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The Portuguese Serial Killer Whose Head Gets Kept in a Jar
His head has been kept since 1841
Portugal's first real serial killer, something to be proud of? I don’t know. This guy definitely made some history.
Diogo Alves was a serial killer and robber who was born in Spain and raised in Portugal. Between 1836 and 1840, he was responsible for the deaths of seventy persons.
He lived and committed those crimes in the Águas Livres Aqueduct area. Therefore he received the nickname: The Aqueduct Murderer.
In 1841, he was sentenced to death and went to be hung on February 19th.
When he was killed, his head got separated from his body and preserved in a jar and is currently put on as a tourist attraction in Lisbon at their university of Medicine.
What Did He Do?
You might be wondering what he exactly did to receive the death sentence? Well, it wasn’t pretty: as a kid, he moved to Lisbon to work as a servant in the aristocratic mansions of the Portuguese capital.
Not long after, young Alves understood that a life of crime was more lucrative in terms of making money.
In 1836, he arranged for himself to be transported to a residence on the ‘Aqueduto das guas Livres’, where he…
