When you look at the official statement regarding the disappearance of 8-year-old Joana Cipriano from the small town of Figueira, Portugal, back in 2004, you’ll find a bloody and horrific tale of the girl’s mother and uncle — Leonor and João Cipriano. It’s one that involves murder, then the disposal of the evidence by cutting apart Joana’s body and feeding it to the pigs, and the eventual ending with both Leonor and João being convicted for the crime and sentenced to prison.
But, as it turns out, the story doesn’t end there. In 2007, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann — who vanished from Praia de Luz, Portugal, just 10 miles away from where Joana was last seen — was all over the news. Once again, the parents were immediately blamed, Kate and Gerry McCann in this case, despite a lack of real evidence, and that started turning heads.
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In fact, both investigations were led by the same man, Goncalo Amaral, who would eventually be kicked off the McCann case after some digging led to the discovery that he’d falsified evidence in the past. More specifically, he’d covered up the use of torture to coerce a confession from Leonor Cipriano, something that had gone unnoticed at the time because the Ciprianos didn’t have the money or platform to raise the alarm, even though Leonor had come back from interrogations beaten and bruised. (She would later retract her confessions, but to little effect.) The methods certainly call the Ciprianos’ convictions into question, leaving plenty of mysteries surrounding both cases.
