Atafona Beach Incident

In the summer of 1966, Miguel José Viana, Manoel Pereira da Cruz, and Elcio Gomes were conducting their latest experiment on Atafona Beach in Brazil. Witnesses watched in awe as a luminous object descended over the ocean, shot upwards, and then exploded above the sea. The blast created a huge fireball that lit up the sky, and the air was filled with the smell of sulphur. The blast was reportedly heard up to 10 miles away, and buildings in the nearby city of Campos were rocked by the explosion. Simultaneously, fishermen reported seeing a UFO plunging into the sea.

This event marked the beginning of a mystery that continues to intrigue and captivate as one of history’s most perplexing unsolved cases.

Two Deaths on a Hill

A couple of months later, on Thursday, August 18th, 1966, a young man named Paulo Cordeiro Azevedo dos Santos was hunting birds on Morro do Vintém, a hill in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. While there, he stumbled upon two men lying side by side. Unsure if they were sleeping, Paulo alerted a nearby guard, Antônio Guerra, but the guard did not investigate further.

Two days later, on Saturday, August 20th, an 18-year-old named Jorge de Costa Alves was flying a kite on Vintém Hill when he noticed a strong odour coming from the bodies. He informed the Niterói police, but they did not respond until the following day. This delay was due to the challenging terrain and fading daylight, which made it difficult to climb the hill. By the time the authorities reached the top, the bodies had been exposed to the elements for over three days.

The men were identified as 32-year-old Manoel Pereira da Cruz and 34-year-old Miguel José Viana, two of the men from the Atafona Beach incident. They were friends and business partners from Campos dos Goytacazes. Manoel owned a shop for TV and radio components, while Miguel was an enthusiast of the subject and had a radio repair shop. They were married with children and were well-respected members of their local community.

On the surface, they appeared very ordinary. However, the peculiar circumstances surrounding their deaths on top of a hill, as well as the unusual items discovered with them, made the scene far from ordinary.

The two men were lying on their backs on a spread of Pindoba leaves. It was thought that the leaves must have been cut with a blade, even though no knife was found at the scene. There was no sign of a struggle, and the bodies did not show any visible injuries. Additionally, the bodies reportedly had not been disturbed by any animals, adding to the mystery of how the men could have died in a way that even scavengers would not feed on them.

The men were dressed in formal suits and identical raincoats. Nearby lay crudely cut homemade lead eye masks that were shaped like glasses but without any eye holes to see or stems to keep them on.

The men were also carrying handwritten notes. Some of the pages contained alphanumeric codes which were later determined to be part numbers of electronic components related to their work. However, other pages contained cryptic instructions, which still baffle people to this day.

One of the notes when translated read:

Sunday, one capsule after lunch; Wednesday, one capsule at bedtime.

Another note read:

16:30 be at the specified location.
18:30 ingest capsules, after the effect protect metals await signal mask.

Miguel’s brother later discovered that the paper the notes were written on had come from a notebook inside their shop in Campos, and handwriting analysis showed the instructions had been written by Miguel. However, the police suspected that Miguel would not have used some of the terminology contained in the notes, and they believed that the instructions might have been dictated to him by someone else.

Several other items were also found on or by the bodies. These included: two towels inside a paper packet, square pieces of cellophane paper soaked in an unknown chemical substance, a handkerchief with the initials M.A.S., some cigarettes, a newspaper, a bottle of magnesian mineral water, and two cups that had been crudely made from a sheet of aluminium foil.

Also found inside Miguel’s pockets were a wedding ring which had been tied to a pair of reading glasses, and a wristwatch. One theory is the men removed their jewellery to protect it, as per the instruction to ‘protect metals’.

The men were carrying approximately Cr$161,000 between them. The police found a receipt for the raincoats they were wearing and a ticket for the water bottle, which would enable them to return it for a small refund.

First Autopsy

The bodies were taken to the coroner’s office, which happened to be particularly busy that day. Since the coroner couldn’t examine the men immediately, an assistant carried out the preparations for the autopsy. Unfortunately, the organs had not been properly stored, and by the time the coroner got to them, they had decomposed to the point that proper testing could not be done. A toxicology report was released indicating no abnormalities, though it was almost certainly fabricated, as no actual testing had been carried out.

When the autopsy report was issued the following month, it stated:

Cause of death could not be determined because of the advanced state of decomposition on the bodies.

The report was signed by the coroner, Astor Pereira de Melo. However, the specialist’s name, Sebastiao Faillace, had been erased and replaced by the name Walmore Giani. Speculation is that Faillace disagreed with the report and had his name removed from it.

Miguel’s and Manoel’s Final Movements

With no clues as to how the men died, the police were keen to establish their final movements and interviewed the men’s families and acquaintances in Campos as well as witnesses who had seen them in Niterói.

The police established that the men had told their families that they were headed to São Paulo, which is 430 miles away, to purchase a car and supplies for their electronic business. Three days before the men were discovered, on Wednesday, August 17th, their friend Elcio Gomes dropped the men off at the bus station, and they took the 9:00 a.m. bus from Campos. However, instead of travelling to Sao Paulo, they got off the bus at approximately 2:00 p.m. in the city of Niterói, 170 miles away. They had supposedly taken with them Cr$ 2,300,000, which is a much larger sum than the Cr$ 161,000 that was found on their bodies.

Miguel and Manoel first stopped at an electronics store called Fluscop, where the men talked to the owner about purchasing some components that were not in stock. The owner found this conversation strange because, given the men’s level of expertise, they should have realised that the components they needed would not be found there. They left the shop without purchasing anything.

It was beginning to rain when the men arrived in Niterói, and the receipts in the men’s pockets show that their next stop was at a clothing store where they purchased matching raincoats for Cr$ 9,400 each. However, the clerk said the men left in such a hurry that they didn’t even bother to put the raincoats on before heading out into the rain.

Next, they walked to a bar and bought one bottle of mineral water, which was later found almost empty at the scene. Police questioned the waitress at the bar, who told them the men seemed agitated, particularly Miguel, who was constantly looking at his watch and appeared worried about missing something important. Despite appearing to be in a hurry, the men waited for a receipt so that they could later return the glass bottle to the bar for a small refund.

The men left the bar at approximately 3:15 p.m. It is unclear whether the men’s apparent agitation that day was because the timings on the note required them to be at a specified location by 4:30, or if they were planning to meet someone. According to one account, the men set out for Vintém Hill on foot. In a different account, a guard reported seeing the men being dropped off at the base of the hill by a jeep containing three other unidentified individuals. No one knows exactly what happened after the men left the bar, but whether they left on foot or were driven, it is believed they reached the top of the hill at around 4:30 p.m.

The Third Man – Elcio Gomes

Shortly after the discovery of the men’s bodies, Elcio Gomes, the third man present at Atafona Beach, was taken in for questioning by the police. Manoel’s widow claimed to have witnessed an argument between her husband and Gomes. However, Gomes was able to provide the police with an alibi regarding his whereabouts at the time of his friends’ deaths, and he also provided a receipt for vehicle parts he had purchased in Campos that day. Neighbours also reported seeing Gomes working on his car at home during the time the men were believed to have died.

However, it did seem that Gomes was hiding something. In September 1966, Gomes informed the police about a man named Álvares de Souza, who was subsequently arrested. No action was taken against the man, though it did raise questions about whether Gomes was genuinely being helpful or trying to divert suspicion from himself. But why?

When questioned about the Atafona Beach incident, Gomes provided conflicting accounts, first stating they had travelled there in Miguel’s car, and later claiming Miguel’s car was broken, and they had used Gomes’ car instead. An employee of Miguel and Manoel, Valdir Cardoso, alleged that Gomes had lied to the police when he told them that Miguel and Manoel were the masterminds behind the incident because it was actually Gomes who had instigated the experiment. Cardoso also said Gomes acted as a spiritual doctor, greatly influencing Miguel and Manoel, who would consult him for their physical ailments. This raised the possibility that Gomes may have prescribed the ‘capsules’ the men had taken that day and may account for his conflicting testimonies.

No further action was taken against Gomes. However, it was evident that he was influential in the spiritual beliefs of Miguel and Manoel, as Manoel’s widow had previously informed the police that her husband and Miguel were members of a spiritualist group, and Gomes was also part of this group.

Spiritual Scientists

Gomes confirmed that the men were part of a secret society of experienced electrical technicians who practised spiritism. The members regularly held séances, aiming to communicate telepathically with the spirit realm.

Spiritism is extremely popular in Brazil. It is based on the belief that every living person has an immortal spirit or soul connected to their physical body, which is released and reincarnated after death. However, what makes spiritism different to other religions with a similar belief is the approach. Spiritists take a more scientific approach to contacting the spirit world, rather than relying on traditional mystical methods.

However, it appears Miguel and Manoel’s beliefs extended to a desire to communicate with beings on Mars. Spiritists believe there is life on other planets, and where there is life, there is also a spirit. Gomes claimed that Manoel’s backyard had been used to perform first-contact rituals, and that two months before their deaths, they had built a device in an attempt to establish such contact, which then exploded. This was confirmed by Manoel’s father.

The police found evidence supporting Gomes’ claims when they raided Miguel’s home workshop, including tools, lead scraps for making masks, and a book on scientific spiritualism. One highlighted passage discussed an ‘intense luminosity’ emitted from the creatures, which could blind humans, thus explaining the men’s belief that lead masks were necessary for eye protection.

The police could not dismiss the possibility that Miguel and Manoel had visited Vintém Hill that day to conduct another one of their experiments. To lend credence to this, it appears Gomes was not the last person to see the men before they boarded the bus to Niterói. In fact, Miguel and Manoel had run into Miguel’s cousin, who expressed scepticism about their claim of a five-hour bus trip to purchase a used car. Miguel himself confirmed they had told people the car and electronics purchase was a cover for their real intentions. As he told his cousin:

Buying a car isn’t the real purpose of this trip. When I get back, I’ll tell you whether or not I believe in spiritualism. (Jacques Vallee. Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact.) 

Alien Sighting

On August 25th, 1966, a new witness came forward who corroborated the theory the police were now investigating, that the men had travelled to Vintém Hill to make contact with extraterrestrials. The witness was Gracinda Barbosa Coutinho da Sousa, who stated that on the evening of August 17th, the night Miguel and Manoel arrived in Niterói, she and her three children were driving home when they saw a UFO hovering over Vintém Hill. Gracinda described it as an orange oval shape with a ring of fire around its edges, emitting blue rays of light in all directions. Given Gracinda’s high standing in society, her account of the incident was deemed credible.

The local newspapers covered the sighting, and soon after, other residents came forward claiming they had also seen the same object. Another sighting over Vintém Hill occurred in September 1968 when Ari Pereira from the newspaper Diário de Notícias was able to capture a photo of an unidentified object hovering above the hill. At the time, UFO sightings were being reported frequently, and some people believed that the sightings over Vintém Hill were evidence that Miguel and Manoel had been attempting to make contact with extraterrestrials that evening. 

One of the most bizarre UFO-related theories suggests that Miguel and Manoel truly made contact with extraterrestrials that night. Even more astonishing is the claim that the aliens retaliated against the men as revenge for supposedly obliterating one of their own over Atafona Beach! 

While the alien theory may sound far-fetched, the police believed Miguel and Manoel had conducted similar experiments in other cities. The explosion at Atafona Beach drew the attention of the Navy, who became intrigued by the men’s alleged connection to reported alien sightings and their potential threat to national security. On the night before the explosion, the Navy’s monitoring system intercepted a conversation between three unidentified ham radio stations. Upon reviewing the logs, they discovered that none of these stations were officially registered in Brazil. According to Gomes, Miguel and Manoel operated a covert radio station, which likely accounted for one of the signals. The origins of the other two signals, however, remain unknown, hinting that whoever was behind them may have played a role in the experiments.

A Related Death

Four years earlier, in 1962, another electronics technician was discovered dead in similar circumstances. Hermes Luiz Feitosa was found on Cruzeiro Hill near Neves, and like Miguel and Manoel, a homemade lead mask was lying beside him.

It seems likely that all the men were part of the same society. In fact, Gomes claimed that Miguel and Manoel had maintained a secret radio communication centre in their hometown to stay in contact with other members around the country.

The police reopened the case of Hermes Luiz Feitosa but could not find any connection.

There was no explanation for Hermes’ death, though it is believed he took drugs convinced could receive radio and television signals with mind.

Mind-Altering Substances

About ten days after the men’s deaths, a Brazilian newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, published a statement from a yoga teacher suggesting that Miguel and Manoel may have been using mind-altering drugs like LSD to enhance their mental alertness during their telepathic experiments.

Similarly, Father Oscar González Quevedo, a professor of parapsychology, told the newspaper O Globo that the drugs Miguel and Manoel used were meant to induce a trance state, allowing them to enter a higher level of consciousness. He also confirmed that the light emissions they would receive while in this trance state were very powerful, and that the lead masks were used in these occult practices to provide some protection from the bright light.

Additionally, in his statement to the police, Elcio Gomes stated the men would use drugs when performing their rituals.

It is known that the men had notes with instructions for taking capsules, but unfortunately, without a toxicology report, it can never be determined if or what they consumed. Frustratingly, the results of testing on the square pieces of paper soaked in an unknown chemical substance are also unknown.

However, the evidence, such as the notes, the makeshift cups, the nearly empty water bottle, and the connection to Hermes Luiz Feitosa, who it is believed used drugs on the day he died, strongly suggests that Miguel and Manoel had taken a substance on the day they died.

However, even with this knowledge, many questions remain unanswered. For instance, what could they have taken? Psychedelic drugs like LSD are not known to cause accidental overdose. Of course, they could have been from a bad batch, but the odds of Hermes Luiz Feitosa also dying from a bad batch four years earlier seem low.

Another theory suggests that the men intended to commit suicide and overdosed intentionally. Their goal could have been to shed their physical bodies and be transported to the alien world, which, considering their spiritual beliefs, is plausible. However, their behaviour leading up to their death did not really indicate suicidal intentions. Their families did not notice any unusual behaviour from them before they left, plus they planned to return the water bottle to the bar.

Lastly, is it possible that the capsules were tampered with, meaning the men were deliberately murdered? And if that was the case, who would have wanted to murder them and for what reason?

A Case for Murder? 

Some speculate that Miguel and Manoel had gone to Vintém Hill to purchase smuggled or illegal goods for their work. At the time, Brazil was grappling with inflation and economic instability, and the military government had implemented measures to reduce reliance on foreign products by promoting domestic production. As a result, imported goods may have been more expensive and less accessible compared to locally made items.

Alternatively, another theory suggests that Miguel and Manoel were trying to obtain radioactive materials for their experimental devices. Some believe the masks were intended to protect themselves from radiation exposure. In 1980, Jacques Vallee, an expert on UFO phenomena, visited the area to investigate the case. In his book ‘Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact,’ he noted that the sparse vegetation where the bodies were found could have indicated the presence of radiation. However, an explanation for the grass not growing back is that it may have been due to the chemicals used on the ground where the decomposing bodies were discovered.

Arguably, if Miguel and Manoel were handling radioactive material, they probably would have taken better protection and covered more of their body than just their eyes. Additionally, the Army’s analysis of the masks found no traces of radioactive substances.

One possibility is the men were meeting someone to purchase radioactive material but were murdered instead. Alternatively, some believe they were tricked into taking what they thought were anti-radiation tablets so that they could safely inspect radioactive material, but were poisoned. Regardless of whether Miguel and Manoel had travelled to Niterói that day to purchase illicit or radioactive materials, the question still remains, why would someone want to murder them?

Robbery

Could Miguel and Manoel have been murdered because of the large amount of cash they were carrying? Were they lured to the area under the pretext of purchasing rare goods for their work, or possibly radioactive materials for their experiments? Or had their trust been won with the promise of alien contact, only for them to be led to the location and robbed?

When the police revisited the scene a few days later, they discovered a stone post on the ground, believed to have served as a marker for a meeting. Yet, given Miguel and Manoel’s intelligence, it seems doubtful they would have fallen for such a ruse. Moreover, would someone really go to such lengths to rob them?

It was said the men were carrying Cr$ 3,000,000, which may sound like a vast sum but equates to only around US$ 2,000 in today’s currency. The Cr$ 161,000 found on their bodies would be roughly US$ 100 by modern standards. While inflation makes it difficult to pinpoint exact equivalents, these figures provide some context for comparison.

If we consider the stolen amount to be just a few thousand dollars, does robbery still seem like a convincing motive? It feels like an excessive effort to orchestrate a ruse to lure two intelligent men to a hilltop, only to kill them for a relatively modest sum.

That said, an opportunistic robbery remains a plausible explanation. The men’s bodies lay undiscovered on the hillside for three days. We know two boys stumbled across the scene before the police arrived, as did Antônio Guerra, the security guard who chose not to investigate further. This window of time could have been enough for someone to find the bodies and take the money.

Some might question why a small amount of cash was left behind if the men had been robbed. However, in a hurried search of their pockets, it’s reasonable to assume a thief could have overlooked it while making a quick getaway. This could also explain why their jewellery was untouched, as opportunistic robbers are less likely to be thorough compared to organised criminals.

Second Autopsy

The case went relatively quiet for about a year, with no significant advancements made by the police. Unhappy with the outcome of the police investigation, the Justice Department ordered a new investigation, and on 25th August 1967, the bodies of Miguel and Manoel were exhumed from Caju cemetery in Campos. However, Dr Sebastiao Faillace finds that a toxicology report still can’t be performed, and the cause of death remains unknown.

In 1968, bones and tissues were sent to the Institute of Atomic Energy in São Paulo for analysis as part of ongoing efforts to determine the cause of death. The tests aimed to indicate whether the men had been victims of murder, suicide, or accidental poisoning. A neutron activation analysis was performed on their hair follicles to test for arsenic, mercury, barium, and thallium. All were found to be within normal levels.

By this stage of the investigation, the police believed Miguel and Manoel had been murdered and their bodies dumped on the hill. In August 1967, they were looking for a car they believed to be involved. Ten months later, in June 1968, the Brazilian press announced the police were looking for a blonde man, believed to be a foreigner, who was seen sitting behind the wheel of a jeep talking to the men near Vintém Hill. And then, in February 1969, newspapers began reporting that the case was solved, and the police named the suspect they had for the men’s murder.

The Case is ‘Solved’

The suspect was a smuggler called Hamilton Bezani, who had confessed to his involvement in the murders of Miguel and Manoel earlier that year.

When the police interviewed Bezani, he was already in prison, serving a fifty-year sentence for smuggling. Bezani told the police that while on the run, he had been hiding in a safe house in Rio when three associates contacted him and offered him a hit job in Niterói with enough money to tide him over for the next few months in hiding. He accepted the hit.

The gang drove in a stolen car to a spiritualist centre where the manager, Helena, was holding a séance. There, they met their targets, Miguel and Manoel, and learned that the two men had a large sum of money on them. After the séance, Bezani drove the gang, along with Miguel and Manoel, to Vintém Hill, where they forced the two men to ingest poison at gunpoint and stole their money.

But who hired the hit in the first place? In some accounts, Helena was the one who hired the hit, while according to the newspaper Diário de Notícias, Bezani claimed that Miguel and Manoel had installed communication equipment on ships used by the three men for smuggling, and they had to be silenced.

However, Bezani’s story had too many contradictions, and the police quickly dismissed it. It seems his true intention was to make a deal and get transferred to the prison in Niterói, where it was supposedly easier to escape from. He was sent back to prison and sued for giving false testimony.

However, Hamilton Bezani’s fake confession does raise unanswered questions such as whether Miguel and Manoel really were dropped off at the base of the hill by a jeep containing unidentified individuals, and whether the men had visited the spiritualist centre before reaching their destination at Vintém Hill.

Final Thoughts

I do not believe the men were lured to Vintem Hill with the intention of being murdered. It is possible something occurred in Niteroi that day which led to their deaths, but with no signs of a struggle, that seems unlikely. Instead, I think whoever robbed them acted opportunistically rather than with premeditation, taking the money only after the men were already dead. This, of course, assumes the men even still had the money by that point. They may have already handed it over to someone they met before reaching the hill. 

In my opinion, this was a tragic accident with no malicious intent. Miguel and Manoel were deeply committed to their beliefs and had resorted to using drugs to enhance their spiritual practices. However, as electronics technicians rather than scientists, they or whoever provided the drugs and determined the dosage may have miscalculated the quantities involved. 

It is clear this case was a mess from the beginning. If only a toxicology report had been conducted from the beginning, we might not be left as in the dark as Miguel and Manoel were when they put on those masks. 

Sources

Anomalies. 1966, August 17: The Lead Masks Mystery.

Dead Volume. The Case of the Lead Masks.

Flying Saucer Review. The Mystery of the Morro do Vintém: How Did the Men with the Lead Masks Die? Bowen, C. March/April 1967. Volume 13, Number 2. Pages 11-14.

Flying Saucer Review. No Easy Solution to the Morro Mystery. Bowen, C. July/August 1968. Volume 14, Number 4.

Flying Saucer Review. Follow-Up on the Morro Do Vintém Mystery. Creighton, G. July/August 1971. Volume 17, Number 4.

Linha Direta, Máscaras de Chumbo. (TV). 1990. Available on YouTube.

Pmig96 (WordPress.com). The Lead Masks Case.

Vallee, Jacques. Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.

Various newspaper articles from:

Correio da Manhã Available at Lead Masks Case: sources (part 1) – pmig96 (wordpress.com)

Diário de Notícias Available at Lead Masks Case: sources (part 2) – pmig96 (wordpress.com)

Luta Democrática Available at Lead Masks Case: sources (part 3) – pmig96 (wordpress.com)

Folha de São Paulo Available at Lead Masks Case: sources (part 4) – pmig96 (wordpress.com)