Francisco das Chagas Rodrigues de Brito was born in Caxias, in the state of Maranhao, in the mid-1960s, and worked as a bicycle mechanic in Sao Luis, the state capital.
Between 1991 and 2003 boys aged between four and fifteen were taken in Sao Luis, Paco do Lumiar, Sao Jose de Ribamar and Codo, and across the state line in Para. They were found strangled or stabbed, and in most cases castrated after death; some were also missing ears or fingers. The pattern is known in Brazil as the Maranhao child emasculations, and in the press of the time as the black magic murders, because the mutilation led to widespread speculation about ritual. Local human rights groups made a different accusation, that the police did little because the victims were poor.
He was arrested in December 2003 in Sao Luis after the remains of two boys were found buried under the dirt floor of his shack. Forensic examination of the house recovered further bodies, limbs and fragments. He confessed, then retracted, then confessed again, repeatedly, and told one judge he could not remember details.
He lived for more than ten years in Altamira, in Para, and the Altamira child emasculations, a series with the same method, are attributed to him on the evidence though not all were tried.
He has faced eleven trials since his arrest. The first, in 2006, concerned Jonathan Silva Vieira, fifteen, and drew nineteen years for the homicide and a further year and eight months for concealing the body; the judge, Marcio Castro Brandao, took account of psychiatric testimony that he suffered from a mental disorder and was not fully in control of his actions, which is why the term fell short of the thirty years available. At the last of the trials, in 2014, Judge Jaqueline Reis Caracas gave him a further hundred and eight years for three boys killed in 1997 in Paco do Lumiar: Eduardo Rocha da Silva, ten, Raimundo Nonato da Conceicao Filho, eleven, and Edivam Pinto Lobato, twelve.
His accumulated sentences run to several hundred years, of which Brazilian law allows thirty to be served. The count attributed to him, thirty in Maranhao and twelve in Para, is not the count proved in court, and the case remains a political question in Maranhao over how long the disappearances were left alone.