Rui Pedro disappeared in 1998 and 25 years later his whereabouts remain unknown. A case that didn’t have the attention and the resources that it needed.
Rui Pedro Teixeira Mendonça, was born on 28 of January 1987 and lived in a town called Lousada in Portugal. He lived with his parents, Filomena Teixeira e Manuel Mendonça, and his sister, Catarina Teixeira.
On March 4, 1998, in Lousada, Rui Pedro got on his bicycle and went to his mother’s, Filomena Teixeira, and asked if he could go out with a friend, Afonso Dias, 21, but his mother refused and told him to go to the field behind the office.
Between five and six in the afternoon, Rui’s teacher called his parents because he hadn’t been to class. People living in the area started searching when a man found the bicycle hidden in the bushes near the field where he had been seen.
The parents contacted the police and Filomena told them that Rui wanted to go out with Afonso Dias. The police questioned Afonso but he said he hadn’t been with Rui and that the police “should close the borders because he was probably on his way to another country.”
Later, some people said they had seen Rui talking to Afonso inside a black Fiat Uno car in the countryside.
The car was his brother’s and he had borrowed it to do the mandatory annual inspection, which was later confirmed that he hadn’t done.
Immediately after this statement, Rui’s cousin André tries to confront him about a conversation Afonso had with him and Rui. Afonso told him to shut up and started threatening him, but André says that Afonso had invited him and Rui to go “to the whores”, but he didn’t go because his mother forbade it.
But the police never followed up these leads and were treating the case as a search and rescue rather than a kidnapping.
A month later, journalist Nuno Rogeiro reported on Disneyland Paris for Caras magazine. Among all the photographs he took, one stands out. Sitting behind his family inside the Pinocchio tunnel, there is a boy next to a man and that boy looks like Rui Pedro.
Filomena believes it was Rui. The photographs were seized by the police, but nothing was done.
In September of the same year, British police busted a website used for child pornography, called “the wonderland club”, which operated mainly online. The police confiscated more than 750,000 (seven hundred fifty thousand) images and videos, representing 1 263 (one thousand two hundred sixty-three) children being sexually abused. 16 children were identified by relatives.
According to the newspaper, the guardian, everyone had a nickname and there were the usual petty rows: grumbles that too many members were being allowed in without going through the official channels or being approved by the hierarchy.
But it was the sinister entry fee that exposed the fact that this was no ordinary club: each new member had to supply 10 000 pornographic images of children.
Among those photos was Rui Pedro, but the police suspected that he had been murdered by the kidnappers.
Filomena and Interpol identified Rui Pedro in the videos and photos, but the Portuguese police dismissed this evidence.
There was also confirmation that at least one paedophile from the “wonderland club” was living in Portugal at the time of the disappearance.
“They showed me children being raped and them taking pleasure in their crying. They masturbated to it. I was looking at the images to see if any of them were mine, and I got to the point where I couldn’t anymore.” Filomena Teixeira, Pedro’s mother, said in an interview.
The clues linking Rui Pedro to international paedophile networks were closed in 2011. According to Cândida Almeida, from the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action, there was no more evidence and everything in this line of investigation had been “exhausted”. Another reason for the closure was that the Public Prosecutor’s Office considered that “there was sufficient evidence” to charge Afonso Dias.
In 2004, the second police squad resumed its investigation, carrying out an initial reconstruction of the events.
In 2008, the third police squad began an investigation, creating a specific team for the first time.
In the years that followed, the police built up a case against Afonso Dias based on several key witnesses, Alcina Dias (the prostitute Afonso Dias took to Rui Pedro) and three of Rui’s friends.
According to the witnesses what happened was: Rui Pedro didn’t listen to his mother and at 3pm he was waiting for Afonso at the racecourse. He left his bike and got into his car. They drove along national road 106 to Lustosa. They stopped to talk to Alcina Dias, to whom Afonso paid 10 euros for her to have sex with Rui and told her that he was 14 years old. Rui got out of the car and went to meet her. She took him into the middle of the forest, put her hands on his shoulders and asked him why he was crying. Rui told her that Afonso was his uncle and that he had made him go with him and that his mother didn’t know where he was. As Rui was hesitant and nervous, they waited 15 minutes, not having any sexual contact, and then returned. He got into the car and Alcina believes they went to a brothel 500 metres away. At 18:45 Afonso arrives at his girlfriend’s house in Freamunde, alone.
Maria de Fátima, another witness who worked at the fire station, says she saw Rui talking to a man in a black car at around 2pm, but she couldn’t see who the driver was. That same day, when they were all at the police station, Afonso told her that he was the one talking to Rui. Maria also reveals that on that day, Afonso visited her at the fire station after their meeting at the police station and seemed very worried, and asked her if she knew who he was and what his car looked like.
Several friends report that Afonso was obsessed with Rui in the two weeks leading up to his disappearance. He knew everything about his life, where he was, who he was with and what he was going to do the next day. These friends had spoken to the police at the time of the disappearance, but were ignored by the police. It was only in 2011 that they were brought in as credible witnesses, and the same thing happened with Alcina Dias.
Rui’s sister told Público that Rui and Afonso were good friends because Afonso was older and therefore a new and exciting source of knowledge for the child. Afonso got on well with Rui because he was very childish himself. She also recalls that a year before the disappearance, Afonso took photographs of her and Rui, something he had never done before.
In 2012, the prosecution asked for a sentence of more than seven years in prison, but the court acquitted Afonso for lack of evidence. The family’s lawyer and the prosecution appealed.
In 2013, the Porto Court of Appeal sentenced Afonso to 3 years and 6 months in prison for kidnapping.
After all legal possibilities for appeal had been exhausted, Afonso began serving his sentence on March 18, 2015, in Guimarães prison. He was released on March 29, 2017, after having served two-thirds of his sentence.
Despite being convicted, Afonso Dias has always pleaded not guilty.
Journalists and members of Rui Pedro’s family have criticised the police investigations into the case. In 2019, 20 years after his disappearance, Rui Pedro was declared presumed dead and the police are no longer investigating the case.
“My father-in-law was the one who fought hardest for Pedro. He was tireless. He spent many thousands of dollars at the time. He followed every lead. He went to the Netherlands, Belgium… He went wherever he was told his grandson was. Unfortunately, he was always deceived and died without finding him,” Manuel Mendonça, Rui Pedro’s father, said in an interview.
The Lousada City Council, in partnership with the Portuguese Association of Missing Children, marked the International Day of Missing Children (celebrated on May 25 2023) with a screening of the film “Sombra”, the literal translation would be shadow.
Even before the film was shown, Filomena Teixeira, thanked the municipality for organising the initiative, which allows her to continue to remember the fight she has been fighting for several years to find out what happened to Rui Pedro, whose disappearance is still shrouded in mystery.
Filomena Teixeira highlighted the importance of the Portuguese Association of Missing Children in helping other families search for their missing children, providing the support she didn’t have when her son went missing.
25 years have passed and even though a person was convicted we don’t know what happened. If he were alive, Rui Pedro would now be 36.
Filomena said in an interview “I have a medal here that says ‘hope never dies’, you can call me crazy, but I haven’t given up hope yet. Of at least knowing what happened to him”.
TIMELINE
• 1998
March 4 – Rui Pedro disappeared and was last seen by colleagues after lunch
March 5 – PJ begins investigating the disappearance by listening to several people, without ever determining any suspects.
• 2004 – The second PJ squad resumes its investigation, carrying out an initial reconstruction of the events.
• 2008 – PJ’s third brigade begins investigation, creating a specific team for the first time.
• 2011
February 26 – Afonso Dias, the main suspect in the disappearance, is charged with aggravated kidnapping.
May 26 – the family’s lawyer argues, in a pre-trial debate, for Afonso Dias to be brought to trial.
June 6 – the investigative decision in the case determines that the defendant will stand trial.
November 17 – Afonso Dias begins his trial. More than 60 witnesses are listed.
November 22 – Rui Pedro’s cousin tells the court that he and Rui were invited to go to the prostitutes in Freamunde, confirming the prosecution’s thesis.
November 25 – the court observes that the place where several children saw Rui get into the car is suspected to be Afonso’s. He goes to the Institute of Forensic Medicine to undergo psychiatric examinations requested by the defence. He goes to the Institute of Forensic Medicine to undergo psychiatric examinations requested by the defence.
December 4 – the prostitute who claims to have been with Rui on the day of his disappearance reaffirms that the child was taken to her by Afonso.
December 7 – Afonso’s defence says that the prostitute’s testimony contradicts her alleged statements to the PJ and that this harms the defendant.
December 13 – the court views a video of the re-enactment of the day of the disappearance, in which Afonso guarantees that he was not with Rui on the afternoon of the disappearance.
December 14 – two inspectors say in court that the prostitute gave unreliable information and that’s why the lead wasn’t pursued.
• 2012
January 26 – the court hears the closing arguments of Afonso’s trial.
January 27 – the prosecution asks for a sentence of more than 7 years in prison. The defence lawyer asks for the defendant’s acquittal, considering that the crime has not been proven.
February 22 – court acquits Afonso for lack of evidence. The family lawyer and the public prosecutor’s office appeal.
• 2013
March 5 – The Porto Court of Appeal sentences Afonso to 3 years and 6 months in prison for kidnapping.
• 2014
June 5 – Supreme Court upholds conviction.
• 2015
January 15 – Constitutional Court upholds conviction.
March 18 – Afonso turns himself in at the Guimarães prison to serve his sentence.
• 2017
March 29 – Afonso is released after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
I AM ANA DUARTE 