Francisco de Assis Pereira was a motorcycle courier in São Paulo when, in July 1998, police linked the deaths of several young women in the south of the city and began looking for one man. The press called him the "Maníaco do Parque," the Park Maniac, a nickname taken from the state park on the city's south side that was linked to the crimes. He fled the city, was arrested on August 4, 1998, in Itaqui, a town in Rio Grande do Sul on the border with Argentina, and confessed to the killings soon after he was brought back to São Paulo.
Juries in São Paulo found him guilty of the murders of seven women, with other charges, in a series of trials that the Santos newspaper Diário do Litoral, in a 2025 retrospective, describes as four trials between 2001 and 2002. The combined sentences are reported at about 285 years. Brazilian law at the time of his crimes set a maximum of 30 years actually served, and the end of that period is projected for August 2028. By 2026 his possible release had become a subject of public debate in Brazil, and the São Paulo public prosecutor's office had opened a procedure to consider whether he should be committed to psychiatric care instead.
He has given different totals over the years. He has said he killed 11 women, and police attribute 11 victims to him, according to Diário do Litoral; other reports give nine or ten. The courts convicted him of seven.
Pereira was born on November 29, 1967, in São José do Rio Preto, in the interior of São Paulo state, according to Diário do Litoral. The same newspaper reports that he described rejection by his family and abuse when he was young, and that the relative he accused denies it. A psychiatric report prepared for his defense later said he had suffered abuse in childhood, according to the same account.
Before he moved to São Paulo he worked at a slaughterhouse, Diário do Litoral reports. In the city he worked as a motorcycle courier, a "motoboy," for a delivery company, and he also skated competitively. Metrópoles, the Brasília news site, describes him as someone who competed in skating championships; Diário do Litoral says he was known in skating circles as "Chico Estrela" and was a professional skater. At the time of the crimes he was living at his workplace, according to Metrópoles.
Press accounts agree on the pattern that investigators later described. Pereira approached young women in the street, praised them, and presented himself as a talent scout looking for models. O Povo, the Fortaleza daily, reports that he invited women to take photographs in the park for what he said was a cosmetics catalogue. Band, the São Paulo broadcaster, reports that the women he approached were between about 17 and 27 years old and that he offered them modeling work. He took them on his motorcycle to the wooded park on the south side of the city.
Sérgio Luís Alves, the police chief (delegado) who later led the inquiry, described the women as young, with long hair, some of it curly, as quoted by the Gazeta de S.Paulo in 2024. The same report says the women shared a similar build and appearance. Diário do Litoral reports that he looked for slim young women with long dark hair who seemed sad.
Diário do Litoral reports that the women were usually strangled.
Seven women are named in the Brazilian press as women he killed. Accounts differ on some ages and on which of the women were covered by the convictions.
Isadora Fraenkel was 19. She was a student who wanted to become a flight attendant and was about to begin an English course when she disappeared, according to Diário do Litoral. Her father reported her missing, and his search for her led police to Pereira.
Raquel Mota Rodrigues was 23. She came from Gravataí, in Rio Grande do Sul, and worked in sales; she was about to be promoted to manager, Diário do Litoral reports.
Rosa Alves Neta was 21. She was studying figure skating, and that was how she met Pereira, according to Diário do Litoral.
Selma Ferreira Queiroz was 18, according to Diário do Litoral, O Povo and the Gazeta de S.Paulo; Band gives her age as 17. She worked as a clerk in a drugstore. Hers is the death for which the police sought Pereira's preventive detention, according to the Gazeta de S.Paulo. Metrópoles reports that hers was the first body found, and that police later found her identity card at the workplace where Pereira also lived.
Patrícia Gonçalves Marinho worked in sales in São Paulo. Diário do Litoral gives her age as 23; O Povo and Band give 24.
Elisângela Francisco da Silva was 21 and came from Paraná. She left home saying she was going to meet a friend and did not come back, Diário do Litoral reports. O Povo spells her first name Elizângela.
Michelle dos Santos Martins was 18, according to Diário do Litoral, which lists her among the victims.
Band's 2024 account names five of the women (Patrícia, Selma, Raquel, Isadora and Rosa) and says two victims were never identified. O Povo names six and says only one of the seven women in the conviction was never identified. Diário do Litoral names seven. The Gazeta de S.Paulo reports that the victims were young women of low income, aged up to 24.
The bodies were found in São Paulo between January and August 1998, according to Band. The Gazeta de S.Paulo reports that the police investigation began in July 1998, after six bodies had been found.
Not every woman he approached was killed. Several escaped or survived his attacks, and their accounts were central to the case. Survivors helped police produce a sketch of the attacker, according to the Gazeta de S.Paulo. Diário do Litoral reports that on July 10, 1998, one survivor gave police a detailed description of his face, which allowed a composite sketch to be drawn. Nine survivors later recognized him, the Gazeta de S.Paulo reported in 2024.
The 2024 documentary series about the case argued that some of these women met prejudice when they first tried to report what had happened to them, and that earlier action by police might have saved lives, according to a review in the Gazeta do Povo of Curitiba.
The first cases were registered at different police stations in São Paulo, and no one connected them at first, according to Diário do Litoral. The inquiry was taken over by Sérgio Luís da Silva Alves of the city's homicide department, the DHPP (Departamento de Homicídios e de Proteção à Pessoa), who linked the deaths through the way they had been carried out.
The sketch based on a survivor's description was published in Folha de S.Paulo on July 12, 1998, the day of the World Cup final in which Brazil lost to France, Diário do Litoral reports. The next day a woman whom Pereira had approached recognized the face and gave the police his real name, which led them to the delivery company where he worked.
By then Pereira had already been questioned once. Isadora Fraenkel's father, searching for her, found two checks from her account, for 200 and 500 reais, made out to Pereira, and gave copies to the police, according to Diário do Litoral. Pereira went to the DHPP the following morning, gave a false account of a relationship with Isadora, and was released. O Povo gives a slightly different version: it reports that his first summons followed the use of a check in Isadora's name to buy a motorcycle helmet. It also notes that the delivery company he worked for was close to a police station that later investigated him.
When detectives reached his workplace, he had gone. He left a note for his employer, which Diário do Litoral quotes as saying, in translation, "Unfortunately it has to be this way. May God be with all of us." Metrópoles reports that he left in a hurry after seeing his own sketch in the newspaper.
He first hid at his brother's home in Diadema, in the São Paulo metropolitan area, until his sister-in-law recognized him and made him leave, according to Diário do Litoral. He then took a bus from São Paulo's Tietê terminal toward Paraguay, crossed through Argentina, and entered Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state. There he used the false name "Pedro" and found work as a helper to a boatman in a fishing community at Itaqui, near the border with Argentina.
On August 4, 1998, after 22 days on the run, he was arrested in Itaqui by the Rio Grande do Sul civil police under delegado Raul Fernando da Silva Bósio, according to Diário do Litoral. A fisherman had recognized him from the national evening news, Jornal Nacional, and found his real identity document in his backpack.
Metrópoles gives a different account of the moment of recognition: it reports that he stopped at a house and asked to take a bath, and that the owner recognized him at once and called the police. The Gazeta de S.Paulo also reports that a local fisherman recognized him. He was taken back to São Paulo in handcuffs.
The arrest made him a television figure. He was captured wearing a black and yellow Boston Bruins hockey shirt, and the image was shown repeatedly, the Gazeta do Povo noted in 2024.
At the DHPP in São Paulo, soon after his arrest, he confessed. Diário do Litoral quotes him as saying that all the crimes committed in the park had been done by him. He then went with investigators to the park and showed them how he had brought the women there. Sérgio Luís Alves later said Pereira became animated and proud during that visit, according to the same report.
His accounts did not stay the same. His mother has said that while he was held at the police headquarters in São Paulo he told her he had not committed the crimes, and that he confessed to the police afterward, according to a 2024 report by Rádio Itatiaia of Belo Horizonte drawing on her interview with TV Record. Band reports that after his arrest he denied the killings, saying, in translation, "I didn't kill. Whoever killed is out there, free." Diário do Litoral reports that he later told investigators that about 200 women had gone with him to the park over two years and that he had killed nine of them. In later interviews he said an "evil force" had controlled him.
The totals in the press vary. Most reports say he confessed to 11 killings; the Gazeta de S.Paulo in August 2024 said he confessed to nine deaths; O Povo reported that the case was linked to the killing of ten women. The Gazeta do Povo reported that he admitted killing 11 women but answered in court for only seven. None of the killings beyond the seven covered by the convictions was tried.
He was tried before São Paulo's jury court (Tribunal do Júri). The prosecutor was Edilson Mougenot Bonfim, who later wrote a book on the case, "O Julgamento de um Serial Killer: O Caso do Maníaco do Parque" (The Trial of a Serial Killer: The Park Maniac Case), according to Metrópoles.
Bonfim told the legal news site Migalhas in 2024 that he had to explain to the jury the idea of a serial killer, then little known in Brazil, and that he studied foreign literature and traveled abroad to prepare. He also objected to the press's use of the word "maníaco," arguing that it suggested an illness and so an excuse from punishment, while in his view an antisocial personality disorder was no such excuse.
The central legal question was his mental state. The defense argued that he had mental health problems. A psychiatrist, Paulo Argarate Vasques, classified him as semi-imputable, meaning that he understood what he had done but was not fully in control of it, according to Diário do Litoral. Under Brazilian law that finding could have reduced his sentence or sent him to a forensic hospital. The jurors and judges rejected it and found him fully responsible, so he was sentenced to an ordinary prison.
Diário do Litoral reports that there were four trials between 2001 and 2002. At trial he maintained his confession but blamed the devil for what he had done, and on his lawyers' advice he later said he could not remember how many victims there had been, the same report says. Band dates his jury trial to 2000, and a photo caption in Metrópoles says a jury in 2002 sentenced him to 121 years for the deaths of five women. Band also reports, citing his biographer Ullisses Campbell, that he said at his trial that he would kill again if released.
The convictions were for qualified homicide (homicídio qualificado), concealment of a corpse and other charges, according to the Gazeta de S.Paulo and Gazeta do Povo.
Reports of the combined sentence differ. Diário do Litoral and NC News give 285 years, 11 months and 10 days; the Gazeta do Povo gives 285 years; the Diário do Nordeste of Fortaleza, republishing a column by Ullisses Campbell from O Globo, gives 276 years and 3 months; O Povo, Band and the Gazeta de S.Paulo give figures from 260 to 286 years.
The figure that matters in practice is 30 years. Article 75 of the Brazilian Penal Code limited the time a prisoner could actually serve to 30 years when he was convicted. A 2019 law, part of the anti-crime package (Pacote Anticrime), raised the maximum to 40 years, but only for crimes committed after it took effect in 2020, so it does not apply to him, the Gazeta de S.Paulo reported in 2025. He has been in custody since August 4, 1998, and the Gazeta de S.Paulo, citing the São Paulo Court of Justice (Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo), gives August 2028 as the expected date of release.
He was held in the 1990s at the Casa de Custódia de Taubaté, in São Paulo state, and has been at the Iaras penitentiary since 2009, according to O Povo, citing Ullisses Campbell. NC News names the prison as the Penitenciária Orlando Brando Filinto in Iaras. He serves his sentence in closed conditions.
Reports from inside the prison come mostly from his lawyers, his family and his biographer. Band reported in 2024 that he shared a cell with other inmates and embroidered rugs and towels during permitted activities, and that some were sold to prisoners' families during visits. The Diário do Nordeste reported in 2025 that he makes sisal rugs, has gained a great deal of weight, went about ten years without visits, and had recently renewed contact with his mother and his brother.
His mother told O Globo in 2024 that she had not visited him in ten years and did not know whether he was ready to leave prison, as reported by the Gazeta de S.Paulo. She told TV Record later that year that he had changed, that he had stopped being a bad person, and that she would take him into her home when he was released, according to Rádio Itatiaia. She also said she rejects the nickname and never answers to it. O Povo reported, citing O Globo's interview with her, that he received letters, food and money from women who wrote to him, and that he married a woman he met that way; the marriage ended.
In 2025 a criminal lawyer, Caroline Landim, said publicly that she represented him. She told Ullisses Campbell, in a column republished by the Diário do Nordeste on May 8, 2025, that she would not ask for his release, and that as far as she was concerned he would stay in prison forever. She argued that he had never had psychiatric follow-up in his years in custody and that no current assessment of his mental health existed.
On May 25, 2025, the Gazeta de S.Paulo reported a statement she posted on Instagram. She said she had been hired by an author writing a book about the case to look after his basic needs, that she had made no requests for benefits on his behalf, and that her contract did not extend to 2028. She said the state had failed badly by not offering him treatment, and that she was not opposed to the rehabilitation of a prisoner.
Accounts differ on whether a new assessment is required before he can leave. O Povo and Diário do Litoral report that courts will require new psychological examinations and psychiatric reports to assess the risk that he will offend again. The Diário do Nordeste reports that he has never had a criminological examination, which is usually requested only when a prisoner asks to move to a less strict regime, and that because he would be leaving at the end of the 30-year maximum he could go free without a recent psychiatric evaluation.
Edilson Mougenot Bonfim has argued publicly against his release. In October 2024 he told Migalhas that the danger was contained only while Pereira was in prison and that his personality and disorder would be the same outside. He said the 1984 reform of the Penal Code, which replaced a system of sentence plus security measure with a choice of one or the other, had been a very serious mistake, and he argued for life imprisonment in Brazil. Metrópoles quoted him as saying that a psychiatrist would have to be completely irresponsible to certify Pereira fit for release.
On September 1, 2026, NC News, a Brazilian news site, reported, citing unofficial accounts published by Metrópoles, that the São Paulo public prosecutor's office (Ministério Público de São Paulo, MPSP) had opened a procedure through its criminal sentence enforcement unit to look into his current mental health, after reports from the prison that he was confused. According to those reports he often spoke in disconnected phrases and might be detached from reality.
The assessments described were preliminary. Two psychologists reported that his cognitive functions were preserved and that he was polite and cooperative; one report recommended neurological follow-up and a further psychiatric evaluation. The state prison administration (Secretaria da Administração Penitenciária) told the prosecutors there were no conclusive technical grounds for a finding of mental insanity or for compulsory internment. The defense objected to assessments carried out by the state alone, asked that a psychologist of its choice be allowed to act as a technical assistant with access to the reports, and said no diagnosis supported such an extreme measure.
On October 19, 2026, NC News reported that the procedure was still open, that the evaluations remained preliminary with no definitive diagnosis, and that August 2028 was a projected date, not a confirmed release.
On October 19, 2026, Francisco de Assis Pereira was in prison in closed conditions at the penitentiary in Iaras, São Paulo state, serving sentences for the murders of seven women, with other charges. The end of the 30-year maximum is projected for August 2028. The São Paulo prosecutors' procedure on possible compulsory psychiatric internment had produced no decision.
The case ran alongside the 1998 World Cup and became what Bonfim called, in an interview with G1 quoted by Diário do Litoral, a "media soap opera." In 2004 an IBOPE poll for the public prosecutor's office found that 75 percent of Brazilians remembered it as the most memorable police case, the same newspaper reports. The criminologist Ilana Casoy has described him as a serial killer, Diário do Litoral notes.
In October 2024 Prime Video released a feature film, "Maníaco do Parque," directed by Mauricio Eça and co-written by Thaís Nunes, with Silvero Pereira as Francisco and Giovanna Grigio as Helena, an invented journalist, according to Metrópoles. The filmmakers said they created the journalist so that Pereira would not be at the center of the story, and that they wanted to give a voice to the victims. A four-part documentary series, "Maníaco do Parque: A História Não Contada" (The Untold Story), followed on Prime Video, scheduled for November 1, 2024; Metrópoles reports that it drew on research by Thaís Nunes's team. It used period footage, interviews with survivors, victims' families and his own family, and recordings of Pereira, and its last episode dealt with the law and the risk of his release, the Gazeta do Povo reported.
Number of victims. The courts convicted him of seven murders. He has given totals of nine and 11, and police attribute 11 victims to him, according to Diário do Litoral. Other reports give ten. Killings beyond the seven were never tried.
Which women were in the convictions. Reports differ on whether one or two of the seven women in the convictions were never identified, and it has never been reported which of the women named in the press were the seven in the convictions.
Ages. Selma Ferreira Queiroz is 18 in most reports and 17 in one; Patrícia Gonçalves Marinho is 23 in one report and 24 in others.
Trial dates. Diário do Litoral reports four trials in 2001 and 2002; Band dates his jury trial to 2000; a Metrópoles caption refers to a 2002 jury verdict of 121 years for five deaths.
Total sentence. Reported variously as 260, 268, 276 years and 3 months, 284, 285, 285 years 11 months and 10 days, and 286 years.
Dates of the crimes. Most reports give 1997 to 1998; the Diário do Nordeste gives 1996 to 1998.
How he was first questioned. Diário do Litoral ties his first visit to the police to two checks from Isadora Fraenkel's account; O Povo to a check in her name used to buy a helmet.
How he was recognized in Itaqui. Diário do Litoral says a fisherman recognized him from the television news; Metrópoles says a homeowner recognized him when he asked to bathe.
Whether an examination is required before release. Some reports say courts will require new psychological and psychiatric reports; others say he can leave at the end of the 30-year maximum without one.
November 29, 1967: born in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo state.
1997 to 1998: period of the killings, by most press accounts.
January to August 1998: bodies of young women found in São Paulo.
July 1998: police investigation begins after six bodies are found.
July 10, 1998: a survivor's description allows a sketch to be drawn.
July 12, 1998: the sketch is published, on the day of the World Cup final.
Shortly after the sketch is published: a woman he had approached gives police his name; he has already fled.
August 4, 1998: arrested in Itaqui, Rio Grande do Sul, after 22 days on the run; confesses at the DHPP in São Paulo.
2001 to 2002: four jury trials in São Paulo; convicted of seven murders, with other charges.
Late 1990s: held at the Casa de Custódia de Taubaté.
2004: IBOPE poll finds 75 percent of Brazilians remember the case as the most memorable police case.
2009: moved to the Iaras penitentiary.
October 2024: feature film released on Prime Video; documentary series follows.
May 2025: his lawyer says she will not seek his release.
September 2026: São Paulo prosecutors open a procedure on possible compulsory internment.
October 19, 2026: procedure still open, no decision.
August 2028: projected end of the 30-year maximum.