In his first interview after being sentenced to 23 years for butchering young women whose flesh was then transformed into meat pies, Portuguese-born Jorge Negromonte da Silveira has told the UK’s Daily Mail that he is better off in jail. If he was released, he confided, he “could do another one”.
It was an interview which shed further horrific light on the “Sweeney Todd” serial killer, who “infamously baked his female victims in meat pies” to sell to unwitting passers-by.
He even killed one of his victims in full-view of her toddler daughter, whom he then fed on her mother’s remains.
As the Mail explained, the Coimbra-educated former university lecturer believed the consumption of human flesh purified his soul from sin.
Aided and abetted by wife Isabel Pires and Brazilian mistress Bruna da Silva, Silveira savagely butchered his victims because he believed they would only have gone on to give birth to “thieves and lowlife”.
Journalist Matt Roper said Silveira “hadn’t savoured the ‘succulent’ taste of human flesh for at least three years – and MailOnline was about to spend the next four hours alone with him”.
It was an interview that was doubly unnerving, as the Portuguese-born killer licked his lips “after almost every word”.
Only two years into his 23-year sentence, Silveira is in a run-down overcrowded jail in the poor Brazilian town of Pesqueira.
Alluding to the story today, Portugal’s Correio da Manhã adds the chilling extra detail that the local chief of police was among many people who lived and worked near Silveira’s former home and bought human meat pies from his wife and mistress, unaware of their true content.
As the killer told the Mail: “Human meat, for me, is no different to beef. It has the same taste and the same succulent consistency. It isn’t any more delicious than beef, but neither is it less delicious.”
Other than the pies which the trio sold in the street, Silveira’s companions made stews, or sautéed the victims’ flesh.
He told his stunned interviewer: “We’d often cook it in a Mexican stew called carne guisada, with vegetables. Isabel would use it to make a typical northeastern dish called Macaxeira, made from cassava root, which was tasty.”
The horrific crimes date back to 2008. Silveira and his two accomplices were arrested in 2012.
By Natasha Donn
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