Francisco das Chagas Rodrigues de Brito was a bicycle mechanic on the island of São Luís, in the northern Brazilian state of Maranhão. In December 2003 a boy of 15 from a poor neighborhood of São José de Ribamar, one of the towns on the island, told his sister he was going out with the mechanic to gather juçara, a palm fruit. He did not come home. Within months Chagas, as the press and the courts usually call him, was in custody and had confessed to killing boys over more than a decade, in Maranhão and earlier in Altamira, in the state of Pará.
The deaths he confessed to number 42 in most accounts: 30 in Maranhão and 12 in Pará. Maranhão police attributed 30 deaths of children in their state to him. Juries in Maranhão have since convicted him in trial after trial, one or a few boys at a time, and the sentences have been reported to add up to several hundred years. The killings in Pará were never tried against him, and other men had been convicted there before he was identified. Before his arrest, the families of the Maranhão boys and the groups that worked with them had taken Brazil before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, arguing that the police had failed to investigate the deaths of poor children. That petition ended in a settlement in which the state accepted responsibility.
Chagas was born in Caxias, in the interior of Maranhão, according to a 2024 retrospective by the broadcaster Band. In the 1990s he lived in Altamira, a town on the Xingu River in Pará, where he worked as a gold prospector as well as a mechanic. A Brazilian Supreme Court news item from December 2004 also describes him as a former resident of Altamira.
He was 41 when his first trial opened in October 2006, according to the legal news site ConJur. Neighbors on the island of São Luís knew him, in Band's account, as a helpful man whom people trusted.
The victims were boys from poor families. Bahia Notícias, setting out the prosecution's case in 2014, reported that all of them were under 15. Most accounts give their ages as roughly 4 to 15. They lived in poor districts of São Luís, São José de Ribamar and Paço do Lumiar, on the island of São Luís. A 2021 study in the Revista de Direitos Humanos e Efetividade, built on the accounts of the boys' mothers, describes families living in informal settlements.
The Maranhão state prosecutors (Ministério Público do Maranhão, MPMA) have named some of the boys in the releases they published after each verdict:
Ivanildo Póvoas Ferreira, 10, who died in November 1991 in the Maiobinha area.
Hermógenes Santos, 11, and Raimundo Luís Cordeiro, 10, who died in September 2000 in Mata Grande, São José de Ribamar. Their bodies were found two months later.
Daniel Ferreira Ribeiro, who died on February 9 or 10, 2003. Band gives his age as four and says he was a nephew of Chagas's former wife.
The other boys are described in the trial reports by age only. The state of Maranhão, in a law passed on December 15, 2005, recognized 28 boys as victims for the purposes of the settlement with the families, according to the 2021 study; an MPMA release of 2018 also gives the number as 28.
The deaths around São Luís went on for about ten years before anyone was charged with most of them. At first they looked unrelated. The Centro de Defesa Padre Marcos Passerini, a children's rights group in São Luís, began to catalogue the cases and saw features they shared, the MPMA wrote in 2018. With the group Justiça Global, it took the cases to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. A 2025 paper presented at the national law research congress CONPEDI gives the petitions as cases 12.426 and 12.427, covering three boys killed in Paço do Lumiar. Band, in 2024, gives the years of those three deaths as 1991 and 1997 and says the complaint was made in 2001.
Before Chagas was identified, other men were arrested over some of the deaths. The CONPEDI paper says that third parties, not the actual perpetrator, were arrested and convicted for some of the crimes. Band reports that prosecutors later asked for the acquittal of two men who had been accused in some of the cases.
The MPMA said in 2018 that after the complaint to the OAS it formed a task force with other state bodies, and that this joint work led to the identification and arrest of Chagas.
The boy of 15 disappeared on December 6, 2003, according to Band. Before he left, he told his sister he would go with Chagas to gather juçara. When he did not return, his mother went to the police and named the mechanic as the last person to have seen her son.
Chagas was called in to give statements on December 7 and 8. In the first interview he said he did not know the boy and had seen him only a few times, and he was let go.
The police kept working in the neighborhood. Sebastião Uchôa, the police chief (delegado) on the case, later told Band that Chagas had left what he called subjective traces. Chagas had made missing-person posters to help the search for the boy of 15, and earlier for Daniel Ferreira Ribeiro, the four-year-old who had gone missing in February 2003. Uchôa said he noticed a poster on a utility pole near the older boy's home that looked like the one made for Daniel, and that this turned his suspicion toward the mechanic.
After Daniel disappeared, the boy's father was briefly suspected, because Daniel had been sleeping at his house. Chagas took part in a police reconstruction of that case, playing the part of the father, according to Band.
A police inspector, Wilton Carlos Rego, used GPS to map the places where the bodies of boys had been found, which Band notes was unusual for Brazilian police at the time. The data placed Chagas's movements inside that zone. Rego described the method at a public hearing in the Chamber of Deputies in Brasília in 2004.
In March 2004 the police searched Chagas's house. Band reports that the search, with laboratory work in São Paulo, led to the identification of Daniel and of the boy of 15 as victims. Chagas was taken into temporary custody, and he then led the police to the body of another boy. The same month, a Maranhão court ordered his preventive detention. He has been held at the Pedrinhas prison complex in São Luís since 2004, according to Bahia Notícias and Band.
Chagas changed his account many times. ConJur reported in October 2006 that he first denied the charges, then confessed to 30 killings in Maranhão and 12 in Pará, and later gave versions that his lawyer, Erivelton Lago, dismissed as inventions. Band reports that he confessed to 42 killings, 12 in Pará and 30 in Maranhão. The CONPEDI paper of 2025 gives a different count: 41 homicides of boys aged 4 to 15, between 1989 and 2003, 13 of them in Altamira between 1989 and 1993.
Investigators told Band that a confession alone was not considered enough. They pointed to the common pattern of the crimes, the forensic findings and the posters as the evidence that supported the convictions.
In November 2004 the police chief then heading the Maranhão inquiry, João Carlos Amorim Diniz, presented a geographic analysis of the deaths to the human rights committee of the Chamber of Deputies. The Agência Câmara report of that hearing says Chagas had confessed to all the crimes, including those in Altamira, and that 30 deaths of children in Maranhão between 1989 and 2003 had been attributed to him by investigators.
Mental health was raised at his trials. ConJur reported in 2006 that a forensic psychologist had diagnosed antisocial personality disorder, that the prosecutor described him as semi-responsible for his acts, and that his lawyer did not rule out arguing that he lacked awareness of what he did. Band reports that a psychological evaluation by the psychologist Carlos S. Leal described psychopathic personality traits and a latent schizo-paranoid psychosis.
At his August 2009 trial the jurors found him semi-imputable (of diminished responsibility), and the sentence was cut by a third, the MPMA reported.
The Maranhão cases were not joined into one trial. Band reports that they were divided among the courts of Paço do Lumiar, São José de Ribamar and São Luís, according to where each boy died. In March 2014 Bahia Notícias reported that 25 more cases against him were still pending in the criminal courts of Maranhão.
The first jury trial opened on October 23, 2006, in São José de Ribamar, over the death of the boy of 15 who had disappeared in December 2003. ConJur reported that about 500 people wanted to attend and that the trial was expected to last at least two days. He was charged with doubly qualified homicide. Lago, his lawyer, dismissed some of his client's later accounts as fabrications.
On August 24, 2009, a jury convicted Chagas of the deaths of Hermógenes Santos, 11, and Raimundo Luís Cordeiro, 10, who had died in September 2000 in Mata Grande, São José de Ribamar. He was convicted of qualified homicide for each boy, with other charges, including concealment of a corpse. Judge Tereza Cristina de Carvalho Mendes presided, and the prosecutor was Carlos Henrique Brasil Teles de Menezes. The jurors found him semi-imputable, and the sentence was 36 years and 6 months, after the reduction of one third, the MPMA reported.
On March 22, 2010, a jury found Chagas guilty, by a majority vote, of the November 1991 death of Ivanildo Póvoas Ferreira, 10. The verdict was for doubly qualified homicide, with other charges, including concealment of a corpse. Judge Teresa Cristina de Carvalho Pereira Mendes signed a sentence of 26 years. The prosecutor, Carlos Henrique Brasil Teles de Menezes of the second prosecutor's office of São José de Ribamar, had filed the charge in March 2006. The MPMA said this was his seventh conviction in the series and that his sentences then totaled 237 years.
On April 4, 2011, a jury in São José de Ribamar convicted Chagas of qualified homicide, with two qualifying circumstances, and concealment of a corpse in the death of Daniel Ferreira Ribeiro, who died on February 9 or 10, 2003. Judge Teresa Cristina de Carvalho Pereira Mendes sentenced him to 28 years and 9 months, to be served in the closed (maximum security) regime. The prosecutor was Carlos Henrique Teles de Meneses; a public defender, Marcos Fróes, represented Chagas. The MPMA said his sentences now totaled more than 250 years.
In 2012 the First Criminal Court (1ª Vara) of São José de Ribamar convicted him over the death of a nine-year-old boy whom he had invited to gather buriti, a native palm fruit, Bahia Notícias reported in 2014. The boy is not named in that report.
In March 2014 a jury convicted Chagas of the deaths of three boys, aged 11, 10 and 12, and he was sentenced to 108 years and 6 months, Bahia Notícias reported on March 27, 2014. Two of the boys died in Vila Nova Jerusalém and the third in Vila São José, in the Maioba area. The jury accepted the prosecution's case of qualified homicide, citing a base motive, cruel means and the victims' inability to defend themselves, and also convicted him of desecration of a corpse, for which the combined term was 6 years and 9 months. The report called it his eleventh trial and gave his sentences to that point as 385 years and 6 months.
Band, in 2024, describes his last sentence as handed down in 2014, for the twelfth death for which he was convicted. The 2021 study says he was convicted of more than 30 homicides of boys, without giving dates. Accounts of the number of his convictions therefore differ.
The reported total of his sentences rose with each trial: 237 years after the seventh conviction in March 2010, more than 250 years in April 2011, 385 years and 6 months in March 2014, and 580 years and 10 months in an MPMA release of May 2018. Band and the Correio Braziliense describe the total as more than 400 years.
The STF's news service dates the Altamira crimes to 1989 to 1992. The Agência Câmara report of November 2004 counts 14 poor boys aged 8 to 13 taken and killed between 1988 and 1992, 11 of them in Altamira. Four men had been convicted in Pará before Chagas was identified: two physicians, a businessman and a military police officer, the Agência Câmara reported. A Pará jury in Belém sentenced one of them to 57 years, according to the Supreme Federal Court (STF).
Chagas confessed to killings in Pará; the number is 12 in most accounts and 13 in the CONPEDI paper. In December 2004 two of the men convicted in Pará asked the STF for release pending their appeals. The STF's news service reported that their lawyers argued that Chagas, a former Altamira resident under investigation in Maranhão, was the real culprit, and called their clients' convictions the greatest judicial error in Brazil. At the November 2004 hearing in the Chamber of Deputies, the committee's chairman, Deputy Mário Heringer, announced a further hearing with representatives of Pará to ask why the men convicted there were still in prison after Chagas's confession.
The Pará killings were never tried against Chagas. Band reports that he has been convicted only in Maranhão, and that the Maranhão authorities said in 2004 that they had had no response from the Pará courts; the police chief on the case repeated this in a later interview. In November 2009 Senator Magno Malta told the Federal Senate that he had visited Chagas in prison in Maranhão during the work of a parliamentary inquiry, that Chagas had admitted all the crimes, and that the killings in Altamira had stopped while Chagas was in Maranhão and in Maranhão while he was in Altamira. The senator said innocent men were in prison in Pará and asked for prosecutors from other states to review both investigations. Those are the senator's statements; the Pará deaths remain attributed to Chagas, not proven against him in court.
Chagas has been held at the Pedrinhas prison complex in São Luís since 2004, according to Bahia Notícias (2014) and Band (2024). Band reported in August 2024 that he was still there.
The petitions to the Inter-American Commission ended in a friendly settlement between Brazil, the state of Maranhão and the two petitioning groups. The CONPEDI paper cites the settlement report as number 43 of 2006. Under it, Brazil acknowledged international responsibility at a public ceremony in São Luís. The state promised to reopen the criminal investigations and to hold the confessed perpetrator to account, to pay the families a monthly pension of 500 reais for 15 years, to include them in income and housing programs, to place a commemorative plaque, and to train police and set up services against sexual violence toward children, according to the paper. Band reports that Maranhão, in its submission to the Commission, acknowledged errors and difficulties in the investigations, citing weaknesses in its security system, the complexity of the crimes, their spread across several towns and technical flaws in some police work.
The 2021 study of the mothers' accounts says the families received houses, though the property titles were still pending when it was written, and that the pension was later made lifelong and raised to one minimum wage. It says a specialized police station and a public defender's office were opened in Paço do Lumiar and a child protection center in São Luís, while promised schools and prevention programs were never fully delivered. It says the OAS considered the case closed in 2010. The MPMA reported in 2018 that Governor Flávio Dino had sent the legislature a proposal to make the pension lifelong, that houses built for the families were being repaired and their ownership formalized, and that a forensic center for children and adolescents was to be built. Sálvio Dino, a former state secretary, said at that 2018 event that parts of the government had first viewed the agreement with suspicion and that the arrest of Chagas and political changes had made it possible.
The settlement is still being monitored in Maranhão. On June 27, 2025, the MPMA held a public hearing in São Luís on six items of the agreement that had not been carried out in practice, O Imparcial reported. A prosecutors' record of that hearing lists the gaps: only one property title had been handed over, the inclusion of the families in state income programs had not been shown, and the state forensic institute for children had too few staff, an average wait of 120 days and 277 cases pending. Five state departments sent no one to the hearing. A mother whose four-year-old son was killed in 2003 told the hearing that the agreement had not been fully met and that families needed better support.
How many boys. The figure of 42 (30 in Maranhão, 12 in Pará) comes from his own confession as reported by ConJur in 2006 and Band in 2024. The CONPEDI paper of 2025 gives 41, with 13 in Altamira. Maranhão investigators attributed 30 deaths in their state to him in 2004. The state recognized 28 boys as victims for the settlement with the families. The number of deaths proven against him in court is smaller than any of these.
How many convictions. Bahia Notícias called the March 2014 trial his eleventh; Band describes the 2014 sentence as his twelfth for a death; the 2021 study says he was convicted of more than 30 homicides. These cannot all be right as stated.
The years. Band and the CONPEDI paper date the series from 1989; Bahia Notícias, reporting the prosecution's case in 2014, gives 1991 to 2002 for the Maranhão deaths; the Agência Câmara gave 1989 to 2003 for the deaths attributed to him in Maranhão.
Pará. The Altamira killings of 1989 to 1992 led to the convictions of other men in Pará. Chagas confessed to killings there, the defense of those men argued before the STF that he was the real culprit, and a senator said in 2009 that innocent men were in prison. No court in Pará has tried him; those deaths are confessed or attributed, not proven.
His statements. He denied the crimes, confessed, and gave versions his own lawyer called fabrications. Senator Magno Malta said in 2009 that Chagas sometimes denied the crimes and sometimes cried. Investigators said they did not rely on the confession alone.
Other men accused in Maranhão. Third parties were arrested and convicted for some of the Maranhão deaths before Chagas was identified, according to the CONPEDI paper, and prosecutors later asked for the acquittal of two men accused in some of the cases, according to Band.
1989 to 1992: boys are killed in and around Altamira, Pará; men are later convicted there. Chagas, who lived in Altamira in the 1990s, later confesses to killings in Pará.
November 1991: Ivanildo Póvoas Ferreira, 10, dies in the Maiobinha area; Chagas is convicted of his death in 2010.
September 2000: Hermógenes Santos, 11, and Raimundo Luís Cordeiro, 10, die in Mata Grande, São José de Ribamar; Chagas is convicted in 2009.
2001: Brazil and Maranhão are reported to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights over three boys' deaths in Paço do Lumiar (Band).
February 9 or 10, 2003: Daniel Ferreira Ribeiro dies; Chagas is convicted in 2011.
December 6, 2003: a boy of 15 disappears in São José de Ribamar after telling his sister he was going out with Chagas.
December 7 and 8, 2003: Chagas gives statements to police and is released.
March 2004: police search his home; he is taken into custody and a court orders his preventive detention.
By November 2004: he has confessed to killings in Maranhão and Pará (Agência Câmara).
November 18, 2004: a Maranhão police chief presents his analysis of the deaths to the human rights committee of the Chamber of Deputies.
December 7, 2004: the STF reports habeas corpus petitions by men convicted in the Altamira case, whose lawyers name Chagas as the real culprit.
December 15, 2005: a Maranhão state law recognizes 28 boys as victims for the settlement.
2006: the Inter-American Commission publishes the friendly settlement report (number 43 of 2006, as cited by the CONPEDI paper).
March 2006: charges filed over the death of Ivanildo Póvoas Ferreira.
October 23, 2006: his first jury trial opens in São José de Ribamar, over the death of the boy of 15.
August 24, 2009: convicted over the deaths of Hermógenes Santos and Raimundo Luís Cordeiro; 36 years and 6 months.
November 26, 2009: Senator Magno Malta speaks about the case in the Federal Senate.
March 22, 2010: convicted over the death of Ivanildo Póvoas Ferreira; 26 years; total reported as 237 years.
2010: the OAS considers the case closed (2021 study).
April 4, 2011: convicted over the death of Daniel Ferreira Ribeiro; 28 years and 9 months; total reported as more than 250 years.
2012: convicted in São José de Ribamar over the death of a boy of nine.
March 2014: convicted over the deaths of three boys aged 10, 11 and 12; 108 years and 6 months; total reported as 385 years and 6 months, with 25 cases pending.
May 18, 2018: the MPMA gives his total sentence as 580 years and 10 months.
August 12, 2024: Band reports him held at the Pedrinhas complex, São Luís.
June 27, 2025: the MPMA holds a public hearing on items of the settlement not carried out.