The Mystery of Rio (3 page)

The museum's collection is truly amazing. The objects on exhibit, all of them, were taken from real crime scenes or seized as evidence to be used against suspects. There were weapons and projectiles for ballistic analysis, instruments used in celebrated murders, objects with fingerprints (still a novelty at the time), shoeprint molds, pieces of fabrics (for comparative analysis), even letters used to illustrate the latest techniques in graphology.

The museum also had a gruesome collection of human organs, removed during the autopsies of crime victims and then preserved in formic acid for forensic studies.

Also notable were the significant number of exhibits related to illicit activities, such as samba, Candomblé, and gambling: roulette wheels with cheat pedals, loaded dice, tarot cards with arcane characters, and the vast arsenal of religious objects of the
mães-
and
pais-de-santos
—among which I would highlight the most varied types of drums, including the oldest
puíta
manufactured in Rio de Janeiro, which is different from its African counterpart because the stem is on the inside.

Lastly, there was a section for documents: transcripts, reports, crime statistics, photos of murder victims, and anthropometric identification cards (the type championed by Alphonse Bertillon), which would soon became obsolete as forensic science began favoring more modern techniques, which prevailed in Argentina, the United States, and England.

The entire collection was under the care of Sebastião Baeta, who, in spite of being born out of wedlock into humble beginnings, had traveled to London, New York, and Buenos Aires, where he had studied techniques employed by forensic experts in those countries, specifically the use of fingerprints.

He was recognized as one of the most talented forensic investigators, and was a pioneer in the photographing and dusting of fingerprints.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the police high command chose their best forensic expert, and the chief of that division, to secretly collect and analyze the evidence in the murder committed at the House of Swaps. The reader must have already perceived that it was Baeta whom the chief of police rushed to call on the night of the crime.

Baeta had a great calling for the forensic sciences. Although he was not a doctor, he had acquired a solid understanding of anatomy and physiology and was rarely wrong when identifying the
causa mortis
and other
circumstances surrounding a homicide.

Therefore, the coroner (hand-picked by the minister of justice himself), after a cursory examination, signed off on the expert's conclusions, forwarded in advance to the chief of police, which stated that the secretary had died of asphyxiation caused by constriction of the respiratory cavities of the neck, and that, because of the decline in temperature and the first signs of mandibular and cervical stiffness
,
strangulation must have occurred shortly before the approximate time when Fortunata exited the building.

Fingerprint analysis, particularly of the wine bottle and glasses, revealed that two people were drinking in that room—the secretary and one other individual. According to the nurses, who had witnessed the comings and goings of the suspect before the murder, Fortunata had grabbed the bottle and glasses and took them with her into the bedroom. Therefore, it stood to reason that the second set of fingerprints was hers.

At a given moment, probably in the bedroom, the bottle was grabbed by the body and not the neck. The size of the hand that did so coincides with that of the person who strangled the victim. Therefore, it was the prostitute who killed the secretary, there being no reason to assume the presence of a third individual at the scene of the crime.

This conclusion, however, was not without controversy: Baeta could not help but wonder about Fortunata's hand strength, which would have to be exceptional for a woman, and capable of fracturing the laryngeal cartilage of the secretary, a man with a robust and relatively adipose neck. Not to mention that she would have had to snap the cervical curvature at the fifth vertebra. Perhaps feeling a tinge of professional jealousy, the coroner chose to overlook this objection.

Of the objects seized from Rufino, the ones that most interested authorities were the earrings in the shape of seahorses; however, the overlapping fingerprints on them made precise identification difficult.

Sebastião Baeta also paid a visit to the English Cemetery. The first thing that caught his attention was the remnants of a bonfire, put out at least twelve hours earlier, which included not only ash, but also charred leather, probably from a shoe.

There were no signs of disturbed graves, or of overturned soil, except in a remote area, on the extreme right, on a slope, where, days before Rufino's arrest, a mass grave had been dug. In that grave, the bodies of ten sailors, who perished during a quarantine of a British cargo ship, were buried. The ship had come from Ceylon and perhaps brought with it a plague of some sorts.

The episode with the cargo ship had caused a rift of sorts between the Anglican community and Brazilian authorities. The English intended to accept only those sailors who were subjects of the British crown and who adhered to the Anglican faith. The city, however, decided that they would either bury all eleven dead—which included Indians, Africans, and Malays—or they would all be sent to a common grave at another burial ground.

Forced to admit Muslims and idolaters onto such holy ground, the cemetery's administrators were outraged and tried to block the exhumation, which they considered disgraceful, delaying the work of forensics by about ten days. Finally, on June 23rd, the mass grave was opened before a lieutenant from the First District and one of the expert's assistants. No female cadaver was found, and thus they rejected the hypothesis that Rufino had killed Fortunata, stolen her earrings, and buried the body.

Baeta added the wine bottle and a photograph of the secretary's neck (which did not show his face), highlighting the region where the prostitute had choked him, so that the comparative analysis employed could be taught to students at the Police Academy.

I had almost forgotten a key fact: the silver-handled whip, which aroused so many malicious comments, had on it fingerprints that forensics concluded belonged to the woman. However, since it had not been used as a weapon, it was not added to the museum's collection.

 

Perhaps Sebastião Baeta's greatest merit as a forensics expert was his previous experience as an investigator. He had joined the police force as an officer, stationed first in the fifth district, in the most dismal area of Lapa, a favorite location for the practice of capoeira and a breeding ground for bandits. He soon showed talent in solving complex cases, using a simple methodology, which could be summed up in a phrase that he himself had coined: “No one can withstand a continuous and exhaustive investigation.”

For Baeta, a crime scene said a lot about the criminal, who invariably left his “signature” behind. For him, ideally, the work of the forensic police consisted in discovering and identifying these signatures, without having to resort to the fallibility or even the venality of witnesses, the traditional tool for gathering evidence.

The expert's enthusiasm for dactyloscopy, therefore, was to be expected. His most ambitious project was to create fingerprint records for the entire population of Rio de Janeiro so as to be able to immediately identify a perpetrator after a crime had been committed.

Nonetheless, in 1913 criminal identification techniques were still very new. Without properly hiring and training personnel, police authorities had no way of obtaining data for all of the city's inhabitants, but rather only for those who passed through the precincts. And even then, not all suspects were taken to Relação Street to be processed.

It was thus that Baeta first came face to face with Rufino. On the afternoon of June 23rd, when the inspection of the English Cemetery had been concluded, the chief of police called the precinct at Maúa Square, and ordered that the sorcerer be freed after being taken down to Relação Street and undergoing the customary processing. The captain at the precinct balked at the order, but the decision had already been made.

“That man's bait. Behind bars he won't be of any use to us.”

Both the chief of police and Baeta were convinced that Rufino had not killed Fortunata, for one very simple reason: The old man's run-ins with the police in the past had all been for 399s—loitering. Everyone knew him, what he did for a living, where he lived. Which was precisely their great hope: that there might be some tie between him and the prostitute, so that they could track her down. If she were dead, on the other hand, discovering the motive of the crime, or who had ordered it, would be almost impossible.

The only problem—or, at least the only problem Baeta could see—was how to keep hidden the tie between the death of the secretary and the search for Fortunata. Especially since the earrings had been found in the possession of the sorcerer.

That was why the expert was extremely dismayed at seeing Rufino arrive at the police headquarters accompanied by an officer and the captain of the First District himself.

“I need to have a word with you, sir.”

It was a delicate situation. Baeta, who would have preferred to be questioning the old man, left the job up to his subordinates, and he invited the captain into a private room. The expert looked askance as the officer followed them in.

“Don't worry. In the First District we're all brothers.”

The captain thought it very important that he know the crime this woman known as Fortunata was being sought for. The expert, naturally, said he was also in the dark, that he worked in a bureaucratic area of the police, and who was he to question his superiors. The captain looked at him suspiciously.

“What's the lady have to do with the old man?”

The situation was not only delicate, it was also dangerous. If Baeta did not act quickly, the Maúa Square people might get their hands on Fortunata. And of course they would force her to talk, and then the whole story would go public. The expert, thus, turned the tables and abandoned his defensive stance.

“You've had the old man for ten days. More than enough time for a confession.”

This time, to the surprise of the expert, the officer interceded, producing Rufino's statement, where he alleged he had not received the earrings directly from Fortunata, but from a certain man.

“That man will be at his house, next Friday.”

The expert noticed a look of skepticism on the part of the captain. But the officer insisted.

“Wait till Friday, boss. The old guy doesn't lie.”

Baeta had heard the legend before. To get them even further off track, he thought a slight taunt was in order.

“The last resort for a liar is to claim he doesn't lie. Rather obvious, don't you think?”

Officer Mixila was almost offended by this. And he began to recite stories about the sorcerer. He was one of the officers most responsible for spreading the mythology surrounding Rufino, telling incredible tales: miraculous cures, disconcerting predictions, spellbound individuals acting against their own will, or others who suddenly became rich, or managed to contact dead relatives.

And he referred to personal experiences, that he had a
corpo fechado
, because of the old man's work, which protected him from metal weapons and bullets, which had saved him fantastically, in confrontations with the worst criminal elements, and that everyone had witnessed this, even the captain.

“I owe him my life.”

Mixila opened his shirt to show the scars. Just then, someone knocked, saying that they were done with the old man.

Baeta could not resist asking Rufino, who looked at the captain with disdain, one question: “What's the relationship between this woman and the man who gave you the earrings?”

Rufino, with an air of insolence, did not hesitate.

“Just that they came from the same belly.”

So, then, that was it: it was simpler than anyone had imagined. Perhaps it was worth waiting for the brother to be picked up; perhaps he really would appear on Friday at the sorcerer's home.

Baeta, then, told the old man that he was free to leave, and he formally returned the earrings to him. To his surprise, however, this greatly upset the captain: “This man was arrested in my jurisdiction. Any evidence of a possible crime, whatever that crime may be, stays with me, in my precinct.”

Without waiting for an answer, the captain turned his back on Baeta, followed by Officer Mixila.

 

In 1890, during construction of the Central Post Office, in the old Imperial Palace, a coffin was dug up containing the skeleton of an adult male.

Due to the fact that he had been buried in one of the Palace rooms, due to the fact that he had been buried in a coffin, due to the fact that there had never been a single murmur of a murder committed in the privacy of that building, those with very active imaginations have imputed the crime to the emperor himself—more specifically, the first emperor.

Perhaps the suspicions were founded: Pedro I was impulsive, a good swordsman, he knew the rudiments of capoeira, and had affairs with countless married women. According to the most common rumor, the skeleton belonged to an outraged husband, or to a father seeking revenge, who had had access to the palace.

The much-discussed case of the skeleton, also known as the “crime of Bragança,” was the subject of satirical and sensationalist newspaper serials, such as one by Vítor Leal (a pseudonym shared by Olavo Bilac, Aluísio Azevedo, Pardal Mallet, and Coelho Neto), who gave the story its current and definitive shape.

There are, however, plausible objections to this hypothesis. According to newspapers of the time, an analysis of the coffin revealed that the body had not decomposed inside. It was a second burial, after the remains had been exhumed a first time. Since the statute of limitations had expired, there had been no investigation or forensics performed. Therefore, it was never proved conclusively that the victim was a male.