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Dom Phillips: Murder suspect of British journalist shows police the crime scene
The creator's telling of the case, the strongest entry point on file.
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What happened
On 5 June 2022, Brazilian indigenist Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips were murdered during a boat trip through the Vale do Javari, the second-largest indigenous territory in Brazil. The pair had traveled to Lago do Jaburu near a National Indian Foundation surveillance base on the Ituí River, where Phillips planned to conduct interviews for a book on the Amazon's sustainable potential. Two days later they went to the São Rafael community for a planned meeting with a local fisherman about joint surveillance work between riverine and indigenous communities in the Javari Valley, an area affected by invasions and criminal activity. The fisherman was absent, and the two men disappeared while traveling along the Itaguaí River toward Atalaia do Norte.
Bruno Pereira, born in Recife, Pernambuco, on 15 August 1980, was a career civil servant with FUNAI (Brazil's National Indian Foundation) and one of the country's leading experts on isolated or recently contacted indigenous peoples. In 2019 he led the largest expedition to contact isolated indigenous groups in 20 years, but was dismissed from his post that October under pressure from ruralist sectors linked to the government of Jair Bolsonaro. Indigenous entities reported he had been repeatedly threatened by gold miners and fishermen. Dom Phillips, born in Bebington, Cheshire, on 23 July 1964, was a freelance journalist who had contributed to the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He had lived in Brazil since 2007.
Search efforts began on 5 June, organized by the Union of Indigenous Organizations of the Javari Valley (Univaja), while the Federal Police confirmed an investigation without providing details. On 7 June, the Military Police searched the home of a man known as "Pelado" following an anonymous tip; he was arrested on unrelated drug and ammunition charges, and blood traces were found on his seized speedboat. Items belonging to the victims were found near his residence on 12 June. His brother was arrested on 14 June, and on 15 June the first suspect confessed, disclosing the location of the buried bodies and the sunken boat. A third suspect was arrested on 18 June, and the remains were formally identified on 22 June.
On 21 July 2022, prosecutors in the Federal Court of Tabatinga, Amazonas, charged three people with the murders and concealment of the bodies, stating Pereira was shot three times, including once in the back, while Phillips was killed because he was accompanying Pereira. Police also indicted an unnamed former head of Brazil's indigenous protection agency for allegedly failing to act on information that could have prevented the killings. Two additional suspects were later charged, one of whom was alleged to be the mastermind of an illegal transnational fishing network spanning Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.
The case drew extensive domestic and international media coverage, with criticism directed at the Brazilian federal government over delayed search efforts and the weakening of environmental protection institutions.
