Brazil: Journalist Evany José Metzker Murdered While Investigating Drugs and Child Exploitation in M
Brazil: Journalist Evany José Metzker Murdered While Investigating Drugs and Child Exploitation in Minas Gerais
Written by Flávia Tavares for Época; Translated by Holly Holmes
Wednesday, 01 July 2015 18:59
Original Article in Portuguese
Photo: Scene of the crime: The identity card of journalist Evany José
Metzker. It was ditched in a rural area of the Padre Paraíso municipality,
where his body was found. (Photo: Leo Drumond Nitro/Época)
On Wednesday morning, May 13, the journalist Evany José Metzker, also known as Coruja (Owl), woke up, had coffee with a piece of cake that he didn't finish, and told Cristiane, the daughter of the Elis Inn's owner, that he needed to go to a nearby city. Metzker had agreed to give a talk that afternoon at the girl's high school. He promised to let her know if he couldn't get back in time. The trip from Padre Paraíso to Teófilo Otoni, a city 62 miles away, took almost all day. The talk he was supposed to give, on the exploitation of child labor, would have to wait until the next week. Metzker returned to the inn, apologized to the student, left to eat supper with his friend Valseque, and arrived back at the little roadside hotel by the end of Jornal Nacional (Brazil's longest running primetime TV news program, which airs on Globo). He asked to settle his account from the last three months. He said he was going to Brasília the following day, and, upon his return, would pay the R$ 2,700 (US$ 875) that he owed. He left again, leaving the ceiling fan and lights on in his room. He let them know, “I'm going over there and coming right back." Metzker didn't come back.
Last Monday, June 18, the Military Police (Polícia Militar--PM) in Padre Paraíso, in the Jequitinhonha Valley in northern Minas Gerais state, received a phone call. Rural inhabitants had seen what seemed to be a body at the side of a well-beaten dirt road, 12 miles from town. A police vehicle was sent out to the area, and two police officers found a body without a head, that was severed just at the height of the shoulders. The victim's hands were bound—right over left—over the torso with an orange rope. The man was partially nude; he was dressed only in a jacket, T-shirt, and black socks. Further along, they found one dress shoe and black pants. Eyeglass frames and a lens were in another spot. The corpse was decomposing quickly. It was very swollen—most of all, the testicles. An expert pointed out later that there were indications of anal bleeding and genital bruising. The skull was found 100 yards from the body, and it is possible that dogs dragged it away, consuming the skin and the eyes. The jaw was broken, dislocated from the head. This horrific crime scene, however, didn't contain a single drop of blood. The body was dragged to that point and the trail was still visible. The perpetrator of the monstrosity wasn't concerned about hiding the crime or the identity of his victim; the corpse was left beside the drag marks, a few yards from a deep ravine. Documents lay scattered around—a voter registration card, a national identity card, a social security card, three blank checks, two bank cards, and an ID card as a journalist for the magazine Atuação—all in the name of Evany José Metzker, 67 years old. On the right side of the chest, the black t-shirt still showed a yellow owl, the logo from Metzker's blog, Coruja do Vale (Owl of the (Jequitinhonha) Valley). On the back was written: PRESS.
Metzker had a deep pride in displaying the title of reporter. He told his colleague Valseque Bomfim, who is from Padre Paraíso and is also a blogger, “We are journalists. Investigative [journalists]. We have to investigate.” Despite much insistence from the outsider, Valseque resisted forming a blogging partnership with Metzker, who had recently arrived in the city. Valseque had started to drop by his room at the inn. “Metzker didn't tell me about the investigations he was doing. He only said that he wanted to help, that he wanted to work together,” recounts Valseque. Metzker had mounted a small editorial suite in his room. He asked that Elizete, the hotel owner, provide an exclusive router to have stable access to the Internet. He pushed together three tables in the small accommodation, where he set up a printer, kept his notebook, and spread out numerous documents. He smoked Hilton and Hollywood cigarettes incessantly. The smell of tobacco clung thickly, perhaps irreversibly, to the walls, mattress, and pillow. Elizete fears she'll never be able to rent the room again. “I called him Paulo Coelho,” said Elizete (after the well-known novelist from Rio de Janeiro). “He had a goatee and was very quiet. He only wrote, worked and smoked. He never returned after 10 pm and he never brought a woman here.” In the few moments in which he relaxed, Metzker gave advice to Elizete's children, including Cristiane, who wanted to be a journalist and for whom he had made a reporter-in-training ID card. He often repeated that they needed to study and to lead an orderly life, as he did. Metzker didn't speak very much about the past, not even with his own wife, Ilma. But he told the girls he had been a police sketch artist. He drew composite portraits, and, in fact, he sketched very well. He also mentioned that he had been in the military, without giving details. He only dressed in suits and liked to dye his goatee to match his bushy mustache.
His profession as a journalist began in 2004. The previous year, Metzker met Ilma. He was from Belo Horizonte, but he worked in Montes Claros as an IT specialist in a hospital. Ilma was there visiting her first husband, who had cancer. Months after her husband's death, Ilma met Metzker once more. One afternoon in December 2003, Metzker went to visit her in Medina, a small charming city in the interior of Minas Gerais, and he never left. There, he founded the news magazine Atuação, published in Montes Claros. He made denouncements about the city administration, pot-holed streets, and the lack of staffing in health clinics. He wanted more. Ten years after beginning his career as a reporter, he felt he wasn't recognized for his work. In 2014, he began to travel in the region, searching for hotter news items. He kept up good relationships with both the military and civil police in all the cities he visited. His blog, that earned him the nickname Owl, published mostly police reports. He covered nearly all of northeast Minas Gerais, passing through the municipal areas of Almenara, Divisa Alegre, Itinga, Araçuaí, and Itaobim. He would stay in one of these small towns on the weekends, then return to Medina to be with Ilma and her three children, that he raised as his own. When small news items for the blog became scarce, he made ends meet by advertising the logos of local businesses. He got by on little. He wanted to construct a reputation, become a reference. “Little by little, people started to seek him out, to tell him about the indifference of the authorities,” said Ilma, who never saw any journalism diploma from her partner. Metzker guaranteed her that he had studied. “He was very responsible. He only published (an item) if he had certainty, documentation.”
More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5378-brazil-journalist-evany-jose-metzker-murdered-while-investigating-drugs-and-child-exploitation-in-minas-gerais
