Post by theshee on Sept 25, 2013 4:56:30 GMT 10
On August 20th, 1966, a boy named Jorge was out flying a kite on Vintém Hill, a sort of park-like area that’s right smack in the middle of Rio de Janeiro, when he stumbled across two guys lying side by side in the brush, dressed to the nines in their best suits, dead. The men were later identified as Manoel Pereira de Cruz and Miguel Jose Viana, two electronic technicians from Campos los Goytacazes, a town several miles northeast of Rio.
A notebook was found near them, and in the notebook was written,
16:30 Hs. esta local determinado.
18:30 Hs. engolir cápsula, após efeito proteger metais aguardar sinal máscara.
Which means,
At 16:30 be at the agreed place.
At 18:30 swallow capsule, after effect protect metals await mask signal.
Police were later able to piece together a rough account of what happened before the two men arrived – three days before they were found, Cruz and Viana told their families that they had gotten some money to buy work supplies and a car, and took the bus out of Campos to Niteroi, the Rio neighborhood where Vintém Hill is located. In Niteroi, they purchased the raincoats and towels, and stopped in at a local bar to buy a bottle of water. The bartender, when interrogated, said Viana looked nervous and checked his watch often. From there, the two men went to Vintém Hill, and whatever happened to them happened.
To this day, the deaths of Cruz and Viana remain unexplained – toxicology scans were never even performed, because the coroner’s office was full; by the time they got around to it, the bodies were too decomposed to have any tests done on them.
The list of questions that spins off from the case is simply endless, but I’ll hold myself to only a few:
It seems fairly clear that the men were poisoned. The mention of a capsule, the water bottle used to wash it down, the fact that a tox screen was never perfomed, and the lack of physical violence done to the bodies seems to suggest this pretty strongly. But who did it? It wasn’t suicide. Also in the notebook was a list of codes for TV parts, which suggests that the two men went to Niteroi to do exactly what they said they were going to do – buy equipment for work and return with it – and that the Vintém Hill visit was merely one item on the itinerary. The bartender mentioned that the men, after purchasing the bottle, got a receipt to return the empty bottle to the bar so it could be reused. And per the note, after the effect of the capsule kicked in, they planned to “protect metals” and “await mask signal,” whatever that could possibly mean. All of which suggests that Viana and Cruz certainly weren’t planning their deaths.
This implies that they were killed. But how, and by whom? Were they tricked into taking poison? Some have suggested that they planned to buy radioactive metals from whomever they were meeting, hence the lead masks and the “protect metals” part of the note. But why the capsule then? And why the waterproof coats and the towels? And if the meeting was at 4:30, but the pill-taking was at 6:30, isn’t that an awfully long time to make a clandestine exchange?
The UFO nuts love this one, for obvious reasons, and there are reports that the two men were themselves UFO-obsessed and planned to meet with aliens or something that day. But, again, if the two men really thought they were going to meet aliens, why did they also buy TV parts? Why did they think they’d be able to return to the bar with the water bottle and then go back home to their day jobs, after meeting with freaking aliens!?
What makes this case great is that it’s so beautifully bizarre. It’s like a harmonic convergence of weirdness – any given explanation will account for one or two of the details, but the incongruity of the other facts renders those explanations incomplete and unsatisfying. And yet we’re stuck both with the fact that something really did happen on Vintém Hill that day, and with the sneaking suspicion that, considering the aggregate eeriness of the clues we have before us, we may not want to know what exactly that something is.
A notebook was found near them, and in the notebook was written,
16:30 Hs. esta local determinado.
18:30 Hs. engolir cápsula, após efeito proteger metais aguardar sinal máscara.
Which means,
At 16:30 be at the agreed place.
At 18:30 swallow capsule, after effect protect metals await mask signal.
Police were later able to piece together a rough account of what happened before the two men arrived – three days before they were found, Cruz and Viana told their families that they had gotten some money to buy work supplies and a car, and took the bus out of Campos to Niteroi, the Rio neighborhood where Vintém Hill is located. In Niteroi, they purchased the raincoats and towels, and stopped in at a local bar to buy a bottle of water. The bartender, when interrogated, said Viana looked nervous and checked his watch often. From there, the two men went to Vintém Hill, and whatever happened to them happened.
To this day, the deaths of Cruz and Viana remain unexplained – toxicology scans were never even performed, because the coroner’s office was full; by the time they got around to it, the bodies were too decomposed to have any tests done on them.
The list of questions that spins off from the case is simply endless, but I’ll hold myself to only a few:
It seems fairly clear that the men were poisoned. The mention of a capsule, the water bottle used to wash it down, the fact that a tox screen was never perfomed, and the lack of physical violence done to the bodies seems to suggest this pretty strongly. But who did it? It wasn’t suicide. Also in the notebook was a list of codes for TV parts, which suggests that the two men went to Niteroi to do exactly what they said they were going to do – buy equipment for work and return with it – and that the Vintém Hill visit was merely one item on the itinerary. The bartender mentioned that the men, after purchasing the bottle, got a receipt to return the empty bottle to the bar so it could be reused. And per the note, after the effect of the capsule kicked in, they planned to “protect metals” and “await mask signal,” whatever that could possibly mean. All of which suggests that Viana and Cruz certainly weren’t planning their deaths.
This implies that they were killed. But how, and by whom? Were they tricked into taking poison? Some have suggested that they planned to buy radioactive metals from whomever they were meeting, hence the lead masks and the “protect metals” part of the note. But why the capsule then? And why the waterproof coats and the towels? And if the meeting was at 4:30, but the pill-taking was at 6:30, isn’t that an awfully long time to make a clandestine exchange?
The UFO nuts love this one, for obvious reasons, and there are reports that the two men were themselves UFO-obsessed and planned to meet with aliens or something that day. But, again, if the two men really thought they were going to meet aliens, why did they also buy TV parts? Why did they think they’d be able to return to the bar with the water bottle and then go back home to their day jobs, after meeting with freaking aliens!?
What makes this case great is that it’s so beautifully bizarre. It’s like a harmonic convergence of weirdness – any given explanation will account for one or two of the details, but the incongruity of the other facts renders those explanations incomplete and unsatisfying. And yet we’re stuck both with the fact that something really did happen on Vintém Hill that day, and with the sneaking suspicion that, considering the aggregate eeriness of the clues we have before us, we may not want to know what exactly that something is.