Two young Lagos women arrested for dismembering and decapitating 21-year-old Albufeira man, to steal 75,000 euros

Two young women have been arrested on suspicion of having killed and dismembered a 21-year-old boy, whose head was initially found on the 26th March, in Tavira’s Pego do Inferno.

The crime was revealed to be premeditated: one of the young women seduced Diogo in order to get close to him, but both of them allegedly participated in his murder. Their reason was the theft of the 75 thousand euros that the victim received in compensation for the death of his mother in a hit-and-run incident in recent years.

The 21-year-old boy was asphyxiated, and the body was then dismembered and deposited throughout different areas of the Algarve. The two accomplices were caught yesterday by the Judiciary Police (PJ) who arrested them on suspicion of homicide and desecration of a corpse. The detainees are 19 and 23 years old, and lived together in Lagos.

They were caught after making bank payments with a debit card that they stole from Diogo Gonçalves. However, they were already under investigation by the Judiciary Police due to their close relationship with the victim. A close relationship that allowed them to find out the details of the compensation package he had received due to the death of his mother, incentivising the crime.

Diogo, a native of Albufeira, was reported missing on 18th March. The various traces collected by the inspectors and experts of the PJ indicate that he was killed in the house where he lived, in Algoz, in the municipality of Silves, and it is also from there that the victim’s two mobile phones and computer disappeared.

He was asphyxiated to death at his home and then dismembered in a location that the PJ is still trying to ascertain. The head was thrown into the Pego do Inferno waterfall, in Tavira, and was found by French tourists on the 26th. Hours later, the severed body, without arms or feet, was removed from the base of a cliff in Sagres.

Police investigators believe that the two young women went to Sagres first. One of them drove Diogo’s car, which was found near the cliff. After the vehicle was located, the Maritime Police and the Shipwreck Aid Institute launched a search operation that led to finding the finding of the dismembered torso, wrapped in plastic bags.

From humble beginnings, Diogo worked in for Vila Vita Parc, in Porches. His mother was killed in a hit-and-run and the young man, the only heir, received a compensation package of about 75 thousand euros. Theft was, from the start, the hypothesis that the PJ took as the most likely reason of his murder. According to the PJ, in a statement, the young women were “without a criminal record”.