The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (47 page)

“The monster tried to help out the mothers of the children he killed because he was looking for victims,” she said.

She said she had shown Chagas a photograph of her son after he disappeared, and the killer laughed and told her he had not seen him.

“It seemed like he was laughing at my suffering,” she said.

The trial was held in the auditorium of a club in Sao Jose de Ribamar, 1,400 miles north-east of Rio de Janeiro, because the courtroom was not big enough to hold the hundreds of victims’ relatives.

Prosecutors say they charged Chagas with Jonathan Silva Vieira’s murder first because it was the case in which they had the most evidence.

Chagas was arrested in April 2004 after neighbours complained of a stench coming from his ramshackle house on the outskirts of the Maranhao state capital of Sao Luis. Officers secured a search warrant and dug up a dirt floor to find two skeletons. One was identified as a four-year-old boy named Daniel and the other of a child Chagas said was called Diego. Daniel’s father recognized scraps of clothing as a T-shirt he was wearing when he disappeared in February 2003.

According to police, Chagas quickly confessed to the killings and those of at least 18 other young boys. The methods he used were similar to those used in the spate of murders that ravaged Maranhao and the neighbouring state of Para between 1989 and 2003. The police said that Chagas lived in both states at the times the killings took place.

The series of killings shocked even Brazil, where violence is common and the murder rate is one of the world’s highest. Reports that Chagas sexually assaulted the boys and then castrated them added to the outrage, as did allegations that some of the earlier killings that took place in Para between 1989 and 1993 were related to a satanic cult. Such things are not uncommon in Brazil.

On 27 November 1998, Brazilian police arrested six members of the United Pentecostal Church of Brazil, who had beaten and kicked to death six people, including three children, purportedly so that the perpetrators would be taken to heaven “after wiping out the enemies of God”. The cult practiced their bizarre rituals on a remote rubber plantation where men, women and children were subjected to vicious ritual beatings. Among those arrested was Francisco Bezerra de Moraes, aka Toto, who was believed to be the leader of the 30-member sect.

The killings began two weeks before the arrests when Bezerra announced during a sermon that he could hear “voices from Jesus Christ” telling him that the former pastor of the group and all his followers must be punished. Bezerra, his wife and two other men then began beating, whipping and kicking other worshippers. For the next several days “disciplinary” torture continued in nearby shacks.

“Each day began with a ceremony venerating of Toto’s wife,” said a survivor. “Then came the torture.”

Torture were accompanied by prayers and chants of “Out, Satan!” Among the dead were two brothers aged three and four, who were allegedly killed by their father, and another 13-year-old boy. The mother of the dead brothers was also murdered. The former pastor of the sect escaped and raised the alarm. When police arrived, they discovered the bodies of the dead out in the open, decomposing, torn apart and being eaten by animals.

Then in August 2003, five men went on trial in the Brazilian city of Belem accused of sexually mutilating and murdering young boys in Altamira, a town in the Amazon. They were said to be members of a satanic cult who murdered and mutilated for ten years before being caught. One of the five, Valentina Andrade, was the leader of an occult sect based in Argentina and two were doctors.

Chagas originally told police he did not remember attacking the boys or castrating his victims because his memory was erased at the moment of the killing. Nevertheless, he pleaded guilty to the murder charge. In mitigation he and other witnesses, including his sister, testified that he had been abused as a child by his grandmother and a man named Carlito. Chagas told the court that when he murdered Jonathan Silva Viera, he felt a pent-up rage stemming from those childhood experiences.

“I was seeing Carlito in front of me,” he said.

The killings were so brutal and the inaction of the local police so shocking that the Organization of American States launched a campaign to pressure local authorities into more rigorously investigating the cases. Several foreign and Brazilian human rights groups also petitioned the federal government to intervene in the investigation.

As result, the police in the northern state of Maranhao announced that Francisco das Chagas confessed to the mass killing of 18 boys around Sao Luis from 1991 to 2003. They believe the bicycle mechanic may have killed three others during the same period. Police in neighbouring Para state want to question him concerning the whereabouts of 10 youngsters who were either killed or disappeared there.

In spite of the concerns from human rights groups, the state’s attorney general said the detailed evidence provided by Chagas showed “strong signs” he was responsible, based on his own confessions. But there are concerns. The Organization of American States criticized the state government for failing to cooperate with their inquiry. Children’s rights activitist Pereira da Silva said her organization would focus its attentions on identifying the officers responsible for the imprisonment of Roberio Ribeiro Cruz, who was sentenced to 19 years after supposedly admitting to killing an 11-year old in 1998, and the arrest of two others who are awaiting trial for the slaying of another child in 1996.

According to the police Chagas has now confessed to the killings of 30 boys in Maranhao state and 12 others in Para state between 1991 and 2003, but then retracted his confession again. If convicted of all murders, Chagas would be Brazil’s most prolific serial killer. However, most people involved in the case have their doubts that he is guilty of all the murders he is charged with and are concerned that other child killers are at large.

Brazil’s Killer Beach

Brazilian police said they are hunting another serial killer who has tied up, raped and repeatedly stabbed four women before dumping their bodies in a field close to a motorway. Sergeant Marcelo de Jesus Bispo said officers found the four corpses in Itabuna in the northeastern state of Bahia, 282 miles south of the beach resort of Salvador.

Then in 2005, the police in Maranhao began combing the state’s beaches for more clues to the identity and whereabouts of a middle-aged man suspected of killing two women, from Spain and Germany. A Brazilian woman was also missing, believed she could be a victim of the same killer.

“Everything indicates we are dealing with a serial killer,” Maranhao’s public secretary, Raimundo Cutrim, said. “The women were travelling alone, were beaten to death and were found buried.”

Police said the tourists had all been seen with a man answering the same description.

The body of 27-year-old Nuria Fernandez from Spain was found on an island off the coastal city of Sao Luis on 25 March 2005. Eight days before, the body of 46-year-old German Marianne Kern was found at a nearby beach. The Brazilian Valeria Augusto Veloso disappeared from the same place at around the same time.

On 26 March, police arrested a man who allegedly used Kern’s credit card after her body was found. He said he got the card from a man whose description fitted that of the suspected killer.

Canada’s Beast of British Columbia

In a series of letters to 27-year-old Thomas Loudamy of Fremont, California, accused murder Robert Pickton asserted his innocence and praised the British Columbian judge for dropping 21 of the 27 murder charges against him. He has pleaded not guilty to the remaining six and has expressed his concern about the expense of the investigation which he claims is an attempt to make him a fall guy for all the missing women in British Columbia. There are at the very least 65 women missing from Vancouver’s Downside Eastside alone, the area where Pickton is said to have selected his victims.

The ten blocks of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside comprise not just the poorest area in British Columbia, but the poorest in the whole of Canada. They call the neighbourhood “Low Track”. At its centre is the intersection of Main and Hastings, called “Pain and Wastings” by locals. Its shabby hotels, rundown bars and dilapidated pawn shops are home to 5,000 to 10,000 at any one time. Crack cocaine and heroin are supplied by Asian gangs and bikers who are frequently involved in turf wars. Most of the women addicts support their habits by prostitution, giving Low Track the highest HIV infection rate in North America.

Low Track became famous for its “kiddy stroll”, which featured prostitutes as young as 11. Some underage girls work the streets; others are kept by pimps in special “trick pads”. New “twinkies” – runaways lured by the bright lights – arrive every day. Over 80 percent of the prostitutes in Low Track were born and brought outside Vancouver. A survey in 1995 showed that 73 percent of the girls had started in the sex trade as children. The same percentage were mothers with an average of three children each. Some 90 percent had had their children taken into care. Most did not know where their children were. In 1998, on average, there was one death a day from drug overdoses among these women.

But there were other dangers. In 1983, women began to go missing from Low Track. The police did not notice the trend for nearly 14 years. That was hardly surprising as most of the inhabitants were transients, and runaways change their names and addresses regularly. Some simply moved on. But by 1997, the police began to fear that more than two dozen had been murdered. It was then that they began to compile a list.

The first of the 61 names to be put on the list was that of 23-year-old Rebecca Guno, a prostitute and drug addict last seen alive on 22 June 1983. She was reported missing three days later. Such rapid reporting is unusual. Forty-three-year-old Sherry Rail – the next on the list – was not reported missing until three years after she disappeared in January 1984.

Elaine Auerbach, aged 33, told friends she was moving to Seattle in March 1986 but she never turned up and she was reported missing in mid-April. Teressa Ann Williams, the first First-Nations woman on the list, was 15 when she was last seen alive in July 1988, but was not reported missing until March 1999. Thirty-year-old Ingrid Soet, a schizophrenic on medication, disappeared on 28 August 1989 and was reported missing on 1 October 1990. The first black woman on the list was Kathleen Dale Wattley. She was 32 years old when she vanished on 18 June 1992 and was reported missing 11 days later.

There was then a three-year hiatus. But in March 1995 47-year-old Catherine Gonzales, a drug user and sex-trade worker, disappeared. She was reported missing 9 February 1996. In April 1995, 32-year-old Catherine Maureen Knight went missing. Her disappearance was reported to the police on 11 November. Dorothy Spence, a 33-year-old First-Nations woman, vanished on 6 August 1995. Her disappearance was reported earlier on 30 October. Then 22-year-old Diana Melnick disappeared two days after Christmas and was reported missing two days later.

There was another hiatus until 3 October 1996 when 22-year-old drug user and prostitute Tanya Holyk disappeared. Her family knew something was wrong when she didn’t come home to see her son, who was about to turn one, after a night out with friends. Pickton has since been charged with her murder. She was reported missing on 3 November. Olivia Gale Williams, aged 21, disappeared on 6 December 1996 and was not reported missing until 4 July the following year.

Twenty-year-old Stephanie Lane left her two-year-old son with her mother along with an uncashed welfare cheque, though she continued to call on birthdays and holidays. Then on 11 March 1997, she was released from hospital after an episode of drug psychosis. She was last seen alive at the Patricia Hotel on Hastings Street later that day. She has not been heard of since.

Twenty-two-year old Helen Mae Hallmark was last seen alive on 17 June 1997 and reported missing on 23 September 1998. Her sister wrote a poem to her memory.

Janet Henry, who also went missing in June 1997, came from the KwaKwaQueWak Nation in Kingcome Inlet in British Columbia, the youngest in a family of thirteen. She had a happy childhood until her mother fell ill and her father died. The children were sent to residential schools and foster homes, losing all ties to their native culture. Her sister Lavina was raped and murdered when she was 19. Another sibling killed himself.

A bright young woman, Janet graduated from high school, became a trained hairdresser, married and had a daughter, who she was devoted to. But when the marriage broke up in the late 1980s, her husband was given custody of their daughter. Janet was devastated and her life went into free-fall. She moved to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and begun attending parties where she exchanged sex for drugs.

She had already had one brush with a serial killer. In the early 1980s, she met Clifford Olson, who drugged and raped her, but her life was spared. Olson pleaded guilty to 11 murders in 1982. All too aware of the dangers of her profession, Janet would phone her brothers and sisters frequently to let them know she was okay. She was reported missing on 28 June 1997, two days after her last contact with her siblings.

Marnie Lee Frey, 27, was last seen alive in August 1997, though she was not reported missing until 4 September 1998. She had a baby at 18 and asked her parents to adopt the child.

“She said, ‘Mom, this is the only thing I can do for her. I love her dearly, but I know I can’t look after her as a mom,’” her mother recalled.

Her parents pretended that the child, Brittney, was Marnie’s younger sister but were forced to tell her the truth in the light of the publicity surrounding the case.

Jacqueline Murdock, aged 26, was last seen alive on 14 August but was not reported missing until 30 October 1998. Thirty-three-year-old Cindy Louise Beck disappeared in September 1997 and was reported missing on 30 April 1998. Andrea Fay Borhaven, aged 25, had no fixed address until she vanished sometime during 1997, it is thought. Her disappearance was only reported to the police on 18 May 1999. Thirty-eight-year-old Kerry Lynn Koski disappeared in January 1998 and was reported missing on the 29th of the month.