José Vicente Matias was arrested in March 2005 in the town of Bragança, in the northern state of Pará, after an anonymous tip. Within weeks the police of several states were linking him to the deaths of six women and girls, in Minas Gerais, Bahia, Goiás and Maranhão, between 1999 and 2005. Over the next twenty years four juries convicted him, each for one victim and in a different court: Goiás in 2008, Pirenópolis in 2016, Alcântara in 2018 and Três Marias in 2025. Two further killings, in Maranhão and Bahia, rest on his confessions and on police attribution, and no trial for them is on record.
Because he moved between towns and had no fixed base, no one suspected him until he was in custody, an investigator told the press in 2021, and the last verdict came in 2025.
Matias was born in Firminópolis, in the interior of Goiás, according to the Maranhão prosecutors' office. He worked as a craftsman and traveled between towns, a way of life that investigators later said left no one suspecting him, because he stayed nowhere long. His date of birth was not reported. The press has used several spellings of his surname, including Mathias, which appears in the prosecutors' and court-side reports from Maranhão.
A psychiatric report cited by the Metropoles news site in 2022 described an antisocial personality disorder. The same article reports that he later denied the crimes through his lawyer and said he had signed his confessions without understanding them.
The police chronology published in April 2005 listed six women, and later reports kept the same names with some differences in dates.
Natália Canhas Carneiro was 15. She was killed on September 4, 1999, in Três Marias, in Minas Gerais. It was the first of the crimes later attributed to him.
Simone Lima Pinho was 26. She is placed in Lençóis, in the Chapada Diamantina region of Bahia, in June 2000. She was the second victim in the sequence police later drew up.
Lidiayne Vieira de Melo was 16. The police chronology of 2005 dates her death to January 19, 2004, in Goiânia, Goiás.
Katryn Rakitov was 29. She was killed in Pirenópolis, Goiás, in 2004. The sources differ on the month: the 2005 police chronology gives April 28, 2004, while the prosecutors' office in Maranhão said in 2018 that she died in August 2004.
Marianne Kern was 49. She died in Barreirinhas, Maranhão, in 2005, according to the Metropoles report, which places two Maranhão killings in March 2005 before his arrest. A 2025 article gives the date as March 16, 2005.
Núria Fernandez Collada was 27. She was killed on March 18, 2005, in Alcântara, Maranhão, according to the prosecutors' office and the state judiciary's press clippings. One 2025 article gives March 26.
Matias was arrested on March 29, 2005, in Bragança, Pará, after an anonymous tip, and was taken to Maranhão.
In the first days he told investigators that the women had attacked him and that he had acted in self-defense. His account changed in the following weeks. On April 6, 2005, the Maranhão press carried the police chronology listing six victims, and on April 17 it reported that the police believed there might be more. On May 5, 2005, he gave statements to a judge and a prosecutor at the court in Barreirinhas.
Investigators from Goiás worked on the Pirenópolis case in parallel. A police investigator, Robson Feitosa, told Aventuras na História in 2021 that he had taken up the Rakitov case in 2004 and had interviewed Matias in Maranhão. A police officer in Maranhão, Marcos Affonso Júnior, later wrote a book about the case, which Jornal Pequeno reported in October 2023.
Matias's first conviction came in Goiás, for the death of Lidiayne Vieira de Melo. He was sentenced to 23 years in June 2008, according to the 2025 Sputnik Voz do Povo report and El Ciudadano. The court and the judge are not on record. Metropoles describes it as his first conviction. He has been held in Goiás since 2009, at the Odenir Guimarães penitentiary in Aparecida de Goiânia.
The Rakitov case went through two trials. The Goiás court first convicted him of robbery resulting in death, with a sentence of 27 years, the Correio Braziliense reported in 2016. After he gave a different account in court with a lawyer present, the defense asked for the charge to be reclassified as intentional homicide, and the Tribunal de Justiça de Goiás accepted the argument. A new jury trial was held in the district of Pirenópolis on Thursday, August 25, 2016.
The reported outcome is a 24-year sentence. That figure appears in the Maranhão judiciary's clippings of 2018, which cite G1 and say he was serving 24 years in Goiânia for Rakitov's killing, and in the Sputnik report of 2025, which says the sentence was reduced to 24 years in August 2016. The Aventuras na História article of 2021 says 25 years and names the presiding judge as Sebastião José da Silva. The difference has not been settled.
The prosecution for the death of Núria Fernandez Collada was heard by the Tribunal do Júri of the district of Alcântara, Maranhão. The jury sat at the campus of the Federal Institute of Maranhão (IFMA) in Alcântara, and the presiding judge was Rodrigo Otávio Terças Santos. The prosecutor was Alessandra Darub Alves. A public defender, Marcos César da Silva Fortes, defended him and told the court that he was obliged to give the best technical defense possible rather than seek an acquittal.
On Tuesday, May 22, 2018, the jury found him guilty of qualified homicide by majority vote. The judge sentenced him to 22 years, 4 months and 15 days in prison, to be served initially in the closed regime. The Maranhão prosecutors announced the figure as "22 anos, quatro meses e 15 dias de prisão." The judge cited premeditation, a high degree of culpability and extreme violence as grounds for the penalty, together with his earlier convictions, and denied him the right to appeal in liberty, citing public order and the risk of repeated similar crimes. The sentence was added to those he was already serving in Goiás.
Reports of the day said that he already had three convictions in Goiás and Bahia, with a combined sentence of 69 years. How that figure was made up is not on record, and no Bahia trial is on record. The same reports said he had confessed to killing five women between 1999 and 2005, two of them in Maranhão.
For the death of Natália Canhas Carneiro, a court in Minas Gerais ordered a jury trial in August 2022, Metropoles reported, and his lawyer planned to appeal. The jury sat in Três Marias in early July 2025. The Sputnik Voz do Povo report of July 3, 2025, says he was convicted of murder, with other charges, and sentenced to "mais 19 anos de prisão", 19 additional years. A prosecutor from the neighboring district of João Pinheiro, Flávio Feres, took part in place of the regular prosecutor. The report says the killing took place on September 4, 1999, and calls it the first in the series.
The same report lists the earlier sentences: 23 years for Lidiayne Vieira de Melo in June 2008, a reduction to 24 years for Katryn Rakitov in August 2016, and 22 years, 4 months and 15 days for Núria Fernandez Collada in May 2018.
Two deaths have no verdict on record.
Marianne Kern died in Barreirinhas, Maranhão, in 2005. Matias confessed to the killing in 2005 and the case was linked to him by the Maranhão police. A report of October 2022 said that at least two cases remained pending in the courts of Maranhão and Minas Gerais; the Minas Gerais case has since ended in the 2025 conviction. No verdict for Kern is on record.
Simone Lima Pinho, 26, is listed as the Bahia victim in the 2005 police chronology and in later reports. A Bahia newspaper feature of September 2025 describes her as the second victim attributed to him, in June 2000, and does not report a trial or sentence. The 2018 reports that mention "convictions in Goiás and Bahia" do not give a Bahia court, date or victim.
The number of victims is six in most press coverage and seven in one newspaper, which mentions a seventh woman with no charge or victim named. The motives he gave differ between his early statements and later ones, and none of them is a finding of any court. The sentence for the Rakitov killing is 24 years in most reports and 25 in one. The Alcântara date is March 18 in prosecutors' and judiciary records and March 26 in one later article. Contemporary and later reports also disagree on the years of several killings.
The Maranhão judiciary's 2018 report and the Sputnik report of July 2025 place him in the Odenir Guimarães penitentiary, in Aparecida de Goiânia. In 2022 Metropoles reported that prison authorities described his behavior as good and that he rarely had visitors. His lawyer said he denied all the crimes. No release date is on record.
September 4, 1999: Natália Canhas Carneiro, 15, is killed in Três Marias, Minas Gerais.
June 2000: Simone Lima Pinho, 26, is killed in Lençóis, Bahia (attributed).
January 2004: Lidiayne Vieira de Melo, 16, is killed in Goiânia, Goiás.
2004: Katryn Rakitov, 29, is killed in Pirenópolis, Goiás.
March 2005: Marianne Kern, 49, dies in Barreirinhas, Maranhão (confessed, not tried).
March 18, 2005: Núria Fernandez Collada, 27, is killed in Alcântara, Maranhão.
March 29, 2005: Matias is arrested in Bragança, Pará.
April 6 and 17, 2005: police chronology of six victims is published; more victims are suspected.
May 5, 2005: he gives statements to a judge and prosecutor in Barreirinhas.
June 2008: sentenced to 23 years for Lidiayne Vieira de Melo.
2009: held at the Odenir Guimarães penitentiary.
August 25, 2016: retrial in Pirenópolis for Katryn Rakitov; sentence reported as 24 years (25 in one report).
May 22, 2018: convicted in Alcântara of qualified homicide of Núria Fernandez Collada; 22 years, 4 months and 15 days.
August 2022: a Minas Gerais court orders a jury trial for the 1999 killing.
July 2025: convicted in Três Marias; 19 additional years.