The Onilson Pátero abductions, Catanduva to Colatina

Onilson Pátero was a 41-year-old travelling bookseller from Catanduva, in the interior of São Paulo state. On the evening of May 21, 1973, near the Avanhandava bridge over the Rio Tietê, he picked up a hitchhiker known as Alex. Blond and blue-eyed, he spoke perfect Portuguese. He asked about Pátero's education, home and work, then repeated the address back: "One of these days I'll visit you at home." He got out near Itajobi.

About 7 km from Catanduva, heavy rain fell. Around 3:00 a.m. the radio crackled and his Opala died. A blue light appeared on the dashboard and moved across the car. Wherever it fell, the metal turned transparent. He could see the engine running.

An object hung in the sky. Circular, "like two domes one on top of the other," dull dark grey with a bright glow. A kind of cylinder came down to the ground and moved toward him. He ran about 30 m, feeling pulled back as if by thin rubber. When he turned, his car was completely transparent, like glass, before he blacked out.

He was found at about 5:00 a.m. beside the car. Doors open. Headlights on. His clothes were soaked, except the back of his shirt. Days later, bruise-like marks spread across his thighs and buttocks, then faded.

April 26, 1974. Near Guarantã, his blue Beetle died close to high-voltage power lines. "It was 11:30 p.m. when my car was stopped by a beam of light. I was forced to stop." A moving walkway slid under his foot and carried him aboard.

Blue light filled a domed room. Filaments crossed the ceiling like spider webs. Alex greeted him, smiling, and said he would not be harmed. Three hooded figures in floor-length robes worked nearby. Then a man identical to Pátero walked in, wearing the clothes Pátero had left at home in Catanduva.

Before dawn on May 2, farmer César Minelli heard cries for help from a hilltop near Colatina, Espírito Santo. Pátero had cut his initials, "OP," into a rock with a penknife. A local physician, Dr. Aldo Machado, found him coherent and oriented.

Catanduva police chief Hermínio José Theodoro brought in DOPS, the São Paulo political police. DOPS asked ufologists Max Berezovsky and Willi Wirtz for an assessment. Berezovsky thought the 1973 contact genuine but the 1974 one invented. Both called the accounts "completamente inconsistentes," reminiscent of the US TV series The Invaders. The military also suspected subversion among the ufologists themselves. An undercover DOPS agent attended one of their meetings on June 27, 1975. No subversion was found, and the matter was closed. Historian Cláudio Suenaga was among the first to examine the files, in late 1995.

Under hypnosis with Dr. Sylvio Lago in July 1974, Pátero spoke of an "Olegário" and a "sistema de Edron." Doubters point to The Invaders, to an irregular EEG reading that might suggest a dissociative fugue, and to the investigators' public turn against him. Irene Granchi suspected outside pressure on them under the military regime. Supporters cite his normal medical results and his consistency over 11 months.

He told the story to Silvio Santos on TV Tupi in 1978 and kept to it for life. He died in Catanduva in August 2008, aged 75. In September 2023 his daughter Samária visited the Minelli hill and met the farmer's grandson. Half a century on, the man who fell from the sky has no settled explanation.