[12] José Aparecido Benedito was the only survivor of Cabo Bruno's murders: after being shot, he pretended to be dead and managed to escape.
[8] He was arrested for the first time on September 22, 1983, by court order,[4] after being accused of more than twenty murders (being recognized by several witnesses), although he confessed to only one: on February 6, 1982, in the slum of Jardim Selma, where he was denounced by a friend of the victim, who survived.
[15] By the time the investigations began, the gang was apparently protected by the higher ranks, but the advance gathering of evidence and clues led to the whole organization's collapse.
[15] After 12 trials[4]—in one of them, several other police officers went to court to press, but the evidence was aplenty[16]—Cabo Bruno was sentenced to 113 years in prison.
The State Public Ministry requested a criminological psychosocial examination, done in two stages and with favorable opinions to the progression of the sentence,[3] which was granted on August 19.
[21] He plasticized the original release license and always carried a copy with him, along with a list of ten dreams that he would like to accomplish before he died.
"[12] Just over a month after leaving prison, Cabo Bruno was killed with eighteen or twenty shots in the neighborhood Quadra Coberta, in Pindamonhangaba, around 11:30 pm on September 26, 2012.
"According to witnesses, it was two men who arrived on foot and only shot at him," explained the lieutenant of the 2nd Company of the 5th Battalion of the Military Police.