Classification: Documented

The Evandro case: a child, the tapes, and the truth the trial never reached

Evandro Ramos Caetano's disappearance in Guaratuba led to an investigation marked by ritual allegations, torture-induced confessions, and decades of litigation. The acquittals corrected a miscarriage of justice; they did not identify who killed him.

Guaratuba, Paraná, Brasil · See stories from this place and nearby

The disappearance in Guaratuba

On 6 April 1992, six-year-old Evandro Ramos Caetano disappeared in Guaratuba, on the coast of Paraná, Brazil. Days later, the body of a child was found bearing signs of violence. A town was confronting a boy's death and questions his family needed answered. Decades later, the case had another identifiable set of victims: people convicted on confessions the courts recognized as obtained through torture. Both dimensions belong in the story. An acquittal does not solve the homicide.

Evandro vanished during a period when other Brazilian families were searching for missing children. One was the family of Leandro Bossi, who had also disappeared in Guaratuba that year. The proximity of the cases entered public narratives, but does not show that the same person committed both crimes. In Evandro's case, the discovery of the body and the violence observed opened a homicide investigation; identification of the remains and the interpretation of forensic examinations were also contested in the proceedings. A forensic dispute, however, cannot erase the child: there was a grave crime, a family, and a duty to investigate with testable evidence.

Arrests and the ritual accusation

In July 1992, seven people were arrested and prosecutors framed the crime as part of an alleged ritual. The popular label ‘Witches of Guaratuba’ spread that version before it was proved. Among those accused were Beatriz and Celina Abagge, connected to the then mayor's family, as well as Osvaldo Marcineiro, Davi dos Santos Soares, and Vicente de Paula Ferreira. The supposed ritual should not be repeated as fact: it was a prosecution allegation later undermined by the way the confessions had been obtained. Public interest in local politics cannot turn suspicion into evidence of guilt.

The recorded confessions

The investigation presented audio and video recordings in which defendants appeared to admit involvement. They said for years that they had been coerced. The clash divided juries, journalists, and residents. Hearing only the version entered into the case file made the account appear complete; taking the allegations of violence seriously raised questions about what happened before and between the recorded statements. In 1998, Beatriz and Celina were acquitted in a jury trial later annulled. Osvaldo, Davi, and Vicente were convicted in 2004; Beatriz was convicted at a new trial in 2011. The differing outcomes already showed that there was no single, fixed ‘verdict in the case.’

What the complete tapes revealed

The decisive detail lies in the difference between a tape and the story told about it. The Projeto Humanos podcast began releasing its investigation in 2018 and, in episode 25, presented in early 2020, made longer recordings available than the versions included in the case file. Its documentation lets readers compare excerpts, transcripts, and an earlier forensic audio report. Previously absent portions expose pauses, distress, and changing versions during interrogation. The project also describes digitization and a notarial record of that procedure. Readers need not treat a podcast's interpretation as a judgment: they can follow the material it assembled and, especially, check how the courts assessed its authenticity and legal effect.

The path through the courts

There is a counterintuitive distinction in the Superior Court of Justice's decision. The fuller recording was not treated as ‘new evidence’ of an unknown event. It was the authenticated original version of material already in the investigation, previously presented with cuts. That changed the meaning of the confessions on which the case rested. According to the STJ, the decisions to send the accused to trial and convict them relied essentially on unlawful out-of-court confessions obtained under torture. Once those statements and evidence derived from them were excluded, no independent proof remained to support the convictions. This was stronger than abstract doubt about a jury's verdict: the court found no valid evidence of authorship against those accused.

A criminal review in Paraná's state court overturned the convictions of Osvaldo and Davi; its grounds were extended to Beatriz and the successors of Vicente, who had died. In September 2025, the STJ's Sixth Panel unanimously upheld that outcome and ordered its ruling sent to the national judicial and prosecutorial councils to consider measures against investigative abuses and remedies for state violations. Prosecutors then tried to take the dispute to Brazil's Supreme Federal Court. In March 2026, Justice Gilmar Mendes declined to admit the appeal in case ARE 1,577,174; the ruling became final, according to reports in April. The Supreme Court did not identify Evandro's killer or reinvestigate the homicide on its merits in that decision: it closed the route of appeal against the acquittals.

The state revisits the case

Between the release of the tapes and the end of the appeals, the state of Paraná formed a working group in 2021, ‘The Evandro Case: Pointers for the Future.’ Its site hosts minutes, public meetings, and a final report. Its stated purpose was to identify possible human-rights violations and recommend steps to prevent their recurrence. The material pushes the story beyond a search for a suspect: how should interrogations be recorded without cuts, original material preserved, counsel guaranteed, and police violence stopped from generating the very narrative investigators seek? Being on video does not make a confession reliable.

Public memory and its distortions

The circulation of information is part of the case as well. Documentaries, podcasts, reporting, and old clippings help reconstruct the climate of fear and open archives, but they do not carry the same weight as a judicial ruling, forensic report, or complete recording. Projeto Humanos's documentation matters because it traces the tapes and allows comparisons; court decisions establish what was recognized in the proceedings. The ‘witches’ label turned people into characters before the evidence was tested. Repeating it without context allows the mistake to outlive its correction.

What remains unresolved

What remains known? Evandro disappeared and died violently. An accusation built on torture-tainted confessions produced convictions that were overturned, and the reversal became final. This does not prove a rival theory of the murder, automatically connect other disappearances to it, or answer who killed Evandro. That silence should not be filled with an invented culprit. The dossier remains open at the point where the criminal case failed: the search for an explanation supported by lawful evidence, and the memory of a child whose life was more than the tape that dominated the trial.

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