Credit: Dangerous Minds / Public Domain

So many horrible things from the world of true crime begin with a child stumbling on a mystery that they should never have had to see.

On August 20th, 1966, a young boy on Vintém Hill in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, saw exactly that. Two dead bodies that had clearly been there for days. As if the contrast between youthful innocence and adult horrors wasn’t plain enough, the boy had discovered these bodies on the hill because he’d been flying a kite there. He alerted the authorities, who (after struggling up the hill themselves) discovered the thing that everyone remembers this mystery for.

These two corpses were wearing formal suits, waterproof coats and, most infamously, eye masks made of lead.

There was no sign of major trauma on either body. Neither was there any evidence of a physical struggle. Both men had seemingly dropped dead around three days earlier. Then another infamous part of this mystery was unearthed. An empty water bottle near the bodies had a chilling note attached to it. One that read (translated from Portuguese, obviously), “4:30pm be at the specified location. 6:30pm ingest capsules, after the effect protect metals await signal mask.”

Shortly after the bodies were brought in from Vintém Hill, they were identified as Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana. Two electricians from Campos dos Goytacazes, a town several kilometres north-east of Rio. Which deepened the tale even further, as they absolutely weren’t local. With the help of some testimony from their families, along with a few receipts that were still in Pereira and Viana’s pockets, authorities pieced together the last few days of their lives.

The two electricians had left their hometown on the 17th, supposedly in order to pick up supplies for work. They had then gone over to Vintém Hill, purchasing the raincoats from a nearby shop and the bottle of water from a local bar along the way. Authorities managed to find the waitress who’d sold them that bottle of water, who testified that Viana in particular had seemed “very nervous”, constantly checking his watch as they sat in the bar for around an hour.

That was the last time that anyone saw the two men alive. With no injuries on the men and a note that literally says “ingest capsules”, to this must be an open and shut case of poisoning in terms of cause of death, right? Well… We can’t know that for absolutely certain. Absurdly, the local coroner was swamped with work and thus, their bodies weren’t able to be autopsied until long after they’d been taken in. Considering they’d already been rotting for three days before that, by the time they were being autopsied, their organs were too decomposed to be tested. Grim.

Which is kind of fitting, because the only real clues we have as to what Viana and Pereira were doing on that night come from weak evidence. Testimony from a man who called themselves a friend of theirs and a few books and diary entries found in their homes. Other than that, there’s absolutely nothing to go on, so all we have is the belief that the two friends were, in their friend’s words, “scientific spiritualists” who were trying to contact aliens.

The materials found in their house point to the lead masks being a way they could look at a blinding light safely. Some of the books they owned suggest they believed that the only way that humans could look upon an alien would be through the use of psychoactive drugs, supposedly broadening the boundaries of conception. Thus, the two of them died of a joint drug overdose that would have been confirmed had they been autopsied sooner.

It’s all pretty haphazard but it’s the closest thing to an evidence-supported theory we’ve got. That hasn’t stopped people from chiming in with other theories,evidence-supported though. Why wouldn’t they? From a purely evidence-supported perspective, all of these are just as valid ways of unravelling the mystery of the Lead Masks.