The blows that killed Fagner Falcão de Oliveira Silva follow a scenario already observed on other occasions in the São Paulo prison system. First blows, immobilization of the victim and, when he no longer reacts, opening the abdomen with objects such as broken mirrors, skewers and even broken brooms.
The scene is repeated in processes, obtained by Metropolisesand links Diogo Batista da Silva Claudino, Corintiano, Sandro dos Santos, Nightmare and Luan Soledade da Silva to a sequence of homicides marked by the extreme mutilation of prisoners.
It is with this same method that, according to the civil police, the three men, alongside Helder Dionisio Alves Pereira, were charged with the murder of Fagner. The investigation shows that the group “collects” episodes of brutal violence within prison units, always with the same signature: the disembowelling of the victims.
Throbbing and opening of the abdomen
In Fagner’s case, the attack began with successive head kicks and punches. The victim lost consciousness. It was at that moment, according to police records, that Diogo Batista da Silva Claudino began to open the prisoner’s stomach with a piece of broken mirror.
There are many attempts to negotiate to stop the aggression. There was no success. With the victim no longer reacting, those involved began removing parts of the internal organs, still with blood, and used the material to write the word “CANGAÇO” on the wall of the pavilion, a reference to the tactic used by gangs to besiege cities, with weapons and war, to commit bank robberies.
The scenario described in the Civil Police document is one of extreme violence and follows the same pattern observed in other homicides attributed to the same detainees.
President Prudente, March 2024
In the early hours of March 14 and 15, 2024, at the “Wellington Rodrigo Segura” penitentiary, in Presidente Prudente – in the interior of São Paulo – the body of inmate Anderson da Silva was found in cell 214, radius 2. He had a deep incision on his neck and another on his abdomen.
The viscera had been removed and placed in a bucket. Criminal police officers reported that while carrying the body down the corridor, Sandro dos Santos, the Nightmare, declared: “We killed the brother there, sir.”
Initially, another prisoner claimed sole responsibility, but later statements from prisoners who claimed to have been threatened named Diogo Claudino and Sandro as co-perpetrators. Civil police described the death as marked by “cruelty and barbarity”, with the victim unable to defend himself.
Repeating the method
The documents obtained by Metropolises indicate that Diogo, Luan and Sandro had already been linked to other homicides within the São Paulo prison system before the most recent episode. In each of them, the pattern repeats itself with collective aggression, the use of homemade bladed weapons and the opening of the victim’s abdomen.
The incidents are concentrated in the penitentiary units in the interior of São Paulo, on different dates, but with similar dynamics, which led investigators to consider the cases as being linked to the same group of perpetrators.
In one of the processes, the Civil Police emphasizes that the repetition of the method eliminates the hypothesis of isolated or impulsive crimes and reinforces the existence of repeated and organized actions within the penitentiary units.
Criminal record
Background certificates attached to the files show that Diogo Batista da Silva Claudino, Sandro dos Santos and Luan Soledade da Silva have accumulated convictions for violent crimes, including murder, attempted murder and prison crimes.
The three are described as repeat offenders and, according to police, exert heavy intimidation on other prisoners, making it difficult to collect statements and contributing to the initial silence surrounding the crimes.
In the case of President Prudente, the transformation of the arrest from flagrant to preventive arrest was based, among other things, on the risk of new deaths “as a trigger for other offenses within the penitentiary system”.
Violence behind the walls
Fagner’s death, investigators say, is not an isolated episode, but part of a sequence of crimes that reveals the fragility of state control within prison wards dominated by fear. The repetition of the disembowellings, the exhibition of the viscera and the message written in blood constitute, for the police, a pattern of intimidation and assertion of power.
In these processes, brutality appears not only as a consequence of violence, but as a deliberate method. A method that, when repeated, turns homicides into marks of the same criminal group.
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