A dress, a wig, women’s sandals, dark glasses and painted nails. In his arms he was holding a child of about two years old, with whom he had no family relationship. It is the disguise devised by Jorlan Lopes da Silva, 33, to try to escape the Brazilian police. The man, wanted for a long series of murders, initially managed to pass in front of the officers without being recognized. What gave him away was a tattoo that remained uncovered after the dress had moved.
The arrest took place on Sunday 13 September in Mulungu, in Paraíba, a state in the north-west of Brazil, at the end of an operation that lasted approximately 48 hours. A precautionary custody warrant had been issued against him. Together with him, two other men ended up in handcuffs, suspected of being involved in various crimes committed in the area.
The confession: “I started killing at 13”
After his capture, Lopes da Silva gave investigators a shocking statement: he claimed to have killed around 80 people in his life and to have committed his first murder when he was just 13 years old.
The number, however, has not been confirmed. The police are currently investigating his possible involvement in 16 murders that occurred over a three-month period in the Vale do Mamanguape region. The authorities are comparing his story with the investigations already open, the scientific evidence and the archives relating to the crimes that have remained unsolved.
However, the authorities are cautious regarding the statements of the arrested person: “It is a very high number. We believe that, if it were not exactly what was indicated, it could still be very close”, declared the delegate Douglas Garcia, responsible for the investigations, as reported Globo.com . In short, the suspect’s statement remains to be verified.
According to what was reconstructed by the investigators, the man spent a total of five or six years in prison. He was released last May.
The double murder of the traders
Among the crimes accused of Lopes da Silva is that of two traders, killed on August 1st in Rio Tinto, on the northern coast of Paraíba. According to investigators, four other men also participated in the ambush.
The police are also looking into his involvement in the murder of a young girl. The victim’s body would have been recovered after the thirty-three-year-old himself had indicated to the officers the place where he had been buried. An element that investigators will now have to compare with the other evidence collected.
The Brazilian authorities also hypothesize a connection between Lopes da Silva and a criminal organization born in Rio de Janeiro and active in Paraíba. After escaping a previous police intervention in Rio Tinto, the man apparently took refuge in a community of Cabedelo, in the João Pessoa metropolitan area, considered one of the faction’s bases.
The disguise and the tattoo that gave him away
However, the escape ended a few hours later. Lopes da Silva would have worn women’s clothes and picked up the child in the hope of not attracting the attention of the officers. At first the plan would have worked.
According to the reconstruction provided by the police, after passing the checks the man returned to the house where he was hiding, took a gun and left the child. When he went out again, however, the dress would have moved, revealing a tattoo. The investigators thus recognized him and arrested him.
It has not yet been clarified why the child was with him or who had entrusted him to him. The authorities only specified that he was not a relative.
After the validation hearing, Jorlan Lopes da Silva was transferred to João Pessoa’s Desembargador Sílvio Porto penitentiary. The investigations will now have to establish how many of the crimes he claimed actually occurred and what role he had in the 16 murders already at the center of the investigations.