RedHanded - The Witches of Guaratuba: Black Magic, Child Sacrifice and a Deadly Plot | #470

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

In the early 1990s, the beach town of Guaratuba, Brazil had its very own witch hunt.It started with the mutilated body of a seven-year-old boy: Evandro Ramos Caetano... And it would end with a coven of accused ‘black magic’ practitioners – including the mayor’s own wife and daughter – sentenced to decades behind bars for alleged child sacrifice rituals.But as shocking claims emerged of political scheming and torture-fuelled confessions, was that really the whole story? Or did the trouble brewing in Guaratuba run far deeper?--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Hello, I know this isn't how we normally start an episode, but it is October. It's the first week of October. I was like, oh, what is she going to say? Like, I haven't been briefed. What is she going to do? No, nothing crazy today. Just welcoming everybody to our favourite month here at Red Hand at HQ. It is, of course, spooky season.

It is October. So we're going to do what we do every year. We're going to be pulling out some of the weirdest, spookiest, creepiest stories we can. to keep you entertained this festive season. And we're kicking off in Brazil today. Hmm. Which is fun, but also kind of not fun, because there's a lot of words to pronounce today. I am very scared.

It's our own nightmare. This is truly a horror show for me. I'm sweating. I was practicing this morning, but it's going to be rough. And I can only apologize. Everything is attempted. We actually have an entire pronunciation glossary. today, but I'm scared.

It is the opinion of some people that we don't try. We really do, I promise. I understand why it sounds like we're like, oh, fucking whatever. But I promise, this consumes me. This occupies a lot of my mental space, my inability to pronounce words correctly. But you know what? It's statistically impossible for us to get it right all the time. And also, look, if we were just scared of doing these pronunciations,

and we would never do any cases outside of the English-speaking world. That is a fair point. So let's do it. Let's get into it. In April, 1992, a six-year-old boy vanished on his way home from school in the picturesque seaside town of Guarituba, Brazil. Five days later, Little Lavandro's mutilated body was found dumped in woodland, missing his eyes, hands, and even his heart.

And right on cue, the satanic panic alarm started blaring at full blast, with the angry mob's torches illuminating a black magic human sacrifice ritual, allegedly orchestrated by the mayor's own wife and daughter, and tied to a sinister web of missing children across the state. But with whispers of confessions made under torture, political rivalries and police corruption, was this twisted tale the full story? Or were there even darker forces at work?

I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And this is red-handed. Now, Guarotuba might not seem like the obvious location for a spooky witchy story. Once a humble fishing town, it's now a vibrant tourist spot on Brazil's southern coastline,

known for its stunning beaches, attracting day-trippers from the nearby metropolis of Curitiba, which is the capital, the Perun Estate. It's the kind of place that you would associate more

with sunbathing than hell-raising. Back in 1992, it was home to six-year-old Evandro Ramos Kaitano. Evandro came from an ordinary middle-class family. His dad, Edomir, worked for the city council, and his mum Maria had a job at the local school.

On Monday, the 6th of April 1992, after his mum Maria left for work early, little Evandro made himself a simple breakfast and joined her at the August Silvaria school, just 100 metres from their home. It was a normal day for them. Evandro had lessons in the afternoons, but would regularly spend the mornings hanging out with his mum.

But on this particular Monday, Evandro realised he'd left his handheld games console at his house. So he said he was just popping back to get it. He was never seen alive again. Maria returned home at lunchtime to find the console still there, but no sign of her son. It wasn't like Evandro to just wander off without telling her, so she raised the alarm. Before we go into the police investigation, we need to clear up how this process actually works in Brazil, because it can be a bit complicated. The country has three major crime fighting forces, the federal police, the civil police and the military police.

The federal police agency works on a national level, dealing with high-level operations like organized crime or political corruption similar to the FBI in the US. The civil police force operates at a state level, investigating crimes like homicides, robberies and violence after they occur, basically like plainclothes detectives. The military police respond to emergencies in progress and perform routine policing at a state level with a visible patrol presence. Imagine your classic uniformed cops. And while the military police act as day-to-day enforcers, only the federal and civil police technically have the power to investigate crimes and build legal cases for prosecutors. And we're saying all this because we want you to remember it,

because it is going to come in useful later on. Within a day of Evandro's disappearance, the mayor of Guarotupa, Aldo Abaji, called in the big guns, in the form of a civil police task force named Grupo Tigre, which I think you can guess what it means, tag a group. This is technically an acronym that when translated, stands for tactical integration of specialised repression groups,

but I think it's a bit more likely that they just wanted an excuse to call themselves Grupo Tigray. Whoever thought of K-9 unit, I salute you, I think about it all the time, just waking up in the middle of the night being like, I've got it. But this specialist team aren't dogs. They are humans and also tigers, with extensive experience handling kidnapping cases, which in early 90s Brazil was very much having a moment. It had become a lucrative business for petty criminals to snatch wealthy people off the streets and demand a ransom and then return them safely once the money had been paid. But since Evandro was an ordinary boy and no ransom note had been left, it most likely raised a few eyebrows when the tigers.

came to tea. Groupotigre arrived in Guarituba on Tuesday night. Around 36 hours after Evandro was reported missing, they insisted they were hoping to find Evandro alive, even though, as we all know, the first 24 hours are the most crucial in cases like this. As hours turned into days, hopes slowly faded. And on Saturday the 11th of April, five days after Evandro's disappearance,

everyone's worst fears were tragically confirmed. After two local lumberjacks noticed vultures circling a wild thicket, they ventured into the tangled underbrush and discovered the mangled body of a young child. It was assumed that the body belonged to Evandro because of his clothes and the house keys found close by. Identifying him by appearance alone was basically virtually impossible, because when we say that this child had been brutally mutilated, we mean it. Evandro's throat was slashed and his body was bruised as they were, he'd been beaten. His torso appeared to have been cut open with multiple organs, including his

intestines, his liver and his heart, all having been removed. Most of the hair from his head was also gone as if he'd been scout and his eyes, ears, genitals and hands were also missing. Forensic analysis indicated that six-year-old Evandro had been killed elsewhere and dumped in the thicket, which was around a kilometre or so from his family home. Since Evandro's body was already severely decomposed and had been exposed to wildlife over several days, it was difficult to tell exactly what damage had been inflicted by his killer versus what had occurred naturally. Even the hungriest of animals, don't rip a kid's heart out right from their chest. The missing organs were very cleanly taken. They weren't animal attacks.

Whoever did this meant to do what they did and take what they took. There was no doubt at all that Evandro had been murdered. And whoever did this, had gone a twisted step further by desecrating his body. As the gruesome details spread through Guarotuba and beyond, people began locking up their children. This was a bona fide, satanic panic moment. The people of Piranha's state had good reason to be freaking out, because Evandra was far from the only child to have disappeared around that time.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Piranha was experiencing an atypical spate of child disappearances, with at least 28 children officially reported missing. One huge case was the suspected abduction of 8-year-old Guilama Tibatiis in June 1991, who was last seen playing on his bike in the Kurichiba suburbs. And just two months before Evandro's murder, seven-year-old Leandro Bossi had also mysteriously vanished

without a trace from a carnival party in Guarituba. We'll talk more about him later. Here is where things start to get really dark. It was quickly noted that several of the missing kids, including Evandro and Leandro, had fair hair and light-coloured eyes. So naturally, people started joining the dots and speculated that perhaps these killings weren't so random. And instead, those boys had been selected as, quote, perfect children. Without even getting into the colourism implications of all of that,

we have to quite nervously ask, perfect for what? People's imaginations were ablaze with possibilities from illegal adoption to international sex trafficking, but pretty much all roads lead to one sickening theory, being whispered in Parano. The existence of so-called black magic cults who were sacrificing children.

And look, we've been down the satanic panic. Rabbit holes several times before I'm red-handed. And we've seen cases where it's like, Where's that come from? Where children are making wild accusations with no evidence, blah, blah, blah. We've talked about that before. But here, it's not that much of a stretch to feel like that's what's happening when a body of a six-year-old, like Evandro's turns up with his internal organs missing and his face basically ripped off and having been scalped. Like, you can understand why people are like, this is demonic.

Yes, I agree. I can understand why that's the fear at this point. And maybe to you un-Hallewini people, the black magic thing might sound like a bit of a leap. But it was actually a pretty hot topic in Brazilian pop culture back in the early 90s, just like it was basically everywhere else. The TV miniseries, Isle of the Witches, had the majority Catholic population clutching their rosaries

just a year earlier, traumatising a whole generation of kids. But if those fears had previously seemed the far-fetched stuff of soap operas, the discovery of Avandro's mutilated body changed everything. I'm a Catholic so I can say this. The Catholic mass is cannibalism. That's what it is, the body and blood in Christ. The major difference in doctrine between Catholicism and Protestantism is in Protestantism. It's a symbol in Catholicism. It literally is. So in a country with so many Catholics, like Brazil, it just isn't that far-fetched. You can absolutely understand how that way of worship in the church could be seen as being perverted, turned into something else, doing it to children in the means of

worshipping something else. It really is a hop-skippenob tabernacle away. Now meanwhile, a group O Tigray had an enormous task on their stripy paws because you have to remember all of this is going on pre-DNA testing. So all they really had to go on was this horribly mutilated body and a whole city full of potential suspects. But as weeks passed without them catching the killer or really so much as getting a sniff of a lead, many of the panicked locals grew for frustrated at the lack of progress. And the Evandro case eventually became the spark that lit the fuse on civil unrest in Guarotuba. Because those previous children had gone missing.

And when children go missing, children turned up without their fucking body parts. That's going to be pretty much the worst case scenario if you're trying to quell civil unrest. Like people were going to go crazy. And students began protesting in the city square demanding better police protection while angry mums waved banners featuring photos of the missing kids and calling for more decisive action to tackle the demonic threat seemingly plaguing the region. And these flames were fanned further by local media outlets who stirred the pot by raising questions about how Guarotuba's political bigwigs were responding to the crisis. And this is where we introduce you to a hugely

important figure in this story. The formidable first lady of Guarotuba, the mayor's wife, Salis Donna Salina was a big deal around those parts. Even though her husband Alder was technically the one with the fancy title, she was involved in several city projects and pulled a lot of political strings behind the scenes. So much so that she was jokingly referred to as the real boss in Guarotupa. So when a local paper reported that Donna Salina had personally made efforts to block several of these protests in a bid to protect the city from bad press, It's fair to say that it ruffled a fair few feathers around town and caused some to question if their local politicians actually gave a shit about the missing and murdered kids.

And then came along a guy who made it his personal mission to make things even worse for Selena. A vigilante warrior named Diogenes Caitano. Does that surname sound familiar, listeners? Good work if it did. And if it didn't, it's probably because we've said it wrong. Diojones was Evandro's second cousin. Although, he presented himself more as an uncle figure because he was so much older than the six-year-old, and he very publicly devotes himself to getting justice for his nephew. Having spent 10 years with the civil police and a year with the military police before retraining as an engineer, Diozini clearly felt that he had the credentials to take the investigation into his own hands. From day one, he forced himself into the spotlight as a sort of unofficial

spokesperson for Avandro's family. And let's just say he had a lot of opinion. Never one to be camera shy, Diogenes appeared on multiple TV news channels, accusing the local political administration of actively hindering the investigation. He alleged that the city's press officer was blocking journalists from reporting on the case on direct orders from Mayor Aldo Abaji. The mayor's office insisted that this was just protocol to protect the police investigation. But Dioconis was like a dog with a bone. And it turned out that this particular beef actually went way back. Diozini's father, Diozini Sr., was actually the mayor of Guarituba back in the 70s,

and at the time the family were very close friends with a rising politician named Aldo Abaji and his young wife, Selena. They would enjoy dinner parties together and even double dates, but if you believe Diogini Jr., that's not all they shared. Rumors of a torrid affair between Diozini Sr. and Selena destroyed the couple's once close bond, and led to the breakup of the city's first couple, which is Diojini Sr. and his wife. Selina and Diojini Sr. adamantly denied cheating, but the mayor's wife certainly believed that it happened, and crucially, so did a then 12-year-old Diojones.

Blaming Selena for being the other woman who caused his parents' divorce, he harbored a lifelong grudge against the Abarges that only festered with time. And this vendetta wasn't just personal. it was political too. Theogenes had been a vocal critic of Aldo Abaji's regime even before Evandro vanished, publishing at least nine pamphlets slagging off the city's top dog. Although Abaji's term, as mayor was coming to an end, Donna Salina was still very much involved in local politics. In fact, she'd been campaigning to manoeuvre her preferred candidates into local council seats for the upcoming election. At the same time, Diogenes was running for councilmen.

for the opposing party. Needless to say, there was no love lost between Georgians and the Abadji family, but nobody could have predicted just how explosive their feud would become. In their initial investigations, Grupo Tigray's prime suspect was a guy called Euclidio Suarez, who lived right by the thicket where Evandra's body was found. From the very start, Dioginis insisted that they were barking up the wrong tree, though. He befriended Euclidio, and even. and gave him money, claiming that he felt sorry for him as a persecuted poor man,

and urged Grupo Tigre to look elsewhere. As for where he thought they ought to be looking, according to the unit's lead investigators, Diogenes hounded them with his own theories and tried to steer them towards his preferred suspects, one of whom was a mysterious guy called Osvaldo Marcinio. To understand why exactly Osvaldo caught Diogenes' attention, We need to explain first the mystical world of Macumba in Brazil.

Osvaldo was what was known as Piedasanto, a type of spiritual leader involved in the Afro-Brazilian religions of Umbanda and Candomble. Known collectively and not always kindly as Macumba, these practices emerged hundreds of years ago after the colonial Portuguese rulers forcibly converted African slaves to Catholicism. While these religions have their roots in, in Nigerian Europe, a spiritualism,

they're mixed with some elements of Catholic faith and worship that make them uniquely Brazilian. Followers of these religions believe in gods and goddesses called Eresha, who represent different areas

of the natural world, with passions and flaws just like ours. Basically a bit like the Catholic saints, but less holier than now. Worship involves communing with the Eurasia through prayer and ritual offerings at altars, usually with simple items like flowers,

candles, sweets, and animal sacrifices are made. including specially prepared goats and poultry, but that is said to be quite rare, and practitioners refute any notion at all of human sacrifice. Of course, people who partake in this, who practice this kind of thing, are going to say, oh, we don't do any human sacrifice.

They're like, we barely even do animal sacrifices. It's incredibly rare that we do that. And look, I'm no expert in these religions and what's going on in Brazil, but I did have a quick look. there have been multiple cases of accusations of this kind of thing happening. The Witches of Guarituba is like the most famous story around this kind of case. But there have been multiple arrests before of priests and people who are involved in these religions, having been at least accused of or if not outright convicted of human sacrifice or murder in the name of this religion.

So I think that while they're saying it never ever happens, it's completely ridiculous. and they distance themselves when those cases do come up. I think it's a stretch to say that it's like never there. And also, like, we are going to talk about actually when we get to the Halloween story swaps. You know, if you look at religions in Africa, we're not a million miles away from things like Muti murder, which we've talked about before, and even things like money rituals in Nigeria where people essentially believe if they murder somebody in this sort of human sacrifice situation, that it can bring wealth and riches to them personally, if that it's done in a sort of

spiritually accurate way. So I think that it might make people feel uncomfortable to say that these things are happening because it feels so unbelievable. I think we can't deny the fact that it is happening. And I did quite a lot of research into these money rituals in Nigeria. It's definitely happening. And it's barely under the surface. That doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah. Having said that, a lot of these religions have an unfairly bad reputation in Brazil due to their association with black magic and voodoo. A lot of that stigma is rooted in racism, even though not everyone who practices umbunda or candombly is necessarily black. And the rest of it could be thanks to a generalised suspicion of any religion other than the dominant Christianity. And that is

true. There definitely is attempts to make any religion that isn't Christianity look barbarous, like we know that, but like doesn't mean that sacrifices weren't happening ever at all. And as a result, Markunbe has always been deeply misunderstood and demonised in mainstream Brazilian society. And nowhere would this prove to be more true than the Evandro Ramos Kotano case. And the guy we've been talking about, Osvaldo, specialised in what's called Yoga Day Busios, the art of divination through reading cowrie shells. And cowrie shells are like, you know those shells when people have gone on holiday somewhere and then they like come back with a necklace.

Yeah, like puka shells. Yeah. So it's basically divination using those. It's a way of connecting with the orishas, answering spiritual questions and communicating with lost loved ones. And this is how Osvaldo made the majority of his living. After arriving in Gorotuba just a few months earlier, Osvaldo had set up a stall at the Maker's Market

where he offered shell readings and other spiritual services, which raised eyebrows among the more conservative types, like Diogenes. But according to Diogenes, Osvaldo's behaviour was more than just a bit spooky. On the night that Evandro disappeared, his Aunt Davina had actually sought Osvaldo's spiritual help, and whilst driving her to various locations in the city to place offerings with the Orishas and pray for Evandro's safe return, Osvaldo reportedly claimed to feel energies emanating from a dark thicket of trees and urged Aunt Devina to leave an offering. at its edge. Five days later, Evandro's body would be found in that very same thicket. At best,

it's an eerie coincidence. But to Diogeny's, it was proof that Osvaldo was involved in Evandro's murder. And I don't know, like we already said, Evandro's body was moved there, according to the coroner after he had been murdered, so it's a dump site. So the fact that this guy's saying this to Aunt Davina five days before his body has found. She could have told anybody, and anybody could have moved if Andro's body there afterwards to try and make it look like Osvaldo was onto something and he's just chatting shit while they're driving around. It's not necessarily a smoking gun, as suspicious as it may initially look. And there was another crucial element fueling Diogenes' conviction here. Osvaldo Marcinero had recently grown close to the daughter of Diogenes' worst enemies,

28-year-old Beatrice Abaji. An occupational therapist who technically lived in Curituba, Beatrice often returned to Guarituba to visit the same spiritual centre as Alvado. While Aldo and Salina were devoted Catholics who were close to senior religious figures in the city, they'd reluctantly allowed Beatrice to explore an interest in esotericism since they thought it was harmless. Needless to say, Diogenes did not share that opinion. Groupot Tigre said that they investigated the centre and its members based on his dogged tip-offs, but ultimately dismissed it as a line of inquiry after informants failed to glean any useful intel.

To be honest, by this point, Diogenes had become a massive pain in the unit's neck, and his obsessive attempts to smear the abogis just made him sound like some sort of mad, grudge-wheeling, broken record. So, after Groupo Tigre made it clear that they would not be following anymore, of his leads, Diogenes was forced to change tag. Instead of trying to tame the tigers, he publicly turned on them. In a series of TV interviews, Diogenes pointed out that despite staying at the city's swankiest hotel, paid for by the mayor and his cronies, for three months by this point, the civil police had conveniently failed to uncover any major leads in Evandro's case. And since the highly connected Abaji's were very cosy with heavyweight politicians,

like Pirana State Representative Anil Barcuri, how could the public trust that they weren't pulling political strings to cover their evil tracks? Diogenes publicly accused Grupo Tigre of being incompetent and corrupt, guilty of either being misled by the Abaji clan or taking dirty money to avoid solving the crime. On the 29th of May 1992, Diojones took his accusations a step further. He submitted a document to the Piranha State Ministry, where he publicly announced his belief that Selena and her daughter Beatrice Abaji were responsible for orchestrating the murder of his nephew, Evandro,

as part of what he sensationally labelled a black magic ritual. And guess what? They listened to him. A special task force attached to him. to the military police was immediately deployed to investigate the case and the so-called Grupo Aguilla. This technically stood for joint intelligence and attack group operation. But I'm sure you can see what's coming. Aguia in Portuguese means eagle. I was reading about Dolly Parton this morning because I was going to talk about her and under the duvet, but then I got distracted and forgot. She prevented the extinction of the bald eagle. What hero. There is an eagle

breeding sanctuary at Dollywood. Love Dolly. RIP. What a wonderful for women. 300 million books from the imagination library, like total. And it's over three million children a year. She sends books to you. What a legend. Because, because, because, because her dad was illiterate. And throughout her whole life, she was always talk about how hardworking and how

intelligent her dad was. But literacy became so important to her because she saw how it stunted him at every time that even though he was really intelligent, he couldn't get through certain doors because he couldn't read all right. And that's why. Anyway, we're now reversing out of my segue. into Tiger versus Eagle, Brazil edition. Grupa Aguwa took over this case right under the civil police's noses,

who had no idea the military police were even conducting their own operations. And if the tigers had been planning on creeping stealthily towards their prey, Eagles swooped in with their sharp talons and snatched it right out of their jaws. Literally days after getting involved, Grupo Aguilla made a wave of arrest following Diogenesa's intel. On the 1st of July they nabbed Osvaldo, followed by two men accused of being his assistants in the alleged ritual. A painter named Vincente de Paula and a local artisan named Davy dos Santos Sores. Donna Salina and her daughter Beatrice were also rounded up a day later. And on the 3rd of July, the arrests of alleged accomplices Sergio Cristofino and Ayrton Badelli brought the total accused up to 7.

On the 7th of July, Grupo Aguilla's fearsome captain, Valdeer Kopetschi and Yvis, published a notorious document known as The Black Magic Dossier, Thunder Clap. I mean, if you want people to read it, that's what you call it. It detailed the arrests of the Guarotuba 7 and the roles that they were believed to have played in Evandro's Kidnap and Murder, spelling it out in no uncertain terms. The participation of these people is irrefutable. in the satanic ritual that occurred on the 7th of April 1992, which resulted in the death of Avandro Ramas Khaitano. And there are also indications that they are perpetrators of other crimes that victimized children who are missing.

Grupa Aguilla declared that not only had they exposed a real-life coven of witches performing horrifying child sacrifices in Guarituba, but it had all been presided over by the city's seemingly unimpeachable, first lady. Juicy, whatever that is in Portuguese. Don't you get, don't start. The Black Magic dossier named Donna Selina as the ringleader, head witch, high priestess,

who commissioned the spiritual works from Osvaldo. Paying seven million cruiseros, the equivalent of just a couple of grand in US dollars, thanks to insane hyperinflation in early 90s Brazil, to carry out what's known as a, the good luck ritual to keep her family in power in Guarituba. And since nothing in this life comes for free, the sacrifice of a healthy little boy, like Edvardo, would surely do the trick in exchange for power and fortune. Along with Osvaldo and Vincente, the Abaji women kidnapped

Evandro after spotting him on the street, using their trusted status to lure him into Beatrice's car. After taking him to the Abaji family sawmill business, the group kept Avagio tied up all night in the back of the office and beat him mercilessly. On the next night, the 7th of April, the seven witches gathered in symbolic white clothing to sacrifice six-year-old Evandro to the Uri Shah. Osvaldo led the spiritual proceedings and conducted the ritual. Vincente de Paula strangled Oswaldo while the others all held him down and together they cut open the little boy's chest and greedily pulled out all of his organs.

Selena and Beatrice specifically took Evandro's heart, placing it in a small clay pot as an offering for the Ishu. Ishu is sometimes compared to St. Anthony. He's sort of a guardian figure between men and deities, and only through him is it possible to invoke the power of the Orisha. After the ritual was complete, the group instructed the sawmills manager, Eton Baddele, to hide Evandro's entrails in a small cavern built into the wall on the ground. described as a little house with a red candle burning inside. Other logistical details like the subsequent cleanup were also dealt with by Sergio Cristofino, who was named by the dossier as the Abaji family hitman.

According to the documents, Selina and Vincente were the ones who dumped Devandro's body in the wooded area where he was found. In all its sensationalised glory, the Black Magic dossier seemed more like a horror film script than something that could actually happen in real life. But here is the truly shocking part. Within hours of their arrests, almost all of the accused had confessed to every single detail. The full sickening story was captured in videotaped confessions

made between the night of the 1st of July and the 2nd of July, while Sergio Christof Lini and Ayrton Bardelli never actually confessed they were implicated by the other five in their statements. Despite some initial bumps and inconsistencies, their stories eventually converged onto one terrifying cohesive tale that would form the basis of the Black Magic dossier.

There was just one snag. These taped confessions weren't technically illegally binding because they had only been given to military police personnel. So the first official statements in front of state prosecutors were taken on the night of the 2nd of July at the military police's headquarters in a nearby town. And then there's another problem. Now flanked by lawyers, Selena and... and Beatrice were denying any involvement,

and they claimed that they had been forced to confess in the earlier tapes. But Osvaldo Vincente and Davy didn't have lawyers, and they kept on singing. The first official confessions came pouring out, implicating all seven of the accused in the gruesome ritual that had claimed Little of Andrew's life. So at this stage, it pretty much looked like the case was closed. They had caught the witches of Guarotuba.

And Guarotuba erupted. To the public, it seemed like the military police had achieved in a matter of days what the civil police had failed to do in three months, exposing a corrupt bureaucratic regime that had only been toppled by Grupo Aguirre's rough justice. And finally, their simmering anger boiled over. Violent riots broke out in the town square, with furious citizens hurling bricks at the mayor's house and targeting other government buildings.

Crowds chanted burn the witch as Selena was transported. to prison and anyone associated with the old regime in Guaritoba came under suspicion, with protests wielding signs accusing senior council workers, civil police officers and local government figures of eating children and practicing witchcraft. Naturally, state government officials were absolutely shitting themselves that they had been tarred with the same satanic brush. So they loudly distanced themselves from the Abaji family. Prana's public secretary of security gave interviews claiming that he would throw the prisoners

in a public square to be lynched once they were found guilty in court. And Diogenes Caitano, he was hailed as a hero in the local media for his vigilante efforts to solve the case, boasting the proud nickname of the witch-catcher. It's not quite as good as the witch-finder general, but he can have it. Maybe it sounds better in Portuguese. Unsurprisingly, the press wasted no time in publishing wild theories linking the witches of Guarotuba to the wider space of missing children across the Paranastate. The most explicit connection, though, was that the unsolved disappearance, of Leandro Bossi in February

1992. On the 13th of July, almost a fortnight after the arrests, which captured Diogenes and Grupa Aguirre's captain Valdei Copicchinevas dropped a brand new bombshell. Osvaldo and Vincente had allegedly confessed in prison to also killing little Leandro. The story went that Ayrton Bandelli and Sergio Cristofilini had snatched the boy from a carnival party

on Osvaldo's orders, driving off on a motorbike. They took Leandro to a remote stretch of beach. where Osvaldo and Vincente were waiting, and the men performed a human sacrifice ritual to the sea goddess Lemanja. They drained Leandro of two liters of blood before dumping his body in the ocean. But here's the tricky bit. These confessions apparently existed on a videotape, but nobody seemed to actually know where that tape had got to.

That's convenient. Almost as convenient as them suddenly confessing two other murders of missing children that you haven't found yet. The tape wasn't entered as evidence. in the Evandro case's legal proceedings. And the fact that it never materialised caused many to question its existence in the first place. But, surprise, surprise. It didn't stop the press from reporting

on the ghost tape's supposed contents as if the story were gospel. In the eyes of the public, this case was already wrapped up in a lovely, grizzly bow. But first, the so-called Witches of Garozoba would have to face legal justice. Their trials were split into three separate groups.

The witches, Beatrice and Selena, the spiritual leaders, Osvaldo, Vincente and Davy, and the helpers, Sergio and Ayrton. Now, Brazilian jury trials work a little bit differently to, let's say, American trials that we follow on court TV. For crimes like murder, seven ordinary citizens are selected to sit alongside a professional judge who presides over the proceedings.

The jurors ultimately decide whether the accused is guilty or not guilty, while the judge handles the legal side of the trial and delivers the sentence if they're convicted. But, unlike, for example, in the US, the jurors in Brazil don't sit around a table afterwards hashing out the evidence together. Instead, they answer a series of questions individually

and then vote by secret ballot, with a simple majority deciding the verdict. The whole process tends to be a lot shorter than the sprawling courtroom dramas that we've come to expect with high-profile murder cases, but this was no ordinary trial. The trial against Selena and Beatrice Sabaji didn't start until 1998.

since it took prosecutors so long to wade through the complex evidence and prepare. And it lasted a staggering 34 days, making it one of the longest jury trials in Brazilian judicial history. Selina and Beatrice spent four years in prison and two years on house arrest before their trial finally kicked off in March 1998. But the case was still very fresh in everyone's memory in Guarituba and more contentious than ever. The prosecution had two major witnesses to support their Black Magic Ritaph, argument. The first was a local man who claimed to have seen Evandro inside a car with Selina and Beatrice on the day of his abduction. His testimony should have been gold dust for the prosecution, but he contradicted himself multiple times on the stand, and the jury ended up

dismissing him as an unreliable mess. The second was the Sawmill's manager, who lived opposite the site. He claimed to have seen the seven accused arriving at the mill dressed in white on the evening of the 7th of April, as though gathering for a spiritual session. This was crucial, since it confirmed a date and time for the supposed ritual, but while prosecutors had expected him to be their star witness, he retracted many of his statements at trial, claiming that he had been pushed into making them. Alongside their shaky witnesses,

prosecutors also didn't have much physical evidence to present in court. Although considering the crime did go down in 1992, this wasn't all that surprising. Forensic testing on a clay pot taken from Osvaldo's house did find traces of human blood. but it was so tiny that experts couldn't confirm who would actually belong to. An apparent bloody handprint on the wall at the sawmill office was also tested, and it was confirmed to be human blood.

But it wasn't Evandro's, and it was a sawmill, after all, lots of sharp stuff and pesky fingers in the way. Now, the little house where Evandro's innards had allegedly been kept, did have traces of a reddish material on the ground, but it was actually thought that it was probably just left over candle wax. So all in all, the prosecution didn't exactly put on the most convincing show here. But according to them, none of this actually mattered, because the main thing was that the defendants had all confessed to their crimes.

And we'll admit that doesn't seem great. But we have been holding something back from you, listeners. Osvaldo, Vincente, Davy, Selina and Beatrice had admitted to ritually sacrificing Evandro in a series of videotaped confessions. But the core part of the defense's strategy was, that they only made those confessions under torture. Between their arrests and the official statements made on the night of the 2nd of July, the five core suspects were held for roughly 36 hours by military police. Whilst they were in prison, awaiting trial, the defendants were

supported by human rights lawyer Isabel Kluger Mendez to form their own dossier detailing their alleged torture. And it's an incredibly brutal read. The defendants claimed that they were tortured by the military police officers conducting their interrogations, including the Eagle Group Captain, Vladimir Kopchetti, Neves. In terms of psychological abuse, they were constantly threatened with death and violence towards both themselves and their families if they fail to confess. They were drugged, beaten, suffocated, burned with cigarettes and subjected to water torture methods, like being dunked in water and having hoses forced into their mouths. Officers allegedly also hooked them up to a machine that they were told was a lie detector and were

apparently told that it would give them electric shocks whenever they lie during their interrogation, but the defendants swiftly learned that they'd be shocked, even if they were telling the truth. And some of the methods were a grim throwback to Brazil's military dictatorship that had ended only seven years earlier. So let's give you a bit of context. Despite their name, the military police aren't exactly the guys who ruled Brazil during the 21-year dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. They were, and still are, the country's state-level uniformed police force. But during the dictatorship, they were placed under the direct authority of the army and played a key role in enforcing the regime at a ground level.

Even though Brazil was technically a democracy by 1992, those links to the old era was still pretty fresh. And some of the methods used during the brutal dictatorship hadn't disappeared. Namely, a torture technique known as Parrots Perch was a dictatorship classic. As the name suggests, Parrots Perch involves tying a person over a wooden pole, by their ankles and wrists, suspending them upside down. The Guarotuba defendants

alleged that they were held in this agonising position for hours between their taped confessions, losing the will to keep protesting their innocence. And the most sickening part of all is that Beatrice and Selena reported being subjected to horrific sexual violence whilst in custody.

Selina said that military police officers violated her with objects, called her a whore, while Beatrice alleges that she was gang raped by multiple men at once, including Captain Nevis. Despite these shocking revelations, the defence weren't actually certain that this would sway the jury as much as they hoped. Brazil only got a specific law criminalising torture as its own actual offence in 1997.

Torture had become such standard procedure during the brutal dictatorship that had almost been normalized, with most cases hushed up before the public could even hear about it. And since the Witches of Guarotuba were such a sensitive topic in Piranha, that obviously triggered intense outrage, there was the very real possibility that the public wouldn't actually care if the so-called witches had been tortured, because in the court of public opinion, well, they deserved it. Finally, there was the issue of proving the alleged torture actually took place.

During Selena and Beatrice's trial, the defence pointed to numerous cuts in the videotaped confessions that indicated parts of the interrogation had indeed been edited out, and in those unknown gaps is where the torture sessions must have taken place. However, the prosecution dismissed this claim and insisted that they would only use the transcripts as evidence, not the tapes themselves. On top of this, prosecutors argued that there was no medical evidence of any torture. The defendants were examined by doctors at the time, and they were signed off the Clean Bill of Health. According to Selena and Beatrice, they were never properly examined for sexual assault, so those documents were falsified.

Even more damningly, one of those medical examiners actually took his own life on the day he was supposed to testify in court. Could he have been suffering from a guilty conscience for his role in the cover-up? The defendants also explained that they had been beaten using instruments designed not to leave physical marks. Their torturers clearly knew how to avoid detection. According to the Abaji's defence lawyer, this case has never been about Little Evandro. It was an elaborate revenge plot engineered by Diogenes Keitano to frame his enemies. They pointed to how Diogenes positioned himself as an uncle to Evandro, but couldn't even remember his birthday.

The defence team called Diogenes a madman who had a pathological, morbid, great hatred towards Selina Abaji and would stop at nothing to bring her down. They argued that the case was riddled with inconsistencies that seemed like a deliberate attempt to pin the crime on a witch's coven that simply didn't exist. The best example? The Eagle Group's bizarre obsession with the number seven.

Diogenes and the group's captain repeatedly insisted that Maccumba practices always revolved around this number. Seven witches, seven Orisha, the spiritual on the seventh day of the month, the seven million cruiseros fee, and Evandro even having seven letters in his name. And while the number seven does have significance in some of these traditions, which organize the spiritual world into the seven lines, it's hardly a universal rule.

So sevens are all over Catholicism as well. Seven deadly sins, like seven spirits. Like, it's, you know, the seven altars. Everything's a seven. So, yeah, instead, the constant symbolism being shoehorned into the case actually smacked to non-believers of trying to frame it on spiritual practitioners. Finally, the Black Magic dossier was hardly the slam-dunk evidence group Ogea needed or wanted it to be. The defence argued that it failed to cite any investigative evidence to back up its various claims,

to the point where it didn't even name the police officers involved in verifying Diogenes's Caitano's accusations before the arrests. And outside the dodgy confessions, the dossier provided zero tangible supporting evidence for anything actually happening at all. There was no proof of money exchanging hands even. Basically, it seemed like Capsin Valadier Capetianivas had just swallowed Diogenes' whole story without question. I think it's quite clear why Diogenes was very, very invested in this narrative.

He hates Selena. We know that. He hates the Abaji family. But why would the military police go along with this lone madman's elaborate conspiracy to really what looks like frame his personal enemies? Well, the military police had its own score to settle here. There was a long-standing rivalry between them and the civil police, who had far greater powers of investigation, much to the Eagle Group's frustration. So the controversy stirred up by Diogenes surrounding the Abkhazini, and their alleged corrupt ties to Grupo Tigray, it may well have presented an opportunity

for the military police's equal group to flex their feathery muscles in Guarituba and score some much needed political points. For most of the trial, the two major sticking points were the alleged torture and the legality of the military police's investigation, since the civil police were already assigned to the case. But then there was an unexpected spanner in the works. When the defense asked a mic drop question, could anyone actually prove that the the body in the woods was Evandro Ramos Ketano at all. The defence argued that the mutilation of the body meant that it hadn't been possible to

properly ID Evandro by his appearance. In fact, the damage done to his corpse may have been done to deliberately obscure his identity. The only useful identifying factors were his clothes and his house keys that seemed to have been placed conspicuously near the body, almost as if his killer had wanted the body to be identified as Evandro. to the defence, the body was significantly taller than expected for a boy of Evandro's age. And while the corpse's clothing matched what he had been wearing that day,

his shorts appeared much shorter on the body than they did on photos of Evandro. They also pointed to marks that looked like Fraser Burns suggesting that the body had been stored for far longer in a morgue or something like that. And at the crime scene, Diogenes had urged Evandro's father

to accept that it was him, repeating the distinctly creepy phrase look at his upturned bum. That really is your son. I don't get that. I don't think that's something lost in translation. I really don't understand what's going on there. But as it turned out, this would be the deciding factor at trial.

After 34 days, Selina and Beatrice were found not guilty and acquitted on a five to two majority. Since the jury couldn't agree if the body was, in fact, of Andros, it pretty much made everything else null and void. The public prosecutor's office immediately appealed and requested a new trial arguing that dental examination and DNA tests had proven the body was Evandro. And a year later, in March 1999, the jury that acquitted the Abaji women was officially annulled by the Parana's Court of Justice. And a retrial was ordered, meaning that everyone had to go through

the whole thing all over again. It's quite ironic that obviously they don't have DNA testing when the murder actually happens, but then it goes on for such a long time that science catches up And then they're like, oh, now we can test it and we can prove it was Avandro's body. But then that leads them to then going back to trying a case that has absolutely no evidence involved at all. It's really quite a bizarre situation. And it's funny that this newly like scientific breakthrough of being able to identify that is Avandro put the case of the witches of Guarotuba and this covene back on the road, so to speak. Meanwhile, the trial of the spiritual leaders, Osvaldo, Vincente de Paula and Davy de Santas kicked off in 1990. But for some reason, it was called off midway through.

And when it resumed five years later in 2004, all three men were found guilty. Osvaldo and Vincente were sentenced to 20 years and two months in prison, while Davy received 18 years and eight months. Vincente died in prison in 2011 after suffering from ill health. In 2005, the Helpers, so the final trial of Sergio Cristolfino and Ayrton Bardelli was meant to get started, but They were actually both acquitted after spending several years behind bars awaiting trial. It wasn't until 2011 that the Abaji women were finally called to face the music again in court.

But once a defendant hit 70, the 20-year statute of limitations is halved under Brazilian law. So by now, Salina's charges had run out, and she actually didn't have to go on trial at all. Unfortunately, her daughter Beatrice wasn't so lucky. This time, the trial lasted just two days. after which Beatrice was found guilty on a four to three vote. She was convicted of aggravated homicide with three qualifying factors, vile motive, cruel means and the murder of a defenceless victim. In May 2011, Beatrice Savaji was sentenced to a whopping 21 years in prison.

But a legal loophole meant that she didn't initially go behind bars. Under Brazilian law, she was allowed to stay free whilst appealing her sentence. But then another twist. Rather than being locked up, Beatrice was actually pardoned by the judge. This was thanks to a presidential decree that grants pardons to felons to felon sentenced over eight years in prison if they have children under the age of 18. Since Beatrice had a 15-year-old daughter, she qualified, but she wasn't officially acquitted of her crimes.

And in 2018, everything changed. History professor and journalist Ivan Mizanzuk, who grew up in Piranha, had always had a morbid fascination for the story of the Witches of Guarotuba. And he actually managed to get his hands on over 20,000 pages of court documents. And Ivan spent his time doing an insane deep dive into this case.

On his podcast, Projecto Humano's, featuring over 36 episodes and countless interviews with those involved in this case. As part of his four-year investigation, Ivan stumbled across discarded evidence in 2021 that included audio tapes of the Confessions. Not all these tapes had been entered as evidence in the original trials, and of those that were admitted, guess what?

Ivan found inescapable proof that the defendants had been tortured, just like they said they had. Predictably everyone involved in the prosecution denied hearing any of these tapes at the time, but according to Ivan, quote, the torture which was previously a defence argument is now proven. It's just a matter of the authorities acknowledging it. The success of the podcast revived interest in the case and a documentary called The Evandro Case,

a devilish plot, came out in 2021. It triggered a legal appeal into the case that went all the way to Brazil's Supreme Court and in March 26 this very year, the Supreme Court declared the case closed and officially acquitted all those convicted of Avandro's murder. In the end, the so-called riches of Garutuba finally cleared their names.

But we never found out who actually killed six-year-old of Andro. Today, many actually believe that Diogenes Caitano could actually be guilty of more than just conspiracy against the accused. His obsessive desire to control the narrative in this case has raised questions that perhaps he was the true culprit, as well as some seriously dodgy loose sense. I mean, I think that makes the most sense we've heard all episode, to be honest. I mean, even the fact that, like, I get it, he's got this vendetta against the Abarjis, but like when the police, the civil police originally look at that guy who's like living nearby and he's like, no, no, no, and like even goes and befriends him and is so adamant it can't possibly be him,

it's a little bit suspect. Now, according to Grupo Tigray officers, Diogenes seemed to know that Evandro had been murdered, even in the very early days of the investigation when they were still hoping to find him alive. And just one day after Evandro vanished, Selina remembers Diogenes turning up at the Abaji house and screaming, and this is a quote, according to Selena, if this kid turns up without his organs, I'll know it was you. What a weird thing to say. Almost as weird as, look at that upturned bum. That's definitely your son. Or was Diogenes just exploiting the work of an actual serial killer or criminal group targeting children for his own ends?

After all, Avandra was far from the only child to go missing across the state. He was just the only one that they found. During the fight to clear his wife and daughter's name, former mayor Aldo Abaji relentlessly pursued the theory that there could have been a shadowy child trafficking ring behind the disappearances in Paranat. The missing kids with classic European features could have been attractive prospects for overseas black market adoptions.

Or even worse, perhaps there was an organ trafficking operation that had gone terribly wrong in Avondiard. Ultimately, the Witches of Guarotuba might have been a made-up fantasy. But someone was responsible for brutalizing Little Evandro and someone was behind the disappearances of all of those other children in the state of Piranha, but they were never caught. And that, I think, is probably the most chilling part of all of this, is that one man's determination to pin this on his political and personal enemies really did just derail the whole investigation.

I'm not saying they necessarily would have caught the person who actually did this, but they certainly weren't looking for the people who actually did this or the person who actually did this because they were so busy going after this family that just happened to have a daughter who was taking a break from Catholicism and looking into some weird as shit. Like there's just a staggering, total staggering lack of evidence that they did this, obviously. I mean, this is just, like, unbelievable that it went as far as it did and drag over three decades before they were finally acquitted.

Like, it is really quite mind-boggling, but, I think the similarities between the children, I guess you could say that does point to some sort of serial killer possibly being involved. But I don't know. I don't know. The fact that we never found the other bodies, it is hard to say that there's a similar MO or a similar signature or anything like that. But yeah, I don't know. Was Diogenes involved in this or did he just use it? I think if there weren't other missing kids, maybe I could believe that he did it. Or did he know about the other missing kids? And that's why he used his own second cousin as bait to kill him to trap this family. I just don't know if he's like that sophisticated of a thinker. It's pretty out there to think that I'm going to kill my second cousin

and then I'm going to find a way to get the police to be convinced that it is this family. Like even in your wildest dreams, do you think you could have brought down the mayor and his family like that? I don't think Diocenees did it, but I think once the opportunity presented itself, he was going to go full force in using it to bring down that family. And it almost worked. So they go, guys. That's the case of the Witches of Guaritoba or the Evandro. case, as it is also called in Brazil. But poor Evandro, my fucking God, like what they did to him,

like whoever did that. Horrific, horrific, horrific stuff. And I also think it is quite interesting, isn't it, that a world away in Brazil, the language, they're like the folklore around satanic panic, the white robes, the like people in positions of power, targeting children, ripping out their inner organs. It's so similar to what we've seen in the West around the satanic panic. I think that is also quite interesting. The devil believes in you whether you like it or not. And on that, we will end the first episode of October 26. And we'll see you next week for another something scary.

Goodbye. Boo.