Brazilian Police Arrest a Man in a Dress and Wig, Suspected in 16 Killings in Paraíba
Jorlan Lopes da Silva, 33, was caught in Mulungu after a two-day manhunt. Police say he claims about 80 killings since age 13; he has not been tried.
Published
Police in the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba had been closing in for two days when, on Sunday, September 13, 2026, a slight man in a black dress with white stripes, a wig, women's sandals, sunglasses and painted nails walked past officers in the small town of Mulungu with a toddler in his arms. Investigators say he was Jorlan Lopes da Silva, 33, the man they had been hunting in connection with sixteen killings in about three months, and that the disguise very nearly worked.
According to Delegado Douglas Garcia, the civil police investigator who led the operation, da Silva slipped back into the house where he had been hiding, picked up a revolver and left the child behind. As he came out again the dress shifted, and a tattoo gave him away. He was arrested on a preventive detention warrant issued by the Paraíba courts. The child, about two years old, was not related to him, and police did not say how the boy or girl came to be in his care.
What police say he told them
Under questioning, police say, da Silva claimed he had killed about eighty people in his life and that the first time was when he was thirteen. The investigation does not accept that figure as established. "It is a very large number," Garcia told reporters, in remarks published in Portuguese. "We believe that if it is not that number, it is something very close to it." Police said they were checking his account against technical evidence and old homicide records, and were weighing whether to order a psychiatric evaluation.
What the police do attribute to him is narrower: sixteen killings in the Mamanguape Valley, beginning at the end of May 2026, the month he walked out of prison. He had spent five or six years of his life behind bars. Police named one of the cases, the August 1 shooting of two shopkeepers in Rio Tinto, on the state's northern coast, in which they say he took part with four other men. They are also investigating his possible role in the death of a young woman whose body was found, Garcia said, after da Silva told officers where it was buried.
Garcia later told the Associated Press that it was the killing of an 18-year-old, shot dead in a public square, that finally let investigators connect da Silva to crimes that had not seemed linked. Locals called him "Mosquito" for his frail build, and he lived mostly in makeshift camps in thick bush. "That allowed him to evade capture for years," Garcia said. He said police were keeping the victims' identities confidential while the prosecution did its work, and that some older investigations were being reopened.
A gang, or a "personal war"
Police say da Silva is tied to a criminal faction that started in Rio de Janeiro and operates in Paraíba. After a confrontation in Rio Tinto, investigators say, he hid in a community in Cabedelo, outside João Pessoa, associated with that group, and was tracked from there toward Mulungu with help from the Federal Highway Police. One companion was caught at a roadside stop while da Silva got away again. Two other men suspected of crimes in the region were arrested in Mulungu during the same operation, and Delegado Marcos Paulo Sales said all three were linked to the same faction.
Da Silva denies belonging to any gang. He told investigators he was fighting "a personal war" and attacked only criminals. Garcia said the evidence gathered so far shows that was not true.
After a custody hearing he was sent to the Desembargador Sílvio Porto penitentiary in João Pessoa.
Da Silva has not been tried or convicted. The sixteen killings are the police's attribution; the figure of about eighty is his own claim as police relayed it, and investigators have not confirmed it. No police statement or court record could be located for this story, so it rests on the lead investigator's remarks to the Associated Press (September 21, 2026) and to Brazilian reporters as published by g1 Paraíba (September 17, 2026); Garcia's Portuguese remarks are translated here. Some Brazilian outlets reported his name as Jorlan Alves da Silva.
Sources
- A Brazilian serial killer dressed as a woman, hid in the woods and was nicknamed 'mosquito', The Associated Press (Mauricio Savarese), via KIRO 7
- Preso de peruca, primeiro crime aos 13 anos: o que se sabe sobre homem que diz ter matado 80 na Paraíba, g1 Paraíba (republished by TNH1)