The Unsolved Mystery of The Lead Masks Case

Written By Kaelyn Moore

Did something supernatural occur in Brazil in 1966? That’s when two men were found deceased on Vintem hill wearing black suits and lead masks, with a note by them that read “4:30 PM be at the determined place. 6:30 PM swallow capsules, after effect protect metals wait for mask signal” We’re going straight down the rabbit hole in this episode, into the world of the occult, seances, secret societies, and aliens. Buckle up.

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18-year old Jorge da Costa Alves was flying his kit on Vintem Hill.in 1966 when he first noticed the smell. It was a sunny day after a stretch of rain in the southeast of Brazil He was expecting the scent of dewy, fresh grass and clean air. Maybe even Salt air from the nearby beach. But this was not that. Instead, the strong, unmissable stench of rot hung thick in the air

Jorge searched around for the source when he saw it. Two pairs of legs stretched out in the grass. At first it almost looked like two men were taking a nap, but the bugs and smell said otherwise. What he was smelling was death.

Investigators were on the scene fast and it became apparent quickly that this was not going to be a normal investigation. The two deceased men were both dressed in black suits and laying near their bodies were two lead masks. Not full face masks or lead N95’s, these masks were cut into the shape of eyeglasses but were made of pure lead.  And found on them was a note that read 

“4:30 PM be at the determined place.

6:30 PM swallow capsules, after effect protect metals wait for mask signal”

What followed was a wild goose chase down the paths of secret societies, the occult, and even UFO sightings. Buckle in, because today, we’re diving head first down the rabbit hole. 

Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of terrifying tales. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore

If you're new here, don’t worry, you’re in good company. This is a community of people who follow their dark curiosities wherever it leads them. If youd like to get deeper into the community, you can follow me on Instagram or tiktok @ heartstartspounding, and support the show on patreon where I have some bonus content like short dives into recent cases and extended material from episodes. I also have a few remixed episodes that feature my commentary with Leo. Just three bucks a month, that’s less than a black coffee.

Today’s story is one unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s got aliens, secret societies, men in black, and seances. It’s practically directed by the Wachowski’s. Let’s dive in.

It’s August 20th, 1966, and we arrive at the scene right after Jorge da Costa Alves found the bodies of the two men. When police arrive they take stock of the scene which included

Two men in their 30’s wearing suits and raincoats, the strange note about taking the tablets and awaiting the signs, a bottle of mineral water, two towels, and a few thousand dollars by todays conversion. Initial observation showed the men had NO visible signs of injury, though it was hard to tell because they were so decomposed.

The bodies were also found laying on a bed of vegetation that looked like it had been cut down from nearby trees and grass by a knife, but no such knife was ever found in the area.

Police weren’t able to immediately figure out a cause of death. they were, however,  able to identify the men as Manoel Pereira da Cruz And Miguel José Viana, two electronic repair men in their early 30’s with young families. Both of them lived 175 miles away in a town called Campos. 

So what were they doing on that hill? And most importantly, what killed them? Police hoped that answering a few of these questions would at least give them somewhere to look, because right now they didn’t have much to go on

Well, Jorge, the boy who found the bodies, remembered that had seen the men just a few days before, on August 17th, sitting on the hill. Jorge came back the next day and found them laying down, but wasn’t concerned enough to call authorities. It was only a few days later when he noticed the smell and was certain they were dead. 

Through interviews with those closest to Miguel and Moneol, the police were able to put together the following timeline of events leading up to their deaths.

The morning of August 17th, both Miguel and Manoel told their families that they were taking a bus to San Paulo to buy some electronics and a used car. Both men were electronic repairmen so this didn’t strike their wives as too strange. What was strange, however, was why they decided they had to travel hours away to buy a used car. It’s also estimated they left their homes with 3 million Cruziero’s, which would have been several years wages at the time. more importantly, this was far far less than was found on their bodies.

But the men didn’t go to sao paulo, they went to Neteroi, a wealthy suburb of Rio De Janeiro. Upon arriving in Neteroi they did make a few purchases, but not of electronic equipment, nor a car.  It had started raining, so the men went and purchased matching rain coats for around 9,400 cr. Then, they went to a bar and purchased a bottle of mineral water. At the time in Brazil, there was a program where if you kept the receipt for a bottle, you could return it and get some of the money back. The men kept the receipt. This is the first indicator we have that the men potentially did not intend to die that day. The receipt made it seem like they had made some sort of future plan.

Witnesses in the bar where they purchased the mineral water said that the men seemed anxious, and Miguel kept checking his watch. At about 3:15, they got a ride in a jeep to the bottom of the hill. Where they walked up to their final resting place on foot.

It was about 5pm when Jorge saw them sitting up there. 

When the bodies were found, they had $161,000 cruzieros. We know the rain coats were 9400, and we can assume that the mineral water was not 2,829,600. So what happened to the rest of their cash?

I have to tell you. Right from the start pieces of this puzzle were bungled. The coroner claimed that he was too busy to do a proper autopsy, so right after the bodies were found there was no toxicology testing done. We can assume from their note that they took a pill, we just don’t know what the pill they took was.  there was more written on the note besides the instructions on what to do that day. The note also read: Sunday, one capsule after lunch; Wednesday, one capsule at bed-time. This is a little confusing because they were on the hill on a wednesday, so maybe this is referring to the week before? What kind of capsule would be taken one day at lunch, three days later at bed time, and then one week later at 4:30pm. I’m no pharmacist but I think we can rule out antibiotics. 

Also on the note was a mathematic formula. Ohms Law. E=IR. used to calculate the strength of an electrical current. Ok, that potentially makes some sense, they worked in electronics. 

All of this evidence is…strange to say the least, and doesn’t really point in a definitive direction so  The police start going through their usual theories. For one, where was all of the money that they had brought to the hill? Could this have been a robbery gone wrong?

even though the coroner half assed the autopsy, he did declare that there was no foul play. Nothing about the state of the bodies suggested that they had been killed by violence.

Ok, was it suicide. Well. if the coroner wasn’t taking summer fridays, we may know that. At the time, the bodies were not tested for poison, but eventually, a year later, they were exhumed and tested, and it was confirmed that they didn’t have arsenic, mercury, barium or thallium in their systems. Not a super comprehensive list, but something.

There was also the issue of the receipt which the police kept coming back to. Why would they have their receipt for the mineral water if they didn’t think they would go back to collect the cash. One thought I have on this is, if a cashier hands me something, i absolutely take it. I’d rather walk around awkwardly holding trash than be put on the spot to say that i dont actually need the receipt. Especially if you’ve already printed it out and handed it to me. I’m not saying that’s what they did, but I’m just saying the receipt evidence isn’t the homerun that some people make it out to be.

So maybe they got hit by lightning, the cops thought. It had been raining that day and locals had complained about seeing something bright in the sky the night of the 17th. But again, their bodies weren’t consistent with a lightening strike, and the area around them didn’t suggest it either.

But I want to take a minute to talk about these bright lights that locals had been complaining about, because this is where the story starts to get absolutely wild.

On August 17th, the night that the men went to the top of the hill, a well respected woman in the community named Gracinda, was driving home with her children when they all saw a strange light in the sky. Gracinda described it to police as a multicolored object, ovoid, orange color, with a ring of fire which came out blue rays in various directions.” in other words, she thought she saw a space ship.

So Gracinda does call the police to notify them, and local press catch wind of this and put out an article about it. It’s then that multiple people call into the police station saying the same thing. They also saw this weird orange object in the sky that night. And when pressed as to why they didn’t come forward earlier, they said they thought people would think they were crazy. They felt safe now that someone as well known and respected as Gracinda had come forward. 

And now you may be like, but kaelyn what does this UFO sighting have to do with the mens death? Are you suggesting that a rogue UFO killed them?

Well, I’m not NOT suggesting that, but theres more to the story. After the break

So later on, when the police were investigating the mens homes, they made an interesting discovery.

Manoel and Miguel had a workshop where police found scraps consistent with the lead eye glasses they wore. This meant that the men had constructed the glasses themselves. The police ALSO found a few books on Scientific Spiritualism that had passages highlighted. Those passages were about aliens, and how when contact is made with aliens, they will emit a light SO bright that you’ll need to wear sun glasses made of lead to protect yourself from it.

Were they trying to protect themselves from alien light? you see why the UFO sighting the night of their death is a little coincidental. 

Manuels wife confirms that the two men were indeed scientific spiritualists, and she admits that actually a lot of the electronic repairmen in the area are spiritualists. They even had their own secret society where they talked to each other about these things and regularly attended seances. And then, stranger yet, Miguel’s niece recounts a conversation she had with him the day he died. 

As miguel was leaving the house, she asked him where he was going, to which he responded Sao Paulo. When he told her that he was going there to buy a car, she asked him why. It was far cheaper to buy a car near home. To which Miguel replied

- I need to know one thing. Then when I get back, I'll tell you if I really believe in this story of spiritualism or not.

So was the reason the men were heading to the mountain tied to their beliefs in spiritualism?

To figure that out, let’s first do a little dive into what Spiritualism even is 

To put it plainly, spiritualism is the belief that we can communicate with the dead. That there is some hidden channel that exists between the living and the dead, and if we can tune into it, we can communicate with lost loved ones.

The movement absolutely exploded in the mid 1800’s after the Fox sisters, 11 year old kate and 14 year old Margaret, claimed they could communicate with a ghost in their house. They said that they could communicate with a ghost residing in their new york home through taps, one tap yes two taps no. 

Word quickly spread around the community of Rochester, and soon onlookers would come and watch the girls display their gift. 

Though eventually the Fox sisters would admit to being frauds, the spiritualist movement was born. Seances soon happened around the world and medium became a legitimate job title. 

But Miguel and Manuel weren’t just spiriualists, they were scientific spiritualists. A brand of spiritualism that was rooted in observable facts and scientific experiments.

Scientific spiritualism rose because the 1800s were a gold rush for those who believed they had the gift of being able to contact the dead, and as a result, many mediums were debunked as scam artists. It was actually a thing where women who didn’t have much money would turn to spirituality as a source of income. It didn’t require any startup cost, and people tended to trust that women had a stronger ability to contact the other side.

So The movement caught the attention of many scientists who looked to prove that what was happening was REAL, especially with the rise of scam artists. 

One of these scientists was William Crookes, a british scientist best known for his work in spectroscopy and for discovering the element Thallium. William was a hard core man of facts until his brother’s death in 1867. After Phillip’s death, he started attending seances to get in touch with his brother, and he believed that he had. 

In a dimlit lit room in france, Crookes thought he caught an apparition of his brother during a seance. This catapulted him into the world of spiritualists, and he started studying those that proclaimed they could make contact with the other side. He was a skeptic by nature, and his scientific mind wanted to be sure that what he was seeing was real, so he dedicated the rest of his life to finding the link between the scientific and the spiritual

And you can see this in his studies of spectroscopy, the study of visible light. Crookes knew that there were rays of light humans couldnt see, think X rays, and he suggested that there could potentially be a wave of light that carried thoughts. And if some people could tune into this radio wave, they could harness the power of telepathy. 

Sounds wild, right? Well, this idea spread, and by the 1960’s in Brazil, the connection between the scientific and spiritual had permeated the electro repairmen community in Brazil.

During the investigation, the police caught wind of another electronic repair man that was involved with Manuel and Miguel. A man by the name of Elcio.

Elcio quickly became a suspect because he was thought to be the last person to see the two men before they died. Elcio admitted that yes, he was also a scientific spiritualist. And though the police couldn’t find much of a connection between Elcio and the men’s deaths, Elcio enlightened the police into what the men were interested in finding on that mountain.

Elcio, Manuel, Miguel, and many other electronic repairmen in Brazil were interested in not just making contact with the dead, but making contact with higher, more intelligent beings. And Elcio knows how crazy this sounds but believe me, he tells the police, it was working, and I can prove it to you.

A few weeks prior to the mens deaths, Elcio said that the men had conducted an experiment to see if they could, in fact, communicate with extra terrestrials, specifically, ones on mars. They had built a device in Elcio’s garden.

According to Elcio, the scientific spiritualist community thought that you could contact life on other planets in the same way that you could contact the spirit of someone who passed. They thought that all spirits could be contacted, living, or dead. This device that they had built was going to help them do that.We don’t know the specifics of the device they built, but we do know that  when they fire it up it explodes, violently.

However, once the chaos of the explosion settled down, the men noticed that sprinkled around the garden was a strange powder. And to elcio, this felt like proof that a spirit had been there.

And so elcio, miguel and manoel decided to try the experiment again on a much larger scale, so one warm, tranquil night in june  they went down to Atafona beach.

This part is really strange. According to Elcio when they started their experiment down by the beach, they all looked up to see a large, illuminated object descending from the sky. About five minutes after they watched it come down, it started lifting back up into the clouds when there was a bright flash and a loud bang. It sounded like an explosion, like a bomb had gone off in the sky.

At this part I’m thinking, ok a large flash and a loud explosion on a beach, if this really happened there must have been one other person who heard or saw this.

And what’s absolutely crazy is that yes, many other people heard and saw this. It was such a loud explosion that the Brazilian navy and air force launched an investigation into it.

Strange enough, during the investigation, the military found that they picked up three radio signals that night that they couldn’t trace. Apparently they heard a strange conversation happening over the radios, though no one reported what exactly was said. The military had the technology to identify where radio signals were coming from, but they said that none of the radios were registered in Brazil. 

And again, after the dust had settled, Elcio saw the same powder on the beach that he had seen in the garden, and again he feels like this is proof that the experiment somehow worked. A spirit had been here. 

But that was the last experiment that the three of them had done together, so what were the men doing up on the hill that day?

Well, a few years after the deaths of the two men, a professor of yoga in Brazil came forward and claimed he knew what the pills were for. He said that he knew the local scientific spiritualists were taking psychedelic drugs because they thought that it would help tune their brains to be able to communicate with alien life. These drugs were supposed to lull people into a trance like state where they could be receptive to alien emissions. And because these emissions would be blindingly bright, they brought lead masks with them.

I know this is getting really bizarre. And police thought so to. Ok, it was weird that the guys were hunting for UFOs, only for other people in the area to SEE UFOs the night they died. But there’s no way that they summoned aliens with their minds. Right

Though the police were thrown into the world of the occult and spiritualism, they couldn’t close a case by saying that alien tech zapped the men to death, they’d be the laughing stock of their community. 

But lucky for them, another lead came in, one that pointed towards a much more earthly explanation.

In June of 1968, the police announced they were now looking for a blond man who it’s believed drove the jeep from Neteroi to the foot of the mountain. A witness had come forward saying that they saw Miguel and Manuel talking to a blond man in a jeep they were in. There were two other people in the jeep, but they didn’t get a great look at them. 

This didn’t bring up many leads. The only evidence police had was that there was someone blonde and potentially foreign looking who owned a jeep, and no one came forward claiming to be that person or to know them. While the police didn’t get anywhere with this lead, it at least gave them hope that there was someone out there who knew what happened to these men. and then, less than a year later, someone came forward.

A man by the name of Hamilton Bezani told police that he knew what had happened to the men, because he was responsible for it. 

According to hamilton, who, by the way, was a notorious criminal who was giving this testimony from prison, he was hiding from the law in Rio de Janeiro when he was approached by three people. They told him that they had a job for him to do in Niteroi that would pay well for all of them if done correctly.

So they bring Hamilton to Niteroi and they all go to a spiritualist center together. Apparently, at a seance that happened at the Spiritualist center, Hamilton and the the group met Miguel and Manoel. It was here that they learned that the men were on their way home to buy a used car and some equipment and had lots of cash on them. 

One of the men told the others “see, the spirit of fortune has descended. But it will shortly incarnate in other bodies.” Hamilton and the group then drove the men to the foot of the mountain and forced them to walk to the top, where they robbed manuel and miguel and made them drink poison. 

I don’t know about you, but This confession brings up a lot of questions. There was still money on Manuel and Miguel when they were found, 161000 cr, why didn’t they steal all of the money the men had on them? And why did they have to kill them on top of a mountain, with poison? Couldn't they have just held them up, said, give us all your money, and then taken off? Also he was approached by the men saying there was a job in Niteroi, yet it seems like they chose the victims on the spot. There seems to be a lot of unnecessary steps in their plan. This lead a lot of people to believe that this was just a tall tale that Hamilton was telling from prison. 

And the police thought so too, they never tried hamilton for the crime, and after this, they closed the case. There just wasn’t enough evidence, police claimed. They wouldn’t even entertain the idea of any of the supernatural threads, and some people believed that this was on purpose. Spiritualism was clearly spreading throughout Brazil and UFO sightings started becoming more and more common. Maybe because people were actually seeing them, or maybe because more people started believing in them and thought they were seeing them. people in the community seemed to think the police were desperate to prove that UFOs weren’t real, so they would discount any quote evidence the locals would give them. It seems like the police’s quest to debunk UFOs may have hindered their investigation. 

Ok, so let circle up for a moment. The case was closed even without an explanation. But what makes the most sense?

Sure Hamilton could have forced them to take poison, could have stole a weird amount of money from them, but that seems like a stretch. Though it’s not outside the realm of possibilities. 

We know the toxicology report was not comprehensive so yes, what they took could have been fatal. If they were really using psychedelics like the professor said, it’s rare to overdose on them, but maybe it was cut with something poisonous. From the note though, it sounds like they were taking the drugs throughout the week and never had any problems. 

I’m going to pose this last theory. There seems to be a non zero chance that whatever the men were trying to do on that hill worked. Maybe they did summon an alien spirit and that spirit took their spirits and they all went off together. I honestly can’t believe I’m saying that because I’m a skeptic, I’m usually the last one to believe something like this. But there’s just a part of me that can’t let that theory go. 

I also want to mention that we don’t have great sources for this case. All of the original sources were published in portuguese, and the sources that are available to us today, are ones that reference those sources, they’re not the actual sources. This could also be a copy pasta story, where each time it’s retold another fantastical element is tacked on until we’re left with a tale of UFO abduction. Maybe we don’t live in a world where we can train our brains to contact other spirits, where alien life exists, where both alien spirits and human spirits can interact. 

But there is one thing I didn’t tell you. 

In 1962, four years before the deaths of Manuel and Miguel, there was another body found on vintem hill. It was the body of a man named Hermes, and he was an electronics repairman in the area. He was also found to be wearing a suit and lying next to him was none other than a lead mask. The police also closed his case with no explanation, but maybe, just maybe, Manuel and Miguel knew that what he had done, had worked
This has been heart starts pounding. Written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Follow along on instagram and tik tok at heartstartspounding, and support us on patreon if your able to, linked in the description. Have a case request or a heart pounding tale you’d like to share? Email heartstartspounding@gmail.com. Until next time.

Kaelyn Moore
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