The Duas Pontes Case: The Disappearance of Rivalino Mafra da Silva

Duas Pontes lies in the rural area of Diamantina, in northern Minas Gerais, Brazil. An isolated hut stood there, home to Rivalino Mafra da Silva, a garimpeiro, or diamond prospector. A widower since 1961, he was raising three sons: Raimundo Aleluia Mafra, 12, Fatimo, about 6, and Dirceu, about 2.

Around 17 August 1962, Rivalino told two fellow prospectors something strange. He had seen small beings, about 3 feet tall, digging near his house. Both men later confirmed he had told them.

19 August. Around 8 PM. Father and son saw a dark, indefinable shadow slide silently across the kitchen toward another room. Raimundo said it was half the size of a man and did not resemble a human being. Then came voices. Human voices, thick and dragging, threatening Rivalino. Outside, a noise like an alarm clock. The family spent the night praying.

Around 6 AM. Still afraid, Raimundo went out to fetch his father's horse. Two objects were waiting. Oval, 40 to 50 centimetres across. One was matte black. The other had black and white stripes. Each carried a small appendage like a little tail, pointed toward the door. They hung slightly above the ground, about a metre apart. Later English accounts add a hum, and fire flickering underneath.

Rivalino walked toward them, apparently without fear. In investigator Hulvio Brant Aleixo's report, the two objects joined sideways with a dull sound and began spinning together, fast, raising a whirlwind of yellow dust. It enveloped Rivalino. It did not reach his son. "I yelled for my father but there was no answer," Raimundo said. The smoke had an acrid smell. When it cleared, the man and the objects were gone.

Lt. Wilson Lisboa, the police chief in Diamantina, led the case. Police suspected the boy was covering up a murder and tried psychological tricks to draw a confession. Raimundo kept to his story. He told it to a judge, priests, doctors and journalists. Dr. João Antunes de Oliveira found nothing wrong but malnutrition. "The boy is normal, and he is telling what he thinks is the truth," he told the press.

At the site there was a cleanly swept circle. No footprints. A few drops of human blood lay 160 to 200 feet from the house. Military Police dogs from Belo Horizonte found no trace. On 30 August the civilian group CICOANI took Raimundo's formal statement, and the SBEDV made a drawing from his testimony. After about a month the case was closed, unresolved. Aleixo's report went into the Brazilian Air Force files, now released through the Arquivo Nacional.

March 1963. Hunters, two of them named as Paulo Duarte and Chico Prata, found a skeleton in a rock crevice close to the hut. It was identified by a belt. Aleixo asked how searchers had missed a body so near the house. Local police reportedly concluded Rivalino had either tried to run away or been kidnapped. Later, researcher Claudio Suenaga argued it was murder over a very large diamond, blamed on flying saucers.

Brazilian newspapers carried the story that August. Coral Lorenzen published it in the APRO Bulletin in September 1962, and Flying Saucer Review, Brad Steiger and Jacques Vallée carried it further. Researcher Patrick Gross calls it an example of "how a case can be embellished and distorted to the highest degrees by authors and ufologists." No formal hoax finding was ever made.