User:Paris1127/Marcelo Costa de Andrade

Marcelo Costa de Andrade
Other names	The Vampire of Niterói
Conviction(s)	Murder
Details
Victims	14
Span of crimes	April 1991 – December 1991
Country	Brazil
State(s)	Rio de Janeiro
Date apprehended	December 1991

Marcelo Costa de Andrade, also known as the Vampire of Niterói, was a Brazilian serial killer, alleged to have killed around 14 boys in the area around Rio de Janeiro in 1991.

Childhood

De Andrade grew up in Rocinha, a favela in Rio de Janeiro, in a broken home. His mother, a maid, was constantly beaten by her husband. For a time, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Ceará, where he claims he was beaten. Later, he was sent back to Rio de Janeiro, where he was constantly the victim of mistreatment at the hand of his now-separated parents' new partners. It was during this period that he was sexually abused by an older man.

Adolescence

De Andrade was admitted to a school for boys, but did not perform well in class. At the school, he was harassed by classmates and called retarded. At fourteen, he was kicked out the boarding school, because the school only hosted young people, age six to fourteen.

Once out of boarding school, de Andrade became a prostitute. According to him, he was always the passive partner, but one time an old man forced de Andrade to be the active partner, something which greatly disturbed him. It was at that time that he attempted suicide. Later, he was sent to a home for troubled adolescents, but escaped months later and returned to prostitution, and at sixteen was living with another homosexual, Antônio Batista Freire, who introduced him to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. With the support of his partner, de Andrade continued prostituting himself until they broke up and de Andrade returned to the family home.

From there, de Andrade quit prostitution and got a job in order to help his family pay the bills.

De Andrade attended the the UCKG's services for 10 years, and watched the celebrations on TV daily. According to him, it was at one of those services that, when they die, all children go to Heaven. According to his logic, he could not kill adults, because doing so could send them to Hell.

The church was an important part of de Andrade's life. When not reading the sermons of Bishop Edir Macedo, he was reading pornographic magazines. He liked to listen to the music of Xuxa and other childhood idols of the era. His mother reported that he also had the strange habit of listening to a tape he'd made of his brother crying.

Arrest

On December 16, 1991, Altair Medeiros de Abreu, 10, went with his brother, Ivan, to the house of a neighbor who had promised them lunch. At the time, the brothers were living in a poor area of Santa Isabel, part of São Gonçalo, near Niterói. Their mother was Zelia de Abreu, a maid with five other children.

When the two boys passed through the central station in Niterói, they were approached by de Andrade, who, according to Altair, offered them around 4000 cruzeiros to help him perform a Catholic religious rite. They boarded a bus and ended up at a deserted beach near the Barreto Viaduct. De Andrade attempted to kiss Altair, who fled, scared, but was knocked unconscious by de Andrade; stunned, Altair watched as de Andrade abused and murdered Ivan; de Andrade told Altair, however, that his brother was asleep.

Frightened, Altair did everything de Andrade wanted. De Andrade took him to a gas station, where Altair cleaned himself up, while keeping an eye on de Andrade. That night, the two slept in a thicket, and the next morning they departed for Rio de Janeiro. During the trip, de Andrade reportedly offered to stay with Altair, who agreed. In later statements made after his arrest, de Andrade said he pitied Altair because he had been "good" and promised to stay with him. At the time, de Andrade was working as a pamphlet distributor, and had to show up to work in order to pick up his pamphlets. Once de Andrade was distracted, Altair seized the opportunity and fled.

After hitchhiking his way home, Altair did not at first reveal what had happened to him and Ivan, only telling an older sister a few days later. De Andrade did not try to find Altair or hide the body, but he did return to the scene in order to modify the position of the dead Ivan. The body would be found by police hours later. Reportedly, Ivan's hands were inside his shorts, which did not fit the initial theory of drowning, and a subsequent autopsy found signs of sexual abuse.

When the body was identified by Ivan's mother, Altair led the police to de Andrade's workplace, where de Andrade immediately confessed without showing any surprise.

Confession

At the police station, de Andrade confessed to the murders of 12 boys in addition to Ivan de Abreu Medeiros. His first murder, in April 1991, was of a boy selling candy along a boulevard. Using the ploy he would use to lure the de Abreu brothers, de Andrade took the boy to a thicket, where he tried to have sex with the boy. The boy resisted, and de Andrade smashed his head in with stones then strangled and raped him. From this point on, according to de Andrade, he could not stop committing crimes.

In his second murder, de Andrade killed Anderson Goulart Gomes, 11, by smashing his head with a rock, then drank the victim's blood while raping him, finishing the act by breaking Gomes's neck. De Andrade said in his confession that he drank Gomes's blood in order "to become young and pretty like he was."

One of the first crimes de Andrade confessed to occurred in June of 1991. According to his account, he got off a bus and saw Odair Jose Muniz dos Santos, 11, begging on the street. De Andrade convinced dos Santos to come with him to the home of an aunt where he could borrow 3000 cruzeiros to give to the boy. Instead, de Andrade took him to a football field and tried to abuse him; however, de Andrade failed to do so, and in a rage murdered him. He said:

[...] I did not notice whether he was dead or alive when I raped him. I could not get satisfied. I squeezed his throat one more time to make sure his soul went to Heaven.

Afterwards, de Andrade returned home for dinner, but returned to the murder scene later to decapitate the boy. De Andrade explained that he did this in order to avenge what happened to him during his time at school. He wanted dos Santos to be made fun of when he got to Heaven.

References

Brazilians shocked by serial killer's confession

External links

• example.com