Florisvaldo de Oliveira was a Military Police officer in São Paulo State who was arrested in September 1983 and later sentenced, in a series of trials, for killings in the south of São Paulo city. He was known as Cabo Bruno. He was accused of killing at least 50 people. The sentences against him added up to 113 years, also given as 117 years and as 120 years. He escaped from custody three times, was recaptured in 1991, and spent the following two decades in the prison system at Taubaté and Tremembé.
In August 2012 a judge in Taubaté granted him a full pardon, declared his custodial sentences extinct and ordered his release. About a month later, on the night of September 26, 2012, he was killed in Pindamonhangaba, the town in the Paraíba Valley where he lived with his wife.
His early years were spent in the interior of São Paulo State. He lived in Catanduva until he was 24 and also spent part of his youth in Uchoa, where neighbors gave him the name Bruno. Although he was called "cabo" (corporal), his rank is also given as soldier, a rank below corporal. In August 2009 he was 50 years old.
The Civil Police investigators who led the case regarded him as one of the biggest killers in the history of the São Paulo Military Police. Investigators alleged that local business owners in the south zone paid him. He was dismissed from the force at some point before his release in 2012.
He was arrested on September 26, 1983, and held at the Romão Gomes military prison. At the time he was accused of more than 20 murders, and an inquiry named thirteen people in all.
The number of murders for which he was finally convicted is not on record. He faced 12 trials, by one count.
The aggregate sentence is most often given as 113 years. The São Paulo Court of Justice gave it in 2012 as 117 years, 4 months and 3 days of reclusion, and it is also given as 120 years.
The figure of 50 killings is an accusation and an estimate, not a count of convictions, and the individual convictions are not on record.
He escaped from custody three times between 1983 and 1990; a fourth attempt in 1991 is also given. The last escape was in July 1990. He was recaptured in May 1991, on May 29 or May 30. No sentence or other legal outcome for the escapes is on record.
After the recapture he was moved to the Casa de Custódia e Tratamento in Taubaté in June 1991, to the Centro de Observação Criminológica in 1996 and to the penitentiary at Tremembé in 2002.
In prison he turned to religion. By 2009 he was responsible for work at an evangelical church and said that his change came from fear and spirituality. A psychological report from those years found changes in his ethical and moral values. He ran a painting studio in the penitentiary at Tremembé, and some of his work was shown in an art gallery. On July 19, 2008, he married a missionary.
He became a pastor while in prison, serving in the prison's ecumenical chapel, with an exemplary record; he is also linked to a Pentecostal church outside, where his wife, herself a pastor, also worshipped.
In August 2009 the prosecutor at Taubaté, Paulo Rogério Bastos Costa, gave a favorable opinion on moving him from the closed regime to the semi-open regime. Criminological, social, psychological and psychiatric examinations were favorable or showed no disorder, he had no serious disciplinary infractions since his recapture, and he had served eighteen years without interruption in the closed regime. The execution judge, Sueli Zeraik, was to decide on the request, and a court later allowed him to serve the rest of his sentence in the semi-open regime.
In August 2012 the 2nd Criminal Execution Court of Taubaté granted him an indulto pleno, a full pardon. Judge Marise Terra Pinto Bourgogne de Almeida signed the decision. It declared his custodial sentences extinct and issued a release order, citing his good conduct. The decision recorded that after 20 uninterrupted years in prison he acquired the right to the pardon on May 29, 2011, and that he had committed no disciplinary infractions. A prosecutor, Paulo José de Palma, had given a favorable opinion earlier in the month.
The release was therefore a pardon with the sentences declared extinct. It was neither a conditional release nor a sentence run to its end. He had spent almost 28 years in custody. He left the Tremembé prison on a Thursday afternoon, and his lawyer, Fábio Tondati Ferreira Jorge, said he would go straight home and planned to sell his paintings.
Florisvaldo de Oliveira was killed on the night of Wednesday, September 26, 2012, in Pindamonhangaba, in the interior of São Paulo State. He was 53 and had been free for about a month. His family asked for justice.
Three Civil Police teams were assigned to the investigation. By October 2021 the killing was unsolved, and the retired detective on the case, Vicente Lourenço Lagioto Júnior, said that those responsible were never identified.
The number of killings attributed to him is an accusation and an estimate: at least 50, or more than 20 at his arrest in 1983. The aggregate sentence is given as 113 years, as 117 years, 4 months and 3 days, and as 120 years. His rank (soldier or corporal), the number of escapes (three, or four attempts) and the setting of his pastoral work (a prison chapel or an outside Pentecostal church) are also given differently. The date on which he took up that work is not on record.
September 26, 1983: arrested.
1983 to 1990: three escapes from custody.
July 1990: last escape.
May 1991: recaptured; moved to Taubaté in June.
1996: moved to the Centro de Observação Criminológica.
2002: moved to the penitentiary at Tremembé.
July 19, 2008: marries a missionary.
August 2009: prosecutor gives a favorable opinion on moving him to the semi-open regime.
May 29, 2011: he acquires the right to the pardon.
August 2012: the 2nd Criminal Execution Court of Taubaté grants a full pardon, declares his sentences extinct, and he is released.
September 26, 2012: killed in Pindamonhangaba.
October 2021: the killing remains unsolved.