5 perpetrators of crimes who are in forensic asylums

In 2007, researchers Juliana Garbayo and Marcos José Relvas Argôlo carried out a survey in a forensic asylum, at the Heitor Carrilho Hospital for Custody and Psychiatric Treatment, in Rio de Janeiro. They mapped the population interned there, made up of 177 people who committed crimes, but were considered unaccountable for having a mental disorder. They identified that the most common diagnoses involved psychotic disorders, which accounted for 67% of cases – another 7.3% reported disorders due to the use of psychoactive substances.

No less than 71% had received psychiatric treatment before entering the custodial hospital. Even so, they were there for having committed homicide in 44% of the cases. Crimes against property accounted for 26%. Sexual crimes, by 11%, the same percentage related to cases that had some relation to the use or trade of narcotics. “Intrafamily homicide predominated among psychotics and people with mental retardation”, they pointed out. And they concluded: “The population profile was compatible with that described for other populations of inmates in custodial hospitals in the country”.

Now, between August 2023 and May 2024, custody hospitals, also called forensic asylums, will begin to close, as determined by the National Council of Justice (CNJ). There are 30 such units, according to the Commission for the Prison System, External Control of Police Activity and Public Security of the National Council of the Public Ministry (CNMP). These institutions were created to keep and treat people with some kind of mental disorder and who committed crimes.

A medical board will evaluate each case. And it will decide who will win freedom, counting on treatment in the Unified Health System (SUS). If released for social reintegration, the family will be able to take that person in. Or else, he should go to the Public Defender’s Office or the Public Prosecutor’s Office to ask that the person be collected again – but now in a psychiatric bed with others who did not commit crimes, since these cases would leave the scope of public security and would be considered cases of health. The measure has been widely criticised.

Considering the percentage of those who committed homicides identified in the 2007 study, and taking into account that today custody centers hold 4,583 people, according to the CNMP, it is to be expected that, in the coming months, hundreds of perpetrators of crimes, considered unaccountable, will return to the streets. Some are well known to the public. Check below the stories of five people who can be released, even having committed crimes, with the end of judicial asylums:

Marcelo Costa de Andrade, 56 years old
He was arrested in 1991, after the police linked his name to the death of a 6-year-old boy who was hanged and later suffered sexual violence. The “Niterói Vampire” then confessed that he had killed 13 children, aged 6 to 13, over the course of eight months. He confessed that he sexually abused the bodies and drank the victims’ blood. Considered unimputable, he was taken to the Henrique Roxo Custody and Psychiatric Treatment Hospital. On different occasions, he was reassessed by psychiatrists who concluded that he was unable to live in society.

Francisco Costa Rocha, 81 years old
Known for murdering and dismembering the bodies of two women, in 1966 and 1976, Chico Picadinho served the maximum sentence provided for in Brazil on November 21, 1998, but was still kept in prison. Declared mentally incompetent in 1994, he has since been held in the Taubaté House of Custody, in the interior of São Paulo. He is considered a quiet inmate, who spends his days reading and painting. But when he committed the second crime, in 1976, he had been released for good behavior two years earlier.

Edílson Meneses Cruz, 51 years old
In 2019, he tried to invade the Pedacinho do Céu school, in Asa Norte de Brasília. Cruz, who has schizophrenia, is being held in a custody hospital – at first, he was released because there were no vacancies. A former civil police officer, he was expelled from the corporation in 2001, accused of misuse of the firearm entrusted to the service. In 2015, he was arrested again when he stripped naked in front of two girls, a 15-year-old and an 11-year-old, at a bus stop. He is also accused of rape of vulnerable.

Adaylton Nascimento Neiva, 42 years old
Baker, resident of Novo Gama (GO), in 2000, he killed his partner, who was pregnant with his child, in addition to her five-year-old daughter. He was imprisoned until 2009, when he was released to the semi-open regime – he disappeared two months later. He was arrested again in 2010, in Picos (PI), after killing Alessandra Alves Rodrigues, 14 years old. Since then, he has been detained in a custody hospital in Brasilia. Investigations point out that, while he was free, he killed eight more people and raped three women.

Roberto Aparecido Alves Cardoso, 36 years old
In 2015, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) denied a request by the Public Defender’s Office that asked for Champinha’s release. In November 2003, he repeatedly raped 16-year-old Liana Friedenbach, who ended up dead from head trauma caused by blows to the head with a machete by Cardoso. The crimes were committed by him with two other accomplices. At the time, he was only 16 years old and was kept at the Casa Foundation. From there, he went to the Experimental Health Unit (UES) in São Paulo (SP), where he has remained ever since.

The end of three people released from judicial asylums

Also learn about the story of three violent psychiatric patients who, in the past, were released from custodial hospitals or psychiatric clinics:

João Acácio Pereira da Costa (1942-1998)
Born in Joinville (SC), he committed a string of crimes in Santos (SP) and São Paulo until he was arrested in Curitiba, in 1967. He was known as the “Red Light Bandit” because he used to invade mansions using a flashlight with a filter reddish. He was convicted of four murders, seven attempted murders and 77 assaults. He was released after serving 30 years in prison and returned to his hometown, where he died just four months later, on January 5, 1998, during a bar fight.

“Pedrinho Matador” (1954-2023)
Shot to death on March 5th, aged 68, in the city of Mogi das Cruzes (SP), he had been released since 2018, after having accumulated 42 years in a cell, on two different occasions – he was imprisoned between 1973 and 2007 , was released and ended up being arrested again in 2011. He was convicted of killing 71 people, although he declared more than 100 homicides, which would make him the biggest serial killer in the history of the country. Freed, he declared himself converted and assumed, on social networks, the nickname “Pedrinho Ex Matador com Jesus”.

Carlos Eduardo Sundfeld (1986-2016)
Confessed murderer of cartoonist Glauco and his son, Raoni, in 2010, Cadu, as he was better known, was arrested near the border of Brazil and Paraguay. He was transferred to Goiânia, where he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. Despite the murders, and even though he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was discharged in 2013. In August 2014, he was arrested again after committing two robberies. He was being held at the Núcleo de Custódia in Aparecida de Goiânia (GO) when he was killed during a fight with another detainee.