The Lisbon Ripper
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Three sex workers named Maria were disemboweled in Portugal. The killer has never been identified.
On the morning of July 31, 1992, a woman was found behind a shed in Póvoa de Santo Adrião, Lisbon, surrounded by her own blood. Maria Valentina Lopes, better known as Tina, was 22-years-old. Tina’s heart, liver, intestines, and vagina were missing.
On January 2, 1993, Maria Fernanda Matos was found behind a shed in Entrecampos, about twenty minutes away from the first victim. Workers from a nearby under-construction railway bridge had gone the shed to get equipment when they found the 24-year-old. Maria Fernanda was missing the same organs as Tina but her breasts had also been cut off.
On March 15, 1993, 27-year-old Maria João was found dead in Póvoa de Santo Adrião. She lived in the nearby town of Santo António dos Cavaleiros with her two cats and was close friends with Tina. She was also missing the same organs as the two previous victims, plus a lung.
Notably, the three victims were named Maria, were in their twenties with brown hair and were short in stature. They were sex workers and were addicted to drugs.
The women were alive when disemboweled, but unconscious due to strong blows to the head, which experts say the killer had practiced. Dubbed the Lisbon Ripper, the killer used a scalpel and left very little evidence behind. The victims were not sexually abused and the murders occurred at night, leaving no witnesses — except for one person who heard the last victim scream.
After the second murder, authorities were aware of the high possibility of another killing happening. They had a list of suspects but did not have enough evidence to arrest and question any of them.
An expert described the killer as a lonely man with a deep hatred towards women but believes he did not have any association with any of the victims.
The Lisbon Ripper has been linked to other murders, but authorities were never able to prove any definite connections.
He is suspected to have murdered two sex workers in Lisbon in 1990.
Four similar murders occurred in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Belgium, between 1993 and 1997. This lead to the theory that the Lisbon Ripper was a long haul truck driver.
Authorities also investigated the possibility of the Lisbon Ripper being the New Bedford Highway Killer. From 1988 to 1989, nine women were murdered and two went missing from New Bedford, Massachusetts. The women were also sex workers and addicted to drugs.
The Portuguese authorities, along with the FBI, theorized that the killer was a part of Bedford’s Portuguese community, one of the largest in the US. A suspect was arrested but released soon after due to the lack of evidence.
In 2011, a man confessed to being the Lisbon Ripper.
Secret Story-Casa dos Segredos is a Portuguese reality TV show inspired by Big Brother. Contestants spend 10 weeks in a house, with no contact to the outside world, and have to conceal a secret from each other. The goal is to guess other people’s secrets.
21-year-old Joel applied to be a contestant — his secret was that his father was the Lisbon Ripper. Authorities were alerted and investigated 46-year-old José Pedro Guedes, a former construction worker who was believed to be in Lisbon at the time of the crimes.
Before authorities could arrest him, he confessed to the crimes to a journalist for the newspaper Sol.
The father and son ended up admitting that they were kidding. Joel had been joking about his father being the ripper since he was a kid because his father had in fact been in Lisbon at the time.
José was cleared from being the Lisbon Ripper and Joel was not chosen as a contestant for the show.
Crime analyst, Barra da Costa, who wrote a thesis on the Lisbon Ripper, believes he knows the killer’s identity. Costa believes the serial killer lives in the same area that the crimes took place.
Costa also claims the man’s name is the same as the one the witness heard the third victim scream. Nevertheless, he does not believe the killer is capable of hurting anyone again due to age.
27 years after the killing spree began, the Lisbon Ripper is still unidentified.
If he is ever caught, he will not be convicted due to the statute of limitations having expired fifteen years after the crimes.
