A five year old girl in Brazil became an unwitting key witness in a harrowing murder case after her seemingly normal life was exposed as a facade. As little Maria* enjoyed a home-made empanada in her family’s garden in Garahuns, northeastern Brazil, her tranquillity was shattered by a police raid.
The discovery made by the officers was particularly disturbing for locals who were fans of the family’s popular empanadas, a local delicacy similar to a Cornish Pasty. Jorge Beltrão Negromonte da Silveira, whom the young girl, Maria, believed to be her father, claimed he was on a divine mission from an angel to “purify” the Earth and control overpopulation.
However, his methods were nothing short of sickening.
Podcaster Mr Ballen recounted how Maria’s family, busy with their thriving pie business, would often hire young women to care for her. A month prior to the raid, a new nanny had arrived but seemed to have left abruptly.
Mr Ballen noted: “In the past there had been other women who had come by to be her nanny and they didn’t seem to last very long.”, reports the Mirror.
Negromonte, along with his two accomplices Isabel Cristina Torreão Pires da Silveira – whom Maria believed to be her mother – and Bruna Cristina Oliveira da Silva – thought to be her aunt – established a perverse religious sect they dubbed The Cartel. Negromonte engaged in sexual relations with both women, who acted as parents to young Maria despite not being biologically related to her.
Maria’s actual mother was Jéssica Camila da Silva Pereira, a 17 year old homeless single mum. She represented the type of “impure” woman that Negromonte felt divinely mandated to eradicate from the planet.
“The literal purpose of the cartel sect was to eliminate women they deemed unclean in order to reduce and purify the world’s population,” explained Mr Ballen.
When Maria was just a year old, one cult member snatched her from Jéssica’s grasp. While Jéssica was distracted, Negromonte clubbed her over the head. The dazed teenager was then hauled into a bathroom, where her throat was cut, and her body drained of blood.
The trio proceeded to dismember and skin Jéssica’s corpse, slicing the flesh and refrigerating it overnight. The following day, the women seasoned the meat with salt and cumin, before baking it into empanadas filled with the human remains.
Tragically, some of Jéssica’s own flesh was fed to her daughter.
A horrifying trio travelled across various cities in Brazil, committing murders and using the flesh from their victims’ buttocks or thighs to make pies. These were then sold by Pires in hairdressers and beauty salons for the equivalent of about 25p each.
Cristiane Lima, 29, who owned one of the salons where Pires sold her pies, told Globe.com: “Most of the customers bought them and didn’t complain, some thought they were just okay. Once, there were two customers who thought they were too salty and didn’t finish them. [Pires] said they were chicken empanadas.”
In a chilling twist, the group’s most heinous act involved feeding Maria, the daughter of their first victim, her own mother’s flesh. Mr Ballen explained: “She was actually the daughter of the very first victim of the Cartel sect,” and “They had been lured to this very house where her mother was murdered right in front of Maria and then after her mother was killed they cooked her mother and fed pieces of the mother to Maria.”
Maria was kept by the group and treated as a family member, unknowingly becoming a cannibal. The gruesome crimes were exposed when the killers used a victim’s credit card.
In November 2014, the three were convicted in a Brazilian court, with the two older cult members receiving 71-year sentences and Pires sentenced to 68 years in prison.
Negromonte has utilised part of his sentence to pen a series of books detailing his experiences, revealing that he has since adopted a vegetarian lifestyle.
*Maria is currently living under a new identity.