[1][2][3] All the victims were young brunettes named Maria, allegedly prostitutes and drug addicts, and were disemboweled with a sharp object that was not a knife, possibly a scalpel.
Six men worked 24 hours a day on the same case and sometimes even with the support of the drug trafficking department, which seconded employees from its nighttime surveillance brigade.
"There were clues between Lisbon and Cascais about several people relating to their past, but everything was informal, without enough evidence to arrest or even question anyone," lamented coordinator João de Sousa.
The Ripper probably knocked his victims unconscious with strong blows to the head, something he had most likely practiced, then plucked out the heart, liver and lungs, lingering around the bodies but leaving no trace.
[6] However a comparison between the suspect's version of the facts and the evidence found at the crime scenes revealed José Guedes was not the Lisbon Ripper.
In his version of the facts, José Guedes said he didn't own a car and used to hitchhike to Lisbon with friends, returning by bus at twenty five to one in the morning.
According to the FBI's theory, the killer was a member of the Portuguese community in New Bedford, who had left the city and traveled back to Portugal, where he returned to work.
However, the bodies of the victims in Portugal were horribly mutilated and those in New Bedford weren't, and since the two agents eventually returned to the US, no connection could be made, and the identity of that killer remains unknown.
[10] Even if the murderer is discovered in future, he can not be tried or imprisoned, because under the Penal Code of Portugal, the statute of limitations comes into force 15 years after the crime.
In 1996, Francisco Moita Flores wrote a script for a series titled Polícias, which portrayed the judicial police investigating deaths caused by a similar murderer.
The first episode of the series, renamed to Cidade Despida and shown on RTP1 in 2010, reported on the daily life of the PJ brigade, including cases like that of cyclist Pedro Lopes and the modus operandi of the Ripper.