The Bizarre Story of Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana

Almost 60 years ago, two men healthy men in their 30s died under mysterious circumstances in Niterói, Brazil. To this day, nobody knows the truth behind the events of the evening of August 17th, 1966.

The investigators working on their case were left with strange clues that continue to confuse the experts and internet sleuths even now.

**Photos of Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana via Wikipedia.**

The Discovery Of The Bodies

On August 20th, 1966, 18-year-old Jorge da Costa Alves was flying a kite on the Vintém Hill in Niterói, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He saw something strange up on the hill and came closer to inspect. The teen realized two bodies were lying in the grass.

The men looked like they were resting with their hands behind their heads, but neither was moving. Frightened, the boy ran to the nearest police station to report what he had seen.

When law enforcement arrived at Vintém Hill, it was already dark, and the weather changed abruptly, so they decided to return the following morning.

On August 21st, police officers braved the rugged terrain to get to the bodies. What they saw confused everyone at the scene.

The two men were dressed in formal suits paired with raincoats and lying on leaves cut with a sharp tool. They were wearing masks made of solid lead that looked like sunglasses.

The men had no external injuries, and no signs of struggle were found on or around them. The investigators discovered an empty water bottle, two wet towels, and a notebook at the scene.

The media quickly learned about the mysterious deaths on the Vintém Hill and managed to snap photos before the bodies were taken to the morgue.

The men were identified as Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana from Campos dos Goytacazes, a town 174 miles away from Rio de Janeiro. Cruz was 32, and Viana was 34 years old.

Both were married and worked as electronic technicians. The men were good friends who often worked together and wanted to start their own business soon.

They had the same interests, like technology and spiritualism. Combining those two might seem odd, but at that time, people in Brazil were into spiritualism despite their professional backgrounds.

Once the police learned where to start their investigation, they slowly began piecing together the events that led to the discovery of the two bodies.

The Journey Of Cruz And Viana

According to the families of Cruz and Viana, they were planning to go to São Paulo to buy a used Volkswagen Sedan and get some electronic equipment while in the city.

Since they were making a large purchase, Cruz and Viana had 2.3 million cruzeiros with them for the vehicle.

On the morning of August 17th, they asked their friend, Hèlcio Correira Gomes, to drop them off at the bus station, and he said goodbye to the men at around 9:00 am. Gomes wanted to go inside the station with them, but Cruz and Viana insisted there was no need.

They likely sent the friend away because the men weren’t planning on going to São Paulo. Instead, they purchased two tickets for Niterói.

Cruz and Viana arrived at their destination after 2:00 pm and stopped at an electronics store named Fluoscop.

The clerk remembered them because they occasionally shopped for various parts, but they left the store this time without purchasing anything. The men bought two raincoats at a nearby clothing store despite the sunny weather. The salesperson confirmed the two were in a rush.

The next sighting was at a bar by the clothing store. Viana ordered mineral water and requested a receipt to return the bottle for a deposit. The bartender said Cruz and Viana kept looking at the clock as if they were meeting with someone.

At 5:00 pm, a security guard saw the men near Vintém Hill, but they weren’t alone. According to the witness, the group arrived in a jeep driven by a man with blond hair.

He couldn’t see everyone inside the vehicle, but the security guard believed there were two more men besides Cruz, Viana, and the driver.

Nobody knows what happened afterward. Three days later, Cruz and Viana were found dead on the hill.

The cause of death remained unknown at the beginning of the investigation, probably because the autopsies were conducted weeks after the discovery.

The coroner’s office had a backlog, and the internal organs of the two men decomposed because they couldn’t be stored properly.

The medical examiner stated that the toxicology report couldn’t be completed because of the decomposition. But they very likely died on August 17th, and the cause of death was listed as cardiac arrest due to unknown causes.

Therefore, law enforcement didn’t have an essential piece of this puzzle. But they still had other evidence found on the bodies.

The Mysterious Notes And Masks

So, what happened to Cruz and Viana? The investigators managed to create a solid timeline of their movement from the moment the two left their hometown, but they still had many unanswered questions, namely the strange notes found on one of the men.

The first page contained a list of serial numbers for electronic parts with several Ohm’s law equations underneath.

The next page seems to be directly linked with the men’s deaths since the handwritten notes mention capsules and the exact time when they should be taken. Cruz and Viana were preparing for some event days before their trip to Niterói.

Here’s what was written down: ‘Sunday, one after a meal. Monday, one capsule in the morning on an empty stomach. Tuesday, one capsule after the meal. Wednesday, one capsule before bedtime.’

The third page contained the instructions for whatever was supposed to happen in Niterói. The notes say: ’16:30 be at the specified location. 18:30 ingest capsules, after the effect protect metals await signal mask’.

**Photographs of the glasses worn by Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana.**

These notes confirm that the men took some kind of drug, but were there any other clues? The handwriting was consistent with the samples from Viana’s home.

However, both families confirmed that the men didn’t use some of the words mentioned in these instructions.

Investigators then focused on the masks worn by the men, hoping they could provide more answers to this mystery. The masks resembled sunglasses and were homemade. Cruz’s neighbor confirmed that Cruz and Viana made the masks on August 12th using a hammer and a lead tube.

The masks weren’t see-through. Investigators located the lead tube scraps from Cruz’s workshop and found literature on spiritualism that would take them in a whole new direction.

A Connection To A Similar Case

In the weeks after Cruz and Viana were found, their case became the most popular topic in Brazil. People were trying to figure out why the duo wore lead masks and what made them climb Vintém Hill.

These clues revealed a similar case that happened in 1962 on Cruzeiro Hill outside São Paulo. A radio and television technician named Hermes Luiz Feitosa was found deceased with a homemade lead mask next to his body.

Detectives working on this case quickly discovered the reason behind Feitosa’s hike to Cruzeiro Hill. His friends and family confirmed the man was researching psychic abilities and planned to experiment on himself.

Feitosa wanted to pick up radio and TV signals with his mind. The lead mask was made to prevent radiation poisoning.

This case was reopened in hopes of finding a connection between Cruz and Viana, but it was discovered that the three men didn’t know each other. It was concluded that the only connections between the cases were the profession of the victims and the masks.

Theories

Several theories emerged over the years as more people took an interest in this mystery. A robbery gone wrong was proposed as the cause of death by some of the investigators.

It is known that Cruz and Viana left Campos dos Goytacazes with 2.3 million cruzeiros, but only 160,000 were in their pockets on August 20th. The two did purchase the raincoats, but they should have had plenty of money left.

The sighting by the security guard at the base of Vintém Hill confirmed Cruz and Viana didn’t get there alone. It is common for thieves to devise elaborate plans for robbing their targets.

Cruz and Viana might’ve been lured to a remote place with the promise of seeing a UFO or contacting the spirit world and unknowingly ingested poison. The thieves robbed them afterward and left the men on the side of the hill.

While the robbery theory sounds plausible, the thieves didn’t take all their money and also left some valuables on the bodies. For instance, Cruz and Viana were wearing watches, and they were found tucked neatly in their pockets.

Since the bodies were out there for three days, perhaps other people spotted them and rummaged through their belongings.

The UFO theory was introduced almost immediately thanks to Gracinda Barbosa Coutinho de Souza, who claimed to have witnessed an unidentified object fly over the Vintém Hill on the evening of August 17th.

The woman and her three children were walking down the Alameda Sao Boaventura in Niterói when they spotted an oval-shaped object in the sky.

It stopped above the hill and hovered for a couple of minutes. All four told the same story, but no other witnesses came forward at the time. The ball lighting theory could explain the lights seen over Vintém Hill that evening, but it’s a very rare phenomenon.

Since both Cruz and Viana were interested in spiritism, many people, including the investigators, suggested the two were trying to contact the dead.

During the search of Viana’s room, officers found books on spiritism and noted that the chapters mentioning lead masks were highlighted.

This doctrine was popular in Brazil, and many scientists believed that ghosts live in a parallel universe.

Spiritism is based on the theory that everything is cyclical and that an immortal spirit lives in every one of us. It is released after death and reincarnated when the spirit is ready.

Viana’s niece mentioned she had talked to her uncle about his upcoming trip to São Paulo.

The girl wanted to know why they were traveling so far to buy a car, and Viana said they had other things to do in São Paulo besides shopping. He didn’t want to reveal details about the trip but said he’d tell her if spiritism was real afterward.

A well-known occultism expert chimed in after the mysterious deaths of Cruz and Viana and offered an explanation for the lead masks.

According to him, the men were part of an experience that required taking psychedelic drugs to go into a trance-like state to enter the spirit realm. The lead masks were supposed to protect their third eye from the bright lights of the parallel universe.

Even though we don’t have a toxicology report, it is likely the two men died as a result of an overdose. But the reason why they traveled to Niterói remains unknown all these decades later.

We’ll never know what really happened to Cruz and Viana on August 17th, 1966, unless someone comes forward with the answers. Until then, the case of the lead masks will remain unsolved.