A sick trio of lovers who believed they had to devour human flesh in order to purify the world committed a series of gruesome murders that sent shockwaves through Brazil.
Their three victims, aged just 17 to 31, were not chosen by chance, but were handpicked by the group who considered them to be impure women who spread evil and discord on Earth, and therefore had to be eliminated.
And for these ‘sins’, the three women ended up paying the ultimate price.
Jorge Beltrao Negromonte, his wife Cristina da Silveíra, and his mistress, Bruna da Silva, would join forces to lure unsuspecting young women to their lair before draining their blood and hacking their flesh into pieces like an animal sent to slaughter.
But following a significant blunder, their twisted tale came to an end when Brazilian police were led to their residence and opened up a macabre Pandora’s Box.
From feeding one of their victim’s daughter a chunk of her own mother’s flesh, to selling pies stuffed with the meat of their human sacrifices to oblivious neighbours, MailOnline has taken a look at the vicious crimes carried out by the hands of those who became notoriously known as the Garanhuns Cannibals.
Jorge Beltrao Negromonte da Silveira started a cult named The Cartel alongside his wife and mistress where they believed they had to make human sacrifices in order to purify the world
Negromonte’s wife Cristina a Silveíra (left) and mistress Bruna da Silva (right) helped him lure women to their home by promising them jobs as nannies before brutally slaughtering them
The Triangle
A sick trio of lovers, now widely known as the Garanhuns Cannibals, were made up of Jorge Beltrao Negromonte da Silveira, his wife Isabel Cristina Torreao Pires da Silveira, and his mistress, Bruna Cristina Oliveira da Silveira.
Born on December 14, 1961, to immigrants from Coimbra, Portugal, Negromonte spent his early life in the riverfront city before returning to live in Pernambuco, Brazil.
But in his first act of violence that would foreshadow a disturbing and grisly future, he killed a 17-year-old named Luciano Severino da Silva.
Negromonte was acquitted of murder charges, however, due to a lack of evidence.
He later attempted to kill his elderly mother, before stealing nearly £11,000 with which he bought himself a house.
At one point, Negromonte had formed a sect called The Cartel which aimed to ‘purify’ the world and protect the Earth from overpopulation.
As part of the chilling purification process, Negromonte demanded the sect had to consume human flesh and kill four victims in correspondence to the four natural elements – air, earth, water, and fire.
The cult leader, who claimed to receive direct orders from an engel and a cherub, promised that after successfully completing the bloody tasks, a ‘portal to paradise’ would be opened and they could all ascend to the next plane of existence.
Later on in life he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and wrote a book, Revelations of a Schizophrenic, documenting his hallucinations and other experiences with the illness.
‘I often wondered if my mind was healthy; I asked myself this in front of the mirror, and my reflection told me that a normal person would not talk to an image in the mirror,’ he wrote.
Negromonte, a schizophrenic, killed a 17-year-old before attempting to kill his own mother
The killer was said by police to have had handwritten a 34-chapter, 50-page book with details and drawings of cannibalism, titled Revelations of a Schizophrenic
One page in the disturbing manuscript shows a group of naked men slaughtering naked women during a nighttime scene
Negromonte pictured with his mistress, Oliveira, who was over two decades younger than him when they fell in love
He recalled seeing ghosts and shadowy women in his back garden, watching a funeral procession that passed on a street near his house that no one else saw, and being surprised by beautiful floating women and headless men.
Born in the same year as Negromonte, just seven months earlier, was Isabel Cristina Torreao Pires.
Her impoverished family could not afford to educate her, so Pires, known as ‘Bel’, spent most of her childhood playing housekeeper, carrying out chores around her home.
While attending a local Mormon church, Bel fell in love with Negromonte, and the pair decided to wed in 1984.
But at the wedding reception, her husband flew into a fit of rage and threatened to kill guests with a knife, forcing the newlywed couple to isolate themselves from others.
Over two decades later, on September 29, 1986, a woman named Bruna Cristina Oliveira was born in Natal, South Africa.
When she was just 16-years-old, she met married Negromonte in a gym where he was a teacher.
The pair fell in love, but as he was already married, Negromonte and Pires accepted Oliveira into their relationship and formed what would become a deadly love triangle.
The Slaughters
On May 2, 2008, the three Cartel members invited a 17-year-old Jessica Camila da Silva Pereira to their home in Olinda – a town on Brazil’s northeast coast.
At the time, Pereira was homeless and visited the trio along with her one-year-old daughter.
The group allegedly lured their victims to their house by saying they were looking to hire a nanny.
Distracted for just a moment, Pereira was struck on the head and dragged into the family bathroom, where her jugular vein was brutally sliced with a knife.
After draining the teen of all of her blood with the help of a tourniquet for around two hours, Negromonte, Pires, and Oliveira, dismembered her lifeless body and skinned her.
The trio’s first victim was Jessica Camila da Silva Pereira, 17, who they murdered in their home before feeding her flesh to her one-year-old daughter
A page in Negromonte’s Revelations of a Schizophrenic showing a drawing he made of a dismembered woman in a bathroom
But the sick lovers did not stop there, they continued to chop up her corpse before storing it in their refrigerator.
The following day, Pereira’s flesh was seasoned with salt and cumin, before being grilled and stuffed into thick empada pastries.
The meat pies were then reportedly distributed to neighbours, schools, and hospitals, who were under the impression they contained tuna or chicken.
Some of the meat was even given to the victim’s baby, who the trio also began raising following the slaying of her mother.
The rest of Pereira’s flesh and remains were buried in the form of a cross in the back garden, while other fragments were tossed in the bin.
Negromonte would later say during his testimony: ‘[The people] ate it like they eat any kind of meat. It tasted like beef.
‘I don’t know exactly who prepared the meat, whether it was Bel or Bruna or both together. The people put the [young woman’s] meat on a normal plate’.
The man’s justification for killing Jessica was her rebelliousness and the scandalous clothes she wore when going out at night.
Four years passed, and the group had not performed another ‘ritual’, but in early 2012, Negromonte and his two lovers had relocated to the Jardim Petrópolis neighborhood in Garanhuns where they resumed their atrocities.
In February of the same year, the trio abducted and killed Giselly Helena da Silva, 31, who according to her mother, was offered work as a nanny with a wage of £200 – which was highly unusual at the time.
Silva was reportedly stabbed in the neck and after she was murdered, was dragged to the bathroom to dismember her.
Investigations into her disappearance and subsequent death later found that part of Giselly’s body had been stored for three days to consume her with the rest of her body buried in the back garden of the house in a previously dug grave.
Her belongings were stolen by the vicious lovers, including her credit cards which were used to make purchases at a local store.
Giselly Helena da Silva, 31, was brutally slain by the trio in February 2012
Alexandra da Silva Falcao, 20, was killed on March 15, 2012. While she was conversing with one of the trio’s female members, Negromante launched at her from behind with a knife before stabbing her in the neck
Brazilian police raiding the home of the cannibal trio in Garanhuns, Pernambuco state, in northeastern Brazil
Police would find the remains of the two final victims in the back garden of the trio’s house (pictured)
Negromonte, Pires, and Oliveira had kept gruesome notes and illustrations depicting the ritual killings which police later stumbled across in a raid of the home
Just 17 days later, the trio got their hands on their third and final victim.
Alexandra da Silva Falcao, 20, was killed on March 15, 2012, in a similar method.
The young woman had been promised a high-paying job as a nanny for Negromonte, Pires, and Oliveira, but was instead slaughtered in the family home.
While Falcao was conversing with one of the trio’s female members, Negromante launched at her from behind with a knife before stabbing her in the neck.
They then allegedly dragged her body to the bathroom before chopping it into pieces – keeping some of the flesh to eat, while the rest was buried in the garden alongside the second victim.
The meat of the last two victims, possibly taken from the buttocks or thighs, were used to make snacks such as pies, which were then sold on to unsuspecting locals.
According to stomach-churning reports from the time, some residents who had consumed the trio’s homemade delicacies claimed they tasted normal – while others said the patty was too salty or doughy.
The Capture
Authorities were first alerted to the grisly situation when Giselly’s family reported her disappearance to police, who quickly began an investigation.
They had no viable leads until mid-March 2012, when her family members received a credit card bill that showed several purchases had been made in Garanhuns.
Officers were quickly dispatched to the stores where the card had been used before filing through security footage where they identified Negromonte, Pires, and Oliveira.
Just a month later, on April 9, arrest and seizure warrants were issued for the trio as there were rising suspicions that Falcao and Giselly were inside the residence.
Brazilian cops arrested the trio in their home, where their fist victim’s now-five-year-old daughter was also found.
The young girl revealed to one of the officers that her ‘father’ had brutally murdered the two women and described the scenes in grisly detail.
Shortly after,the trio admitted to their heinous crimes and pointed out the location of the makeshift graves in their back garden, where two of the half-eaten women had been buried.
Oliveira (left), Negromonte (centre), and Pires (right) were arrested in April 2012, just weeks after slaying their third and final victim
The trio admitted to their heinous crimes before police found two half-eaten bodies in makeshift graves at the family home (pictured)
Negromonte and his wife Pires are pictured after being arrested by Brazilian police
Oliveira, Negromonte’s mistress, pictured as the trio were arrested
When investigators exhumed the bodies, they noticed the victims’ remains had been slashed off and that Giselly’s face had been severely disfigured.
While collecting evidence in the home, cops stumbled across the book that Negromonte had been writing.
The 34-chapter, 50-page handwritten book revealed the reality of his delusions while suffering with the disease.
A day later, the house was vandalised and set alight by disgusted neighbours and locals, but detectives did not let this hinder their work on the case.
The child’s birth certificate was located, which led to her being placed in the care of the Guardianship Council, and Pereira’s remains were eventually uncovered and positively identified.
It would be another two years before the trio were convicted of killing Pereira by jury verdict.
Negromonte was sentenced to 21-and-a-half years imprisonment, with an additional six months in solitary confinement, while Pires and Oliveira received 19 years imprisonment and a year of solitary confinement.
Four years on, the trio were jointly put on trial again for the deaths of Falcao and Giselly on December 15, 2018.
All three were again found guilty on all counts, with Negromonte sentenced to 71 years behind bars, Oliveira to 71 years and 10 months, and Pires to 68 years.
Interviewed from his cell, Negroponte told SBT Television at the time that he followed the instructions of voices in his head.
‘I did certain things for purification, to protect people and deliver them to God,’ he told the channel.
He confirmed that he and his two companions ate the flesh of the women ‘to purify them.’
Fiver years ago, in 2019, the trial court ordered that the trio’s sentences for the first murder must be increased.
As a result, Negromonte’s sentence was heavily increased to 27 years imprisonment and a year-and-a-half of solitary confinement, while Pires and Oliveira’s sentence were commuted to 24 years.
