17: The Unsolved Mystery of The Lead Masks Case
27:32 Share

With Lucky Land Sluts, you can get lucky just about anywhere. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to... Has anyone seen the bride and groom? Sorry, sorry, we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost track of time. No, Lucky Land Casino, with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guest registry. In that case, I pronounce you lucky. Yay!

Buy for free at LuckyLandSluts.com. No purchase necessary. BGW grip. Void were prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. 18-year-old Jorge da Costa Alves was flying his kite on Vintem Hill in 1966 when he first noticed the smell. It was a sunny day after a stretch of rain in the southeast of Brazil. He was expecting the scent of dewy, fresh grass and clean air, maybe even some salt from the nearby beach.

But this was not that. Instead, the strong, unmissable stench of rot hung thick in the air. George searched around for the source when he saw it. Two pairs of legs stretched out in the grass. At first, it almost looked like two men were taking a nap. But the bugs and the smell said otherwise. What George was smelling was death.

Investigators were on the scene fast, and it quickly became apparent that this was not going to be a normal investigation. The two deceased men were both dressed in black suits, and laying near their bodies were two lead masks. Not full-face masks or lead N95s, but these masks were cut into the shape of eyeglasses and were made of pure lead. And found on them was a note that read, "'4.30 p.m. Be at the determined place.'"

6:30 p.m. Swallow capsules, after effect, protect metals, wait for mask signal. What followed was a wild goose chase down the paths of secret societies, the occult, and even UFO sightings. Buckle in, because today we're diving headfirst down the rabbit hole. It's that feeling when the energy in the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of a moment,

Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of terrifying tales. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore.

If you're new to the podcast, don't worry, you're in good company. This is a community of people who follow their dark curiosities wherever it leads them. If you'd like to get deeper into the community, you can follow me on Instagram or TikTok at HeartStartsPounding, and you can support the show on Patreon, where I have some bonus content like short dives into recent cases and extended material from episodes. I also have a few remixed episodes that feature my commentary with Leo.

Just three bucks a month. Today's story is unlike anything I've ever heard. It's got aliens, secret societies, men in black, and seances. It's practically directed by the Wachowskis. Let's dive in. It's August 20th, 1966, and we arrive at the scene right after George DaCosta Alves found the bodies of the two men.

When police arrive, they take stock of the scene, which included two men in their 30s wearing suits and raincoats, the strange note about taking capsules and awaiting signs, a bottle of mineral water, two towels, and a few thousand dollars by today's conversion. Initial observation showed the men had no visible signs of injury, though it was hard to tell because the bodies were very decomposed.

The bodies were also found laying on a bed of vegetation that looked like it had been cut down from nearby trees and grass with a knife, but no such knife was ever found in the area. Police weren't able to immediately figure out a cause of death. They were, however, able to identify the men as Manuel Pereira de Cruz and Miguel Jose Viana, two electronic repairmen in their early 30s with young families. Both of them lived 175 miles away in a town called Campos.

So what were they doing on that hill? And more importantly, what killed them? Police hoped that answering a few basic questions would at least give them somewhere to look, because right now they did not have much to go on.

Well, George, the boy who found the bodies, remembered that he had seen the men just a few days before, on August 17th, sitting on the hill. George came back the next day and saw them laying down, but he wasn't concerned enough to call authorities. It was only a few days later when he noticed the smell and was certain they were dead. Through interviews with those closest to Miguel and Manuel, the police were able to put together the following timeline of events leading up to their deaths.

On the morning of August 16th, both Miguel and Manuel told their families that they were taking a bus to Sao Paulo to buy some electronics and a used car. Both men were electronic repairmen, so this doesn't strike their wives as too strange. What was strange, however, was why they decided that they had to travel hours away to buy a used car.

It's also estimated they left their homes with 3 million cruceros, which would have been several years wages at the time. More importantly, this was far less than the amount found on their bodies. But the men didn't go to Sao Paulo. They went to Niterói, a wealthy suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Upon arriving in Niterói, they did make a few purchases, but not of electronic equipment and not of a car.

It had started raining, so the men went and purchased matching raincoats for about 9,400 cruzeiros. Then, they went to a bar and purchased a bottle of mineral water. At the time in Brazil, there was a program where if you kept the receipt for a bottle, you could return it and get some of the money back. The men kept the receipt, and this is the first indicator we have that the men potentially did not intend to die that day. The receipt made it seem like they had made some sort of future plan.

Witnesses in the bar where they purchased the mineral water said that the men seemed anxious and Miguel kept checking his watch. At about 3:15, they got a ride in a jeep to the bottom of the hill where they walked up to their final resting place on foot. It was about 5:00 p.m. when George saw them sitting up there. When the bodies were found, they had 161,000 cruceros on them. So what happened to the rest of their cash?

I'm going to stop us right here to bring up that right from the start of this investigation, pieces of this puzzle were bungled. The coroner claimed that he was too busy to do a proper autopsy, so right after the bodies were found, there was no toxicology testing done. We can assume from their note that they did take a pill, we just don't know what that pill was.

There was more written on the note besides the instructions on what to do that day. The note also read, Sunday, one capsule after lunch. Wednesday, one capsule at bedtime. When they were found on the hill, it was a Wednesday, so I think these instructions were referring to the week before. But what kind of capsule would be taken one day at lunch, three days later at bedtime, and then one week later at 4.30 p.m.?

I'm not a pharmacist, but I think we can rule out antibiotics. Also on the note was a mathematical formula for Ohm's law. E = IR used to calculate the strength of an electrical current. Okay, that potentially makes some sense, they did work in electronics. All of this evidence is strange, to say the least, and it doesn't really point in a definitive direction, so the police start going through their usual theories.

For one, where was all the money they had brought to the hill? Could this have been a robbery gone wrong? Even though the coroner half-assed the autopsy, he did declare that there was no foul play. Nothing about the state of the bodies suggested they had been killed by violence. Okay, was it suicide?

Well, if the coroner wasn't taking summer Fridays, we may know that. At the time, the bodies were not tested for poison, but eventually, a year later, they were exhumed and tested and it was confirmed that they didn't have arsenic, mercury, barium, or thallium in their systems. Not a super comprehensive list, but it's something. There was also the issue of the receipt, which the police kept coming back to.

Why would they have their receipt for mineral water if they didn't think they would go back and collect the cash? One thought I have on this is, if a cashier hands me something, I absolutely take it. I'd rather walk around awkwardly holding trash than be put on the spot to say I don't actually need the receipt, especially if you've already printed it out and handed it to me. I'm not saying that's what they did, but I'm just saying the receipt evidence doesn't seem to be the home run that some people made it out to be.

Okay, maybe they got hit by lightning, the cops thought. It had been raining that day, and locals had complained about seeing something bright in the sky the night of the 17th. But again, their bodies weren't consistent with a lightning strike, and the area around them didn't suggest it either. But I want to take a minute to talk about the bright lights that locals were complaining about, because this is where the story starts to get absolutely wild.

On August 17th, the night that the men went to the top of the hill, a well-respected woman in the community named Grisinda was driving home with her children when they all saw a strange light in the sky. Grisinda described it to police as a multicolored object, ovoid, orange color, with a ring of fire which came out blue rays in various directions. In other words, Grisinda thought she saw a spaceship.

So she calls the police to notify them, and local press catch wind of this and put out an article about it. It's only then that multiple people start calling into the police station saying they had seen the same thing. They also saw this weird orange object in the sky that night. And when pressed as to why they didn't come forward earlier, they said they thought that people would think they were crazy, and they felt safe now that someone as well-known and respected as Grisinda had come forward.

So now you might be like, but Kaylin, what does this UFO sighting have to do with the men's death? Are you suggesting that a rogue UFO killed them? I'm not not suggesting that. But there's more to the story after the break. So later on, when the police were investigating the men's homes, they made an interesting discovery.

Manuel and Miguel had a workshop where police found scraps of metal consistent with the lead eyeglasses they wore. This meant that the men had constructed the glasses themselves. The police also found a few books on scientific spiritualism that had passages highlighted. And get this, those passages were about aliens and how when contact is made with aliens, they will emit a light so bright that you'll need to wear sunglasses made of lead to protect yourself from them.

You see why the UFO sighting the night of their death is a little coincidental. Manuel's wife confirms that the two men were indeed scientific spiritualists, and she admits that actually a lot of the electronic repairmen in the area were also scientific spiritualists. They even had their own secret society where they talked to each other about these things and regularly attended seances.

And then, stranger yet, Miguel's niece recounts a conversation she had with him the day that he died. As Miguel was leaving the house, she asked him where he was going, to which he responded, When he told her that he was going there to buy a car, she asked him why. It was far cheaper to buy a car near home, to which Miguel replied,

I need to know one thing. Then, when I get back, I'll tell you if I really believe in this story of spiritualism or not. So was the reason the men were heading to the mountain tied to their beliefs in spiritualism? To figure that out, let's first do a little dive into what spiritualism even is.

Plug in a Hyundai EV and the extraordinary happens. It's not just the ultra-fast charging capability and long range in the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6, or the adventure-seeking spirit of the Kona Electric, or the groundbreaking 601 horsepower Ioniq 5N. And it's not just the comfort in knowing that every Hyundai EV is backed by a 10-year, 100,000-mile limited electric battery warranty.

Hyundai's EVs transform a low hum into a loud adventure. They bring color to your journey and turn energy into main character energy. So forget everything you thought you knew about EVs and turn the extraordinary into something truly electrifying.

There's joy in every journey. EPA estimated 303 mile driving range for 2024 IONIQ 5SE SEL limited rear wheel drive and 361 mile driving range for 2024 IONIQ 6SE long range rear wheel drive with fully charged battery. Estimated range varies for other models and trims and depends on battery capacity, temperature options and other factors. Limited battery warranty covers defects and materials for 10 years or 100,000 miles, whichever occurs first. See owner's manual for complete warranty details and limitations. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. I'm Victoria Cash and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land.

where you can play over 100 social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. So what are you waiting for? The best way to discover your luck is to spin. So go to LuckyLandSlots.com. That's LuckyLandSlots.com. And get lucky today at LuckyLand. No purchase necessary. VTW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.

To put it plainly, spiritualism is the belief that we can communicate with the dead. That there is some hidden channel that exists between the living and the dead, and if we can tune into it, we can communicate with lost loved ones. The movement absolutely exploded in the mid-1800s after the Fox sisters, 11-year-old Kate and 14-year-old Margaret, claimed they could communicate with a ghost in their house.

Whatever spirit was residing in their New York home would communicate with them through taps. One tap yes, two taps no. Word quickly spread around the community of Rochester and soon onlookers would come watch the girls display their gift. Though eventually the Fox sisters would admit to being frauds, the spiritualist movement was born. Seances soon happened around the world and medium became a legitimate job title.

But Miguel and Manuel weren't just spiritualists. They were scientific spiritualists, a brand of spiritualism that was rooted in observable facts and scientific experiments. Scientific spiritualism came to be because the 1800s were a gold rush for those who believed they had the gift of being able to contact the dead. And as a result, many mediums were debunked as scam artists.

It actually was a thing where women who didn't have much money would turn to spirituality as a source of income. It didn't require any startup costs, and people tended to trust that women had a stronger ability to contact the other side. So the movement caught the attention of many scientists who looked to prove that what was happening was real, especially with the rise of these scam artists.

One of these scientists was William Crookes, a British scientist best known for his work in spectroscopy and for discovering the element thallium. William was a hardcore man of facts until his brother Philip's death in 1867. After Philip died, William started attending seances to get in touch with his brother, and he believed that he had...

In a dimly lit room in France, Crookes thought he caught an apparition of his brother during a seance. This catapulted him into the world of spiritualists, and he started studying those that proclaimed they could make contact with the other side. He was a skeptic by nature, and his scientific mind wanted to be sure that what he was seeing was real. So he decided to spend the rest of his life finding the link between the scientific and the spiritual.

And you can see this in his studies of spectroscopy, the study of visible light. Crookes knew that there were rays of light that humans could not see, like x-rays, and he suggested that there could potentially be a wave of light that carried thoughts. And if some people could tune into this radio wave, they could harness the power of telepathy.

Sounds wild, right? Well, this idea spread, and by the 1960s, the connection between the scientific and spiritual had permeated the electronic repairman community in Brazil. During the investigation, the police caught wind of another electronic repairman that was also involved with Manuel and Miguel, a man by the name of Elcio.

Elcio quickly became a suspect because he was thought to be the last person to see the two men alive. Elcio admitted that, yes, he was also a scientific spiritualist, and though the police couldn't find much of a connection between Elcio and the men's deaths, he enlightened the police into what the men were interested in finding on that mountain.

Elcio, Manuel, Miguel and many other electronic repairmen in Brazil were interested in not just making contact with the dead, but making contact with higher, more intelligent beings. And Elcio knows how crazy this sounds. But believe me, he tells the police it was working and I can prove it to you.

A few weeks before the men's death, LCO said that the men had conducted an experiment to see if they could, in fact, communicate with extraterrestrials, specifically ones on Mars.

So they built a device in Elcio's garden. According to Elcio, the scientific spiritualist community thought that you could contact life on other planets the same way you could contact the spirit of someone who passed away. They thought that all spirits could be contacted, living or dead. This device that they had built was going to help them do that. We don't know the specifics of this device, but we do know that when they fired it up, it exploded. Violently.

However, once the chaos of the explosion settles down, the men notice that sprinkled around the garden was a strange white powder. And to Elsio, this kind of felt like proof that a spirit had been there. And so the three men decide to try the experiment again on a much larger scale. One warm, tranquil night in June, they all go down to Atifona Beach. This part is really strange.

According to LCO, when they started their experiment down by the beach, they all looked up to see a large, illuminated object descending from the sky. About five minutes after they watched it come down, it started lifting back up into the clouds when there was a bright flash and a loud bang.

It sounded like an explosion, like a bomb had gone off in the sky. And at this point, I'm thinking, okay, a large flash and a large explosion on a beach. If this really happened, there must have been one other person who heard or saw this.

And what's absolutely crazy about it is that yes, many other people heard and saw this. It was such a loud explosion that the Brazilian Navy and Air Force launched investigations into it. And strange enough, during the investigation, the military found that they picked up three radio signals that night that they could not trace. Apparently, they heard a strange conversation happening over the radios, though no one reported exactly what was said.

The military had the technology to identify where radio signals were coming from, but they said that none of the radios were registered in Brazil. And again, after the dust had settled, Elcio saw the same powder on the beach that he had seen in the garden. And again, he feels like this is proof that the experiment somehow worked. A spirit had been there. But that was the last experiment that the three men had done together. So what were they doing up on that hill that day?

Well, a few years after the deaths of the two men, a professor of yoga in Brazil came forward and claimed that he knew what the pills were for. He said that he knew the local scientific spiritualists were taking psychedelic drugs because they thought it would help them tune their brains to be able to communicate with alien life. These drugs were supposed to lull people into a trance-like state where they could be receptive to alien emissions.

and because these emissions would be blindingly bright, they brought lead masks with them. I know this is getting a little bizarre, and the police thought so too. Okay, it was weird that these guys were hunting for UFOs only for other people in the area to see UFOs the night they died, but there's no way they summoned aliens with their minds, right? Though the police were thrown into the world of the occult and spiritualism,

They couldn't close the case by saying that alien tech zapped the men to death. They would be the laughingstock of their community. But lucky for them, another lead came in. One that pointed towards a much more earthly explanation.

In June of 1968, the police announced they were now looking for a blonde man who it's believed drove the men in the Jeep from Niteroi to the foot of the mountain. A witness had come forward and said they saw Miguel and Manuel talking to a blonde man in a Jeep that they were in. There were two other people in the Jeep, but they didn't get a great look at them.

This didn't bring up many leads. The only evidence police had was that there was someone blonde and potentially foreign looking who was driving the Jeep. And no one came forward claiming to be that person or to know them. While the police didn't get anywhere with this lead, it at least gave them hope that there was someone out there who knew what happened to these men. And then, less than a year later, someone came forward.

A man by the name of Hamilton Bazzani told police that he knew what happened to the men, because he was responsible for it. According to Hamilton, who, by the way, was a notorious criminal who was giving this testimony from prison, he was hiding from the law in Rio de Janeiro when he was approached by three people. They told him that they had a job for him to do in Niteroi that would pay well for all of them if done correctly.

So, they bring Hamilton to Niteroi and they all go to a spiritual center together. Apparently, at a seance that happened at this center, Hamilton and the group met Miguel and Manuel. It was here that they learned that the men were on their way home to buy a used car and some equipment and had lots of cash on them. One of the men told the others, quote, "'See, the spirit of fortune has descended, but it will shortly incarnate in other bodies.'"

Hamilton and the group then drove the men to the foot of the mountain and forced them to walk to the top where they robbed Manuel and Miguel and made them drink poison. I don't know about you, but this confession brings up a lot of questions for me. There was still money on Miguel and Manuel when they were found. 161,000 cruceros. Why didn't they steal all of the money that the men had on them?

And why did they have to kill them at the top of the mountain with poison? Couldn't they have just held them up, said give us all your money, and then taken off? Also, he was approached by the men saying there was a job in Niteroi, yet it seems like they chose the victims on the spot. There seems to be a lot of unnecessary steps in this plan. This led a lot of people to believe that this was just a tall tale that Hamilton was telling from prison.

And the police thought so too. They never tried Hamilton for the crime. And after this, they just closed the case. There just wasn't enough evidence, police claimed. They wouldn't even entertain the idea of the supernatural occurrences. And some people believed that this was on purpose.

Spiritualism was clearly spreading throughout Brazil and UFO sightings started becoming more and more common. People in the community seemed to think that the police were desperate to prove that UFOs were not real, so they would discount any evidence the locals would give them. It seemed like the police's quest to debunk UFOs may have hindered their investigation. Okay, so let's circle up for a moment. The case was closed even without an explanation. But what makes the most sense?

Sure, Hamilton could have forced them to take poison, could have stolen a weird amount of money from them, but that seems like a stretch. Though, it's not outside the realm of possibilities.

We know the toxicology report was not comprehensive, so yes, what they took could have been fatal. If they were really using psychedelics like the professor said, it is rare to overdose on them. But maybe it was cut with something poisonous. From the note though, it sounds like they were taking the drugs throughout the week and never had any problems. I'm going to pose this last theory though.

There does seem to be a non-zero chance that whatever the men were trying to do on that hill worked. Maybe they did summon an alien spirit, and that spirit took their spirits and they all went off together. I honestly can't believe I'm saying this because I'm a skeptic. I'm usually the last one to believe something like this, but there's just a part of me that can't let this theory go.

I also want to mention that we don't have great sources for this case. All of the original sources were published in Portuguese, and the sources that are available to us today are the ones that reference those sources. They're not the actual sources. This could be a copypasta story where each time it's retold, another fantastical element is tacked on until we're left with a tale of UFO abduction.

Maybe we don't live in a world where we can train our brains to contact other spirits, where alien life exists, where both alien spirits and human spirits can interact. But there is one thing I didn't tell you. In 1962, four years before the deaths of Manuel and Miguel, there was another body found on Vintem Hill. It was the body of a man named Hermes, and he was an electronics repairman in the area.

He was also found to be wearing a suit, and lying next to him was none other than a lead mask. The police also closed his case with no explanation, but maybe, just maybe, Manuel and Miguel knew that what he had done had worked.

This has been Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kaylin Moore. Follow along on Instagram and TikTok at Heart Starts Pounding and support us on Patreon if you're so inclined. Linked in the description. Have a case request or a heart-pounding tale you'd like to share? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time. You slept through your alarm, missed the train, and your breakfast sandwich, cold. Sounds like you could use some luck.

I'm Victoria Cash, and Lucky Land is where people go every day to get lucky. At Lucky Land, you can play over 100 casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Go to LuckyLandSlots.com and get lucky today. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.