The Lead Masks Case: Morro do Vintém, Niterói

Wednesday, 17 August 1966. Miguel José Viana, 34, and Manoel Pereira da Cruz, 32, took the 9:00 bus from Campos dos Goytacazes. Both were electronics technicians. They reached Niterói in the early afternoon and bought two raincoats. At Bar São Jorge they bought a bottle of mineral water. Staff remembered Miguel as "muito nervoso," checking his watch again and again. It was the last time they were seen alive.

That evening, around 19:00, Gracinda Barbosa Coutinho de Souza was driving along Alameda São Boaventura in the Fonseca neighbourhood. Her three children were with her. Her daughter Denise, aged 7, is said to have seen it first. Gracinda stopped the car. The family watched.

Over the hilltop was something "bem grande." Very big. It was oval and orange, with a band of fire around its edges. Her police statement called it "multicolorido, ovóide, de cor alaranjado, com um anel de fogo de onde saíam raios azuis." Blue rays, sent out in all directions. It hovered over the hill. It rose and fell vertically for some three or four minutes. No source records a sound.

Her husband, Paulo Roberto de Sousa, went to look afterwards. He found nothing. The family told no one at first. They went to the police only after the deaths were in the news.

On 20 August a kite flyer, Jorge da Costa Alves, reported two bodies in a clearing near the summit. Police, firemen and volunteers brought them down the next morning, after a climb of more than two hours.

The men lay on cut palm leaves, in suits and raincoats. Beside them were two crude lead eye masks, hand cut in the shape of sunglasses. A nearly empty water bottle. Two towels. A slip reading "banzai." And a note: "16:30 be at the specified location. 18:30 ingest capsules, after the effect protect metals await signal mask." The men had set out with a large sum of money. Only Cr$161,000 was found.

The autopsy found no sign of violence. The cause of death was undetermined. The organs were reportedly discarded without toxicology tests, and an exhumation on 25 August 1967 found too much formaldehyde for any analysis. On 14 September 1966, O Globo reported investigator Idovan Ferreira's conclusion. An "experiência parapsicológica mal-sucedida." A failed parapsychological experiment. Their friend Élcio Correia Gomes was arrested and questioned. He had an alibi. False confessions and false leads followed. The case was closed in May 1969.

The doubts centre on the UFO report. It came only after the news broke, and the descriptions grew more elaborate with each retelling. Skeptoid's Brian Dunning favours a spiritualist contact ritual with drugs that ended in an accidental overdose. Élcio Gomes said the group had tried to contact Mars. Parapsychologist Padre Óscar González Quevedo tied lead masks to deadly occult tests. Others proposed poisoning with hemlock or curare, or robbery. With no toxicology, none of it can be proven.

September 1968. Photographer Ari Pereira photographed an object over the same hill. It stayed still for a few minutes, then vanished at high speed. In April 1980 Jacques Vallée visited Morro do Vintém and found a bare clearing where grass had not grown back after 14 years. Two men. Two masks. One note. The mystery of Vintém Hill remains unsolved.