Victims 3-9 | ||
 | ||
Span of killings 1992–1993 (possibly 1988–2000) Country Portugal (possibly also the USA, Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Belgium) | ||
The Lisbon Ripper (Portuguese: O Estripador de Lisboa) was a serial killer who, between 1992 and 1993 murdered three prostitutes in Lisbon, Portugal.
Contents
Crimes
The first victim was Maria Valentina, nicknamed "Tina", age 22, who was found on 31 July 1992 in a large cabin in Póvoa de Santo Adrião. She was strangled, disemboweled, and some of her internal organs were removed.
The second victim, Maria Fernanda, age 24, was found on 27 January 1993 in a large cabin in Entrecampos. She was also disemboweled, and some internal organs were removed.
The third and last victim was Maria João, age 27, found on 15 March 1993, near the location of the first victim. Like the previous victims, she was disemboweled, but this time almost all her organs were removed.
All the victims were young brunettes named Maria, allegedly prostitutes and drug addicts, and were disemboweled with a sharp object that was not a knife.
Investigation
There was little or no evidence found on the crime scene: no blood (except from the victims'), hair, footprints, fingerprints, or glove material. The police had some suspects, but no evidence against them.
Suspects
In late 2011, nineteen years after the murders, one suspect, José Pedro Guedes, aged 46, had his name put forward by his son Joel, aged 21, who had applied to appear on the Secret Story - A Casa dos Segredos 2 reality show. On the show, contestants are kept locked away for 10 weeks in a house, and each contestant has to conceal a secret while everyone else has to try and discover it; the secret Joel applied with was "I am the son of the Lisbon Ripper". This information aroused the Polícia Judiciária's suspicions. Before his arrest, José Guedes confessed details of the murders to the online edition of the Sol newspaper.
José Guedes was arrested, even though he could not be tried for the Lisbon Ripper murders as they had prescribed in 2008. He was investigated for a different murder in Aveiro, in 2000, and an unknown number of murders in Germany, where he had been living for a time. Guedes was found not proven of the Aveiro murder and was released in 2013, due to lack of evidence. The sentence noted that several details given by Guedes about the Aveiro and Lisbon murders were inaccurate.
Other crimes
There were two other alleged prostitutes found dead. There were also four similar murders in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Belgium. There was a lead that the Lisbon Ripper may have been a serial killer active in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1988, known as the New Bedford Highway Killer.