A devoted indigenist and a journalist set off into the depths of the Amazon to report on corruption and criminal activity but are never seen alive again. The murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira rocked the international community and revealed dark secrets hiding in one of the world's most beautiful natural wonders.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/revisited-the-amazon Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck
Chapter 1: What is the Amazon case about?
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and I know I told you we were off this week, but I wanted to make sure you guys got your fix. Today's episode, The Amazon, is one I covered a few years ago on the show, but there have been a few updates in the case since it first came out, so I wanted to get it in your ears again.
This story hits especially close to home for me because I'm a working journalist, and even though this show isn't one where I always feature my own original reporting, I know all too well from producing another show I host called CounterClock that sometimes being the person who's examining and uncovering controversial issues comes with a certain level of danger.
Today's story is about exactly that, two men, an indigenous and a British journalist who were determined to expose illegal natural resource extraction happening in the Amazon, but ultimately paid the price for their righteous endeavor with their lives.
Chapter 2: Who were Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira?
Bruna Pereira and Dom Phillips' case unfolded in the summer of 2022 in one of the most beautiful and dangerous landscapes in the world, South America's Javari Valley in the Amazon. This region is one of the most remote places on the planet and is situated where the borders of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia meet.
It's made up of tens of thousands of square miles of thick jungle and waterways, and it's not the kind of place you want to wander into on your own. According to the news source France 24, for decades this region has been plagued with violent crime, drug trafficking, and illegal fishing and logging on protected lands.
The natural camouflage the Amazon provides is the main reason why criminals conducting these illegal activities operate there. Depending on which source material you read, there are anywhere from 20 to 26 different indigenous groups living in the valley, a dozen or so of which are categorized as uncontacted people, meaning they live in isolation from the rest of the world.
No technology, no modern infrastructure, completely indigenous. They live off the land and speak languages unique to their tribes. Many of these folks live in the Javari Valley Indigenous Reservation, which was established by the government in 2001. This vast protected land converges near the Itui and Itakwai rivers.
Sometimes I heard British journalists pronounce the name of that second river as Itaki River, but Portuguese sources pronounce it Itakwai, so I'm going to go with Itakwai. In June of 2022, Dom and Bruno set out on an expedition to visit an uncontacted people group. But during a short two-hour boat ride, they disappeared.
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Chapter 3: What happened on June 5th, 2022?
Around 9 o'clock in the morning on Sunday, June 5th, 2022, a man named Orlando Posuelo, who worked for the organization named the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley, also known by the acronym UNIVAJA, which I believe is pronounced Univaza, noticed something odd. Two men he was expecting to arrive via motorboat at his outpost in the town of Adelaide du Nord were late, really late.
A few days earlier, longtime Univaza associate Bruna Pereira had called Orlando from a region of the Javari Valley near Peru to tell Orlando that he and his passenger, 57-year-old British journalist Dom Phillips, would be arriving by 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. But 8 a.m. had come and gone, and then 9 a.m., and there was still no sign of the two men.
The city of Atalaya de Norte was where most everyone entered or exited the Javari Valley, so Orlando knew that Bruno and Dom not showing up wasn't a good sign. The men's absence indicated they'd either made last-minute plans to stay longer inside the valley without telling anyone, or something had happened to them while they'd been boating on the Atui or Itaquai rivers.
Those were the bodies of water they would have had to have taken to get back to Atalaya de Norte. The Washington Post reported that by 10 a.m., Orlando couldn't bear waiting around for Dom and Bruno any longer without doing something. So he went out on the river with another staffer to look for them, but had no luck.
Other source material says that a few hours later, around 2 p.m., more people joined to help and went out in boats to go on a longer stretch of the Atacway River near Atalaya de Norte. The goal was to search for the men, but after scouring a few miles of shoreline, treeline, and open water, no sign of the men or their boat turned up.
Another search party of Univaza volunteers went out around 4 o'clock, this time in a slightly bigger vessel, but just like the groups before them, they couldn't find a trace of Dom or Bruno. The source material isn't clear on when exactly government agencies were made aware of the situation and responded.
But the best I could gather was that on Monday morning, the Brazilian Navy and the federal police were alerted about what was going on. And those agencies dispatched additional personnel to help look for Dom and Bruno. According to BBC News, the Navy promised to supply more resources, including a helicopter, two larger boats, and another kind of watercraft on Tuesday morning.
But the Amazon Military Command, a branch of the Brazilian Army, wasn't so quick to mobilize its resources. The Guardian reported that a spokesperson for the Army said he had to wait for government officials to order military personnel to get involved. And until that happened, the Army's hands were tied.
Still, the additional beefed-up resources that did come in during those first 24 hours were a huge relief for the local indigenous leaders with Univaza, whose search parties were already stretched thin. It was clear from the outset, though, that the folks with Univaza didn't think the Brazilian government was acting fast enough to help find the men.
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Chapter 4: How was the search for Dom and Bruno conducted?
The Guardian reported that Dom's family had last heard from him on Wednesday, June 1st, while he'd been flying from his home in Salvador, Brazil, to meet Bruno.
Authorities learned that after the men connected in Adelaide du Nord, they'd gotten into a boat on Friday, June 3rd, and traveled to a remote village along the western side of the valley near Peru's border to meet with a group of uncontacted people.
Witnesses who knew the details of the men's travel itinerary told investigators that Dom had planned to interview several natives from that tribe on Friday and Saturday, and then the duo was expected to journey back to Adelaide du Nord on Sunday morning. On their way back, they were supposed to pit stop in Riberia São Rafael, a small indigenous community on the Atacuai River.
When authorities spoke with people in that village, everyone there said they'd last seen Dom and Bruno around 6 a.m. on Sunday, June 5th. And data that UNIVASA staff provided tracing the men's satellite phone communications confirmed that. According to witnesses at São Rafael, before leaving, Dom and Bruno had spoken with the wife of a guy who was in charge of that community.
Agência Brasil reported that Bruno had prearranged a meeting with this community leader to discuss how the village could improve combating intruders who were conducting illegal activities. But when he and Dom had arrived, the leader wasn't there, so the men spoke with the guy's wife instead and then left shortly after that.
News outlets reported that sometime after 6 a.m., but before 9 a.m., more witnesses in a small community between Sao Rafael and Adelaide du Norte had reported seeing a boat matching Dom and Bruno's pass by. But the articles don't say what specific time in the morning this sighting happened. After that, the men's trail went cold. Just nothing.
The Brazilian Indigenous National Foundation, or FUNAI, who Bruno had been associated with for years, told several news outlets that the men's journey wasn't supposed to be complicated. Their two-hour boat ride to the entry and exit point of the valley was a routine trip Bruno had made many times.
For several years prior to this, Bruno had worked as a regional coordinator for the Indigenous National Foundation's outpost in Adelaide Nord. So him getting lost just wasn't something anyone thought was likely. He knew that area like the back of his hand, getting turned around would have been extremely out of character for him.
A theory law enforcement considered on day one of the investigation was whether the men's boat had stalled or perhaps sank and they'd been left stranded somewhere in the jungle. Dom's wife, Alessandra, told The Guardian that in a strange way, that suggestion gave her some comfort.
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Chapter 5: What were the challenges faced during the investigation?
You see, those workers knew that the boat Bruno and Dom had taken only had a 40-horsepower engine in it. It was new, plus the men had taken 70 liters of extra fuel, seven empty gas cans, and a satellite phone with them. So their vessel failing and then them not being able to contact the outside world for help just seemed like an unlikely scenario.
When word of the men's disappearance made news headlines on the morning of Monday, June 6th, the day after they were reported missing, the story spread like wildfire. By nightfall on Monday, Dom's family members in Britain and staff at the news publication he worked for, The Guardian, took to social media to express their concerns and begged the Brazilian government to take the matter seriously.
Everyone who knew the nature of that part of the Amazon knew that time was of the essence. They feared that if search and rescue teams didn't swarm the jungle along the section of river where the men had last been seen fast enough, the duo would perish from either encountering hostile people or dangerous wildlife.
According to The Guardian, Dom's sister posted a video online that said, quote, we are really worried about him and urge the authorities in Brazil to do all they can to search the routes he was following. If anyone can help scale up resources for the search, that would be great because time is crucial, end quote.
Dom's wife voiced the same sentiment and requested the Brazilian government work with a sense of urgency. The Guardian's editor, Jonathan Watts, released an official statement for the publication that said, The Guardian is very concerned and is urgently seeking information on Phillips' whereabouts.
We are in contact with the British Embassy in Brazil and local and national authorities to try and ascertain the facts as soon as possible." The organization Human Rights Watch also vocalized its concerns about the men's disappearance and called on Brazil's government to act more swiftly.
The entity's director wrote, "...it is extremely important that Brazilian authorities dedicate all available and necessary resources to the immediate execution of the searches in order to guarantee as soon as possible the safety of the two."
I mentioned it a second ago, but the glaring fact that was apparent to Dom and Bruno's families and all the organizations advocating for them was that where they'd been working in the Javari Valley was known to be extremely unstable and prone to violence. In fact, it was almost guaranteed the pair would encounter some level of danger while in that part of the Amazon.
And according to Orlando Pozuelo, the man who first noticed they were missing, a somewhat violent encounter was exactly what had happened hours before Dom and Bruno vanished. The End
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Chapter 6: How did the Brazilian government respond to the disappearance?
When he took office as president in January 2019, he quickly became a strong voice downplaying the importance of setting aside more protected lands for indigenous people. According to CNN, Bolsonaro's entire campaign running up to election day had focused on what kinds of future efforts could be made to explore the untouched territories of the Amazon for farming and natural resource extraction.
One of his first actions as president was cleaning house at the Brazilian Indigenous National Foundation and transferring the organization out of Brazil's Ministry of Justice Department to the Ministry of Agriculture.
He also ousted many longtime environmentally conscious leaders from the organization and put men like Bruno, who were leading operations and programs to reach isolated people on administrative leave. Two days after the men vanished, Bolsonaro issued a blunt initial response that rubbed folks who knew Dom and Bruno the wrong way.
Bolsonaro told news outlets, including CNN, "...two people alone on a boat, in a region like that, completely wild. It's an unrecommended adventure. Anything can happen. It could be an accident. It could be that they have been executed. Anything could have happened. We hope and pray to God that they will be found soon."
Now, I don't think he necessarily intended to sound cavalier with his statement, but many people close to Bruno and Dom and others who opposed the president's stance on environmental issues felt like it was a backhanded way of questioning the men's mission and purpose.
Basically, see, this is what happens when you unnecessarily go to places you shouldn't and do stuff that's dangerous kind of thing. But even though Bruno was on administrative leave during the summer of 2022, the 41-year-old was as dedicated as ever to working with indigenous communities in the Javari Valley and being a guide for journalists like Dom.
At 57 years old, Dom was an established foreign correspondent who didn't shy away from the opportunity to cover controversy. He'd spent the last 15 years living in Brazil. According to his obituary by The Guardian, he met his wife Alessandra in 2013, and the two had gotten married in 2015.
Through tough times, Dom had remained dedicated to telling gripping stories about Brazilian residents living in remote regions of the Amazon, even when his dedication required him to make several expensive trips that neither he nor his research grant sponsors could afford.
The Guardian reported that in the summer of 2022, he and his wife had been forced to move to the less expensive Brazilian city of Salvador to live because he was relying on supplemental income from his family members in Britain to make ends meet. Still, Dom hadn't wavered. He knew his life's calling was to report about the travesties taking place in the Javari Valley.
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Chapter 7: What threats had Dom and Bruno faced before their trip?
In the 90s, his passion for music led him to pursue a writing and publishing career in that genre. But ultimately, his interest in South America's political and environmental conflicts had been what had kept him working as a full-time foreign correspondent. Dom had taught himself to speak fluent Portuguese, which was a huge help navigating his way through stories in Brazil.
He'd been contracted for prestigious newspapers and magazines across the globe, which included The Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and others. Leading up to 2022, Dom had extensively covered several environmental disasters in the Amazon, two of which were results of failed iron ore mining operations.
He'd seen firsthand how the influx of natural resource extraction was devastating ecosystems in the pristine landscapes. In 2018, he joined Bruno for a trip into the Javari Valley for the first time to see how companies and illegal hunters and prospectors were impacting native uncontacted tribes.
And after seeing how much of the indigenous people's land was being destroyed by outside forces, Dom couldn't stop writing about all the issues that were going on. Unfortunately, the stories he'd written were so explosive, they'd made him a handful of powerful enemies. One in particular, and you guessed it, it was Jair Bolsonaro.
According to Jonathan Watts reporting for The Guardian, during a press conference in 2019, after Bolsonaro had just officially won the presidential election, Dom asked him what his administration was going to do to address an increase in forest fires that had been plaguing the Amazon. And Bolsonaro barked back, quote, the Amazon is Brazil's, not yours, end quote.
So yeah, these two guys weren't friendly. But this tension only proved to fuel Dom's fire as an investigative journalist. The whole reason he was traveling with Bruno in the summer of 2022 was because he was in the middle of writing a book about all the messed up things that were happening in the Javari Valley. Things that he felt were being ignored by the Brazilian government.
He titled the novel, How to Save the Amazon. A big focus of the book was going to be how unwarranted contact with remote indigenous tribes was extremely dangerous and what solutions could be generated in the future.
According to the website Survival International, forced contact with indigenous tribes in the Javari Valley had been happening for decades, all the way back to the 1970s, and it came at a very high human price.
An article on the site describes how non-native visitors like missionaries brought diseases like the measles and the flu to these remote people groups and all but wiped them out because the indigenous tribes had no built-up immunity to those ailments.
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Chapter 8: What impact did Dom and Bruno's work have?
This time, the Amazon Military Command and the Brazilian government's military-trained officers with faster boats, diving equipment, and investigating expertise combed the Javari Valley. That afternoon, Bruno's brothers and partner, Beatrice, spoke publicly about the case and told CNN that they wanted everyone who was searching for the men to work hard and smart.
They cautioned crews to remember to respect indigenous land if they met uncontacted people groups while looking for Dom and Bruno. Beatriz also told a local newspaper that she was distraught not only for herself, but for her two and three-year-old sons.
The source material isn't clear as to whether Bruno was their dad, but still, I must imagine he definitely cared for them and was part of their lives.
According to Andrew Downey and Cayo Briso and Tom Phillips reporting for The Guardian, on Wednesday, three days into the search, the police officially announced they'd interrogated a handful of people and arrested two men so far in their investigation.
One of the two guys that had been detained, who authorities didn't name, had been arrested for having drugs, a firearm, and ammunition that was illegal. The other guy, whose name was Amardio da Costa de Oliveira, also had been arrested for the same offenses and questioned in relation to Dom and Bruno's case.
And according to the article, that's because Amardio was the fisherman who threatened Bruno and his men on Saturday morning with the gun. You know, the guy who'd been well-documented in pictures? Yeah, well, in addition to undergoing an interrogation, police also took his boat to search for additional clues.
On Wednesday, authorities also announced that they were widening the search for Dom and Bruno, and by that point had roughly 250 people out looking for them. They utilized airplanes, drones, and 16 boats to scour as much of the landscape as possible, but still nothing had turned up. Not a scrap of clothing, not a piece of equipment, the missing boat, nothing.
The Brazilian army had also dedicated more personnel to go into remote parts of the jungle, but those efforts also hadn't pushed the investigation forward. What's interesting to me is that even though three full days had passed with no sign of the two men, investigators were still reluctant to say on the record that they believed something bad had happened to Dom and Bruno.
Instead, federal police detectives said they genuinely thought the pair was still alive, saying, quote, End quote. But despite that, authorities were still side-eyeing Amardio and not letting him go anywhere. So they kept him detained in jail while they continued their investigation.
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