In the first eight months of 2014, a man on a motorcycle shot women and girls in the streets of Goiânia, the capital of the central Brazilian state of Goiás, apparently at random and without taking anything from them. The youngest was 13. In August the Polícia Civil set up a task force, and on the night of October 14, 2014, its officers detained Tiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha, a 26-year-old security guard who had started a new job with a security company only two months earlier. Police said he confessed to 39 homicides going back to 2011.
Over the next three years he faced a jury trial for each killing, one at a time, in the courts of Goiânia. By June 2018 juries had convicted him of 28 homicides and acquitted him of three. After 32 trials the sentences added up, by one newspaper's count in October 2026, to 619 years, of which Brazilian law allowed 30 to be served for crimes committed at that time. In October 2026 the judge who presided over most of the trials said he remained in custody.
Gomes da Rocha was a vigilante, a private security guard. The security company Fortesul (also written Forte Sul) hired him in August 2014 on a trial contract in its unarmed surveillance division, according to the company's statement after his arrest, as reported in October 2014. The company said he had passed the required hiring checks, including a certificate showing no criminal record and a psychotechnical examination, and that his conduct at work had been beyond reproach.
He had worked for another security firm, Proguarda, before that. Court records in one of his cases show that a day guard of the same company, Aleandro Santos Miranda, was stabbed to death at his post in the Zona Industrial Pedro Abrão area of Goiânia on November 20, 2011, and that Gomes da Rocha was later charged with the killing. In a later trial the prosecutor told the jury that three guns had been stolen from the security company where he had worked.
Police described him to reporters in October 2014 as intelligent, uneven in mood and slow in speech. They said he seemed uncomfortable with women, sometimes freezing when female clerks took down his statements.
The cases that alarmed the city began in January 2014. Prosecutors later described a pattern that held across most of them: a lone man on a motorcycle who shot people he did not know and took nothing from them.
Ana Karla Lemes da Silva, 15, a student, was walking alone in Jardim Planalto on the evening of December 15, 2013, when she was shot. Her mother told the jury in 2016 that the family cried every day and that she could no longer work properly.
Bárbara Luíza Ribeiro Costa was 14, less than a month short of her fifteenth birthday, when she was shot in Setor Lorena Park on January 18, 2014. The judge who sentenced her killer noted that she was an only child.
Beatriz Cristina de Oliveira, 23, was killed in Setor Nova Suíça on January 19, on her way to buy bread. Arlete dos Anjos Carvalho, 16, was killed in Bairro Goiá on the night of January 28. The prosecutor at her trial described her as a studious girl, and her father and half-sister sat through the hearing. Lilian Sissi Mesquita e Silva, 28, was killed in Cidade Jardim on February 3 while going to collect her children from school.
On February 28, Mauro Ferreira Nunes, 51, was shot inside a shop in Vila Canaã, and Denílson Ferreira de Freitas was shot the same day in the city center. Ana Maria Victor Duarte was killed in Setor Bela Vista late on the night of March 14. Wanessa Oliveira Felipe was killed in Bairro Goiá on April 23. On the night of May 8, two women were killed in Jardim América within an hour of each other: Janaína Nicácio de Souza, 24, and Bruna Gleycielle de Sousa Gonçalves, who was on her way home from work. Carla Barbosa Araújo was killed in Setor Sudoeste on May 23.
On June 15, Taynara Rodrigues da Cruz, 13, was killed in Bairro Goiá, and that evening Thamara da Conceição Silva, who was five months pregnant, was killed in the city center on her way to church; the court records note that the unborn child also died. Pedro Henrique de Paula Souza, 19, a student, was shot on June 20 in Setor Sol Nascente as he sat with his brother and a friend. Rosirene Gualberto da Silva, 29, was killed in Setor dos Funcionários on July 19; her sister, who was with her, was slightly hurt.
Juliana Neubia Dias, 22, was shot in Setor Oeste on the night of July 26. On July 27, Mateus Henrique de Morais and Karina dos Santos Farias were shot in Setor Leste Universitário after returning from a church retreat. Adailton dos Santos Farias, 23, was killed in Setor Rodoviário on July 31. Ana Lídia Gomes, 14, was killed in Setor Cidade Jardim on August 2.
Investigators came to believe that the 2014 series had a longer history. Court records list among the earlier victims named in the charges Valdivino Luiz Ribeiro, killed in the city center on October 11, 2012; Paulo Sérgio Xavier de Bastos, killed in the Setor Central area at about four in the morning of November 5, 2012; Thiago Fernandes de Carvalho Machado, killed in the center on December 11, 2012; Michel Luiz Ferreira da Silva, 28, killed in Setor Campinas on December 12, 2012; and Wesley Alves Guimarães, killed in Jardim América on February 3, 2013.
Rafael Carvalho Gonçalves, 22, was on his way home with a friend in Setor Campinas at about one in the morning of February 16, 2013, when he was shot. The friend, who was not hurt, later identified Gomes da Rocha. Isadora Aparecida Cândida was killed in Setor São José on June 1, 2013, and Edimila Ferreira Borges, 18, was shot in Parque João Braz on the afternoon of August 19, 2013, while she sat with a young cousin.
The Polícia Civil formed a task force in August 2014 to investigate the killings of women. Its members went on to describe the scale of the work to the press. In October 2014 they said that over 70 days, 25 police chiefs (delegados), 95 agents and 30 clerks had examined more than 150 hours of security camera footage, analyzed 576 suspect number plates and 50,000 traffic-fine photographs, followed up 150 anonymous tips, interviewed 200 people and commissioned 71 forensic reports. In a 2026 account, O Hoje put the force at about 200 officers and described the search through more than 100,000 images of motorcycles registered in Goiânia and about 150,000 traffic-fine records from outside the capital. One of the officers, Douglas Pedrosa, told the paper that the idea of searching fine photographs came after he received a fine with a picture of his own car.
Camera images near the crime scenes gave investigators the build of the rider and the make, model and features of his motorcycle. The decisive image came from a traffic radar. About fifteen minutes before Rosirene Gualberto da Silva was killed in July, a radar camera photographed a motorcycle running a red light. The picture was too blurred to produce a fine, but a forensic expert was able to read the plate, which had been reported stolen. In September and October a man on a motorcycle robbed the same lottery agency in central Goiânia twice, and its owner noted a plate that matched the one in the radar photograph. The police chief in charge concluded that the robber's build and motorcycle matched Gomes da Rocha's.
On October 9, 2014, Judge Eduardo Pio Mascarenhas da Silva of Goiânia's first court for intentional crimes against life granted a request from Carlos Douglas Pinto, a delegado of the state homicide investigation division (DIH), for his temporary arrest. The order was kept confidential until it could be served. According to O Hoje's 2026 account, the officers who made the arrest on the night of October 14 were on their way back to the state security secretariat, because one of them had left his wallet behind, when they saw a motorcycle like the one they were looking for.
Police said that Gomes da Rocha confessed in interrogation to 39 homicides since 2011 and that the total could reach 40. They said that he had committed 16 of the killings under investigation by the task force, and that only two of the cases in its file were not attributed to him. In October 2014 they described those 16 as women aged 13 to 29 shot between January and August that year, and linked him as well to the killings of eight people living in the street, with 15 more cases under investigation.
Delegado Carlos Douglas Pinto later testified that the confession was voluntary. He said that when he asked Gomes da Rocha about the first woman he had killed, Gomes da Rocha answered that his first victim had not been a woman, and went on to describe other cases. A delegada who also questioned him, Flávia Santos Andrade, told a jury in 2016 that he had confessed to some killings to raise his count, that his method had been very similar across the crimes, and that he had recognized himself in video footage of some of them. In interrogation he told police that he left home with a feeling of anguish and a wish to kill, and felt relief afterward; asked whether he was angry at his victims, he said he was angry at everything.
Officers searched his home and seized number plates and a gun. Ballistic comparison tied that gun to the bullets in many of the cases; by November 2014 the head of the homicide division, Murilo Polati, said it matched in 13. Investigators also pointed to a backpack seized at his home that was identical to one carried by the motorcyclist in the radar photograph, and to a sketch drawn from a description by Rosirene Gualberto da Silva's sister, who after the arrest identified him as the man who shot her sister.
He was held alone in a cell, which a delegado said was to protect the other prisoners, and was then moved to the maximum-security Núcleo de Custódia of the prison complex in Aparecida de Goiânia, where only his mother and his lawyers were allowed to visit.
He did not stand by his confession. At his first court interrogations he denied several of the killings, said he had been pressured at the police station into confessing to crimes he might not have committed, or said that he had been drinking and could not remember. Some confessions he did not retract in court, and in two cases the judge later reduced his sentence by six months because he had confessed spontaneously to the police.
On November 21, 2014, the first three completed police inquiries went to the courts, and Gomes da Rocha was formally accused (indiciado) over the deaths of Rosirene Gualberto da Silva, Juliana Neubia Dias and Arlete dos Anjos Carvalho, then 16. Judge Mascarenhas converted his temporary arrest into preventive detention, citing public order, the protection of the criminal case and public safety. Thirteen more inquiries were to follow once forensic work was complete.
The Ministério Público de Goiás filed charges case by case through 2015. Its charge in the Rosirene killing, signed by prosecutor João Teles de Moura Neto, relied on a recorded interrogation in which he confessed to that killing and several others, a forensic report linking the fatal bullet to the revolver seized at his home, and a photo identification by her sister. By April 2015 prosecutors had filed nine homicide charges, and by May 2015 there were 21 cases pending against him in the first criminal court of Goiânia alone. In each case the court first held a hearing of evidence and then decided whether to send him to a jury, a decision called a pronúncia. Judge Jesseir Coelho de Alcântara issued most of them. By October 2015 there were 30 such decisions, 29 in Goiânia and one in Aparecida de Goiânia.
Not every case went forward. In September 2015 the prosecution and the defense both asked the judge not to send the killing of Edimila Ferreira Borges to trial, because the cousin who had been with her said Gomes da Rocha was not the man. The judge sent it to a jury anyway, writing that her account had to be weighed with care because she had been 11 at the time. Another case from 2012, listed in the court's files among those involving him, was archived in July 2015 at the prosecutor's request for lack of sufficient evidence.
The first convictions he received were not for murder. In April 2015 Judge Placidina Pires of the tenth criminal court sentenced him to 12 years and 4 months in closed conditions for robbing the same lottery agency in central Goiânia twice in less than a month; prosecutors said he had taken R$11,900 from the business. In May 2015 Judge Wilton Müller Salomão of the eighth criminal court sentenced him to three years in the open regime for illegal possession of a firearm, a term converted into community service and a payment of R$788. The judge kept him in preventive detention because of the homicide cases.
His lawyers argued from the start that he was not fully responsible for his actions. In a letter to the jurors filed in February 2016, the second he had submitted to a court file, he apologized to the victims' families, wrote that he had cried for the lives that were lost, and said that he needed clinical treatment for bipolar disorder, voices, unexplained rage and feelings he could not control. He blamed the media for the image the public had of him.
The court's official medical board (Junta Médica Oficial do Poder Judiciário) examined him. It found no mental illness or incomplete mental development, diagnosed antisocial personality disorder, and concluded that he fully understood the unlawful nature of his conduct and could control it at the time. One report described emotional coldness and a tendency to manipulate; another said he was unable to maintain normal social life, that keeping him apart from society was essential, and that he could offend again if released. Judges noted that psychopathy is not treated as a mental illness in Brazilian legal practice. Defense teams asked jury after jury to find him "semi-imputável", partly responsible, which would have reduced his sentence. Every jury in the reported trials rejected it.
His first murder trial, for the killing of Ana Karla Lemes da Silva, opened on February 16, 2016, before Judge Jesseir Coelho de Alcântara in the first jury court of Goiânia. The session was moved to a larger courtroom and streamed live on the website of the Tribunal de Justiça de Goiás (TJGO). Prosecutor Cyro Terra Peres led the case; the defense was in the hands of a lawyer appointed by the court after his earlier lawyers withdrew.
It was the only one of his first five trials at which he chose to speak. He told the court he had felt very bad after the killings, that there was no reason for them, and that he had not taken pleasure in them but had been driven by a dark force. He said the killings were always committed after he had been drinking, and that he admitted the crimes but was not responsible for all 35 homicides then attributed to him. The jury convicted him and he was sentenced to 20 years. Both sides said they would appeal, the prosecution seeking a term closer to the 30-year maximum.
The trials followed one another through 2016. On March 2 a jury convicted him of the murder of Juliana Neubia Dias and he received 20 years; at the trial the judge pointed to the seizure record of the gun found at his home and to the ballistic tests that tied it to her death. The murder of Ana Rita de Lima, 17, killed in Vila Santa Tereza in December 2013, brought another 20 years in mid-March. On March 29 he was convicted of the murder of Arlete dos Anjos Carvalho. He stayed away from that hearing; his lawyer said he felt unwell because of the attention of the press and public. The defense argued that the bullet had not been recovered and that the confession was full of inconsistencies, and the jury convicted him unanimously. Judge Alcântara found him fully responsible, with an antisocial personality disorder, and sentenced him to 20 years. Arlete's father told reporters that the sentence was what the family had wanted but would not bring her back.
On April 4 the second jury court, under Judge Lourival Machado da Costa, convicted him of the murder of Carla Barbosa Araújo and imposed 22 years. The judge wrote that he had "hunted" his victims and killed them without motive. On April 20 he attended his trial for the murder of Bárbara Luíza Ribeiro Costa and spoke once, to deny that he had any mental disorder. His lawyer presented studies on psychopathy and argued that a brain scan should have been done; the jury rejected the argument and Judge Mascarenhas imposed 25 years, citing the harm to her family and the fear the killings had spread through Goiás.
Convictions followed in May for the murders of Mauro Ferreira Nunes (25 years, May 11), Taynara Rodrigues da Cruz, 13 (25 years, May 18), and Ana Lídia Gomes, 14 (26 years, May 23). In early June a jury convicted him of the murder of Adailton dos Santos Farias, 23, and he received 25 years; Judge Mascarenhas said the victim had been chosen at random and that the crime had left lasting fear in Goiânia. On June 9 he attended under heavy escort as he was convicted of the murder of Janaína Nicácio de Souza, 24, and sentenced to 25 years and 6 months. It was his eleventh homicide conviction. In August came the murders of Lilian Sissi Mesquita e Silva (25 years, August 12) and Beatriz Cristina de Oliveira (26 years, August 25), and in mid-September the murder of Michel Luiz Ferreira da Silva.
In each of these cases the juries found the murder qualified by a base motive (motivo torpe) and by the use of means that left the victim unable to defend themselves.
On September 26, 2016, the second jury court convicted him of the murder of Rafael Carvalho Gonçalves, and Judge Lourival Machado da Costa sentenced him to 30 years, the first time he received the maximum. It was his sixteenth homicide conviction, and his sentences then totaled 403 years and 10 months.
On October 18 he was convicted of the murder of Paulo Sérgio Xavier de Bastos and sentenced to 20 years. He stayed silent when called to testify. Delegada Flávia Santos Andrade told the jury that ballistic analysis tied the same weapon to five homicides, and prosecutor Maurício Gonçalves de Camargos said he had terrorized Goiânia from 2012 to 2014 by killing people at random. Judge Alcântara found him fully responsible and said he had thrown the society of Goiás into panic.
On November 7, 2016, he was convicted of the murder of Ana Maria Victor Duarte and sentenced to 20 years. Two witnesses said they recognized him as the gunman, the prosecution cited ballistics linking the bullet to his revolver, and when he was questioned he said only that he was very sorry. On November 22 he was sentenced to 19 years and 6 months for the murder of Denílson Ferreira de Freitas.
The next day, November 23, a jury convicted him of the murder of Thamara da Conceição Silva. Judge Alcântara set a base term of 20 years and 6 months, took off six months because he had confessed to the police, and added a year because the victim was pregnant, for a sentence of 21 years. The judge treated him as technically a first offender, because none of his other convictions had become final when the crime was committed. It was his 23rd trial. He had then been convicted of 21 homicides, the lottery robberies and the gun offense, acquitted once, and sentenced to a total of 524 years and 4 months.
The first acquittal came on October 26, 2016, in the case of Edimila Ferreira Borges. The Ministério Público asked the jury to acquit him, citing a lack of evidence that he had fired the shot, and the jury did so. By June 2018 he had been acquitted in three of his trials.
The case of Diego Martins Mendes was contested from the start. Diego, 15, disappeared in Goiânia on November 9, 2011, after enrolling for a place at a military school, and his body was not found. The case was handled first as a disappearance. After his arrest Gomes da Rocha confessed to the police that he had killed the boy; a delegado later testified that the confession was voluntary. At a hearing in April 2016 he refused to answer questions, saying only, "I want to tell the truth, but I feel it is not the time." Diego's mother testified that he had gone only between home and school. In May 2016 Judge Alcântara sent the case to a jury, ruling that the absence of a body did not prevent a finding that a crime had occurred.
Other cases sent to juries included the killings of Mateus Henrique de Morais and Karina dos Santos Farias, the only double homicide charged against him; that of Pedro Henrique de Paula Souza, set for trial on November 10, 2016; and the stabbing of Aleandro Santos Miranda. In the Aleandro case he first admitted the killing to police, then said he had been too drunk to remember, then said in court that he had been pressured into confessing to several crimes and that this might be one of them.
In November 2016 the second criminal chamber of the TJGO, following the vote of Desembargador Leandro Crispim, confirmed two of the convictions: 20 years for the murder of Ana Rita de Lima and 25 years for the murder of Bárbara Luíza Ribeiro Costa. The defense had argued that the prosecution went beyond the charge by mentioning other victims, that the verdict was against the evidence and that the qualifying circumstances should be dropped. The chamber rejected each point. It found that his statements to police, which he did not retract in court, and his letter to the jurors supported the verdict, and it described his motive as anger against the world.
The 2016 conviction for the murder of Paulo Sérgio Xavier de Bastos was annulled at the defense's request, because the lawyer handling the case at the time had withdrawn from it. A new jury convicted him again on June 21, 2018, and Judge Mascarenhas imposed 20 years, again citing the medical finding of emotional coldness and a tendency to manipulation. By then, Jornal Opção reported, he had been convicted of 28 homicides and other crimes, acquitted in three trials, and sentenced to a total of 656 years.
The trials continued into the second half of 2018. A jury trial for the murder of Wanessa Oliveira Felipe was set for July 9, 2018. On September 20, 2018, he went before a jury for the murder of Bruna Gleycielle de Sousa Gonçalves, with Judge Mascarenhas presiding and Maurício Gonçalves de Camargos prosecuting; his sentences then stood at 662 years, according to Rota Jurídica. In all, the judge told O Hoje in 2026, there were 32 trials, and Judge Alcântara presided over 20 of them.
The totals reported over the years do not agree: 662 years before the September 2018 trial, and 619 years after all 32 trials in the 2026 count. Either way, the figure is far beyond what he can serve. Judge Alcântara told O Hoje that the law in force at the time of the crimes set 30 years as the maximum time a person could be held on a prison sentence.
From his arrest he was held at the Núcleo de Custódia, the maximum-security unit of the prison complex in Aparecida de Goiânia, and the courts directed that his sentences be served in closed conditions, several of them at the Penitenciária Odenir Guimarães in the same complex. In October 2026, twelve years after his arrest, Judge Alcântara told O Hoje that he remained in custody, and said the case's main lesson was the careful investigative work of the Polícia Civil.
The number of killings attached to Gomes da Rocha has never been fixed. Police said in October 2014 that he confessed to 39 homicides and that the figure could reach 40. At his first trial, in February 2016, he was described as facing 35 homicide cases, and he said he was not responsible for all of them. In April 2016 the court said he was named in 37 deaths. By the end of the trials, juries had convicted him in 28 homicide cases by June 2018, with more trials afterward, and acquitted him in at least three. Killings he confessed to but was never tried for are attributed to him by the police, not by any court.
Much of the case rested on his own statements. He confessed in detail to the police and then, in court, alternately stayed silent, denied particular killings, said he could not remember, or said he had been pressured. In the cases tried, the prosecution relied as well on ballistic tests, which tied the gun seized at his home to many of the deaths, on identifications by witnesses and survivors, and on the motorcycle and its stolen plate. In at least one case the only eyewitness said he was not the man, and the jury acquitted him.
The sentence totals also vary between reports, and some counts were published before verdicts were final or before appeals had been heard.
November 9, 2011: Diego Martins Mendes, 15, disappears in Goiânia; Gomes da Rocha later confesses to police and is sent to trial in 2016.
November 20, 2011: Aleandro Santos Miranda, a day guard at the security company where Gomes da Rocha also worked, is stabbed to death in Goiânia; Gomes da Rocha is later charged.
October 2012 to February 2013: several men are shot in Goiânia; Rafael Carvalho Gonçalves, 22, is killed on February 16, 2013.
August 19, 2013: Edimila Ferreira Borges, 18, is killed in Parque João Braz (Gomes da Rocha later acquitted).
December 2013 to August 2014: a series of shootings of women and girls in Goiânia, from Ana Karla Lemes da Silva, 15 (December 15, 2013) to Ana Lídia Gomes, 14 (August 2, 2014).
August 2014: the Polícia Civil forms a task force; Gomes da Rocha is hired by the security company Fortesul.
September and October 2014: the same lottery agency in central Goiânia is robbed twice.
October 9, 2014: temporary arrest ordered by Judge Eduardo Pio Mascarenhas da Silva.
October 14, 2014: arrested at night in Goiânia; police say he confesses to 39 homicides.
November 21, 2014: first three inquiries sent to the courts; preventive detention ordered.
April 2015: convicted of two robberies of the lottery agency, 12 years 4 months.
May 2015: convicted of illegal possession of a firearm, 3 years (converted).
February 12, 2016: his letter to the jurors is added to the case file.
February 16, 2016: first murder conviction (Ana Karla Lemes da Silva), 20 years.
April 20, 2016: 25 years for the murder of Bárbara Luíza Ribeiro Costa, 14.
September 26, 2016: 30 years, the maximum, for the murder of Rafael Carvalho Gonçalves; total 403 years 10 months.
October 26, 2016: first acquittal (Edimila Ferreira Borges).
November 2016: TJGO confirms two convictions on appeal.
November 23, 2016: 21 years for the murder of Thamara da Conceição Silva; 21 homicide convictions, total 524 years 4 months.
June 21, 2018: convicted again at the retrial for the murder of Paulo Sérgio Xavier de Bastos; 28 homicide convictions and 3 acquittals, total 656 years.
September 20, 2018: tried for the murder of Bruna Gleycielle de Sousa Gonçalves.
October 2026: 32 trials in all, sentences totaling 619 years; still in custody.