A federal police investigator in Brazil says a suspect has confessed to fatally shooting an Indigenous expert and a freelance British journalist in the Amazon, and the investigator said the suspect took officers to where the bodies were buried.
Officer Eduardo Alexandre Torres said at a news conference on Wednesday evening that the prime suspect in the case had detailed what happened to the pair who went missing on June 5. Torres said the suspect confessed he used a firearm to kill Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira of Brazil and freelance reporter Dom Phillips of Britain.
Police say they recovered human remains on Wednesday but they have not yet been positively identified.
“We found the bodies nearly two miles into the woods,” an investigator said. “They put bags of dirt on the boat so it would sink,” he said.
Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen on their boat in a river near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents.
