In early July 1998 four bodies of young women were found over three days in the Parque do Estado, a large forest reserve on the southern edge of São Paulo. More followed. One of them, Elisângela Francisco da Silva, twenty-one, from a poor family in Londrina, had been living with her aunt in the city since 1996; a friend had left her at the Eldorado shopping mall, and she was never seen alive again. Her naked body was found in the park on July 28 and was so decomposed that it took three days to identify. The man the press called the Maníaco do Parque, the Park Maniac, was arrested on August 4, 1998, after one of the largest manhunts in Brazilian history.
Francisco de Assis Pereira was born on November 29, 1967, in São José do Rio Preto, and worked in São Paulo as a motorcycle courier, which gave him his other nickname, Motoboy. He approached women in the street, said he was scouting models for photographic work, and took them on his motorcycle into the reserve, where he raped and strangled them. Nine women survived his attacks and gave evidence against him.
He confessed to ten or eleven murders; the figure varies between accounts, as does the count of attacks, given in one as twenty-three. He was convicted of seven murders, together with rape, indecent assault and the concealment and desecration of corpses. The sentences added up to more than 260 years; the totals reported are 268 years and 285 years and eleven months, and the difference has never been settled in the coverage. The convictions are the only firm figure.
Brazilian law at the time of his sentencing limited the time actually served to thirty years; the ceiling was later raised to forty, but not for him. He completes thirty uninterrupted years on August 11, 2028, when the law requires his release. Edilson Mougenot Bonfim, who prosecuted him, has said publicly that he will kill again if freed. In 2018 prosecutors asked for a new examination of his mental state to try to keep him in custody, and in September 2026 the São Paulo public prosecutor's office argued for his compulsory internment in a custodial hospital before the release date, citing reports of mental confusion. His lawyer, Caroline Landim, says he expects to be released and has had no updated medical assessment in years.
He is held at the Iaras penitentiary in the interior of São Paulo state. According to his lawyer he went more than ten years without visits and, suffering from a congenital dental condition, pulled out all his own teeth with thread. In an interview with a forensic psychologist he said he was a new man and that the old Francisco no longer existed, and he has said he plans to change his name when he gets out.