The Flashlight Maniac

Last week in Castelo de Sonhos, Military Police apprehended a man suspected of being "The Flashlight Maniac," a fugitive murderer who had escaped from a Mato Grosso prison in 2003. The Maniac is alleged to have killed as many as 16 people between 1999 and 2001, and his trademark move was to sneak up on young couples in parked cars, emerging from the woods with only his flashlight. The Maniac would then knock on the window of the car, use the light to temporarily blind one of the passengers, then rip open the door and begin bludgeoning his victims to death.

Rumors have circulated for years that the Maniac was hiding out somewhere around Castelo. The police followed a series of reports to an abandoned goldmine 50 km west of the village, and arrested the suspect without incident.

I took this photo after I interviewed the suspect, who claimed his name was "Josué." Pictured is the flashlight that police found on him in the old goldmine, compared with a photo of a flashlight that the Maniac had used in a 2001 murder. Outside the barracks where I spoke with the supposed "Maniac," a crowd of about 150 Castelo residents were threatening to turn into a lynch mob. "Josué" was eventually removed from the barracks, handcuffed, and spirited off in a Military Police truck to another jurisdiction. I should point out that this only happened after a few people, myself included, pleaded with the police to respect the prisoner's civil rights (he was being held in violation of habeas corpus) and to remove him before the mob invaded the police barracks to kill the suspect.