LITMIR.BIZ

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making Rio one of the murder capitals of the world, the children elicit very little sympathy from the citizens of Rio. Universally despised, they are routinely beaten, abused and attacked.

      The situation was made even worse in the 1990s, when they were regularly being picked off by roving extermination squads, made up primarily of off-duty policeman and security guards. These squads were on the payroll of normally law-abiding citizens, and their mission was to clean up the streets. In 1991, at least four children were being executed every single day on average.

      For a murderer, especially one with a liking for young boys, the conditions on Brazil’s streets at that time could not have been more ideal. Such was the daily death toll, the Brazilian authorities didn’t even notice that somebody else, acting on their own, was slaughtering young boys in the slums just for fun.

      For Marcelo Costa de Andrade, who had spent almost his entire life on the streets, it wasn’t difficult to blend in and lure children away from prying eyes to abandoned spots and their slaughter. The children from the Rio slums were wary of the dangers that constantly surrounded them, but De Andrade seemed to be one of the few adults they could trust, with his harmless appearance, a gentle manner and a soft, childlike way of speaking.

      The 23-year-old lived with his mother, regularly attended church, had a normal job and made constant allusions to his faith in God when talking to children. Having grown up poor in the Rocinha slum, his childhood was in many ways the same as that of the street kids: no food on the table, no running water, constant abuse and hardly any school. De Andrade spent most of his time on the street hustling, and was just ten when he ran away from home for the first time. At 14, he started selling himself to adults for sex.

      On the rare occasions he was at home, De Andrade was beaten senseless by both his step-parents and was sexually abused. At 16, he moved in with an older man, but when he was thrown out he went to live with his mother in another nearby Rio slum. Aged 17, he tried to rape his ten-year-old brother and started listening obsessively to tapes he had made of his brother crying.

      But it was only after he had left hustling for good and was attending church regularly with his mother that his killing spree began. According to De Andrade, it was an encounter with a young transvestite that was the trigger. And once he’d begun there was no stopping him.

      ‘One day when I was walking I met a 14-year-old boy. A transvestite,’ De Andrade recalled in an interview with Epoca magazine in 2003. ‘He propositioned me to go to a hotel with him. I had sex with him and kissed him on the mouth. I paid him 50 Reais [£12]. I never got to see him again. But it sparked the desire for new boys. As I didn’t find another one like him I ended up forcing myself on others. I always took them to a deserted spot.

      ‘The sadism went to my head. I ended up killing some of them… I do not remember their faces very well. The first one I caught was in Niterói. I only know that his name was Anderson. I offered him money. I said he could help me light candles in the church. I took him to a deserted place. When we got there I raped him. I then strangled him with his own shirt. I returned to the spot where the body was three times, to see if anyone had discovered anything. Nobody ever suspected me.’

      De Andrade went on to murder 13 other street kids, following the same pattern as the first. He lured them with sweets and money to secluded spots, raped them, strangled them or beat them to death and had sex with their corpses. He then buried them in shallow graves.

      De Andrade targeted the ‘prettiest boys’ he could find, always hunting for ‘smooth legs, and a pretty face and body’ and later declared that he had killed them so they would ‘go to Heaven’. (He also removed his victims’ shorts and kept them as trophies.) In two instances, he drank his victims’ blood. After sexually abusing them, often for an entire night, he would crack their heads open and collect the blood in a bowl to drink – allegedly so that he would be ‘as young and cute as them’. The majority of his victims were found in the Niterói, just outside the capital of Rio across Guanabara Bay, and as this was the site of his first victim it earned Andrade the nickname in Brazil of ‘the Vampire of Rio’.

      But there was also a religious motive for his murders. The church De Andrade attended was the controversial Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Founded by Edir Macedo, a state-lottery employee turned American-style evangelist, it is the fastest-growing religion in Brazil and now has branches in 172 countries. From its beginnings in 1977, the church has often received fierce criticism from more established religious groups. Part of the criticism levelled against it has been the emphasis on the payment of tithes. These can often constitute upwards of 10% of a congregation member’s income, an amount that many believers are quite happy to pay in the belief that this money will be paid back in full and with interest – not on the Day of Reckoning, but in the church member’s lifetime. The church has particular appeal among the impoverished who, of course, take comfort from its message of guaranteed future remuneration.

      In fact, De Andrade seemed far more interested in another aspect of the church – namely the casting out of demons, something that happens quite regularly during services in the Church of the Kingdom of God. As well as offering protection from voodoo and witchcraft, the church claims that ‘demons’ are responsible for people’s problems (including homosexuality, which is viewed by the church as a disease). De Andrade’s church would cast out these ‘demons’, and to this day the murderer claims he was possessed by evil spirits who forced him to kill because ‘they like children’s blood’.

      In the midst of his killing spree, the devout De Andrade still attended church four times a week, for up to five hours at a time. He later declared that a priest had told him that boys who died under the age of 13 automatically went to heaven. He misunderstood the priest’s message, he claimed, interpreting it as meaning that by killing the boys he was not only ending their awful existence in the slums but also ensuring them a one-way ticket to paradise. It was for this reason that De Andrade never targeted girls. Girls, he claimed, were different from boys because they didn’t go to heaven – and, of course, boys were ‘prettier’.

      Dr Helen Morrison, a forensic psychiatrist and well-known serial-killer profiler, went to interview De Andrade in Brazil in November 2001. Dr Morrison interviews murderers for hours and hours at a time, believing that they are only able to copy normal behaviour until the mask cracks. She believes that serial killers are born, not made, and are genetically prone to kill. Morrison has interviewed at least 80 serial killers during her career, including John Wayne Gacy, the convicted killer of 33 young men and boys. (In fact, Morrison actually took possession of John Wayne Gacy’s brain after he was executed and donated his body to science. She keeps it in the basement of her house.)

      She recounts the experience of her interviews with De Andrade in her fascinating book My Life Amongst The Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of The World’s Most Notorious Murderers. Through an interpreter, De Andrade reiterated to Dr Morrison his claim that he had been doing his victims a favour by killing them. ‘The children have bad lives here,’ he told her. ‘If they are children when they die, they go to heaven. A better place.’

      But De Andrade went much further than gently sending them on their way. After raping and killing 11-year-old Odair Jose Muniz, whom he had met near a football pitch, he returned later in the night with a machete, which he told his mother he was taking to cut some bananas. Back at the scene of the crime, he hacked the boy’s head off. ‘Why?’ asked Morrison. In order, De Andrade told her, that the other children in heaven would make fun of him because he wouldn’t have a head. After all, the kids used to make fun of him at school.

      De Andrade’s killing spree was prolific but mercifully short-lived. On 11 December 1991, brothers Altair (aged ten) and Ivan Abreu (aged six) were picked up by De Andrade, who offered them $20 if they both accompanied him while he lit candles in a nearby church. The boys readily agreed. But as soon as they were away from public view, De Andrade turned on Altair and made to kiss him. Altair tried to run, but his molester was too quick for him, grabbing the boy and throwing him to the ground.

      Then he turned his attention to Ivan and started strangling him. ‘I was so paralysed by fear I could not run away,’ Altair later recalled. ‘I watched in horror, tears streaming

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