Maria Helena, a dedicated nurse at one of the largest public hospitals in the Northwest, and Jandira, a high school English teacher, had been living together for nearly four years. To their conservative community, they were simply “roommates” sharing expenses, a common arrangement in the 1980s. Only a small, trusted circle knew the true nature of their relationship. Their lives seemed to hum along with a comforting regularity. The night before their disappearance, they were seen returning from a downtown movie theater, their bags filled with fresh groceries from the Pike Place Market—a simple snapshot of an ordinary life, abruptly frozen in time.
When the frantic phone calls stopped, Maria Helena’s mother, Dona Josefa, sent her eldest son, Carlos Alberto, to their apartment. The scene he found was eerily unsettling. The door was unlocked. The groceries were still on the kitchen table, half-organized as if they had been interrupted mid-task. There were no signs of a struggle. Their purses, documents, and money were untouched on the sofa. The only things missing were their raincoats and a large black umbrella, suggesting they had left on their own volition, perhaps to escape the impending storm. But where could they have gone? The police, led by the diligent and respected Detective Arnaldo Coelho, were called in. “This is a disappearance with unusual characteristics,” he stated in his initial report. “There is no immediate evidence of a crime, nor any indication that the women planned a trip or a prolonged absence.” The first 72 hours were a blur of frantic searches and interviews, but no one, not friends, family, or colleagues, could offer any explanation for their sudden vanishing act.
The case remained a frustrating enigma until a shocking new detail emerged. A neighbor, Mrs. Celia Gomes, revealed that she had heard a heated argument coming from the women’s apartment late that Saturday night. She couldn’t make out the words, but a male voice, “strong and authoritative,” stood out. “I thought about knocking on the door,” she confessed to investigators, “but I was afraid.” The lead was a breakthrough, but it raised more questions than it answered. Who was this man, and why had neither Maria Helena nor Jandira told anyone they were expecting a late-night visitor?
The first solid clue arrived in April 1985 when a taxi driver, Jose Raymond Oliveira, came forward after seeing their faces in a newspaper. He recalled driving two women matching their descriptions, accompanied by a man in religious robes, in the early hours of March 17. The women were silent, heads bowed, while the man did all the talking, instructing him to drive to the historic St. Anthony Cathedral. “I thought it was strange, the time,” the taxi driver recounted, “but the man said they needed to arrive before the first mass.” The man paid with a large bill and insisted he keep the change, a gesture that seemed designed to make him leave quickly.
