Febrônio Índio do ônioÍBrasil (January 14, 1895 – August 27, 1984) was a Brazilian rapist and serial killer.
Biography
Childhood
Febrônio was born in the city of São Miguel de Jequitinhonha (present-day Jequitinhonha), probably on January 14, 1895. He was the second of fourteen children born to couple Theodoro Simões de Oliveira and Reginalda Ferreira de Mattos. His probable true name was Febrônio Ferreira de Mattos, but he gained fame as Febrônio Índio do Brasil, the "Son of Light", as he presented himself to police officers, journalists, judicial authorities and forensic psychiatrists.
His father, Theodoron, as he was best known, worked as a farmer, but for some time he had been a butcher. He was an alcoholic, and very often violently attacked his wife. On several occasions, Febrônio witnessed his mother's beatings. Theodoron was also violent towards his children.
Probably in 1907, at the age of 12, Febrônio fled his home in the company of a travelling salesman. He wandered around the localities around his hometown, until he arrived in Diamantina, where he learned to read and earned his living as a butler. Later, he moved to Belo Horizonte, surviving as a shoe shiner and a domestic servant.
Probably in 1909, Febrônio, aged 14, went to Rio de Janeiro, then the Federal Capital. He returned to the state capital of Minas Gerais in 1916, under the name of Pedro de Souza, but soon returned to Rio de Janeiro.
Criminal life and mystical revelations
Since returning to Rio de Janeiro, Febrônio began to commit crimes, and between 1916 and 1929, dozens of passages were recorded by police for fraud, blackmail, bribery, theft, robbery and loitering.
During one of these arrests in 1920 at the Dois Rios Correctional Facility on Ilha Grande, Febrônio, who was reading a Bible in the intervals of praxitherapy during the night, had a vision in which a woman with long blond hair chose him as the Son of Light, a title that was his responsibility to declare to all that God had not died. According to the vision, he was to tattoo boys, albeit with the use of physical force, with the symbol of DCVXVI, which meant "God, Charity, Virtue, Holiness, Life, Magnet of Life". The tattoo would serve as a talisman for those who exhibited it on their body. Acting accordingly to what had been commanded to him in the vision, Febrônio tattooed the phrase "Behold the Son of Light" on his chest and, throughout the circumference of his torso, the letters DCVXVI I. Febrônio then began to write a book titled The revelations of the Prince of Fire, published in 1926, which brings incomprehensible messages, taken from the mysterious dreams that were transmitted to him.
In 1921, when he left the correctional colony, Febrônio set up a medical consumers' co-operative named The Auxiliadora Médica, announcing it in a classified ad of the newspaper Correio da Manhã. The ad was read by a dentist, Dr. Bruno Ferreira Gabina, who joined the co-operative. Febrônio, presenting himself as Joaquim Índio do Brasil, rented an office for the dentist and then went on to assist him with the appointments, but the two left the premises a month later, without paying the rent.
In 1922, after taking Dr. Gabina's diploma, Febrônio opened his own dental practice on Rua Visconde do Rio Branco, in Centro, where he demonstrated sadistic behavior by subsequently extracting several healthy teeth from those who sought his assistance. Due to his bad reputation, he turned his office into a job agency, which deceived people who, looking for work, deposited money for Febrônio. Pursued by the police, he moved to Bahia in 1925, where he pretended to be a dentist under the name of Febrônio Simões de Melo Índio do Brasil. From there he settled in Mimoso do Sul, in the state of Espírito Santo, where he pretended to be Dr. Gabina, but soon left following the deaths of two children whom he had prescribed drugs to. Later, in the mining town of Rio Casca, presenting himself as Dr. Uzeda Filho, he continued to act as a fake doctor, even causing the death of a woman in childbirth.
Back in Rio de Janeiro, Febrônio was arrested on October 8, 1926, caught for acting suspiciously on a hill at the Sugarloaf Mountain. As he presented delusional ideas and lied compulsively, he was admitted to the National Psychopath Hospital, which he left a few weeks later. During this hospitalization, he was examined by distinguished psychiatrist Dr. Adauto Botelho, who first diagnosed Febrônio with a mental disorder.