Lisbon Ripper

Lisbon Ripper
Details
Victims 3-9
Span of crimes
 1992–1993 (possibly 1988–2000)
Country Portugal (possibly also the USA, Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Belgium)

The Lisbon Ripper (Portuguese: O Estripador de Lisboa) was a serial killer who, between 1992 and 1993 murdered three prostitutes in Lisbon, Portugal.

Crimes

The first victim was Maria Valentina, nicknamed "Tina", age 22, who was found on 31 July 1992 in a large cabin in Póvoa de Santo Adrião. She was strangled, disemboweled, and some of her internal organs were removed.[1][2][3]

The second victim, Maria Fernanda, age 24, was found on 27 January 1993 in a large cabin in Entrecampos. She was also disemboweled, and some internal organs were removed.[1][2][3]

The third and last victim was Maria João, age 27, found on 15 March 1993, near the location of the first victim. Like the previous victims, she was disemboweled, but this time almost all her organs were removed.[1][2][3]

All the victims were young brunettes named Maria, allegedly prostitutes and drug addicts, and were disemboweled with a sharp object that was not a knife.[1][2][3]

Investigation

There was little or no evidence found on the crime scene: no blood (except from the victims), hair, footprints, fingerprints, or glove material. The police had some suspects, but no evidence against them.[4]

Suspects

On November 30, 2011, nineteen years after the murders, one suspect, José Pedro Guedes, aged 46, had his name put forward by his son Joel, aged 21, who had applied to appear on the Secret Story - A Casa dos Segredos 2 reality show. On the show, contestants are kept locked away for 10 weeks in a house, and each contestant has to conceal a secret while everyone else has to try and discover it; the secret Joel applied with was "I am the son of the Lisbon Ripper". This information aroused the Polícia Judiciária's suspicions. Before his arrest, José Guedes confessed details of the murders to the online edition of the Sol newspaper.[5]

Although he could not be tried for the Lisbon Ripper's murders as they had prescribed in 2008, José Guedes was arrested prevently due to his possible connection with Filipa Ferreira's murder in 2000, in Aveiro.[6] Later inquiries come from the comparation between the suspect's version of the facts and the evidence found at the crime scenes, revealed José Guedes was not the Lisbon Ripper. The Polícia Judiciária inclusively compared the palmprint the Ripper left on a carton of milk with Guedes's one, to realize they don't match. In his version of the facts, José Guedes said he didn't own a car and used to hitchhike to Lisbon with friends, returning by bus at thirty-five past midnight. A prostitute reported to the authorities she heard one of the Ripper's victims crying at 1 AM. Guedes was found not proven of the Lisbon murders, but was still kept under arrest for some more inquiries about the murder in Aveiro. In 2013, José Guedes was released due to the lack of evidence.[7]

Other crimes

There were two other alleged prostitutes found dead.[1][3][4] There were also four similar murders in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Belgium.[8] There was a lead that the Lisbon Ripper may have been a serial killer active in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1988,[8][9] known as the New Bedford Highway Killer.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 (in Portuguese) "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-11-14. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Últimas - Sapo Notícias
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 (in Portuguese) "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-10-17. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
  4. 1 2 (in Portuguese) http://www.correiomanha.pt/noticia.asp?id=252306&idselect=10&idCanal=10&p=200
  5. ↑ "Alegado "estripador de Lisboa" terá sido revelado devido à "Casa dos Segredos"" (in Portuguese). A Bola. 2 December 2011. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  6. ↑ "Alegado "estripador de Lisboa" denunciado por filho que queria entrar na Casa dos Segredos" (in Portuguese). Público. 2 December 2011. Archived from the original on 4 January 2012. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  7. ↑ http://crimeejustica.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/aveiro-jose-guedes-alegado-estripador.html
  8. 1 2 Unsolved Serial Killings; Portugal, Libson
  9. ↑ Unsolved Serial Killings; Massachusetts, New Bedford
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.