User:Paris1127/Fortunato Botton Neto

Fortunato Botton Neto (São Paulo, September 10, 1963 - Taubaté, 1997), known as the Trianon Maniac (Maníaco do Trianon), was a serial killer active in São Paulo, Brazil, in the late-1980s. Working as a male prostitute in Parque Tenente Siqueira Campos (more commonly known as Parque Trianon), a park across Avenida Paulista from the São Paulo Museum of Art, Botton Neto is believed to have murdered between 7 and 13 men who picked him up in Parque Trianon between 1986 and 1989. His victims ranged in age between their 30s and 60s, and included a decorator, psychiatrist, theatre director, and teacher. All lived alone (within the vicinity of Parque Trianon) and were homosexual.

Crimes
On 17 August 1987, an employee of the psychiatrist Antonio Carlos Di Giacomo arrived at work and found a horrific scene. With his hands and feet tied and a sock in his mouth, the doctor, a native of Santos who graduated from the Escola Paulista de Medicina and worked at the Hospital do Servidor Público, was dead. He was found in the apartment where he lived in the Alice Building, on Rua do Rocio in the Vila Olímpia district in the West Zone of São Paulo.

The coldness with which Botton Neto reported this and his other crimes shocked even the most experienced police officers working on the case. In one of his statements, Botton Neto said, "Killing is like having ice cream: when you finish the first, it makes you want to have more, and it never stops". After agreeing on a price for the encounter, he would go to the victims' apartments, where he would drink with them until they became drunk. He would tie their ankles and wrists, gag them, and then kill them by strangulation or by stabbing them with a knife or a screwdriver. When he finished, he would search the victim's apartment for money and valuable objects that he could sell without arousing suspicion.

Because of the poor investigative practices of the police at the time, Botton Neto could have gotten away with all his crimes if he hadn't threatened a client. A young man, the client was afraid that his parents would discover he was homosexual, and Fortunato knew this. He began to leverage the client's fear to extort from him increasingly larger sums of money in exchange for his silence. Finally, the young man reported him to the police and told the detectives who were investigating the murders about Botton Neto's violent personality.

The police were already on Botton Neto's trail and the young man's disclosure was all they needed in order to hunt him down. A trap was set up. The young man would wear a wire and talk to Botton Neto, making it clear that he wouldn't give him any more money and that any affair between them was over. When Botton Neto would try to use violence against the young man, the police would appear and arrest him. The plan worked and the murders ceased.

Botton Neto suffered from serious mental problems that caused him to suffer "episodes". When he was not in one, he was a regular and openly homosexual person; when he entered one, he became a monster that abhorred homosexuals and blamed them for the AIDS outbreak. Each "episode" could last minutes, hours, days or weeks, explaining his disappearances.

The Trianon Maniac killed 13 people between 1986 and 1989, but was only convicted of three of the seven crimes he confessed to. He died in Taubaté Prison in São Paulo in February 1997, from bronchopneumonia due to AIDS, which he had acquired from one of his victims.

Popular Culture
The story of the Trianon Maniac and his victims was part of a series of reports produced by the pay-TV channel Discovery Channel and is part of the episode The Trianon Maniac, from the second season of the program Instinto Assassino, a series that reveals the details of atrocious crimes committed by some of the most bloodthirsty and perverse killers in Latin America. Comprised of eight one-hour episodes, this season was filmed in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, analyzing in detail the acts of psychopaths.


 * José Liberato (aka "Zezinho"), decorator, 66, 7 December 1986
 * Antonio Carlos Di Giacomo, psychiatrist, 39, found 17 August 1987; Edificio Alice, Rua do Rocio, 59
 * Manoel Iraldo Paiva (aka "Maneco"), director, 37, found 18 September 1987; Edificio Malvina, Rua da Consolaçao, 2782
 * Antonio José Laposta, teacher, 21, found 14 June 1988?
 * Alaíde Josafa Pinheiro,, 48, found 11 December 1988; Condominio Edificio Barão Ramalho, Ave. 9 de Julho, 556
 * Arnaldo Vieira Neves, electrician, 38, killed 13 (or 17?) August 1989
 * Luiz Antonio Correa