Pod Insights Park Predators REVISITED - The Amazon About this episode A devoted indigenist and a journalist set off into the depths of the Amazon to report on corruption and criminal activity but are never seen alive again. The murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira rocked the international community and revealed dark secrets hiding in one of the world's most beautiful natural wonders.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And I know I told you we were off this week, but I wanted to make sure you guys got your fix. Today's episode, "The Amazon," is one I covered a few years ago on the show, but there have been a few updates in the case since it first came out, so I wanted to get it in your ears again. This story hits especially close to home for me because I'm a working journalist, and even though this show isn't one where I always feature my own original reporting, I know all too well from producing another show I host called "Counterclock," that sometimes being the person who's examining and uncovering controversial issues comes with a certain level of danger. Today's story is about exactly that: two men, an indigenous and a British journalist,
0:45 Speaker 00 who were determined to expose illegal natural resource extraction happening in the Amazon, but ultimately paid the price for their righteous endeavor with their lives. Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips's case unfolded in the summer of 2022 in one of the most beautiful and dangerous landscapes in the world: South America's Javari Valley in the Amazon. This region is one of the most remote places on the planet and is situated where the borders of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia meet. It's made up of tens of thousands of square miles of thick jungle and waterways, and it's not the kind of place you want to wander into on your own. According to the news source France24, "For decades, this region has been plagued with
1:29 Speaker 00 violent crime, drug trafficking, and illegal fishing and logging on protected lands." The natural camouflage the Amazon provides is the main reason why criminals conducting these illegal activities operate there. Depending on which source material you read, there are anywhere from 20 to 26 different indigenous groups living in the valley, a dozen or so of which are categorized as "uncontacted people," meaning they live in isolation from the rest of the world: no technology, no modern infrastructure, completely indigenous.
2:03 Speaker 00 They live off the land and speak languages unique to their tribes. Many of these folks live in the Javari Valley Indigenous Reservation, which was established by the government in 2001. This vast protected land converges near the Ituwi and Itaquie rivers. Sometimes I heard British journalists pronounce the name of that second river as Itaki River, but Portuguese sources pronounce it Itaquie, so I'm gonna go with Itaquie. In June of 2022, Dom and Bruno set out on an expedition to visit an uncontacted people group. But during a short two-hour boat ride, they disappeared. The saga of events that unraveled after they vanished
2:45 Speaker 00 is one of the most heartbreaking and infuriating stories I've researched for this show. And it's only reinforced my belief that sometimes the most beautiful places do hide the darkest secrets. This is Park Predators.
3:42 Speaker 00 Around nine o'clock in the morning on Sunday, June 5, 2022, a man named Orlando Posuelo, who worked for the organization named the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley, also known by the acronym U-N-I-V-A-J-A, which I believe is pronounced Univaza, noticed something odd. Two men he was expecting to arrive via motorboat at his outpost in the town of Adelaya de Norte were late, really late.
4:13 Speaker 00 A few days earlier, longtime Univazza associate Bruno Pereira had called Orlando from a region of the Javari Valley, near Peru, to tell Orlando that he and his passenger, 57-year-old British journalist Dom Phillips, would be arriving by 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. But 8:00 a.m. had come and gone, and then 9:00 a.m., and there was still no sign of the two men. The city of Adelía de Norte was where most everyone entered or exited the Javari Valley. So Orlando knew that Bruno and Dom not showing up wasn't a good sign. The men's absence indicated they'd either made last-minute plans to stay longer inside the valley without telling anyone,
4:56 Speaker 00 or something had happened to them while they'd been boating on the Atuí or Itaquay rivers. Those were the bodies of water they would have had to have taken to get back to Adelía de Norte. The Washington Post reported that by 10:00 a.m., Orlando couldn't bear waiting around for Dom and Bruno any longer without doing something. So he went out on the river with another staffer to look for them, but had no luck. Other source material says that a few hours later, around 2:00 p.m., more people joined to help and went out in boats to go on a longer stretch of the Itaquay River, near Adelía de Norte. The goal was to search for the men, but after scouring a few miles of shoreline, tree line, and open water,
5:41 Speaker 00 no sign of the men or their boat turned up. Another search party of Univazza volunteers went out around 4 o'clock, this time in a slightly bigger vessel. But just like the groups before them, they couldn't find a trace of Dom or Bruno. The source material isn't clear on when exactly government agencies were made aware of the situation and responded. But the best I could gather was that on Monday morning, the Brazilian Navy and the federal police were alerted about what was going on. And those agencies dispatched additional personnel to help look for Dom and Bruno. According to BBC News, the Navy promised to supply more resources, including a helicopter,
6:24 Speaker 00 two larger boats, and another kind of watercraft, on Tuesday morning. But the Amazon Military Command, a branch of the Brazilian Army, wasn't so quick to mobilize its resources. The Guardian reported that a spokesperson for the Army said he had to wait for government officials to order military personnel to get involved, and until that happened, the Army's hands were tied. Still, the additional beefed-up resources that did come in during those first 24 hours were a huge relief for the local indigenous leaders with Univasa, whose search parties were already stretched thin. It was clear from the outset, though, that the folks with Univasa didn't think the Brazilian
7:07 Speaker 00 government was acting fast enough to help find the men. Many workers, like Orlando Posuelo, thought Brazil's military resources should have been sent out as soon as Dom and Bruno were reported missing, instead of being caught in political limbo. But military or no military, the Brazilian Federal Police did get investigators into the valley the day after Dom and Bruno vanished. And when those detectives arrived, right away, they started conducting interviews with the Univasa staff in Adalaya de Norte. After speaking with some of those folks, police determined that Bruno and Dom had actually entered the Javari region the week before they disappeared. The Guardian reported that Dom's family had last heard from him on Wednesday, June
7:52 Speaker 00 1, while he'd been flying from his home in Salvador, Brazil, to meet Bruno. Authorities learned that after the men connected in Adalaya de Norte, they'd gotten into a boat on Friday, June 3, and traveled to a remote village along the western side of the valley, near Peru's border, to meet with a group of uncontacted people. Witnesses who knew the details of the men's travel itinerary told investigators that Dom had planned to interview several natives from that tribe on Friday and Saturday, and then the duo was expected to journey back to Adalaya de Norte on Sunday morning. On their way back, they were supposed to pit-stop in Ribeiria São Rafael, a small indigenous community on the Itaquai River.
8:38 Speaker 00 When authorities spoke with people in that village, everyone there said they'd last seen Dom and Bruno around 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 5. And data that Univazza staff provided, tracing the men's satellite phone communications, confirmed that. According to witnesses at Sao Rafael, before leaving, Dom and Bruno had spoken with the wife of a guy who was in charge of that community. Agência Brasil reported that Bruno had pre-arranged a meeting with this community leader to discuss how the village could improve combating intruders who were conducting illegal activities. But when he and Dom had arrived, the leader wasn't there, so the men spoke with the guy's
9:19 Speaker 00 wife instead, and then left shortly after that. News outlets reported that sometime after 6:00 a.m., but before 9:00 a.m., more witnesses in a small community between Sao Rafael and Adelha de Norte had reported seeing a boat matching Dom and Bruno's pass by. But the articles don't say what specific time in the morning this sighting happened. After that, the men's trail went cold, just nothing. The Brazilian Indigenous National Foundation, or FUNAI, who Bruno had been associated with for years, told several news outlets that the men's journey wasn't supposed to be complicated.
10:02 Speaker 00 Their two-hour boat ride to the entry and exit point of the valley was a routine trip Bruno had made many times. For several years prior to this, Bruno had worked as a regional coordinator for the Indigenous National Foundation's outpost in Adelha de Norte. So him getting lost just wasn't something anyone thought was likely. He knew that area like the back of his hand. Getting turned around would have been extremely out of character for him. A theory law enforcement considered on day one of the investigation was whether the men's boat had stalled, or perhaps sank, and they'd been left stranded somewhere in the jungle. Dom's wife, Alessandra, told The Guardian that in a strange way, that suggestion gave
10:46 Speaker 00 her some comfort. She told the publication, quote, "All I can do is pray that Dom and Bruno are well, somewhere, and unable to continue with their journey because of some mechanical problem, and that all this will end up being just another story in these full lives of theirs." End quote.
11:06 Speaker 00 But the men's boat becoming disabled or sinking didn't make sense to the staffers who'd been expecting the men. You see, those workers knew that the boat Bruno and Dom had taken only had a 40-horsepower engine in it. It was new, plus the men had taken 70 liters of extra fuel, seven empty gas cans, and a satellite phone with them. So their vessel failing and then them not being able to contact the outside world for help just seemed like an unlikely scenario. When word of the men's disappearance made news headlines on the morning of Monday, June 6th, the day after they were reported missing, the story spread like wildfire.
11:50 Speaker 00 By nightfall on Monday, Dom's family members in Britain and staff at the news publication he worked for, The Guardian, took to social media to express their concerns and begged the Brazilian government to take the matter seriously. Everyone who knew the nature of that part of the Amazon knew that time was of the essence. They feared that if search and rescue teams didn't swarm the jungle along the section of river where the men had last been seen fast enough, the duo would perish from either encountering hostile people or dangerous wildlife. According to The Guardian, Dom's sister posted a video online that said, quote, "We are really worried about him and urge the authorities in Brazil to do all they can to search the
12:35 Speaker 00 routes he was following. If anyone can help scale up resources for the search, that would be great because time is crucial," end quote. Dom's wife voiced the same sentiment and requested the Brazilian government work with a sense of urgency. The Guardian's editor, Jonathan Watts, released an official statement for the publication that said, quote, "The Guardian is very concerned and is urgently seeking information on Philip's whereabouts. We are in contact with the British Embassy in Brazil and local and national authorities to try and ascertain the facts as soon as possible," end quote.
13:14 Speaker 00 The organization Human Rights Watch also vocalized its concerns about the men's disappearance and called on Brazil's government to act more swiftly. The entity's director wrote, quote, "It is extremely important that Brazilian authorities dedicate all available and necessary resources to the immediate execution of the searches in order to guarantee as soon as possible the safety of the two," end quote. I mentioned it a second ago, but the glaring fact that was apparent to Dom and Bruno's families and all the organizations advocating for them was that where they'd been working in the Javari Valley was known to be extremely unstable and prone to violence.
13:56 Speaker 00 In fact, it was almost guaranteed the pair would encounter some level of danger while in that part of the Amazon. And according to Orlando Posuelo, the man who first noticed they were missing, a somewhat violent encounter was exactly what had happened hours before Dom and Bruno vanished.
14:18 Speaker 01 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
14:23 Speaker 02 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
14:27 Speaker 01 I'm Eliza Orland, career public defender.
14:29 Speaker 02 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
14:32 Speaker 01 And on our brand new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
14:39 Speaker 02 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
14:54 Speaker 00 Orlando told The Washington Post that while Dom and Bruno had been traveling through the Javari Valley, they'd been documenting every time they saw someone illegally fishing, especially if those people were folks that Bruno knew had made threats against conservationists like him in the past. Now, for context, harassment wasn't new to either Dom or Bruno. They'd received numerous death threats for years, and some threats had even come in right before they left for their trip. The Brazilian government, the federal police, and the National Human Rights Council were all aware that had happened. In fact, Dom Phillips reported for The Guardian that a publication called Oglobo published
15:37 Speaker 00 that shortly before leaving for their trip, Bruno had been handed a written threat that said, quote, "We know who you are, and we'll find you to settle the score," end quote. So, yeah, the message from Bruno and Dom's haters was real. According to G1 Brazil, Bruno was used to continuous aggressions coming from miners, fishermen, and loggers because of the work he was doing to preserve indigenous land and protect the native people who lived in the Javari Valley. Dom, for all his years of expository work, had also endured hardships because of the truths he'd written about. Still, their friend Orlando Posuelo told the police that an incident that had occurred
16:19 Speaker 00 on the Atacuaí River the very weekend Dom and Bruno had vanished was suspicious and should be investigated further. He said that sometime on Saturday morning, Bruno had called up to the Univaça staff to let them know that while he and Dom had been boating, they'd stumbled upon some men illegally fishing. According to The Washington Post and The Guardian via The Associated Press, during this interaction, the fishermen had become hostile with Bruno, and one of them flashed a gun. Orlando said while the threat had unfolded, Bruno was able to snap a picture of the menacing man's face, and some of the other men in Bruno's group, including Dom, had documented the threat.
17:02 Speaker 00 Orlando said Bruno planned to bring all that footage back with him to Adelia de Norte to notify police and government officials.
17:11 Speaker 00 And there was something else Orlando told The Washington Post he'd mentioned to police that he thought was vitally important. He said shortly after the initial searches had gotten underway on Sunday afternoon, a surveillance team employed by his organization that was stationed somewhere along the river near the community Dom and Bruno had last been seen passing, said that the boat owned by the illegal fishermen who'd gotten into it with Bruno, had been spotted trolling not far behind Bruno and Dom's boat during the hours they'd gone missing. Which, I mean, talk about sus. This information, along with the fishermen's names, were provided to federal police investigators,
17:52 Speaker 00 but according to Univazza staff, the lead wasn't followed up on right away. A reality that upset many people who worked for the organization. An attorney told The Washington Post, quote, "My frustration goes beyond just a slow search mission. We need to know the motives and circumstances behind the disappearance of Dom and Bruno. These are armed gangs that are causing violence not only against indigenous, but also our partners. There needs to be investigation by police." End quote. According to Dom Phillips's reporting for The Guardian, by the end of the day on Tuesday, June 7, police detectives announced they were treating the case as a criminal matter
18:35 Speaker 00 and had interviewed at least five people, four of which they labeled as witnesses and one they categorized as a suspect. That same article also mentioned that 24 hours into the investigation, Brazil's army had finally come around and sent a patrol into the valley on a boat to help. By that point, the public outcry from the men's family and friends that the Brazilian government wasn't doing enough to find them had gotten so loud that then-President Jair Bolsonaro couldn't ignore it. It was widely known that Bolsonaro wasn't a fan of the work that men like Dom and Bruno were doing. The Associated Press reported that he wanted there to be more development in the Javari
19:17 Speaker 00 Valley, not more measures put in place to conserve it. When he took office as president in January 2019, he quickly became a strong voice downplaying the importance of setting aside more protected lands for indigenous people.
19:33 Speaker 00 According to CNN, Bolsonaro's entire campaign running up to Election Day had focused on what kinds of future efforts could be made to explore the untouched territories of the Amazon for farming and natural resource extraction. One of his first actions as president was cleaning house at the Brazilian Indigenous National Foundation and transferring the organization out of Brazil's Ministry of Justice Department to the Ministry of Agriculture. He also ousted many longtime environmentally conscious leaders from the organization and put men like Bruno, who were leading operations and programs to reach isolated people, on administrative leave.
20:13 Speaker 00 Two days after the men vanished, Bolsonaro issued a blunt initial response that rubbed folks who knew Dom and Bruno the wrong way. Bolsonaro told news outlets, including CNN, "Two people alone on a boat in a region like that? Completely wild. It's an unrecommended adventure. Anything can happen. It could be an accident. It could be that they have been executed. Anything could have happened. We hope and pray to God that they will be found soon." End quote.
20:45 Speaker 00 Now, I don't think he necessarily intended to sound cavalier with his statement, but many people close to Bruno and Dom and others who opposed the president's stance on environmental issues felt like it was a backhanded way of questioning the men's mission and purpose. Basically, "See, this is what happens when you unnecessarily go to places you shouldn't and do stuff that's dangerous," kind of thing. But even though Bruno was on administrative leave during the summer of 2022, the 41-year-old was as dedicated as ever to working with indigenous communities in the Javari Valley and being a guide for journalists like Dom.
21:25 Speaker 00 At 57 years old, Dom was an established foreign correspondent who didn't shy away from the opportunity to cover controversy. He'd spent the last 15 years living in Brazil. According to his obituary by The Guardian, he met his wife Alessandra in 2013, and the two had gotten married in 2015. Through tough times, Dom had remained dedicated to telling gripping stories about Brazilian residents living in remote regions of the Amazon, even when his dedication required him to make several expensive trips that neither he nor his research grant sponsors could afford. The Guardian reported that in the summer of 2022, he and his wife had been forced
22:06 Speaker 00 to move to the less expensive Brazilian city of Salvador to live because he was relying on supplemental income from his family members in Britain to make ends meet. Still, Dom hadn't wavered. He knew his life's calling was to report about the travesties taking place in the Javari Valley. According to reporter Jonathan Watts, Dom's first visit to Brazil had been in 1998, after his first marriage in England had ended, and while in the country, he decided to start over and moved to South America full-time. Brazil was completely different from where he'd grown up in the small town of Bebington, Merseyside, England, with his parents and two siblings during the 1960s and 70s.
22:49 Speaker 00 In addition to having an insatiable appetite for storytelling and writing, Jonathan Watts wrote that Dom loved music. Growing up, everyone in his family had a guitar or sang. As a young man, he'd scratched and clawed his way through a college education and then wandered through various countries, playing music and writing. In the 90s, his passion for music led him to pursue a writing and publishing career in that genre, but ultimately, his interest in South America's political and environmental conflicts had been what had kept him working as a full-time foreign correspondent. Dom had taught himself to speak fluent Portuguese, which was a huge help navigating his way through stories in Brazil. He'd been contracted for prestigious newspapers and magazines across the globe, which included
23:33 Speaker 00 The Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and others.
23:38 Speaker 00 Leading up to 2022, Dom had extensively covered several environmental disasters in the Amazon, two of which were results of failed iron ore mining operations. He'd seen firsthand how the influx of natural resource extraction was devastating ecosystems in the pristine landscape. In 2018, he joined Bruno for a trip into the Javari Valley for the first time to see how companies and illegal hunters and prospectors were impacting native, uncontacted tribes. And after seeing how much of the indigenous people's land was being destroyed by outside forces, Dom couldn't stop writing about all the issues that were going on. Unfortunately, the stories he'd written were so explosive, they'd made him a handful
24:22 Speaker 00 of powerful enemies. One in particular, and you guessed it, it was Jair Bolsonaro. According to Jonathan Watts' reporting for The Guardian, during a press conference in 2019, after Bolsonaro had just officially won the presidential election, Dom asked him what his administration was going to do to address an increase in forest fires that had been plaguing the Amazon. And Bolsonaro barked back, quote, "The Amazon is Brazil's, not yours," end quote. So yeah, these two guys weren't friendly. But this tension only proved to fuel Dom's fire as an investigative journalist.
25:03 Speaker 00 The whole reason he was traveling with Bruno in the summer of 2022 was because he was in the middle of writing a book about all the messed up things that were happening in the Javari Valley. Things that he felt were being ignored by the Brazilian government. He titled the novel, "How to Save the Amazon." A big focus of the book was going to be how unwarranted contact with remote indigenous tribes was extremely dangerous and what solutions could be generated in the future.
25:32 Speaker 00 According to the website Survival International, forced contact with indigenous tribes in the Javari Valley had been happening for decades, all the way back to the 1970s, and it came at a very high human price. An article on the site describes how non-native visitors, like missionaries, brought diseases like the measles and the flu to these remote people groups, and all but wiped them out because the indigenous tribes had no built-up immunity to those ailments. The article also details how during the 1980s, when big oil companies like Shell ventured into the valley in search of untapped oil reserves, their crews bumped into one particularly isolated tribe. And in a matter of a few years, roughly half of the people in that tribe died from different diseases.
26:17 Speaker 00 Diseases they likely would never have been exposed to if they hadn't met the oil explorers. Because there are so many ways unwanted contact with indigenous people groups can go wrong, the governments of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, which all border the Javari Valley, had measures in place to protect the indigenous lands and make sure no contact was forced on natives. But as you probably guessed, those rules were constantly being broken by non-indigenous residents. A local activist who knew Bruno and Dom told The Guardian's Dom Phillips that because President Bolsonaro's administration so heavily promoted development in the Amazon,
26:57 Speaker 00 an anti-conservation message had slowly galvanized non-indigenous citizens over time to become more violent with activists in the valley, and essentially treat the region however they wanted. Illegal mining, logging, and poaching had all increased under Bolsonaro's administration. This activist told The Guardian in part, "The invaders felt empowered and became more aggressive. They are veritable gangs, and they are very violent." Regarding how tense things had gotten to keep non-native visitors out of the Javari Valley Indigenous Reservation land, a former FUNAI official told the Associated Press,
27:38 Speaker 00 "To this day, the locals don't accept that they can't fish, hunt, or cut wood there. Colombians and Peruvians also considered the area as a reserve for them to take whatever they want."
27:53 Speaker 00 So there was no question by the summer of 2022, violence had permeated the Javari Valley because of the stringent protective initiatives put in place over the decades. And then a systematic dismantling of those initiatives under new political leadership. Multiple news outlets reported that gunfire battles had broken out between clashing drug cartels, as well as non-indigenous and indigenous people groups. Some FUNAI workers had either been killed or gone missing while living in or traveling through the Javari Valley. In 2019, a man who was employed to root out and report illegal logging and poaching operations was shot to death, and his case has never been solved.
28:37 Speaker 00 But to get back to the search for Dom and Bruno. All day Tuesday, so two days after they disappeared, more search and rescue resources joined the efforts to find them. This time, the Amazon Military Command and the Brazilian government's military-trained officers with faster boats, diving equipment, and investigating expertise combed the Javari Valley. That afternoon, Bruno's brothers and partner, Beatrice, spoke publicly about the case and told CNN that they wanted everyone who was searching for the men to work hard and smart. They cautioned crews to remember to respect indigenous land if they met uncontacted people groups while looking for Dom and Bruno.
29:18 Speaker 00 Beatrice also told a local newspaper that she was distraught not only for herself but for her two- and three-year-old sons. The source material isn't clear as to whether Bruno was their dad, but still, I must imagine he definitely cared for them and was part of their lives. According to Andrew Downey and Caio Briso and Dom Phillips reporting for The Guardian, on Wednesday, three days into the search, the police officially announced they'd interrogated a handful of people and arrested two men so far in their investigation. One of the two guys that had been detained, who authorities didn't name, had been arrested for having drugs, a firearm, and ammunition that was illegal. The other guy, whose name was Amardio de Costa de Oliveira,
30:03 Speaker 00 also had been arrested for the same offenses and questioned in relation to Dom and Bruno's case. And according to the article, that's because Amardio was the fisherman who'd threatened Bruno and his men on Saturday morning with the gun. You know, the guy who'd been well documented in pictures? Yeah, well, in addition to undergoing an interrogation, police also took his boat to search for additional clues. On Wednesday, authorities also announced that they were widening the search for Dom and Bruno, and by that point, had roughly 250 people out looking for them. They utilized airplanes, drones, and 16 boats to scour as much of the landscape as possible, but still, nothing had turned up.
30:46 Speaker 00 Not a scrap of clothing, not a piece of equipment, the missing boat, nothing. The Brazilian army had also dedicated more personnel to go into remote parts of the jungle, but those efforts also hadn't pushed the investigation forward. What's interesting to me is that even though three full days had passed with no sign of the two men, investigators were still reluctant to say on the record that they believed something bad had happened to Dom and Bruno. Instead, federal police detectives said they genuinely thought the pair was still alive, saying, quote, "We still don't have a strong indication a crime was committed," end quote. But despite that, authorities were still side-eyeing Amardio and not letting him go
31:30 Speaker 00 anywhere, so they kept him detained in jail while they continued their investigation. According to Andrew Downey's reporting for The Guardian, by the end of the first week of searching, things were looking grim. And it only got worse when authorities announced they'd found something disturbing floating in a portion of the Itaguay River, not far from Adelía de Nort. Human remains.
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33:04 Speaker 01 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
33:09 Speaker 02 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
33:13 Speaker 01 I'm Eliza Orlands, career public defender.
33:16 Speaker 02 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
33:19 Speaker 01 And on our brand-new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
33:25 Speaker 02 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
33:39 Speaker 00 According to Andrew Downey's article, federal police investigators told the press that on Friday afternoon, five and a half days after Dom and Bruno were last seen, searchers had found, quote, "human organic material" on the Itaquay River. Authorities didn't clarify what this material was, just that it was human and suspicious.
34:01 Speaker 00 But police did reveal that during their search of Amarillo's boat, they'd found blood, but wouldn't say whether it belonged to Bruno or Dom. The only thing investigators would confirm was that samples of the blood from the boat and the human remained material from the river were going to be sent off to a forensic examiner. DNA samples from Dom's house in Salvador and samples from Bruno's relatives were also going to be collected for comparison. The Guardian reported that shortly after that, more ominous clues surfaced. Dom Phillips reported that on Saturday, a small platoon of indigenous residents who'd been searching in tributaries near where the men vanished, found a blue tarp tied around a tree that they recognized as having come from a local group of
34:45 Speaker 00 indigenous workers. Floating in the water not far from the tarp were a pair of men's trousers, which I think refer to pants, boots, and a healthcare card that were quickly identified as belonging to Bruno. Also with those items was a backpack with another set of boots and more articles of clothing in it that were later determined to be Dom's. The Guardian also published that a backpack, laptop computer, and sandals were discovered near Amarillo's house, which was located on the river. So I'm not sure whether this article was referring to the same stuff from the previous article I just mentioned, or something different, but based on what I could gather, it seems like Amarillo's house wasn't too far away from where the men's clothing and boots were discovered by the tied-up
35:30 Speaker 00 tarp. Anyway, forensic investigators took all of Dom and Bruno's personal items as evidence and continued to meticulously dig around the spot where the stuff had turned up. On Monday, June 13, Brazil's ambassador to the UK incorrectly broke news to Dom's family, mistakenly telling them that his body had been found, instead of just some of his belongings. And almost as quickly as he'd released the false information, his office had to go into damage control and apologize, which wasn't a great look and really portrayed to the public that the Brazilian government and its search crews on the ground were not communicating well, as many people already suspected.
36:13 Speaker 00 The next major update came the following day when authorities announced they were upgrading Amardio to prime suspect for alleged aggravated murder. And arresting his brother Osney de Costa de Oliveira in connection with the case. When officers took Osney into custody, they'd served a couple of search warrants that allowed them to seize several bullet casings and an oar from a boat as evidence. The next day, Wednesday, June 15th, federal police officials announced the truth had finally come out. According to reporting by Metropolis and Andrew Downey and Dom Phillips for The Guardian, while being interrogated on Tuesday night, Amardio had cracked and confessed to murdering
36:56 Speaker 00 Dom and Bruno and enlisting other men to help him bury their bodies in a remote secluded spot in the jungle about two miles inland from the banks of the Otagua River. According to Terrence McCoy's reporting for The Washington Post, Amardio told investigators that after seeing Dom and Bruno pass by in their boat, he and his men had followed the pair and shot at Bruno, who he said returned fire with a .38 Taurus handgun he kept on him. But Bruno's pistol was no match for Amardio's shotguns, and eventually Dom and Bruno's boat crashed into some trees along the banks of the river. Both men had been fatally shot. Amardio said after getting their bodies off the boat, it had taken at least four hours
37:41 Speaker 00 to try and burn them. And when that ultimately failed, they'd partially dismembered them with a machete and then sunk their boat so that no one could find it. Amardio claimed his brother Osney and a third man named Jefferson de Silva Lima had helped him every step of the way. After confessing on Tuesday night, Amardio then spent the early hours of Wednesday morning accompanying police investigators as well as Army and Navy officers to the shallow burial site where he and his accomplices had discarded Dom and Bruno's remains.
38:17 Speaker 00 A few hours after locating the victims, police investigators respectfully removed the remains and took them by boat to Adelia de Norte to be transported out of the valley. Forensic tests came in a few days later and confirmed without a doubt that the remains were Dom and Bruno. When word of this development got out, Dom's wife Alessandra released a statement expressing her sadness as well as bittersweet relief. She said, quote, "This tragic outcome puts an end to the anguish of not knowing Dom and Bruno's whereabouts. Now, we can bring them home and say goodbye with love," end quote. Shortly after the bodies were found, police announced they believed as many as five men were involved
39:00 Speaker 00 in the murders and the attempted cover-up. This number included the Oliveira brothers and their friend Jefferson. However, the government didn't go as far as to say that investigators thought a larger criminal organization was behind the killings. Univasa staff, on the other hand, definitely thought an organized crime group that profited from illegal fishing had hired the Oliveira brothers to carry out the crime. The agency even went as far as filing a long report begging the Brazilian government to thoroughly investigate the suggestion. But those efforts fell on deaf ears. A few days after the bodies were sent off for examination, Bruno and Dom's autopsy results were released to the media.
39:45 Speaker 00 The reports confirmed they'd both been shot to death with a shotgun and then partially burned and dismembered before ultimately being hastily buried in the muddy jungle. Within a day of that information being released, Jefferson de Silva Lima, the third man involved in the plot, turned himself into the authorities and confessed to helping commit the crime. Andrew Downey, Oliver Loughlin, and Robert Koz reported for The Guardian that after Jefferson came clean, federal police detectives investigated a handful of other men who they believed might be connected to the case. And one of those guys gave them false documents while being questioned, but he was never arrested in relation to the murders. By the end of June, Bruno and Dom's missing boat
40:29 Speaker 00 had been located and dredged from the Itaquay River. It was processed for evidence, and according to Andrew Downey's reporting, Dom and Bruno's killers had weighed it down with six bags of soil and sunk in it 20 to 30 meters beneath the murky river's surface.
40:46 Speaker 00 At the end of July, prosecutors in Brazil formally charged the Oliveira brothers and Jefferson for Dom and Bruno's murders. The government said the only reason the local men had attacked the pair was because they'd resented Bruno's work in the Amazon, had a personal vendetta against him, and did not want Dom, his companion, to publish the pictures and eyewitness accounts of their illegal fishing. There was no mention of any possible connection to a larger criminal organization. A Washington Post article written by Terrence McCoy went into detail about how Amardio had fostered a deep personal hatred toward Bruno and the organizations he was associated with.
41:27 Speaker 00 In short, the piece discussed how, as a young man, Amardio had experienced a lot of personal and financial turmoil in the region and grew resentful of increased restrictions on fishing and hunting. By early August, though, federal police investigators had changed their tune a bit in regard to how big the conspiracy surrounding the killings might have been. The Guardian reported that authorities arrested five other people who they claimed participated in Dom and Bruno's makeshift burial in the jungle, one of which was the known ringleader of a "illegal fishing mafia based in the Amazon region." End quote. Apparently, this guy was the person providing boats, fuel, firearms, and supplies to illegal
42:11 Speaker 00 fishermen so they could conduct their operations in the jungle. He was released on bail shortly after his arrest, which only frustrated people advocating for harsher restrictions for the suspects involved in the murders. In May 2023, something that threw a bit of a wrench into things was that the defendants began claiming they'd killed Dom and Bruno in self-defense, an argument that many people who were following the story were shocked by. By September 2024, Brazilian appeals judges had decided to drop murder charges from Osney da Costa de Oliveira entirely. Charges against his brother, Amardio, and the other defendant, Jefferson de Silva Lima, remained in place, though.
42:56 Speaker 00 That decision to exclude Osney came as a result of the court determining there was insufficient evidence of authorship or participation in the crime by him to move forward to trial. The Guardian reported that prosecutors still have the option to appeal the ruling and file new charges, but I couldn't find any further source material about whether they've done that. Another piece by The Guardian that was published in November 2024 stated that eventually prosecutors charged a total of nine people who they believed were involved in the killing, including a guy named Ruben Dario de Silva Villar, who was dubbed "The Mastermind." I believe he was that person I told you about earlier who was supplying fuel and firearms
43:38 Speaker 00 to illegal fishermen in the Amazon region, basically the illegal fishing mafia boss. But I've yet to see any news coverage published that states when any criminal trials for these folks will begin, so we'll just have to wait and see. One thing I do know for sure is that Bruno and Dom are gone. However, their impact will never be forgotten. Unfortunately, they'll never see the beauty of the Amazon rainforest ever again, but the work they accomplished there while they were alive, and some would argue are still accomplishing even in death, is unmatched. Their families and supporters continue to publicly express grief over their loss, and thousands of Brazilian citizens have rallied against the government to reform laws and
44:21 Speaker 00 regulations that seek to develop the Amazon rainforest. The fight that Dom and Bruno were taking part in is still far from over, and they deserve to have the world remember their names. So, this is for you, Dom and Bruno. May you rest in peace and forever be known.
44:47 Speaker 00 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.
45:05 Speaker 00 So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?
45:12 Speaker 03 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County.
45:19 Speaker 03 Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks.
45:29 Speaker 03 The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
45:32 Speaker 04 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
45:39 Speaker 03 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
45:47 Speaker 05 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp. That's the one time that we called the cops
45:52 Speaker 06 because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
46:00 Speaker 03 I'm Eva Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous The Trappers Next The Hunters Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated