Document · 11 April 1997
Brazilian Army military police inquiry IPM nº 18/1997 into the Varginha case (Escola de Sargentos das Armas, 1997)
Also known as IPM 18/97, Varginha IPM, Varginha Army inquiry, Autos Findos 908
The Brazilian Army's own investigation of the Varginha case: a military police inquiry (Inquérito Policial Militar) opened in 1997 by the commander of the Escola de Sargentos das Armas in Três Corações, the military school named in the stories of a captured creature. Its purpose was to establish whether a book alleging that the school's soldiers had captured and transported an extraterrestrial had committed a crime; it was not a scientific investigation of the sighting.
It concluded that the creature was most likely a local man mistaken for one, that the military movements cited were routine, and that the book was fiction; the case was closed. Its sceptics note that it was an investigation by the institution accused, of a book rather than of the witnesses, and that it never heard the soldiers who spoke to the ufologists anonymously. The scanned volumes are in Portuguese; our copies carry OCR text, which is searchable here.
Sources: Superior Tribunal Militar, IPM nº 18/1997 (Autos Findos 908), vols. 1–2
Facts and claims
- documented The inquiry was opened on the order of the commander of the Army's Escola de Sargentos das Armas (EsSA) in Três Corações to establish whether the book Incidente em Varginha, by the ufologist Vitório Pacaccini and Maxs Portes, which named military personnel as having captured and transported an extraterrestrial being on 20 January 1996, amounted to a crime. Source: doc-stm-ipm-18-1997-vol2.pdf
- documented The officer in charge, Lt. Col. Lúcio Carlos Finholdt Pereira, concluded on 11 April 1997 that the most probable explanation was that a local man known as “mudinho”, probably dirty from the heavy rain and crouched by a wall, had been mistaken for a creature by three frightened girls; the file includes his photographs and a photo-simulation study made at the EsSA (vol. 2, p. 134). Source: doc-stm-ipm-18-1997-vol2.pdf
- documented It found that the firefighters' presence in Jardim Andere (called out to the storm), Army trucks parked near a dealership for routine maintenance, and EsSA vehicles sent to Jaguariúna for horse fodder were real events unrelated to the alleged capture and transport, that no evidence was presented for the book's claims, and that its informants could not be identified (vol. 2, pp. 134–135). Source: doc-stm-ipm-18-1997-vol2.pdf
- documented Its conclusion gives the book the character of fiction and finds no sign of any crime by its authors; a military judge, agreeing with the military prosecutors, ordered the case closed, describing the claims about the Army as untrue (vol. 2, pp. 138 and 151). Source: doc-stm-ipm-18-1997-vol2.pdf
- documented The record (357 sheets in two volumes, February–June 1997) was archived at the Superior Tribunal Militar and released online in January 2026, for the case's 30th anniversary. Source: arquimedes.stm.jus.br (archived)
Connected files
Claims
- Brazilian firefighters and soldiers captured non-human beings in Varginha in January 1996, and the U.S. flew them out of Brazil (evidence against claim) — The Army's inquiry judged the creature most likely a local man known as “mudinho”, and the military movements routine
Incidents
- Varginha incident (documents)
Videos
More documents
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 21 June 2013 (25 files)
- The National Archives: guides to the Ministry of Defence UFO files (2008–2013)
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 12 July 2012 (25 files)
- CMRI decision on the Operação Prato records (Brazil, 2012)
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 11 August 2011 (34 files)
- Ministry of Defence UFO files: release of 3 March 2011 (35 files)
Links
- Superior Tribunal Militar archive (Arquimedes) — catalogue record
- Volume 1 (STM, PDF)
- Volume 2 (STM, PDF)