THE LIES OF LEONOR CIPRIANO (The mother who murdered her own daughter, Joana, aged 8)

This article was written by Tony Bennett on 2 April 2011. It was revised and updated by MMRG on 2 April 2019. 

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Goncalo Amaral, the detective who took the McCanns in for questioning, was convicted of filing a false report by a Portuguese court, back in 2009. He was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence. Recently that sentence was confirmed on appeal. The Madeleine Foundation has steadfastly maintained that these have been 'political' verdicts, resulting from Goncalo Amaral's determination to charge the McCanns over the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine.

Goncalo Amaral was convicted largely on the testimony of Leonor Cipriano, a wicked woman so evil she can justly be compared to Jezebel of the Old Testament or Lucrezia Borgia of the Vatican. In an incestuous sexual relationship with her own brother, h and she jointly murdered her 8-year-old daughter Joana when she saw them together. 

Cipriano later claimed she had been abducted whilst on an errand to the local shop, sparking a nationwide hunt for her. It was yet one more killing/accidental death covered up b faking an abduction.   

She and her brother were justly convicted of first degree murder and are [were until recently - MMRG] serving jail sentences of 16 years and 16 years 8 months respectively, sentences that many would consider far too lenient. [It is understood that Leonor Cipriano was released early last year i.e. 2018 - MMRG]. 

The McCann Team publicity machine has regularly represented Leonor Cipriano as a sweet innocent woman beaten into making a false confession by Goncalo Amaral and his detectives. Others have assisted the McCanns in portraying her as an innocent mother who was framed, among them controversial self-professed 'criminologist', Mark Williams-Thomas.  

At this time, therefore (exactly a year after we first published the full article), we are reproducing here Chapters 15 and 16 of The Madeleine Foundation's} article on Madeira-based lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia, the man who was suddenly and inexplicably brought in, in April 2008, to represent Leonor Cipriano in her appeal against conviction and her claims of torture against Amaral and his men.

For those reading about Leonor Cipriano and Marcos Aragao Correia for the first time, we'd refer you to our full article on Marcos Correia on our website: www.madeleinefoundation.org.uk - click on 'Articles'. [NOTE: The Madeleine Foundation website is suspended until further notice. To find out more about both Leonor Cipriano and Marcos Aragao Correia, put their names into the CMOMM search bar - MMRG] 

The following brief points about Marcos Correia should be noted:

* He originally claimed that he KNEW from UNDERWORLD CONTACTS that Madeleine McCann had been abducted, raped, killed and her body thrown into a lake

* He later admitted that he had LIED and now claimed he had had a vision of a big evil stranger strangling Madeleine

* He later carried out two searches for Madeleine's body in the Arade Dam, first claiming he had funded all this himself out of the goodness of his heart, a kind of 'Good Samaritan', but later admitting that he had been paid 'expenses' to do so by controversial Spanish detective agency Metodo 3, WHOM THE MCCANNS WERE PAYING A QUARTER OF A MILLION POUNDS TO AT THE TIME to 'look for Madeleine'

* The McCanns enthusiastically backed him as he prosecuted Goncalo Amaral for filing a false report.


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Chapter 15 of the Madeleine Foundation's article about Marcos Aragao Correia.


A summary of Leonor Cipriano’s 15 lies in Court

Here’s a convenient summary of at least 15 of the lies Leonor Cipriano told in court:

(1) She said that she had seen who had assaulted her, but later she denied this.

(2) During the investigation into her allegation, she said that she had been assaulted ‘more than once’, but now, during the trial, she stated it that it happened only once.

(3) She said she knew the time of the beating - around 8.00pm - but during the hearing described the room she was supposedly beaten and did so without referring to any clock.

(4) Despite having made a full confession in front of her lawyer and again in her trial for murder in 2005, she told the Faro Court: “I don’t remember having confessed”.

(5) Leonor Cipriano originally said she had been beaten by PJ inspectors, but when asked to pick them out of a line-up, she could not. She then changed her story to say that the PJ inspectors ‘must have arranged for another person or persons unknown to come into the police station and beat her’.

(6) She then changed her mind once again to say she was beaten by the PJ – claiming she cannot identify them because a bag was placed over her head during the beating.

(7) Ms Cipriano had never previously alleged that Gonçalo Amaral had personally laid a hand on her until the Court hearing in Faro. Yet, in the Faro court, Leonor Cipriano changed her story once again and now said that Gonçalo Amaral personally hit her during the beating.

(8) The photographer who took pictures of Leonor Cipriano’s injuries said he had taken the photographs immediately after the injuries had occurred and that he was there ‘during the afternoon and with daylight’. Yet Ms Cipriano had claimed that the photographs had been taken ‘at night, in a room without light’.

(9) She said that at one point during the beating she was forced to kneel on broken glass. But there was no record of damage to her knees or legs that would be consistent with such a serious incident.

(10) When originally asked by the Prison Governor at Odemira Prison to explain her injuries, Leonor Cipriano did not implicate anyone in the police.

(11) When Ms Cipriano was asked in Court to give the names of the people she was accusing, Leonor Cipriano had to pull a piece of paper out of her purse.

(12) It was clear from the evidence that the beating of Leonor Cipriano took place during the 48 hours after she confessed to murdering her daughter. This is consistent with the reliable reports circulating that Leonor Cipriano was assaulted by fellow prisoners only after they got to learn that she had confessing to her appalling crime.

(13) She denied that she ever had a female lawyer. However, she did have a female lawyer present when she made her original confession.

(14) She said that there was a blue plastic bag over her head, but soon afterwards she changed this to saying it was ‘green or blue’.

(15) She denied that she was visited in prison by her lawyer, Mr Aragão Correia, on 30 October 2008, during the trial. In this respect, she was contradicted by Mr Aragão Correia himself.

Chapter 16 of the Madeleine Foundation's article about Marcos Aragao Correia.


False evidence by the authorities to help frame Gonçalo Amaral

The weakness of the prosecution case was clear from early on in the trial of Gonçalo Amaral and his colleagues.

The sequence of events leading up to the injuries sustained by Leonor Cipriano were soon established. Leonor Cipriano had apparently made her confession to the Polícia Judiciária at a police station on 13 October 2004. She had then been taken to prison. What was clear was that the main injuries she suffered to her face and knees, quite probably caused by a fellow inmate, or a group of them, were probably sustained a day or two afterwards, certainly no earlier than 13 October, i.e. after she made her confession to the police. The date of the assault on Ms Cipriano was between 14 October 2004 and the date she was seen by the Consultant Prison Doctor, namely 18 October. The most probable dates of any assault on her (by fellow inmates) are 14 and 15 October 2004.

The Consultant Prison Doctor who was giving medical evidence to support the alleged torture of Leonor Cipriano contradicted herself on one important detail. A report written on the 18 October 2004 mentioned no lesions to the knees of Joana’s mother, who didn’t complain about any either. Yet on 29 October, she requested an X-ray to be performed on these lesions.

According to the doctor, when she observed Leonor Cipriano on 18 October 2004, she presented lesions on several parts of her body. She had ‘red swollen eyes’, ‘the left eye shut’, and ‘minor cuts on both knees, superficial but symmetrical’. She also presented lesions to her back, to her chest and on her arms. But on 18 October the doctor reported no ‘lesions’ on her knees.

Evidence was then heard by the court that the Prison Governor of Odemira Prison, where Ms Cipriano was being held, had ordered the Chief Prison Officer to materially alter a report about Leonor Cipriano’s health. Yet, said Mr Carlos Anjos, speaking on behalf of Gonçalo Amaral - it was a ‘stupefying fact’ that [instead of the Prison Governor being on trial] the person on trial for allegedly falsifying a document was António Cardoso, one of the four detectives. There was a reference to Ms Cipriano having suffered injuries before she arrived at the prison. 

A former prison guard of Odemira Prison, Ana Paula Teixeira, was heard during the trial on a video-conference link. She claimed that Leonor Cipriano had arrived at the prison with injuries. Leonor Cipriano, she explained, had suffered her injuries while she fell down some stairs at the police station where she was interrogated.

Her evidence coincided with that of social worker Adélia Palma. Ms Palma explained during a later court session during the trial that Leonor Cipriano had told her that she had been assaulted during the questioning she was subject to at the Polícia Judiciária and that the detectives had ‘ordered’ her to say that she fell. But what is the value of any evidence coming from the lips of Leonor Cipriano?

However, whatever these injuries might have been, the clear evidence heard by the court was that Leonor Cipriano suffered her main set of injuries between 14 and 18 October whilst she was already in prison.

One of Leonor Cipriaon’s many lies in court was her denial that she was visited in prison by her lawyer, Mr Aragão Correia, on 30 October, during the trial. Gonçalo Amaral’s lawyer, António Cabrita, had asked for Leonor Cipriano to be heard again, as he wanted to clarify what he referred to as ‘a lie’ about this visit - either by her, or by her lawyer. Cabrita referred to an article that was published in a national newspaper, where Mr Aragão Correia admitted to having visited Ms Cipriano in prison on the night of the 30 October 2009, after she had been giving evidence on Day One of the trial. He had told the press that it was necessary to visit her to ‘calm her down’ as she had been ‘very nervous’ following questions earlier that day from the Polícia Judiciária’s lawyers.

Yet before that newspaper article appeared, during the second day’s session, when António Cabrita had asked Leonor Cipriano if she had received any visits at the prison, she replied that she had not. “So someone is lying”, said Cabrita, merely stating the obvious.

A further contradiction between Leonor Cipriano’s evidence and that of others occurred when the photographer who took the photographs of Ms Cipriano’s injuries in the prison reported that he was called immediately after the injuries were sustained and that he took the pictures ‘during the afternoon and with daylight’. But Ms Cipriano had claimed that the photographs had been taken ‘at night, in a room without light’.

There was further consternation when another official admitted that the prison had destroyed the photographs taken of Leonor Cipriano’s knees because ‘the alleged injuries to her knees were not very visible’.

Given these examples of lies, contradictions, attempts to falsify documents and cover up certain matters, it was scarcely surprising that some of the four jurors asked a lot of questions of the witnesses during the trial. One interesting statement made by Mr Aragão Correia to the court was that British Police officers had been ‘investigating’ Gonçalo Amaral. But with Aragão Correia’s history of outright lies, fabrications and changes of story, this might well have been yet another fabrication by him. He did not of course give details of their names, ranks, collar numbers or their places of employment. It would be a truly sensational revelation if it could ever be proved that any part of the British security services had actually been used to investigate Gonçalo Amaral with a view to trying to get any ‘dirt’ on him.

It was speculated in some quarters that it was just possible that the case against Gonçalo Amaral and his fellow detectives had been brought by Portugal’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service in order to clear Amaral and to prove him innocent. It was thought that the country’s chief prosecutor had a good relationship with the Portuguese Police and perhaps had allowed the case to be brought, perhaps anticipating that Leonor Cipriano’s allegations would be exposed as bogus. But the eventual outcome of the case - Gonçalo Amaral’s conviction for allegedly ‘filing a false report’ (which we shall come to in a moment) - suggests more that this was a political trial wholly intended by the relevant authorities to destroy Gonçalo Amaral’s reputation.

The British press’s response to the trial of Gonçalo Amaral was of no little interest. The facts about Marcos Aragão Correia’s direct links with Método 3 - and thereby to the McCanns - were at least partially uncovered during the hearing, but the British press were silent about it. On the contrary, the alleged misconduct of Gonçalo Amaral was mentioned, alongside endless pictures of Leonor Cipriano with black eyes, clearly linking Mr Amaral to them as the alleged perpetrator or author of the beating she had evidently suffered. So much so, in fact, that many people I have spoken to in England seriously believe that it was Amaral himself who was the one who personally beat up Ms Cipriano. Such is the power of sustained disinformation circulated by the once-respected mass media of Britain.

Let us at this point summarise the most important information to have come out of the trial of Amaral and his colleagues. We now know about, for example:

(1) The involvement of Método 3 in the case against Mr Amaral, given their close association with Mr Aragão Correia and their having been employed by the McCanns and Brian Kennedy

(2) The apparent funding of Aragão Correia by Método 3 - though clearly we do not yet know the full extent of this

(3) The claim that the Prison Governor ordered the alteration of an initial report of the beating of Leonor Cipriano and of a medical report

(4) The alleged special treatment that Leonor Cipriano was accorded by the Prison Governor after the beating

(5) The fact that Leonor Cipriano appears to have been beaten some time after her confession, probably by fellow inmates who might have learned about her confession and felt it their duty to punish her for it

(6) The dirty and possibly illegal proposed deal to give the four detectives light sentences in order to ‘get’ Gonçalo Amaral.

A French journalist who has closely covered the Madeleine McCann case, Duarte Levy, appeared on TV in October 2008 and claimed to have interviewed an ex-convict who was serving a sentence in the same prison as Leonor Cipriano at the time of the events. When asked if she knew who had beaten Leonor Cipriano in prison, the female ex-convict is said to have replied to Mr Levy: “Of course I know. I was one of them”. That account seems far more credible than what Leonor Cipriano asks us to believe, namely that four police detectives, none of whose identities she can recall, beat her up.

The trial of Mr Amaral suited the agenda of the McCann Team and their chief public relations adviser, Clarence Mitchell. Right from the early days of the hunt for Madeleine, the McCanns and their advisers had criticised the Portuguese police, first for mounting what they said was an ineffective search for Madeleine, and later for wrongly and cruelly accusing them of having been involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.

At every opportunity, Clarence Mitchell, the man who had been at the head of the government’s mission to influence the output of the mass media, attacked the Portuguese police in general and Gonçalo Amaral in particular. He had been Head of the ‘Media Monitoring Unit’ at the Central Office of Information on the day Madeleine had been reported ‘missing’. He later boasted that in that capacity he directed a 40-strong team whose job it was ‘to control what comes out in the media’. It was perfect for the McCann Team for Mr Amaral to be repeatedly referred to in the British press as a ‘disgraced cop’with 'a criminal conviction'.

[NOTE: At the time of concluding this essay, Mr Mitchell had been appointed to a top role in the Conservative Party’s General Election campaign, as right-hand man to Andy Coulson, the Head of the Conservative Party’s public relations department and, of course, the former Editor of the News of the World. Mr Mitchell was clearly and prominently visible in the background of a 2-minute pre-election speech by party leader David Cameron released on to YouTube on 4 April].

Every time bad news about the Portuguese Police’s investigation surfaced, the McCanns and their public relations team would be quick to seize on ‘corruption’, ‘beatings’ etc. that were supposedly ‘rife’ in the Portuguese judicial system. It would surely invalidate Mr Amaral’s conclusions in his book if the person who had disgracefully smeared them by making them suspects was a man who could be shown to have a track record of corruption and brutality. That would in turn confirm that the McCanns and their ‘Tapas 9’ friends were absolutely correct not to co-operate with Mr Amaral and his team.

It would provide justification for the McCanns hot-footing it out of Portugal - despite promising to stay there ‘until Madeleine was found’ – as soon as they were made ‘arguidos’. It would also be a good excuse for refusing to go back for a reconstruction of events on 3 May 2007, as the Portuguese Police requested of the McCanns and their Tapas 9 friends in early 2008.

As one person on one of the many Madeleine McCann forums pointed out: “Odd, isn't it? ‘McCann friends get out-of-court payout from newspaper’ is front-page news in several national papers, while ‘McCann private detectives accused of paying lawyer to frame Maddie cop’ doesn't get a mention. Clearly I have no nose for what makes a powerful front-page story”.

Finally, we might conclude this section with a translated report from the newspaper 24Horas published on 30 October 2008:

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LEONOR’S LAWYER RECEIVED MONEY FROM THE MCCANNS

30 October 2008 - by Luís Maneta

Aragão Correia confirms that he was supported with money from Maddie’s parents:


The lawyer claims he is defending Joana’s mother for free and that the McCanns paid him to ‘investigate’ Gonçalo Amaral

“Was Dr Gonçalo Amaral in charge?”; “Was Dr Gonçalo Amaral present?”; “Did Dr Gonçalo Amaral hit you?”. Gonçalo Amaral, Gonçalo Amaral, Gonçalo Amaral - this seems to be the obsession of Leonor Cipriano’s defence lawyer during the trial in which Joana’s mother makes claims agaisnt five Judiciária inspectors.

Three policemen stand accused of torture: Pereira Cristóvão, Leonel Marques and Paulo Marques Bom. But Leonor’s lawyer, Marcos Aragão Correia, has pointed his guns at Gonçalo Amaral, who in this process stands accused of false testimony and ‘omission of denunciation’ [failing to file a report on an incident].

“This doesn’t look like a trial in the Joana case but rather one in the Maddie case”, says a source that is connected to the defence of the former co-rdinator of the PJ in Portimão, who headed the investigations into the disappearance of both children and became a sort of ‘public enemy No. 1’ for the McCann couple.

“A possible condemnation of Gonçalo Amaral in this process may make it easier for the English to prosecute the Portuguese state”, the source says.

They have paid the expenses

”When confronted by 24Horas with suspicions about his connection to the Maddie case, Marcos Aragão confirmed that he was already paid by persons that are connected to the McCanns. “They haven’t paid me honoraries but rather expenses due to transportation, lodging and food, in order to interview João Cipriano [Leonor Cipriano’s brother] in prison”, the lawyer explained, adding that the purpose of the conversation with Mr Cipriano was ‘to analyse the procedures of Amaral as a PJ investigator’.

“Following the investigation - which originated from a report from the Association Against Exclusion through Development (ACED), founded by Aragão Correia himself (!) - Aragão Correia says that he accepted to represent Leonor Cipriano without charging one cent. ‘I accepted this case for humanitarian reasons only. I am not receiving any honoraries’, the lawyer asserted, claiming that the ‘attacks’ against Gonçalo Amaral are linked to Leonor Cipriano’s strategy in this case: ‘It’s not an obsession. I can’t insist on the other arguidos because she has not identified them’.

“Yesterday’s session at the Court in Faro was marked by a new contradiction from the plaintiff. On Monday, Leonor Cipriano had guaranteed that Gonçalo Amaral did not watch the questioning during which she allegedly suffered abuse in order to make her confess to her daughter’s death. Yesterday, Joana’s mother corrected her version: “Gonçalo Amaral beat me”. When questioned by the judge, she said she had recovered her memory after watching a report on television”.

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For discussion, please visit this thread: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t2280-lies-of-leonor-cipriano

by Tony Bennett on 30.05.12 20:06

This English translation of Cristovao's book 'A Estrala de Joana' - The Star of Joana - was published by 'astro' back in, I think, 2008. For new viewers here, I'd like to point out that, for the benefit of us in England, 'astro', Joana Morais and many others have provided a huge number of translations of Portuguese material for us in the past 5 years, all voluntarily and without payment, and for this we have every reason to be very grateful:

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The Star of Joana - A Estrela de Joana

A summary of the Paulo Pereira Cristóvão's book done by Astro

The story is about a team of three investigators from the PJ in Lisbon, who are called in to the Joana case almost a month after the child went missing. Joana was last seen at a small cafe in the village where she lived, Figueira, on the early evening of September 12, 2004. She was sent by her mother to buy some cans of tuna and a package of milk. She was repoted missing by her mother and her partner the next day, at the GNR station in Portimão.

When the three PJ members from Lisbon are called in, Joana's mother Leonor Cipriano and her uncle João Cipriano (Leonor's brother) are in preventive custody, suspected of killing Joana and of concealing her body. The three inspectors from Lisbon - Cristóvão, Marques Bom and Leonel - are brought in to help with their interrogations, as João Cipriano has confessed to killing his niece, and then has led the Faro inspectors on several wild goose chases, claiming to show them where the body is, but the PJ always return empty-handed.

The triad arrives in Faro and immediately meets Guilhermino da Encarnação, the director of PJ in the Algarve, and Gonçalo Amaral, who is leading the investigation into the Joana case. They are visibly exhausted, and they welcome the help from Lisbon, as their personnel has hit a dead end, and have exhausted all their resources.

The interrogations begin almost immediately, and Cristóvão soon notices that João Cipriano, who seems to be a rather primitive character, is actually very smart in an uneducated way. He has developed defences over the many hours of tentative interrogations that were performed by PJ investigators before. So Cristóvão tries a different path, by apparently befriending João, and deliberately ignoring his attempts to lead him in yet another outing to supposedly show him where Joana's body has been hidden.

Leonor is also interrogated by Cristóvão. The picture of the Cipriano family starts to draw itself. The siblings - João has a twin sister - admit to having sexual intercourse with each other as if this was absolutely normal, Leonor has an array of children from different partners which include a teenage daughter who cannot even bear to hear her mother's name, they have never experienced a stable family environment, being utterly incapable of thinking about anyone else except themselves. Leonor lives with a man, Leandro, in a house in Figueira. There is one bedroom that is used by Leonor, Leandro and their 2 small children. The other room was shared by Joana and a male adult friend of Leandro, Carlos. Joana adored her mother, in spite of all the abuse she suffers at her mother's hands. Leonor often sends Joana at 3 or 4 a.m. to walk to a nearby cake factory, because Leonor likes to eat warm cakes. Joana draws cardboard hearts where she writes that she loves her mother.

Gradually, an even more sinister picture starts to emerge. The detectives soon discover that João has several different sex partners apart from his sisters. A more or less regular partner confides that she has to have sex with him even when she is suffering menstrual cramps, because she is terrified of what he would do to her if she refused. Leonor is also visibly afraid of João's temper, and she obeys him blindly. Once left alone in an interrogation room with João, the detectives overhear a conversation where João tells Leonor that they must now tell everyone that a mysterious Spanish man took Joana away.

During one of the interrogations, João, who has mood shifts, ends up confessing voluntarily to having beaten Joana, who hit a wall with her head and collapsed dead on the floor. He says he was having sex with Leonor while the girl had been out on her errand, but Joana returned and saw them. She said she would tell Leandro about what she saw. The child tried to run out of the house, but was dragged back in by João and Leonor. Leonor slapped her, and then João also slapped the girl. The child flew against a wall, bumped her head and dropped dead on the floor. He then cut up her body and stored it in plastic bags in the family's freezer. Cristóvão, the detective who is interrogating him, asks some specific questions about the process of cutting. João's answers chillingly detail the process, including correct information about the difficulty in separating certain joints. He also tells Cristóvão that all 4 adults - João, Leonor, Leandro and Carlos - ended up knowing that Joana was dead, as he and Leonor showed the bags in the freezer to Leandro and Carlos when they arrived home, later that evening. João later repeats his confession in the presence of his lawyer, and duly signs it.

The detectives return to Figueira, now with a forensics team, to check whether the information that João has given them yields some traces of evidence. Their discoveries turn out to be much more than they bargained for. They discover the orange flip-flops that Joana was supposedly wearing the evening she vanished. Then they turn the uv light to the wall where João told them the child had hit her head before collapsing dead on the floor.

Her face is clearly 'drawn' on the wall, also two small hands that left a trace that goes down the wall, showing Joana's last movement. They also discover the prints of her hands on the frame of the house's outer door, that were left there at the moment when she tried to escape. João had told Cristóvão how Joana had tried to cling to the door frame, and they had to pull her back in by her legs. Everything is photographed.

On the sofa where allegedly João was having sex with his sister, no traces of bodily fluids were found. But the forensics team detects blood residues on one of the sofa's feet. They also discover several traces of sperm on a bedcover that is on Joana's bed, as well as on the pillows and on the wall next to the bed. Everything is taken by the forensics team, to be tested in their lab.

Meanwhile, the investigators watch a video capture that was made by an amateur videographer who was filming a local festivity on the evening of September 12, the evening that Joana disappeared. Leandro, Leonor's partner, is coincidentally captured on tape. At that time, he is supposedly searching the area for Joana, as all four adults had stated earlier. But the camera films Leandro at the bar, having a beer. He is not searching for anyone. He has hid head hanging, his eyes focused on the ground, with a deeply sad demeanour about him.

Back in Faro, at the PJ's offices, detective Cristóvão confronts Leonor with what João has told them about the child's death. He omits the part of the body being dismembered. Leonor thinks her partner, Leandro, has denounced her to the police. She finally starts to cry and tells the detective that João cut the body up, and put the pieces inside bags, and into the freezer. Marques Bom takes Leonor away into another room, while Cristóvão writes down what happened. Leonor will have to repeat everything later, in the presence of a lawyer, to validate her confession. As Cristóvão is finishing his report, he hears a commotion outside. He finds Marques Bom and another detective, Antonio, on the floor of the staircase, with Leonor. Gonçalo Amaral also arrives to see what the noise is about. Marques Bom says Leonor asked to go to the toilet, so they stood outside the toilet's door and waited for her to come out. But she opened the door, raced past the detectives towards the stairwell and tried to jump off the railing. They managed to prevent her from jumping, but she then threw herself off the stairs.

Leonor is brought back to the prison. During the night, Cristóvão receives a phone call informing that Leonor has a bump on her head that is swelling up, so two other detectives take her to a local medical centre. The doctor who examines her says the bump is not serious, but there is an internal blood spill and the woman should rest lying down, to prevent the blood from descending into the eye area. They take the woman back to prison. Later on, Leonor will be counselled by someone at the prison to press charges against the detectives, saying they beat her in order to extract a confession.

The picture that is later published in several newspapers shows blood around her eyes, but absolutely no trauma to the eye area. Leonor will also later fail to identify Marques Bom and Leonel at a line-up. She will identify Cristóvão, who was the element that spent most time interrogating her, but she will state formally that Cristóvão never hit her.

A few days later, Cristóvão receives a phone call from Teresa, the forensics team leader that went with the detectives to the house in Figueira. She has results from the tests: the blood that was found on the foot of the sofa, is from one of Leonor's children. But it is not from Joana, nor from the 2 small children that live in the house, and not from her teenage daughter, either. The blood comes from a descendant of Leonor, but none of the known children matches the DNA profile. The residues that were collected from Joana's bed and from the wall next to her bed don't give conclusive results. The blood sample that was detected in the freezer is human, but it is impossible to extract DNA from the sample.

Meanwhile, the detectives talk to a convict in another prison, who shared a cell with João when he was imprisoned years earlier for aggression. The convict had spoken to João about the crime that he had committed, the homicide of a man, and he had told him that his biggest mistake had been to tell the police where they could find the body of the man he had killed. This convict had taught João that nobody could be convicted without a corpse, and he had also taught João about the art of the Triangle. To kill in one location; to dump the body at another location; and finally to move into another location. On a map, these 3 locations form a triangle. The investigators remember that João had confessed to killing in Figueira. He had then gone to the junk yard that Leonor's partner Leonel operates. And finally, he had gone to his twin sister's house. This constituted a triangle.

The detectives bring João into the PJ's offices once again. Cristóvão sits in front of him, and draws a triangle on a sheet of paper. João smiles and completes the drawing with three names, one at each vertex of the triangle: Figueira, Junk yard and Casa Alta, the location where his twin sister lives. The investigators know they must go to the junkyard. They drive there with João. He tells them he placed the bags inside a red car that was going to be pressed and destroyed, but the car is not there anymore.

Later, an informant that wanted to remain anonymous tells the investigators that he saw Leandro and Carlos, on the day after Joana disappeared, driving their truck with an old red car on top of it. They went into the direction of Spain, and the informant thought it was odd because a Spanish foundry came to the junk yard regularly every month to pick up the cars for disposal. They had no apparent need to drive an old car into the Spanish foundry, as they could wait for the regular pick-up. The detectives go into Spain and visit the foundry. The place is huge, and the detectives decide they need to go back to Faro and formally ask the Spanish authorities for help.

But when they arrive back in Faro, they are summoned to return to Lisbon immediately. They were taken off the case because Leonor has filed a complaint against them for assault.

On November 11, 2005, the Portimão court condemned Leonor Cipriano to a sentence of 20 years and 4 months in prison, and João Cipriano to 19 years and 2 months in prison, for qualified homicide and concealment of the body of Joana Cipriano. The Supreme Court later determined a sentence of 16 years each, for Leonor and her brother João.

I’m curious about one thing: in UK, when people is accused of a crime, are they sentenced without having a trial? Chief-Inspector Amaral and the three CID officers are accused of beating a woman, inside a Police station. How many cases of that are groundless accusations from hardened criminals? And who is Leonor Cipriano?

Leonor Cipriano, once descibed as 'the poor Mum' by a Portuguese newspaper, who accuses four CID police officers of beating her, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, on November 2005. She beat her own daughter until she died, with the help of his brother, João Cipriano, sentenced to 20 years in jail. They beat the 8 year old girl because she discovered them - brother and sister - having sexual relations and they were afraid she could tell it to Leonor Cipriano’s lover !!!!

Whem the girl died, they cut the body in pieces, keep some of the pieces at Leonor's home refrigerator and later made the body disappear, giving it to be eaten bu animals. After they killed the girl, Leonor Cipriano went out for a popular festivity, in a nearby village. She didn't report to Police her daughter disappearence for two days.

Leonor Cipriano named four CID offciers for beating her but, during a line-up to indentify the aggressors, were the four named CID officers were present, she didn’t recognised even one of them.

Facts:

1 – Joana Cipriano vanished from a small place 10 km in the outskirts of Portimão. Last time somebody saw her, she was on her way to a local groceries shop;
2 - Her mother, Leonor Cipriano, only reported to Police her daughter has disappeared two days after;
3 – After a long and difficult investigation, headed by Chief-Inspector Gonçalo Amaral, Leonor Cipriano and her brother were accused of murdering the eight years old child;
4 – The body of Joana Cipriano was never found, but samples of her blood were found in her mother's refrigerator;
5 – Her mother justified those samples of blood admitting she had beaten Joana, for some reason, she was hurt and she bleeded from her nose;
6 – Leonor Cipriano and her brother, who had a incestuous relationship, were sentenced to 16 years in jail, for the murder of her daughter and niece;
7 – Before the trial, Leonor Cipriano accused five CID officers of beating her, trying to extract a confession. She named the five CID officers, and included Chief-Inspector Gonçalo (”Amaral Lector”, according to British tabloids);
8 – The Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal investigation and ordered a police line-up, with the CID officers named and accused by Leonor Cipriano of beating her;
9 – The line-up took place with Leonor Cipriano behind a two-way mirror and she couldn’t recognize any of the aggressors;
10 – The Public Prosecutor’s Office magistrate that was in charge of the criminal investigation decided to accuse the five CID officers, but didn’t mentioned, in the accusation sent to the Court, that Leonor Cipriano couldn’t identify any of the aggressors, in the police line-up;
11 – Leonor Cipriano claimed that she never confessed the murder of her own daughter. Her brother, in a letter written from jail, accused Leonor Cipriano of selling her daughter;
12 – Police is convinced (and the jurors at the trial found enough evidence to pass a verdict of guilty) that Leonor Cipriano and her brother were found, by Joana, having sexual relations, when she came home, back from the groceries shop. As Leonor Cipriano had a lover, at the time, they were afraid she would tell him what she saw;
13 – So, they beat her, in order to frighten her and keep her mouth shut up;
14 – Perhaps accidentally, they beat her so violently that they killed her. So, they decided to get rid of he body and cut it in pieces, keeping some of them in the freezer, while they gave the other pieces to be eaten by pigs (this is what police believes is the strongest possibility, because there was no other trace of Joana Cipriano, unless the blood samples in her mother freezer…)
15 – The body of Joana Cipriano was never found.

'Joana’s uncle had contempt for human life'

Leonor and João Cipriano, who have been held on remand for over a year, stood silently and without emotion as they heard prosecutor José Pinheiro outline his case. He described João Cipriano as a man who “has contempt for human life, psychopathic tendencies and difficulty in controlling impulses”. Pinheiro also castigated Joana’s mother for her “emotional instability, insensitivity and disregard for other people’s needs”. Only when Pinheiro announced that he was pressing for a 24-year jail term for both defendants did Leonor show emotion, sobbing uncontrollably.

Pinheiro explained why his team was pressing for such a long sentence. “The defendants’ guilt is heightened by their cold and calculating behaviour after their child’s death, as well as the devious manoeuvres they adopted to conceal the crime,” he said.

The trial included key testimony from Joana’s stepfather, António Leandro, who related that Leonor had confided to him that she had had a sexual relationship with her brother. He also told the court that during this conversation, which took place a few days after Joana’s disappearance, at judicial police headquarters, Leonor had admitted that she and her brother had killed the little girl.

A key element of the prosecution’s case rests on the fact that the couple dismembered the girl’s corpse. António Leandro, confronted with photographs of tools allegedly used by the couple, said he recognised a saw he had kept at home. In the video taped confession, João Cipriano admitted that the body of the girl was dismembered and placed in a refrigerated trunk. A doctor involved in the case, Albino Santana dos Santos, conceded that body parts, matching the size of a girl of Joana’s height, could have been stuffed inside the trunk.



MORE MATERIAL ON THE MURDER OF JOANA - AND LEONOR CIPRIANO'S ALLEGATIONS AGAINST GONCALO AMARAL - WILL FOLLOW IN DUE COURSE
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For discussion please visit this thread:  https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t5104-joana-cipriano-2-a-summary-of-paulo-cristovao-s-book-on-the-investigation-into-the-murder-of-8-year-old-joana-by-her-mother-and-uncle