Episode 3 of 10.
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Pico dos Marins | Episode 3: A Suspect is Sought | Original Globoplay Podcast
Globoplay, Dec 23, 2022.
#Globoplay #Podcast #PicoDosMarins
As searches are underway at Pico dos Marins, the civil police focus all their attention on one man: Juan Bernabeu, the leader in charge of guiding the expedition of the young scouts. A series of errors committed by the Spaniard, who is based in Brazil, make him the prime suspect in the investigation.
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[ If you haven't heard the first two episodes of this podcast yet, I recommend you pause now, go listen, and then come back. My name is Marcelo Mesquita, and from the very first moment, we've been trying to understand what happened to Marco Aurélio, the scout who disappeared in the Serra da Mantiqueira during an especially cold winter in 1985. It's a mystery that intrigues many people to this day, a disappearance without any concrete clues, never solved by the police, but which left a complex mix of great sadness and, at the same time, hope for some answer. [Music] Testing, testing. July 2nd. We're starting here at the studios of the podcast. Going to Tânia's house. I'm picking up your error at the subway. Luiza went to the meeting point. She'll get in here. On this day, Luiza and I were in the car, the executive producer of our series. Good morning, Seu Ivo. How are you? It's good. Let's go. Come in. Luiza went to get a coffee while Seu Ivo, the owner of this voice you already know, got into the car. The plan was for us to interview Tânia together, Neuma's sister, meaning Marco Aurélio's aunt. You're here in the passenger seat, giving me directions. The day has finally arrived. The day has finally arrived. I'm very happy. Good. Me too. In fact, I've already made a statement to the family saying that today is a historic day for the family and for humanity. Marcela, it's much more than for the Simões family, because what we're doing is the beginning of a work that will be historic for the rest of our lives. Historic, perhaps a final act of digging a bit into the depths and reaching somewhere. Indeed, reaching somewhere. I mean, revealing information and perhaps getting closer to the truth. Not the whole truth, of course. Do you understand what happened to Marco Aurélio? I have that hope, but I also have... In this chat in the car, as always, I kept asking questions. Every trip is a chance to hear a bit more about the family's story, Seu Ivo's story, and to also learn a bit more about the world of scouting. For you to see, I had already read in the scouts' reports about this significant moment, the council fire. It was, for example, at a council fire on the eve of the ascent to Pico dos Marins in June 1985 that Marco Aurélio was chosen as the patrol monitor, led by Ruan. On the last day, the farewell song goes something like this, because why lose hope? This wasn't the first, nor the last time I saw Seu Ivo sing this song. It's more than a brief goodbye, winning together alongside us. It's more than a brief goodbye, I'll return soon. [Music] The farewell song in Seu Ivo's voice always carries a very strong feeling. It's the feeling of a father searching for his son who disappeared without saying goodbye. It's melancholic, but it always brings hope. [Music] This is Pico dos Marins, the case of Scout Marco Aurélio, Episode 3, A Suspect is Sought. [Music] Operation Marins lasted over a month. It was a large sweep of the mountain that has held, since 1985, somewhere within its more than 2,400 meters of altitude, the mystery of Marco Aurélio's disappearance. The case generated national shock, and then a name, besides Marco Aurélio's, began to gain prominence in the newspapers. Marco Aurélio wasn't alone. He was climbing the peak with three other scouts and the group leader, Juan Bernabéu. Osvaldo, one of the boys, injured his knee. Marco Aurélio offered to go for help. The scout leader, even knowing it went against scouting rules, allowed the boy to descend alone. The result? After this moment, Marco Aurélio was never seen again. Why did you let the boy go alone? The most capable in field knowledge, and what were you doing at these hours? This is the first time you hear Ruan's voice here, the scout leader of Patrol 240. It's a voice that travels from '85 to here, recorded by the Globo reporter at the time of the searches, Helena de Gramon. As I told you before, Ruan now lives in Manaus. We tried to interview him, but he preferred to answer only specific questions in writing. [Music] It's not very difficult to understand why Ruan became the prime suspect in the investigation opened by the Piquete delegate, Isidro Ferraz. Think about it: if you are a delegate and you learn that an adult was responsible for an excursion with four teenagers, and after this adult allowed the group to separate, one of the boys disappears, of course you're going to go after the responsible adult, in this case, Ruan, the scout leader. Folha de São Paulo reported that Inquiry 3085 was opened to investigate the facts, because, according to delegate Ferraz, "the story is not being told correctly." While searches are underway for the missing scout at Pico dos Marins, doubt hangs in the air: did Marco Aurélio get lost, run away, or is there a crime to be solved? [Music] Every day I think, what can I do? What could I have done? What more can we do? So, some answers I have. What could I have done? I could have been a little smarter and discovered within our group that the scout leader wasn't a trustworthy person. The police inquiry was opened four days after Marco Aurélio's disappearance. We can imagine that the investigation begins when those involved in the search feel they might not find the boy on the mountain. [Music] I spent some time looking at the first documents signed by delegate Isidro. In the papers, he orders that a copy of the missing minor's ID be attached. It was especially this ID of Marco Aurélio that caught my attention. It's a faded black and white image, looks like a bad xerox, but it has his photo. And this photo is what we cling to because, amidst so much harsh and official reporting, we can easily get lost from the main thing, which is this face, the face of a boy, a missing teenager. He's not exactly smiling, because it's an ID photo, but almost. His gaze is a bit shy, looking slightly upward, revealing his slight strabismus. [Music] When I look at this photo, I feel a strange sensation, something that grips you to any clue, however small. And that's what happened from the beginning of the case. As we can feel at some moments of the inquiry, searching for hypotheses, and of course, for some suspect. Remember Lieutenant Airton, who participated in the mountain searches? And remember the end of the last episode? So, I don't know if it slipped by, but there we talked about the seizure of a glove. Lieutenant PM Airton Ribeiro da Costa from the 23rd Military Police Battalion of Lorena, São Paulo, appeared before the authorities and exhibited a pair of white gloves with the inscription Kodak Revelations. It was found in the Marins neighborhood. This is Ivan Zanzuki reading a passage from the inquiry that I find interesting because it immediately mentions the pair of gloves. Whose gloves would these be? Why Kodak? I researched them online and saw that there was a Kodak developing kit with some accessories and the so-called glove, something commercial from that era, the 80s, when we took photos on film and then had to develop them. Well, the gloves led nowhere. It's disappointing, I know, but also quite illustrative of the case. It's a useless clue, as the Folha de São Paulo report described it. What could have been a clue emerged on Saturday night: a pair of woolen gloves found in a clump of grass on the edge of a goat trail on the flanks of the mountain. Although the family assured that the gloves did not belong to the boy, a team of 10 men from the Special Operations Command of the PM (COE) tracked the location throughout Sunday morning without results. [Music] A small hope that leads nowhere. So, when I say illustrative, it's because this will happen at other times in the process. The case inquiry seems to train us in a rather complex logic of unraveling Marco Aurélio's disappearance, passing through detours and false trails. [Music] By the way, before I continue, for those who are not familiar with the term, an inquiry is an investigation process. The inquiry, in the hands of prosecutors, can lead to an indictment. So, the inquiry is like a path to collect elements that can prove a crime or point out infractions. But when we look at the inquiry step by step, it's a pile of paper, and the feeling is like looking at a book. The Simon family gave me a bound printed copy of each of the two volumes. In total, over 600 pages, which I gradually filled with post-it notes and annotations. The inquiry is, therefore, a narrative, and like any narrative, it is subject to biases and uncertain paths. So, suddenly, from those gloves that appear on the first pages, the inquiry about Marco Aurélio jumps from the 12th to the 17th of June, which is when the first testimonies take place. And then the focus shifts entirely to Ruan. The police interrogate Gugu and Paulinho, leaders of the Piquete scout group that had provided logistical support to the patrol led by Ruan. From the testimonies, we perceive that the police seem to be trying to understand why Ruan dismissed the help of the local guide, Seu Afonso, to climb Pico dos Marins. Was it something intentional or premeditated? But the most important fact of this early investigation was yet to come: the testimonies of scout leader Ruan and scouts Ricardo, Osvaldo, and Ramatis, which were taken at the Piquete police station. It is crucial to remember the circumstances in which these testimonies were taken. They occur 10 days after the last time Marco Aurélio was seen. Ramatis' father is the one who takes the boys to the police station. Only Ramatis gives his testimony accompanied by a family member. The records state that teenagers Ricardo and Osvaldo give their testimonies alone to delegate Isidro, but with the company of a child protection commissioner and, of course, the clerk. In their testimonies, scout leader Ruan and the scouts recount the step-by-step preparations and the ascent of Pico dos Marins. They also talk about Marco Aurélio's choice to go ahead to seek help after Osvaldo's accident and how Marco Aurélio was the most dedicated in the group. So far, no contradictions. However, in Osvaldo's testimony, some points appear that don't match the other scouts or Ruan, as shown in a passage on page 13, Volume 1 of the inquiry: "The declarer can affirm that scout leader Ruan knows the whereabouts of Marco Aurélio or his body, because at the scene, shortly after the accident that occurred with the declarer, Juan returned without Marco Aurélio, and he was never seen again by any member of the group. Subsequently, Osvaldo's testimony states: "When we were arriving at this police station today, as we were getting out of the vehicle, Juan addressed the declarer and made a gesture with his hands, meaning 'shut your mouth,' and made a positive signal." And finally, a new element also emerges in Osvaldo's testimony that has to do with the preparations for the climb, still at the campsite in Seu Afonso's backyard, on the eve of the ascent, on Friday night to Saturday. "The declarer recalls that at a certain point, Marco Aurélio left the inside of the tent, and shortly thereafter, Ruan also left, saying he was going to relieve himself, and that both only returned to the tent about half an hour later, when Marco Aurélio was a bit strange and said he was very sleepy, saying he was going to sleep. The declarer is afraid of scout leader Ruan, as he addresses the declarer in a very aggressive manner." After collecting the testimonies, delegate Isidro determines the following: "In view of the discrepancies between the statements, proceed with the confrontation between all, taking the usual precautions." Confrontation is a procedure used when stories don't match, meaning the deponents are placed face to face, and the points of disagreement are discussed in the delegate's presence. [Music] In the confrontation between scout leader Juan and scouts Ricardo, Osvaldo, and Ramatis, which takes place right there at the Piquete police station, all confirm their own testimonies from earlier that same day, June 18th. That is, the stories continue not to match. A Globo TV report recorded at the police station shortly after the confrontation shows the clash. The report's editing condenses each person's statements but shows Osvaldo and Ricardo, scout leader Ruan, and delegate Isidro contradicting each other. Two colleagues who were with Marco Aurélio gave different versions. First, Osvaldo and Ricardo speak: "Where he went back, he wasn't 50 meters away." "Do you disagree with these 50 meters?" "No, I don't agree that there was pressure." "When we... Ruan didn't separate from you, did he?" "He wasn't separated at any moment." Then reporter Helena de Gramon asks Ruan: "Is it true that you pressured Osvaldo? Did you call his house? Did you say 'shut your mouth'?" Finally, we hear delegate Isidro: "There are several controversies regarding the boys' testimonies." "Did he tell you why you let Marco Aurélio go down alone?" "He said he took the risk, despite recognizing that it's not the basic rule of scouting." The suspicion about Ruan only grows, and other reports about the investigation, which begin to appear more and more in the Paulista press, make this clear. Jornada Tarde: "Suspicion of a crime in the scout's disappearance. The police have many doubts about the disappearance of scout Marco Aurélio Simon. Yesterday at the Piquete police station, there were discrepancies between the testimonies of his companions. One of them pointed to instructor Ruan as responsible for the boy's disappearance. Today, Juan retraced Marco Aurélio's path. He disappeared." A report in Estadão is even more incisive. The title is: "Suspicion grows against scout instructor." The text also includes the testimony of a police officer who wished to remain anonymous: "Possibly the scout leader tried to hide the area where Marco Aurélio disappeared, just to keep the family's hope of finding the boy alive." "Do you think Juan would have pointed out the exact location of the disappearance in the first days?" "The tendency, obviously, in the first days would be to divert everyone's attention to other areas, and that's precisely what he did perfectly." Another report from Jornal da Tarde begins with an important statement from Major Edmundo de Assis Bosque, a central figure in the searches for Marco Aurélio at Pico dos Marins: "Something very serious happened, and the boys know what it was. Perhaps we are looking in a place where the group never was." [Music] It's important here to explain that the inquiry being put together at the Piquete police station happened in parallel with the intense searches at Pico dos Marins, and from what we understood by interviewing people and reading the press of the time, scout leader Ruan climbed the mountain along with the search efforts and would talk, recall, that is, he would do a kind of unofficial reconstruction of the Patrol 240's expedition. Reconstruction is an important step in cases like this, but the fact is that the official reconstruction of the scouts' step-by-step journey did not happen at that initial stage of the investigation, according to the records. [Music] Remember the distinctive voice of Paulo Antônio, a journalist from Rádio Mantiqueira who covered the searches from the first day? Here he recounts how he observed the movement around scout leader Ruan: "How was Juan's participation?" "Most of the time, he was with them. Most of the time, he walked with them. Other times, he stayed in Piquete because, while he was taken to Piquete for testimony, which wasn't just once, the searches continued, but at every opportunity, Juan was accompanied. He always followed with the group of police officers from the first day. But even so, the focus of the investigation, and the hypothesis of a murder, fell on him. If you asked anyone, 'Did Ruan kill the boy?' That was the answer. And on the other hand, his firmness in coherence in his testimonies." While there was no initial reconstruction, there was a highly controversial practice that was more common in the 80s than today: the police conducted a hypnosis session with Ruan to help him recall what happened on the mountain. The then Lieutenant Ayrton remembers this fact well: "We even, with his authorization, conducted a hypnosis session with regression up to the day he was there. This was done at the Piquete police station. He requested a room from the delegate. A psychologist from Lorena came and hypnotized him. We were even able to locate the psychologist, but he didn't agree to be interviewed." So, in the narrative drawn by the inquiry, Ruan was becoming the villain. So much so that he sought the press to complain about the direction the story was taking. Folha de São Paulo: "They think I killed the boy," complains Ruan. He continues: "The police have the right to think whatever they want. I know it was a fatality." For Ruan, "the police paid little attention to the searches. The delay in the reconstruction only shows how they have worked all this time." Machado de Assis (referring to Major Edmundo de Assis Bosque) contests: "This leader is trying to divert attention to other points." [Music] The days pass, and the inquiry brings more testimonies: Seu Ivo Simon, Seu Afonso, and his wife Maria, among others. Any trace is grabbed like a belt found on the trail by a COE sergeant and taken to delegate Isidro. Another clue that leads nowhere. The months of June and July pass. Operation Marins, the search with over 200 men, is called off, and the case loses traction in the media. But the Simon family continues to move. On one hand, they continue to contact the press throughout the country, and on the other, they conduct their own investigation, gathering clues and pressuring the police for results. [Music] The voices you will hear now come directly from July 1985. One voice is Ruan's; you will notice it by the accent. The other is the voice of a desperate mother, Neuma, now deceased. Given that they were close and the families were united, Neuma decided she would speak with the scout leader herself to try to discover if there was anything wrong with Ruan's story. Neuma conducted some personal interviews with him at the Simon family's home in São Paulo, without police participation. She recorded everything on cassette tape, which Seu Ivo still has. It's a lot of material and it's very interesting. Agitated, she questions the man who, after all, was responsible for her son on that climb. [Music] "But you didn't even ask if the boy had appeared or not? And how do you assume he was lost? And if he had appeared there and wanted to... I couldn't help him for anything, if I had any problem, and someone had told the boy to go seek help, anything, didn't that cross your mind?" "The first thing that crossed my mind was that he hadn't arrived at the camp." What Neuma raises here in this conversation are questions that also haunt me: why, after walking all night, did Ruan arrive at the base and not go directly to Seu Afonso's house to look for Marco Aurélio? After all, the boy had supposedly returned ahead of the group. And also, why did Ruan return to the mountain to search for him without informing anyone besides the scouts? In this dialogue, it's noticeable that Ruan gives evasive answers. In other segments, we hear a mother in a more resigned tone, tired of searching, even being consoled by Ruan, who, after all, was a friend. The recording quality is a bit poor in this next audio, but we can feel the tone of the conversation. [Music] Translating, Ruan tells Neuma to try to rest because she still has other children to care for. [Music] In early August, a few weeks after the end of the searches, a Public Prosecutor requests a series of inquiries from the police, including, finally, the official reconstruction of the climb. But he receives the following response from the judge: "The delegate of the Piquete police has spared no effort in conducting the present inquiry. However, he lacks the resources available in the specialized agency in the capital, which would greatly assist in this case, which appears to be difficult to elucidate." In short, the judge is suggesting changing the delegate for the case. If we view the investigation as a book, we can say that at this point, the book changes publisher and author. So, throughout August, as there was no material evidence of what had happened to Marco Aurélio, the case becomes a hot potato, passed between specialized missing persons and homicide departments. Then, in September, the inquiry is forwarded to the anti-kidnapping group in São Paulo capital, a unit considered highly qualified and known as GAS. Seu Ivo remembers this moment well: "I have no complaints about the police authorities. Michel Temer was the Secretary of Public Security at the time. I went to talk to him. He said, 'Seu Ivo, the missing persons department doesn't even have a patrol car. So, I'll put you in the anti-kidnapping group.' Anything you have, talk to the anti-kidnapping group. The group acts immediately." The specialists reach an impasse. After all, was it a kidnapping or a disappearance case? [Music] The GAS delegate who takes charge of the case is Anivaldo Registro, and he once again shines the spotlight on Ruan, but now with an even more incisive investigative line. He soon begins to produce a three-page report on the personal life of the scout leader. The report starts on page 67 of the first volume of the inquiry. By reading and re-reading the inquiries carried out by the GAS police officers, one understands a path that had not been explored until then in the investigations: details about Juan Bernabéu's intimate life, personality, and the reasons for his separation from his ex-wife. You might be wondering, what does this have to do with the case? Well, but it doesn't stop there. This report, which is attached to the inquiry and signed by delegate Nivaldo himself, pulls Ruan's entire file. It mentions that he was the target of a previous inquiry for a case of fraud, talks about the couple's separation, Ruan's adolescent son, his connection with scouting, and his professional career, to reach the following sentence: "After divorcing his wife, he did not live with anyone else, has no contact with women, is introverted, but hopes that it's not over yet. Extra-officially and for investigative purposes, Juan was interviewed by a psychologist, who informed this authority that Juan has an adolescent mentality in the range of 15 years, is aggressive, likes to socialize with people of the same sex and in that age range, does not accept the opposite sex." You can guess where he's going. The document even mentions Ruan's sexual life with his ex-wife to draw a conclusion that is, let's say, bizarre at the very least. "Based on the information, the conviction is reached that we are dealing with a homosexual, a potential sexual maniac, bearer of two personalities. Therefore, it is urgent that the individual Juan Bernabéu Cespedes be subjected to an official interview with a psychologist and a psychiatrist." Later, Ruan is even referred for a polygraph test, the infamous lie detector, which at the time was more common in investigations and actually serves as proof of nothing when the case goes to trial. But at the last minute, this test is suspended. At this point, the police inquiry, or if you prefer, the case narrative, is more about Ruan than about Marco Aurélio. That face of a shy boy with a slightly strabismic, upward gaze in the ID photo that started this investigation is disappearing, fading away. [Music] Delegate Anivaldo, who was in charge of the anti-kidnapping group, says he is convinced that it is not a kidnapping and goes further: it is a homicide with concealment of a body. And the perpetrator would be Ruan. But since there is no body, no single clue or trace to support the idea of a crime, the case remains that of a missing person. Therefore, he requests the transfer to the missing persons department, which, in turn, says it is not a disappearance case. A new hot potato. We arrive at October 1985. Despite many assumptions about Ruan, nothing related to the scout is proven. The investigations do not advance, and the official reconstruction is not done. And so, the inquiry ends up back in the hands of delegate Isidro, the first one who took on the case as soon as Marco Aurélio disappeared. [Music] Meanwhile, the Simon family begins to make an important and delicate move. They start distributing "Wanted" posters of Marco Aurélio throughout Brazil. What I mean is, it seems like we skipped from childhood to adulthood, because we had a problem, and there was no longer a mood to be a child. So, what I remember most is us in the office. We already had an office upstairs in the house, and it was that phase of distributing posters, posters, posters. Back then, it was all by mail; there was hardly any fax. Detail: Patrícia, Seu Ivo's youngest daughter, who you just heard, was 11 years old at the time. Now, her older sister, Adriana, comments: "Because we did bulk mailings. So, on a table, someone would take posters, someone would fold them for envelopes, label them, close envelopes, put stamps on them. We would spend days doing that to send all over Brazil." Marco Aurélio remembers with sadness the impact on the family: "My mother developed several autoimmune diseases. Each time we had a peak in the publicity of my brother's case, my mother's health worsened significantly because, physically and emotionally, it was very bad for her." The phone rang all the time. The phone would ring, and we'd rush because we thought it was him. I remember Uncle Telmo setting up a sort of phone tap to record conversations. The first Christmas was a catastrophe. My father cried a lot. Seu Ivo also doesn't forget this sad December of 1985: "At the first Christmas in my house, someone called around midnight, I think it was from Espírito Santo, but look, I'm from expression. I know what happened there on the mountain. 'Oh, that's great! So why don't you tell me?' Perhaps hoping for an opportunity to tell you. 'So tell me now.' 'You won't find your son anymore because I was there, I saw the scout leader kill your son and chop him up on the mountain, throwing pieces of him away. That's why they did the searches to find him.' 'Thank you very much.' My wife asked, 'Who was it?' I said, 'It was a friend wishing us a Merry Christmas.'" [Music] And so ends 1985, the year the Simon family would never forget. [Music] [Music] Enter 1986. The police inquiry into Marco Aurélio, which had returned to Piquete for delegate Isidro, makes no progress in January or February. Nothing happens. But then, suddenly, as is common in the Civil Police, the delegate in charge of the case is changed. Isidro is transferred to another city. Delegate Sandra Vergal takes his place. And here, just to be clear, sometimes we think of a delegate as that obsessive character who only works on one case and spends hours looking at a large mural full of images and clues. But that only happens in movies. In Piquete, the case of the missing scout is just one among many on delegate Sandra's desk. In March 1986, in 2022, Seu Ivo and I went to Cruzeiro, a city neighboring Piquete, to talk to Sandra about her memories of the case. "That's what happens in the police. Time passes, the truth disappears. If I had been warned hours earlier, I wouldn't be far away." When delegate Sandra takes over, she inherits a narrative that, as we know, has Ruan as the main suspect. So, under her command, police officers who participated in the searches are heard, and new confrontations are held, now between Ruan and Seu Afonso, and between Ruan and Maria, Seu Afonso's wife. The point of contention from the preparations for the expedition appears in the records, still at the base of Pico dos Marins: why didn't Ruan climb the mountain with the help of local guide Seu Afonso? The controversy is that Ruan says he heard Seu Afonso say he was very busy and that's why he didn't ask Seu Afonso to go, which was contested by Seu Afonso. It's in the inquiry: so it's one person's word against another's, meaning no evidence is produced. The definitive argument on this issue. But suddenly, an important turn. Remember the testimonies of scout leader Ruan and the scouts taken in the first days of the inquiry? They are resumed. Ramatis and Ricardo return to the police station and confirm what they said practically a year earlier, in June '85. But Osvaldo does not confirm his version from the first testimony he gave. It is stated in the records that Osvaldo affirms having seen Juan leave the tent with Marco Aurélio on Friday night for half an hour, and that Ruan knew where Marco Aurélio's body would be because they separated together on the trail after Osvaldo injured his knee. Now, at 16 years old, almost a year later, Osvaldo, accompanied by his mother, goes to the Piquete police station and changes the version he had given the previous year. "The declarer states that on no night did Marco Aurélio leave the interior of the tent where they were camped and was accompanied by Ruan, who indeed, on one of the nights, Marco Aurélio withdrew to relieve himself, but Ruan remained inside the tent. The fact that Ruan did not distance himself from the others in company of Marco Aurélio, as stated, and which allegedly occurred after the declarer had an accident." It's worth remembering, we are talking about teenagers who had gone through an experience that was at least very intense. I asked delegate Sandra in the recent interview I had with her if it was common for a person to change their version of events in an inquiry. "It's common for that to happen, and it's common, especially for those being investigated, for changes to occur. And it's common for them to attribute it to violence, psychological torture. So, it's common for that to happen. It happens almost every day, even today." "Ah," I said, "I said at the police station, 'I was afraid of getting beaten.'" [Music] The months pass, and with delegate Sandra in charge, the official reconstructions of the climb finally take place, one in April 1986 and two in July 1987. Strangely, these reconstructions are only reported in a report on June 19, 1989, that is, four years after Marco Aurélio's disappearance. "Who climbed it was me, because Isidro at the time didn't climb." [Music] By reconstructing the step-by-step actions of each patrol member on the trail, the police report concludes that there are no significant differences between Ruan, Ramatis, Ricardo, and Osvaldo's on-site versions regarding the route taken by the group at Pico dos Marins. "This basic part, I remember, they agreed. The versions were homogeneous." The report also concludes that if Marco Aurélio had followed the trail, he would have reached the road, or if he had suffered an accident, he would have been found during the searches, and if he had gone into the woods, due to the difficulty, he would not have been able to distance himself much. As for the possibility of homicide, the report shifts the focus from Ruan. "The hypothesis of homicide committed by any member of the group is unfeasible, as none of them, not even Ruan, had enough time to execute such a crime and conceal the body so well as not to be found." [Music] That hill, Pico dos Marins, was thoroughly searched. So, if he were there, he would have been located. He would have been located even if they had buried a corpse. I believe he would have been located because the water, the earth would have become softer, and the experienced people doing the search would have seen it and alerted the police, and they would have excavated. I believe that. The report also states that the hypothesis of collective homicide is also unfeasible, as three teenagers would hardly keep a secret for so long, over four years, without falling into contradictions. The hypothesis of a kidnapping does appear as viable in the timeline, but since there was no ransom demand, it is discarded. [Music] Now, you must be asking yourself the same question that's pounding in my head: but what happened to Marco Aurélio? [Music] We are on the last pages of the inquiry, hundreds of pages after that faded photo of Marco Aurélio that opened this narrative, and on April 5, 1990, Walter Luiz Esteves de Azevedo, Judge of Law of Piquete, determines that Ruan's eventual negligent conduct, at least for now, cannot be classified under any criminal offense. Thus, he accepts a statement from the Public Prosecutor and orders the archiving of the present police inquiry. Another inconclusive case for the police and the justice system. The book closes, but not for the Simon family. [Music] "He must not... I cannot say goodbye to him if I believe I will find him. I cannot say goodbye to him." [Music] "I have to face it. It's a saga of my family, of my life, and I have to face it. I have to face it." [Music] Amidst this entire inquiry, many things happened that we didn't have time to detail here because they open broad questions that deserve further study. Did the police spend too much time looking only at Ruan? What might have been overlooked? And most importantly, questions remain about how the investigations were conducted back in '85, the first year of civilian government after two decades of military dictatorship. I spoke with Ricardo about how those first moments of the police inquiry went, what the day was like when he, Osvaldo, and Ramatis went to Piquete to testify for the first time. "We went into a police station. They separated us. I was in a closed room. Osvaldo was with his father, who drove him. They left us without food. They only offered us water. We arrived there around seven something, and we only ate something around seven in the evening." As part of the psychological torture process, Ricardo says that in the room where he gave his important testimony, separated from Ramatis and Osvaldo, delegate Isidro Ferraz and the child protection commissioner, who according to him didn't do much, were present. Every now and then, a prominent figure, whose name is not on the records, entered: Major Edmundo de Assis Bosque, the one who led the searches on the mountain. He wanted to resolve things right there, however wrong it might have been. So, he came with terms: 'Look, your friend has already signed. Only you are left to sign, saying that Juan did this, that Juan did that, that I saw that.' Things that never happened. And I kept refusing to sign. I kept refusing to sign. At a certain point, I was hungry, thirsty, tired, annoyed, fed up, you understand? I picked up the document, turned it over to him, and said, 'Well, if you...' 'This is the fourth or fifth time you've brought me this paper. I'm telling you, it wasn't like that.' Then he got angry and pointed his gun at me, saying, 'You're going to sign this because we're going to resolve this now. I don't want this exposure for this city.' And he said, 'And the curator there, and the delegate there?' Then he shouted in my face. I stood up, him in my face. 'You're going to sign now.' I said, 'Sir, you're the one talking. That's it.' So, it was a very intense moment. It was very intense. About 12 hours inside a police station, suffering psychological torture. Then, when we returned, Osvaldo was psychologically very ill. He had a regression, returned to almost a childlike characteristic, wasn't making sense anymore. The pressure, I think, on him must have been much stronger than on me. And then we came back with a problem, and we left with two: the psychological, psychiatric issue of Osvaldo. In short, put in a few words, that's what happened in that situation at the police station." If what Ricardo says is true, if torture indeed occurred, then theoretically, the testimonies taken by the police are compromised, and more importantly, the central thesis of this initial investigation is compromised: the idea that Ruan is the prime suspect in the case. In the next episode, we will hear all sides of this story, understand the consequences of the situation described by Ricardo, and pay attention: if you have information or any new clues about what happened to scout Marco Aurélio, you can send an email to
