Varginha 1996: an Army inquiry, a fire-brigade log and a man called "Mudinho"

On 20 January 1996 three young women in Varginha, Minas Gerais, said they saw a crouching creature in a vacant lot, and ufologists later accused the Army of capturing it. The Army's own 357-page inquiry, now public at the Superior Military Court, concluded that the girls probably saw a local man known as "Mudinho" and called the ufologists' book fiction.

21.5685° S · 45.4363° W · Jardim Andere, Varginha, Minas Gerais · 20 Jan 1996

Source: Brazil · Superior Tribunal Militar

Three young women and a vacant lot

The earliest account in an official archive is a magazine story. Brazil's National Archives keeps a copy of the IstoÉ cover story of 22 May 1996 in its UFO collection. The magazine reports that at 15:30 on Saturday 20 January 1996, three young women were walking down a path across a vacant lot in the Jardim Andere district of Varginha, Minas Gerais, about two kilometres from the town centre. They saw a strange creature with three protuberances on its head and slimy skin, crouching about seven metres away by the wall of a mechanic's workshop. IstoÉ names them as Liliane Fátima Silva, 16, her sister Valquíria, 14, and their friend Kátia Andrade Xavier, 22. Forty minutes later the sisters' mother, Luiza Helena Silva, went to the lot and found nothing ^[9].

The same article reports that a farm couple, Oralina Augusta and Eurico Rodrigues, said they saw a grey object, shaped like a submarine and the size of a minibus, fly slowly over their pasture beside the Varginha–Três Corações road in the early hours of the 20th. It also gives the ufologists' version. The lawyer Ubirajara Franco Rodrigues and Vitório Pacaccini said that four firemen had captured one creature at 10:30 that morning, and they named the Army's Escola de Sargentos das Armas (EsSA) in Três Corações as having taken a creature on to Campinas. The magazine also quoted denials, among them one from Badan Palhares, the forensic pathologist at the University of Campinas, who said he knew of no alien material reaching the IML (the forensic institute) or Unicamp ^[9].

Não era bicho nem gente, era uma coisa horrível (translation: It was neither an animal nor a person, it was a horrible thing)

— Kátia Andrade Xavier, quoted in IstoÉ, 22 May 1996 [9]

The Army's first answer: an internal inquiry

After the local press named men from his school, the EsSA commander, Gen. Sérgio Pedro Coelho Lima, opened an internal inquiry (sindicância) on 10 May 1996. It closed on 21 May without punishing anyone ^[10]. The inquiry officer, Col. René Jairo Fagundes, found no extraordinary movement of vehicles of any kind on 22, 23 or 24 January 1996. School trucks did go to Varginha on 25 and 26 January, for maintenance at Automaco, the local Mercedes-Benz dealer. The file backs this up with a payment commitment dated 23 January, the dealer's invoice of 29 January and the guardhouse's vehicle exit sheets ^[2].

Fagundes concluded that the soldiers named by the press had not taken part in any transport operation, of any kind of cargo, and that the media had publicised untrue facts ^[2].

Que os militares citados pela imprensa, não participaram de nenhuma operação de transporte de qualquer tipo de carga. (translation: That the soldiers cited by the press took part in no transport operation of any kind of cargo.)

— Col. René Jairo Fagundes, conclusion of the EsSA sindicância, 21 May 1996 [2]

IPM 18/97: an inquiry into a book

The longer inquiry was not an investigation of the creature. On 29 January 1997 the EsSA commander ordered a Military Police Inquiry (IPM) into the book "Incidente em Varginha" by Vitório Pacaccini and Maxs Portes, after the school's intelligence section reported that it spread untrue stories damaging to the armed forces. Lt. Col. Lúcio Carlos Finholdt Pereira led the inquiry ^[5]. The Superior Military Court now holds it as IPM 18/1997: 357 pages in two volumes, with unrestricted access and the scans online ^[1].

Eleven witnesses were heard between 10 March and 5 April 1997. They were Army officers and soldiers, the commander of the Military Police battalion in Varginha, the fire brigade's former commander, a civilian, and the ufologists Ubirajara Franco Rodrigues and Vitório Pacaccini ^[5]. The three young women were not among them. A 2011 request to the Minister of Defence from the Chamber of Deputies asked why they had not been heard ^[10].

Major José Francisco Maciel Dias Ferreira commanded the Varginha fire company in January 1996. He testified that at the time the book gives he was off duty at home, though on call, and that brigade rules forbid putting any animal into its vehicles. He also said the company's daily logbook is numbered in a sequence that cannot be altered, and that it shows no animal capture in that period ^[4]. Lt. Col. Maurício Antônio Santos, commander of the 24th Military Police Battalion, said that none of the incidents his battalion recorded during the storm involved extraterrestrials ^[3].

não ter havido nenhum registro de captura de animal naquele período (translation: that there was no record of any animal capture in that period)

— Maj. José Francisco Maciel Dias Ferreira, fire brigade, IPM 18/97 testimony [4]

"Mudinho" and the soldier

Santos also showed the inquiry photographs of a local man known by the nickname "mudinho", who probably lived in Jardim Andere near Rua Três Pontas. Santos said the man probably had some mental disability and would spend hours crouching. He suggested that in rain, wind and lightning, in a poorly lit place, the girls had mistaken this man for the creature ^[3]. The inquiry's report adopted this as the more probable explanation, citing a photographic simulation made by the school's computing section ^[6]. The man's real name does not appear in either passage.

The explanation does not fit the earliest press account in every detail. IstoÉ described a sunny Saturday afternoon ^[9]. The inquiry's version depends on heavy rain, and Santos dated the storm to "provavelmente no dia 19 de janeiro" (translation: "probably on 19 January") ^[3].

Santos was also asked about Military Police soldier Marco Eli Chereze, whose death the media blamed on a strange virus caught from the creature. Santos said that claim came from the soldier's sister. In his account, Chereze had a cyst under his left armpit, had long had surgery scheduled to remove it, and died of a severe hospital infection after the operation. He added that Chereze worked in P2, the police intelligence section, and was not officially involved in any incident with extraterrestrials ^[3].

Tais evidências tornam, portanto, mais provável a hipótese de que este cidadão, estando provavelmente sujo, em decorrência das fortes chuvas, visto agachado junto a um muro, tenha sido confundido, por três meninas aterrorizadas, com uma "criatura do espaço". (translation: This evidence therefore makes more probable the hypothesis that this citizen, probably dirty from the heavy rain and seen crouching by a wall, was mistaken by three terrified girls for a "creature from space".)

— Lt. Col. Lúcio Carlos Finholdt Pereira, IPM 18/97 report, April 1997 [6]

Fiction, no crime

The report, dated 11 April 1997, concluded that the book could not be considered scientific and could only be called fiction. Given the naivety of its subject, it found no sign that the authors had committed any crime, military or civil ^[7]. The Military Public Prosecutor asked for the case to be archived. On 4 July 1997 the judge of the 4th Military Judicial Circumscription in Juiz de Fora ordered the archiving, and the decision became final on 15 July 1997 ^[8].

The file stayed out of public view for years. According to the 2011 Chamber request, the Army did not report the inquiry when the presidency's Civil House asked the armed forces about UFO documents in 2008. It did so only in 2010, in reply to an earlier Chamber request, RIC 4470/2009 ^[10].

An earlier version of this page, like many retellings, said the armed forces never released a case file, that the fire brigade's log recorded "the capture of an animal", and that the dead man was an Army sergeant. In fact the Army's 357-page inquiry is public at the Superior Military Court, the brigade's former commander testified that its log showed no animal capture, and Chereze was a Military Police soldier ^[1][3][4]. The documents record denials, truck movements and a hypothesis. They do not record any interview with the three witnesses, and they do not identify what the witnesses saw.

Last fact-checked: 2026-10-03. Every claim cites its source.