Dying for a story: Brazil’s journalists are being killed at record rates
Above: The site where the body of journalist Evany José Metzker was discovered on May 18, 2015, five days after he disappeared in Brazil’s Jequitinhonha valley. Photo: Valseque Bomfim
He called himself the Owl of the Valley. Journalist Evany José Metzker, 67, wanted to see everything that happened in this backwater town situated amid the banana plantations and clandestine gold mines of Brazil’s interior.
Straddling a major highway where truck robberies and child prostitution are routine, Padre Paraíso has 18,000 inhabitants, many of whom are destitute. In recent years drug gangs have taken hold of the town. “Here, they’d kill you for two cents,” muttered one policeman.
On May 13 Metzker, who was on a reporting trip from his home 73 miles away, disappeared. Five days later, his beheaded corpse was found by the side of a secluded dirt track.