Valentina de Andrade was the leader of a religious group called the Lineamento Universal Superior. In the 1990s she was named in the prosecution that followed the killings of boys in Altamira, a town in the state of Para. The charge against her was that she took part, as a co-author, in homicides and attempted homicides against five minors between 1989 and 1993. A jury in Belem acquitted her in December 2003, by six votes to one, after a trial that lasted 17 days.
The court case began in 1992. A police inquiry had been completed after the death of one boy, and in December 1992 the first defendant, a businessman named Amailton Madeira Gomes, was charged over that death. In 1993 the Federal Police named five people in total, two of them physicians in Altamira, and all five were brought into the single prosecution that went to trial in Belem. Families of the dead and of other boys considered the outcome partial, because not every case was tried. One boy's death was in the police report but was never prosecuted.
Valentina de Andrade was added to the case when the Para state prosecutors amended the charge to name her as a co-author. She was 72 at the time of trial.
Her lawyers challenged the amended charge in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) through an ordinary appeal in habeas corpus, number RHC 83178, filed in June 2003. They asked the court to annul the charge on the ground that it did not describe what her co-authorship consisted of, and to annul the ruling that sent her to trial. The Second Panel of the STF unanimously denied the appeal on September 16, 2003. The court found that the charge described the facts to be investigated, so that the defense could contest them at trial, and that the ruling sending her to a jury was sufficiently reasoned and could not be reviewed in habeas corpus proceedings.
The trial before the Tribunal do Juri in Belem began in August 2003. Four defendants were convicted and sentenced to between 35 and 77 years in prison. They included two physicians and the businessman charged in 1992, who received 57 years for murder, with other charges, in the 15th Criminal Court of Belem, jury division. In December 2004 the STF granted preliminary release to two of the convicted men while their appeals were pending, on the ground that the presumption of innocence applies until a conviction is final.
Her lawyers produced a document from the Parana state police indicating that she was not in Altamira when the crimes occurred. On a Friday in December 2003 the jurors voted six to one to acquit her. Families of the boys protested in the courtroom. The prosecution said it would appeal.
She died in the early hours of December 31, 2022 in Londrina, in Parana, at the age of 91.
The families of the boys have put the number of victims in the region at 19, and the court did not try them all for lack of sufficient evidence. The jury accepted the defense position that the evidence did not establish her part in the five cases before it. The defense of another convicted man argued in 2004 that a different suspect was responsible, which the STF reported as an allegation and did not assess.
1989 to 1993: the five cases in Altamira, Para, named in the charge.
December 1992: first defendant charged over one boy's death.
1993: Federal Police name five people in total, including two physicians.
June 11, 2003: her appeal in habeas corpus (RHC 83178) reaches the STF.
August 2003: jury trial begins in Belem.
September 16, 2003: the STF Second Panel unanimously denies the appeal.
December 2003: four defendants convicted (35 to 77 years); she is acquitted, six to one.
December 10, 2004: STF grants preliminary release to two convicted men.
December 31, 2022: she dies in Londrina, aged 91.