Whale bone beach Massacre

I wasn’t even born when all of this happened. But since it was something so strange and almost insane, I wanted to share it with you all. It happened on the 1st March 1987, when a man killed just because he wanted. This man was Vítor Jorge (1949-2018) and he killed seven people in twenty-four hours.

When he was only five years old, he witnessed his uncle killing his twin cousins. Maybe that was the first time that his mind was molded to develop his first and last crimes. At eight years old her mother moved to Lisbon with him, and because they were poor, they shared just one room. In the night, he would watch lovers and clients of her mother “hurting her”, since he didn’t know at that time what it really was. That little kid wanted to defend his mom, but he was just a kid and didn’t know what to do. This traumatic feeling was one of his reasons to think more and more about those deep and dark feelings that he had, I think. That room had a window to the cemetery, and he didn’t like that view because it was frightening, and it remembered his death.

He started writing a diary with his deep thoughts around 1985, he could let all his darkness be explored, and evolve out of his mind. That was almost like me when I started writing to let out my darkness, and that made me think of all the crazy stuff that I had written. But my diary brought me light, he just got deep into the darkness.

“I had just that idea in my head… kill, kill, kill.” This sentence stayed in my mind since I’ve watched the Portuguese documentary about this crime. Thinking that he kept a diary with the most bizarre thoughts and alarming ideas that he had about killing most people possible. Just like a psychopath, that he probably was.

“I must state, obsessed or not, that three women helped dig my grave: my mother, my wife, and my daughter. When a mother wishes to see her son dead, to see him married, when the wife says to her husband kill yourself, and when the daughter outs euphorically ‘at last, dad thinks about divorce’. What else is left after all? What more goals are glimpsed on the horizon of a marked man?” He hated his mother and wife, and that was shown in his diary words. All the fault in his life seemed to be because of women. He was just a result of everything around him. As most of the killers have, that lack of guilt. He is the saint, the victim. I personally dislike that kind of people – even when they don’t kill.

His diary was published at the time in several volumes by Correio da Manhã. A tortured and traumatized man who for several years had been preparing and postponing the slaughter that ended up on Whale Bone beach, Pombal, in Portugal.

He even thought of wiping out the war material factory in Silver’s Arm and thinking about how catastrophic it would be for the capital, Lisbon. Or even use a bomb to annihilate a part of this country. He just wanted to feel that morbid pleasure of the screams of death following the pleasure of dancing.

This man had a normal job at the bank and some gigs with photography in his free time. He had a mistress that met in one of his gigs, and all seemed just like any other man. This until the fateful day.

It was Sunday when it all started. The mistress ended the relationship, and he was madly in love with her. She was feeling guilt and asked him to come to her birthday party, which was near that beach. There were a lot of people at that party but, after some time passed, some of them started to go home. When the time comes to go back home, at night, the victims and Vítor went to the train station to go back home in his vehicle. The train was late, and he suggested to his companions to walk along the deserted beach since they had to wait for the train to come.

They all went to this remote beach, and that was the time he got his shotgun and knife. The victims were running, playing around by the dunes, and having a great time until Vítor shows up with his weapons. He shot to kill most of the five items, some of them tried to escape, but it was no use. Leonor, his ex-mistress, was unrecognizable since he beat her badly after killing her. After that, he left a note next to her saying ‘this was because you wanted it, the others were slaughter just by entrainment’. Not all the bodies were found, but after some time their bodies were left on the beach by the ocean.

Then, he returned home to kill his family and asked them for help since he made up a story about hit someone with his car. He killed his wife and eldest daughter in a pine forest with a knife. After that, he went home searching for his other daughter, and they were in the same pine forest. After some fight, this fourteen girl stole his knife and broke it, and then she ran for her life, searching for help in the streets since his father was trying to kill her. No one opened their doors, afraid of the commotion that she was creating. One driver ends up helping her. She was safe. It was her testimonial that said that her father assumed that he had killed other people by the beach.

“I kill my wife because she was not a virgin when she married. I kill my daughters, so they cannot be the food of the men’s pleasures. I will spare my son so that the seed of evil may endure.” These words were part of some letters left in the car along with the shotgun and diary. He never thought of killing the ten-year-old son. He did not care at all what was happening. Furthermore, he vanished for four days and was found by a former neighbor and her dogs that called the police.

In the trial he confessed the crimes and asked to be hospitalized for life, he warned them that he was dangerous and could kill again. He seemed bipolar: a good man at some moments, a devil’s monster at others. This killer was considered a common criminal and received a normal sentence in 1988: twenty years, the higher sentence in Portugal at the time of the judgment. He tried to kill himself three times before the crimes taking place and thirteen times after finishing fourteen years, being released in 2001 (benefited from several amnesties) and migrating to Corse, an island in France. He ended up dying in 2018, some saying that it was a successful suicide and others because of his health problems.

Let’s stop talking about this man and leave our deep wishes of rest in peace for all his victims. Seven minutes of silence for each victim.

For the facts on this story, I've used the following references, in Portuguese: Observador.pt special article; Wikipedia; and CMjournal article.