 30, 2009, and January 22, 2010, six boys and young men left their homes in Parque Estrela Dalva, a working-class neighborhood of Luziânia, in the state of Goiás, and did not come back. They were 13 to 19 years old. One went to pay a bill, one went to meet his girlfriend, one went to a bicycle repair shop, one went out to ride his bike. They did not belong to the same circle of friends, had no police records and, the Goiás Civil Police said later, got along with their families. For three and a half months their mothers searched, marched and lobbied, and for most of that time the police had no suspect.
On April 10, 2010, police arrested a 40-year-old bricklayer who lived in the same neighborhood. His name was Adimar Jesus da Silva. He had been released from prison in Brasília about a week before the first boy disappeared, part way through a sentence for sexually assaulting two boys. He confessed, led investigators to a ravine on a farm outside town, and showed them where he had buried the bodies. Eight days later he was found dead in a police cell in Goiânia. He was never charged in court, never tried and never convicted, and the case left two unresolved arguments behind it: whether he should ever have been released, and how a prisoner the whole country was watching died in an isolation cell.
Luziânia lies in the Entorno, the ring of Goiás towns around the Federal District, about 60 to 70 kilometers from Brasília, depending on the report. Agência Estado described Estrela Dalva as the most populous neighborhood in the city, and the victims as poor. When the disappearances began, one of the first theories among families and police was that the boys had been taken for forced labor. G1 reported that early in the investigation the police considered that possibility, and Diego's sister said the family had always believed it.
Much of what is known about Adimar Jesus da Silva's early life comes from a criminological report written by psychologists of the Federal District's prison administration while he was serving his sentence, parts of which G1 published in April 2010. According to that report, he did not know his own date of birth. He had been born at home in a rural area of Morrinhos, in the state of Bahia. The psychologists wrote that illiteracy, child labor that began early and thin social relationships "may have contributed to his personality not developing in a harmonious way."
He later lived in Serra Dourada, Bahia. G1 reported that he was a widower whose wife had died of poisoning, and that his two teenage children were living with their grandfather in Serra Dourada. The report did not say how the wife came to be poisoned, and no source found for this bio examined it. In his interview with the Correio Braziliense after his arrest, he said he had been "dying to go to Bahia and see my children."
In Bahia he also had a second identity, under the spelling Ademar, a detail the judge who released him cited in April 2010. Judge Luís Carlos de Miranda said the courts of the Federal District had never been told of an arrest warrant against him in Bahia. The Portuguese news magazine Visão reported that the warrant was for attempted homicide. No Brazilian source found for this bio describes the Bahia case.
On November 2, 2005, in Águas Claras, a satellite city of Brasília, Adimar Jesus da Silva sexually assaulted two boys. According to the prosecution's account, which G1 quoted from the court file, he persuaded an 11-year-old boy to come to his house to help with a supposed move, threatened him with a knife and abused him. The boy talked him into stopping by promising to come back later with a friend. The same day, using the same pretext, da Silva took a 13-year-old to the house. When that boy resisted, he again pulled the knife, but police arrived with the first boy and interrupted the attack.
He was convicted of two counts of atentado violento ao pudor (indecent assault by violence). The figures given for the sentence vary. The Vara de Execuções Penais of the Federal District (VEP-DF), the court that supervises sentences, said in an April 2010 statement that he had been sentenced to 15 years at first instance and that an appeal court had reduced the term to 10 years and 10 months, to begin in the closed regime. Several news reports gave the original sentence as 14 years; one Agência Estado report said 12.
Under Brazilian law a prisoner can move from the closed regime to the semi-open regime and then the open regime after serving a fraction of the sentence with good behavior. The Lei dos Crimes Hediondos (Law 8,072 of 1990), which covers the gravest offenses, had barred that progression for crimes such as his, but the Federal Supreme Court had declared the ban unconstitutional, and the VEP-DF cited that ruling in its statement. Justice Minister Luiz Paulo Barreto said in April 2010 that the system had also been weakened when the mandatory criminological examination before progression was dropped.
The VEP-DF's own reconstruction of the file, as reported by G1, runs like this. On September 12, 2007, at the prosecutors' request, the court ordered psychological follow-up for da Silva. About seven months later he underwent a criminological examination, which confirmed that he needed a psychologist's care. That June he moved to the semi-open regime, without permission to leave the prison, so that treatment could be arranged. Two later reports, one psychological and one psychiatric, were done in May 2009, on May 11 and May 18 according to the judge. The psychological report said he presented himself "with politeness and coherence of thought" and showed criticism of the behavior attributed to him. The psychiatric report said he had no mental illness and needed no controlled medication. On August 31, 2009, he was granted temporary leaves from prison; on October 13 he began working outside. Prison reports recorded no disciplinary faults.
Other documents in the file pointed the other way. G1 reported that the criminological examination, carried out a year and seven months before his release, found "signs of sadism" and "psychopathological disorders," and listed traits including immaturity, dependence, insecurity, aggressiveness and difficulty with sexual adjustment. Agência Estado reported that a report dated August 2009, released by police after his arrest, described him as a dangerous psychopath with a serious disorder who should be kept "isolated from social life," and that three psychologists had called him a "dangerous psychopath" with "signs of sadism" and "sexual perversion." A Federal Police delegate, Wesley Almeida, said the psychiatrists' document showed he "needed surveillance" and later psychological follow-up because he already showed signs of psychopathy.
According to the judge, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Federal District certified on November 10, 2009, that he was entitled to move to the open regime, and judge Miranda signed the order. The VEP-DF said he was granted the open regime on December 18, 2009. The Correio Braziliense and one Agência Estado report give his release from the Papuda prison as December 23, 2009; other Agência Estado reports said November 23. He went to live with his older sister, Irineia da Silva, her husband and a grown nephew at Rua 29, Quadra 81, Parque Estrela Dalva 4, where the family had lived for twelve years. Under the terms of the open regime he had to be home every day by 9 p.m. and on days off and holidays.
On January 7, 2010, the court issued an order for an officer to check his residence and confirm he was obeying those terms. On January 14, by which time three of the six boys had disappeared, prosecutor Maria José Miranda Pereira wrote by hand on the back of that order a request for "systematic and repeated" checks. "There is no such thing as an ex-rapist," she wrote, and constant supervision "could save the sexual dignity of many children." Nobody linked the request to the disappearances in Luziânia, a different state's jurisdiction, at the time.
Diego Alves Rodrigues, 13, was the first. He left home on December 30, 2009, to pay a bill, according to the Correio Braziliense's chronology; another Correio report said he had gone to a mechanic's shop. His mother, Aldenira Alves de Souza, was a seamstress. His sister, Gláucia Gomes de Souza, said the family had always imagined he was being held somewhere as a forced laborer and that police would bring him home. Months after his death his mother was still paying the installments on a computer she had bought for him on credit, and she left his room as it was.
Paulo Victor Vieira de Azevedo Lima, 16, disappeared on January 4, 2010. He worked at a snack bar, and his mother, Sônia Vieira de Azevedo Lima, told the Jornal de Brasília that he had gone out to pay the snack bar's electricity bill at a lottery shop. She watched three security camera recordings from the shop and did not see him, which she took to mean someone else had paid the bill. His birthday was November 2, the Day of the Dead in Brazil. "Last year I bought him a present," she said in November 2010. "This year, flowers."
George Rabelo dos Santos, 17, left home to meet his girlfriend and did not return. The Correio Braziliense gave the date as January 10; G1 said January 12. His father, Otacílio Pedro Santos, 68, was a security guard. His mother, Sirlene Gomes Rabelo de Jesus, 42, had five other children. On her last Mother's Day with him, she said, he gave her a skin cream and a perfume, "but the present I liked most was the hug he gave me." She kept one Vasco da Gama soccer shirt he always wore to bury with him.
Divino Luiz Lopes da Silva, 16, left home at about 10 a.m. on January 13 to play with friends in Parque Estrela Dalva 5. His mother, Marisa Lopes, was a day cleaner. She told G1 that she had stopped celebrating Mother's Day in 2008, when her own mother died, and that even in May 2010 she still hoped her son was alive.
Flávio Augusto Fernandes dos Santos, 14, disappeared on January 18 after going to a bicycle repair shop. His mother was Valdirene Fernandes. Reports give his name both with and without "Fernandes"; one Correio report printed it as Fábio.
Márcio Luiz de Souza Lopes, 19, the only adult among the six, was last seen at 6 p.m. on January 22, when he left home to ride his bicycle. He was the youngest of six children. His father, José Luiz da Silva Lopes, 50, a security guard, described him as serious and shy, a boy who talked little even with his brothers and sisters. "He never gave me grief, only satisfaction," he said. His mother is Maria Lúcia Lopes. His sister Lúcia Lopes said his room was kept exactly as he had left it.
On March 20, 2010, the Correio Braziliense reported another disappearance: Eric dos Santos, 15, who left his home in the Santa Fé neighborhood of Luziânia to give dance lessons. After the arrest, police and press came to count him as a seventh victim, and the November report called the women "the mothers of seven youths." The Correio's May 28, 2010, report said that da Silva never confessed to Eric's death. A later ruling by a Luziânia judge, summarized by the Goiás state court (TJGO), said he had confessed to all seven. The sources found for this bio do not say how Eric was identified or where his body was found.
The Correio Braziliense first reported the disappearances on January 16, 2010, when four boys had gone missing in less than two weeks. The families organized. On February 1 a delegation from the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, the federal Human Rights Secretariat and the Federal District legislature's human rights committee visited the mothers and asked the Civil Police for explanations. The Jornal de Brasília reported that day that the head of the police operations center in Luziânia, Rosivaldo Linhares, told the committee in a closed meeting that the city did not need help from other forces such as the Federal Police, which the parents had asked for. When the families reached the regional police station, they were told the regional chief was in Goiânia. A federal ombudsman, Fermino Fechio Filho, warned: "If this impunity is not resolved, it will generate more." Mothers in the neighborhood began walking their children to and from school.
On February 3 the families met the Chamber of Deputies' inquiry committee on missing children. On February 4 they marched on the Esplanada dos Ministérios in Brasília to ask for federal intervention. The Goiás public security secretary had turned down federal help that month, saying he trusted the Civil Police. On February 9 Justice Minister Tarso Genro received the mothers and announced that the Federal Police would join the case, which G1 attributed to public pressure and to interventions by Genro and the Brazilian Bar Association. On March 24 the mothers spoke at a Senate hearing and asked for a fund to support families of missing people.
Police had been watching da Silva for at least ten days before they arrested him, according to G1. Investigators focused on him through a mobile phone: G1 reported that a relative of his was using the phone of one of the missing youths, and that the phone was traced. The Civil Police arrested him at home on the morning of Saturday, April 10, 2010. The director of the Goiás Civil Police, Aredes Correia, said the suspect had confessed and shown where at least three bodies were buried, in a deserted, overgrown area between Luziânia and Cristalina. "We have a confession and the bodies," Federal Police delegate Wesley Almeida said.
The next morning, Sunday, April 11, Civil and Federal Police dug at the site, on the Fazenda Buracão, a farm beside the BR-040 highway about 1.8 to 2 kilometers from the entrance to Luziânia. The bodies were in shallow graves at the bottom of a steep ravine. Norton Luiz Ferreira, the Civil Police's communications chief, told G1 the valley was about 100 meters deep and hard to reach. Police recovered two bicycles they believed belonged to victims and a sledgehammer they thought had been used in the killings. Families followed the search. Ferreira said da Silva was moved to Goiânia, the state capital, "for security reasons. The atmosphere in Luziânia is not good." The Military Police closed off the street where his sister lived after threats to wreck the house.
On Monday, April 12, the Goiás Public Security Secretariat presented da Silva to the press in its auditorium in Goiânia. Handcuffed and in a bulletproof vest, escorted by hooded, armed officers of a Civil Police tactical group, he spoke standing for about 30 minutes, to reporters and to members of the Senate's inquiry committee on pedophilia. He said he was sorry. "I ended my life and I ended theirs," he told the Correio Braziliense.
His account changed as he told it. At first he said he had had sex with two of the six; later he said all six. He said he had lured them with drugs, telling them there was marijuana at the spot, and that most of them used or sold drugs. He also said he had been offered 5,000 reais to photograph boys and put the pictures on the internet. And he said George Rabelo dos Santos had promised him 5,000 reais to kill the others because they owed drug debts, and that he killed George when he was not paid, although George was the third to disappear, not the last. He said he heard voices "saying, go, do it," that he wanted treatment, that he had never killed before and would not again. He said he struck each victim first on the forehead and then beat him to death, with a stick, a hoe or a mason's hammer. He said he was afraid other prisoners would kill him.
The police treated his explanations with caution. "Everything Adimar says has to be received with suspicion," said Josuemar Vaz de Oliveira, head of the Goiás Judicial Police department. "He will say things to try to ease his situation. He is a sick person." Oliveira said police had asked around the city who harassed the boys and found no one who had seen da Silva with them. Their working account was that he offered the youths small sums to come with him for a small job, that the conversation turned to sex, and that he led them down into the valley, in one version with the promise of fishing in a pond there.
The prosecutor in Luziânia, Ricardo Rangel, objected to the press conference itself. His formal statement to police was only taken that evening, after the interviews. "They turned the case into a circus show," Rangel said. The Correio's reporters described a man who spoke with his eyes on the floor, could not remember the victims' names, referred to them by nicknames he had made up, and could not keep the order of the crimes straight.
The same afternoon his sister, Irineia da Silva, 46, moved the family out of the house on Rua 29 under escort from two Military Police vans, with neighbors shouting from the corner. Five of the six victims had lived in the neighborhood. She said she had never suspected her brother. Neighbors described him to G1 as calm, hard-working and religious, a man with few friends. Maria Lúcia Lopes, Márcio's mother, came to watch the move but said she did not want to curse anyone. "Whoever is going to punish him is the courts," she said.
On April 14 the IML (Instituto Médico Legal, the forensic institute) in Luziânia issued a preliminary report: all six had suffered deep skull trauma "produced by blunt objects," consistent with the confession. Police seized a sledgehammer, a hammer and a heavy hoe from his house for testing. The bodies were too decomposed to determine even sex by sight; only one boy had dental records, and his mother could not find them. Samples of muscle and shin bone went to the Federal Police's National Institute of Criminalistics in Brasília for DNA comparison with relatives. Police said the results would take ten to fifteen days. They took much longer. By early May only three bodies had been identified, and the mothers told a Senate human rights committee hearing on May 6 that the wait was its own torment. "Our wish is for the DNA to be wrong," Sirlene Gomes said.
The count of remains changed after the first dig. According to the Correio Braziliense's chronology, relatives found further bones at the site on April 15, and the next day the Civil Police confirmed they were from one person, a seventh body. On May 11, Agência Estado reported that the Goiás Fire Department had found another young man's body at the same place, also described as a possible seventh victim. G1 reported on May 28 that the body found on May 11 had been identified as Diego's, and the Correio wrote in November that DNA had confirmed the last remains recovered at the Fazenda Buracão were Diego's. The sources do not explain how the April 15 remains relate to Eric dos Santos or to Diego.
Within days the case became a national argument about sentence progression. On April 15, at a Senate Constitution and Justice Committee hearing attended by the mothers, Justice Minister Luiz Paulo Barreto said the state had failed and that the case revealed "serious failures" in the penal system. "In this type of crime, progression cannot and should not be automatic," he said. "It is clear there was an error, and a serious error. The brutal deaths of these young people are there to show it." Federal Supreme Court Justice Cezar Peluso, about to become the court's president, declined to discuss the case but said that "clearly, the prison system does not work."
The VEP-DF said in a statement that it had committed no illegality, had taken the necessary precautions, and that "there is no way to foresee that certain convicts granted external benefits or progression to a less rigorous regime will commit such serious acts." On April 16 Judge Luís Carlos de Miranda, a substitute judge at the court who signed the release, called a press conference. He said no report had found da Silva psychotic, that the criminological report released to the press had only called for the two later evaluations, and that those found no mental illness. He said the prosecutors' warning came only in January, after the release. He said the Federal District had nine psychologists and two psychiatrists for 8,000 prisoners. "The legislation is flawed, yes," he said. "If he were arrested today he would probably be out in five years." He called what happened a tragedy but said the fault was the defendant's. "Any judge who had received this case would have decided the same way," he said, and if he had refused out of caution, the Public Defender's Office would have filed habeas corpus. "Imagine what it is for a mother to see her son go out and not come back," he said of the families.
Da Silva was held alone in a cell of about six square meters at the Delegacia Estadual de Repressão a Narcóticos (Denarc), part of the Civil Police complex in Goiânia. Visão reported that he was kept isolated because of the risk from other prisoners. On Sunday, April 18, 2010, eight days after his arrest, he was found dead, hanged with a strip torn from the cover of his mattress. Accounts of the time vary. The Civil Police's Norton Luiz Ferreira told G1 he was found at about 12:30 p.m.; Agência Brasil reported he was found in the afternoon; the later court ruling, summarizing testimony, said he died during the night. Ferreira said he had talked normally that morning with the eleven prisoners in the next cell and repeated to them how he had killed the boys, and that they had heard the sound of cloth ripping the previous afternoon. Visão reported that the alarm was raised by a shower that kept running, and that a guard found him hanging from a ventilation grate in the ceiling. A forensic expert, Iracilda Coutinho Itacarambi, told the press: "Whoever did this had a lot of patience."
The Civil Police's internal affairs office, the Corregedoria, opened an inquiry the same day. The Goiás attorney general, Eduardo Abdon Moura, assigned two criminal prosecutors to follow it and asked Rangel to take over the investigations in Goiânia. On April 19 the Goiânia IML said the autopsy found death by asphyxia, no puncture wounds and no drugs in his body. The medical examiner, Paulo Afonso Mendes de Campos, told the Correio he found no sign of resistance or recent injury. He was found seated with his feet on the floor, which the examiner described as an incomplete hanging. On May 28 the IML's final reports confirmed hanging and found no drugs or alcohol; experts also tested the improvised rope and found it could bear his weight. The corregedor, Sidney Costa e Souza, said: "It was suicide," and that he would conclude and archive the inquiry. The inquiry file included statements from prisoners in neighboring cells, from the Denarc's chief, delegate Renata Cheim, and from officers on duty, and review of security camera footage. The Correio reported in November 2010 that no one had been punished.
The mothers did not accept it. At the Senate hearing on May 6 they disputed the police finding and asked for the Federal Police to return to the case; Senator José Nery said the Goiás Civil Police could not be impartial in investigating a death in its own cell. Diego's mother, Aldenira, told reporters: "He had to suffer more to pay. He paid nothing." Paulo Victor's mother, Sônia, said in November: "It's very strange: the man kills himself and nobody sees anything. To me, this was silencing a witness." The Correio reported that no relative of da Silva could be found to comment and that if the family did not claim his body it would be buried as an unclaimed person in Goiânia.
The six youths were buried on May 12, 2010. They lay in state in the municipal sports gymnasium in Luziânia, and about 2,000 people attended. Five were carried in Fire Department vehicles to the Jardim da Consolação cemetery in Luziânia; one was buried in the cemetery in Gama, in the Federal District. Reports do not say whether Diego, whose identification was announced later in May, was among them.
Six months later, the Correio Braziliense found the seven mothers, Aldenira, Sônia, Sirlene (spelled Cirlene in that report), Marisa, Valdirene, Maria Lúcia and Benildes, struggling with illness, depression and money. They had not known each other before the disappearances. Promises of food baskets, housing and a fund for victims' families had not materialized, and the women were still on a waiting list for municipal assistance. Aldenira had left her job and lost weight; she could not afford her antidepressants. Sônia was organizing marches. She told the paper she did not believe da Silva acted alone and believed her son and the others were killed for their organs. Police and prosecutors disagreed. "There is no evidence of the participation of another person. He acted alone," Josuemar Vaz said. Rangel considered the case solved and praised the Federal Police's work, but the police inquiry still could not be closed, he said, because the IML in Luziânia had not delivered Diego's autopsy report.
Police also looked for other victims. In April 2010 the Goiás Civil Police said it would send a team to Serra Dourada, Bahia, to search for disappearances, killings and sexual crimes resembling those in Luziânia, and Agência Estado reported that police suspected other crimes during his prison leaves. No result of those inquiries was found for this bio.
The families sued the State of Goiás. According to a TJGO press release, they argued that deficient police custody had allowed the accused to die and so made his conviction impossible, and they asked for psychological treatment and 362,000 reais in moral damages. Judge Flávia Cristina Zuza of the 1st Civil and State Treasury Court of Luziânia rejected the claim. She found no negligence: nothing in the record showed that da Silva had psychiatric problems, used drugs or medication, or had shown suicidal behavior, and he had been held before in the Federal District with no suicide attempt. She wrote that his confession, made at the investigative stage "where not even the adversarial principle is assured," was not by itself enough for a future conviction, and that the suicide broke the causal link to the state. The release is not dated in the copy found.
Proven in court: the 2005 sexual assaults on two boys in Águas Claras, for which he was convicted. Nothing about Luziânia was ever tested in court.
Confessed: the killings of Diego, Paulo Victor, George, Divino, Flávio and Márcio. The confession was given to police and repeated at a press conference before his formal statement, and it shifted on motive, on sexual contact and on whether anyone paid him. Its central claims were supported by the bodies he led police to and by the preliminary autopsy findings.
Attributed but not confessed, by the Correio's account: the death of Eric dos Santos. A later court summary says he confessed to seven.
Disputed: whether he acted alone (police and the prosecutor said yes; some mothers said no); whether he died by his own hand (the IML and Corregedoria said yes; mothers and a senator questioned the investigation); and what the prison reports really said about his risk (the judge said the medical reports found no mental illness; police, Agência Estado and G1 cited reports describing psychopathy and sadism). His claims that he was paid to photograph boys, or that George hired him, were never confirmed, and the head of the investigation said they should be treated with suspicion. Sônia Lima's belief that the boys were killed for their organs is her own and was rejected by police.
Adimar Jesus da Silva died on April 18, 2010, and no court ever ruled on the Luziânia killings. As of the latest dated source, the Correio Braziliense report of November 14, 2010, the police inquiry into the youths' deaths had not formally closed, and the Corregedoria inquiry into his death had found suicide and no one had been punished. The families' damages suit against the State of Goiás was rejected at first instance in a ruling reported in an undated TJGO release; whether it was appealed, or whether any suit was filed against the Federal District over the release, was not found.
November 2, 2005: Sexual assaults on boys aged 11 and 13 in Águas Claras, Federal District; police interrupt the second assault.
September 12, 2007: Court orders psychological follow-up.
About April 2008: Criminological examination. June 2008: Move to semi-open regime (VEP-DF account).
May 11 and 18, 2009: Psychological and psychiatric reports.
August 31, 2009: Temporary prison leaves granted.
October 13, 2009: Begins working outside prison.
November 10, 2009: Prosecutors certify eligibility for open regime.
December 18, 2009: Open regime granted (VEP-DF); release reported as December 23 (other reports, November 23).
December 30, 2009: Diego Alves Rodrigues, 13, disappears.
January 4, 2010: Paulo Victor Vieira de Azevedo Lima, 16, disappears.
January 10 or 12: George Rabelo dos Santos, 17, disappears.
January 13: Divino Luiz Lopes da Silva, 16, disappears.
January 14: Prosecutor asks for systematic checks on da Silva.
January 16: Correio Braziliense first reports the disappearances.
January 18: Flávio Augusto Fernandes dos Santos, 14, disappears.
January 22: Márcio Luiz de Souza Lopes, 19, disappears.
February 2010: Families meet federal and legislative officials and march in Brasília; February 9, Federal Police join the case.
March 20: Eric dos Santos, 15, reported missing.
April 10: Da Silva arrested in Parque Estrela Dalva; confesses.
April 11: Bodies recovered at the Fazenda Buracão; moved to Goiânia.
April 12: Press conference in Goiânia; family leaves the neighborhood.
April 14: Preliminary IML report.
April 15 and 16: Further remains found; judge Miranda defends the release.
April 18: Found hanged in his Denarc cell in Goiânia.
May 6: Mothers at Senate human rights hearing.
May 11: Another body found at the site, later identified as Diego's.
May 12: Collective funeral in Luziânia.
May 28: Final IML reports confirm suicide.
November 14, 2010: Correio reports the youths' inquiry still open.
Date not found: Luziânia court rejects the families' damages suit against Goiás.