– (Kiko Mauriz/)
CRIMINAL RECORD
Name – Diogo Alves (1810-1841)
Place of business – Lisbon, Portugal
Deaths – 3 confirmed, over 70 speculated
1. Diogo Alves was born in Galicia, Spain, in 1810. Some time later, he went to try to make a living in Lisbon, where he started to commit crimes, nobody knows for what reason. Historians say that he was illiterate and rude and that he had a girlfriend, Gertrudes Maria, who encouraged him to commit crimes.
two. In 1836, Diogo began to kill. Its place of action was the Águas Livres Aqueduct, a system for capturing and transporting water built in the 18th century and which is 58 km long – its highest point is 65 m high. The victims were travelers, merchants and students who used a narrow path at the top of the aqueduct as a shortcut to the center of Lisbon.
3. Diogo would surprise the victims, steal their belongings and kill them, throwing them from the top of the aqueduct. As they were poor people, the police did not go out of their way to investigate, and the deaths were generally treated as suicides. Over time, however, Diogo’s murders became so frequent that the path was closed due to the «suicide wave»
4. Some reports say that even before the aqueduct was closed, the serial killer was already attacking homes, leading a gang. In addition to stealing, they killed residents. Unlike the aqueduct crimes, these home invasions were reported in the newspapers and attracted the attention of the police.
5. What definitely put Diogo on the authorities’ radar was the murder of a doctor’s wife and two children. Victims were bound, tortured and then suffocated. “Theft accompanied by horrendous murder” and “cruel murders of the whole family” were splashed across the pages of newspapers.
6. Diogo ended up recognized by witnesses, arrested and sentenced for the death of the three victims. He was hanged in February 1841 in what would be the last execution of a death penalty in Portugal. The aqueduct crimes were eventually blamed on him, but were never properly investigated. It is speculated that he may have killed over 70 people.
7. Death was not the end of Diogo’s story. At the time, phrenology was in vogue, a method that seeks to determine the characteristics of a person’s personality through the study of the anatomy of their skull. For this reason, the doctor José Lourenço da Luz Gomes asked the authorities to keep Diogo’s head to study it. And it did. Diogo’s head was placed in formaldehyde and remains preserved until today. She is at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon
– (Kiko Mauriz/)
READER’S SUGGESTION Vladimir Kowalsky, Bethlehem, PA
CONSULTANCY Anabela Natário, historian / SOURCES Websites History of Portugal, Buzztimes, EPAL – Grupo Águas de Portugal; book The Assassin of the Aqueductby Anabela Natário