The Crash, The Creatures, And The Confession: Inside The Varginha UFO Press Conference

Nearly thirty years after the alleged UFO crash in Varginha, Brazil, witnesses just gathered at the National Press Club to share testimony about creatures, military cover-ups, and a soldier’s mysterious death — and for the first time, a neurosurgeon described standing four minutes with a captured being.

Listen to “The Crash, The Creatures, And The Confession: Inside The Varginha Ufo Press Conference” on Spreaker.

On January 20, 2026 — exactly thirty years to the day after three young women in southeastern Brazil ran screaming from a vacant lot — investigative filmmaker James Fox stood before reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Fox had spent the better part of three decades chasing down witnesses to what many call “Brazil’s Roswell,” traveling back and forth between the United States and a small coffee-producing city called Varginha in the state of Minas Gerais. And now he was presenting something that had never happened before: a neurosurgeon — a respected medical professional with decades of credentials — publicly describing the four minutes he spent standing beside a captured being that communicated with him without speaking a word.

The date Fox chose for this press conference was no accident. January 20, 1996 was the day that put Varginha on the map for UFO researchers worldwide. That Saturday afternoon, three young women taking a shortcut home encountered something in a vacant lot that would change their lives forever — and spark one of the most enduring UFO controversies outside of Roswell itself.

U.S. Representative Eric Burlison, a Republican from Missouri, attended the event. Fox had worked with Burlison’s office to bring six Brazilian witnesses to testify in person, but their visa applications were denied. So Fox did what he’s done for years — he flew his team back to Brazil, sat down with those witnesses on camera, and recorded their statements to be played at the conference instead. The result was hours of testimony from people who had stayed largely silent for three decades, people who said they had been threatened, offered money to change their stories, and ridiculed by their own communities for speaking about what they saw.

THE CREATURE IN THE VACANT LOT

The core of the Varginha story has always centered on what happened around 3:30 in the afternoon on January 20, 1996. Sisters Liliane Fátima Silva, who was sixteen at the time, and Valquíria Aparecida Silva, who was fourteen, were walking home with their twenty-two-year-old friend Kátia Andrade Xavier. They decided to cut through a vacant lot in the Jardim Andere neighborhood — a weedy, partially developed area near a mechanic’s workshop — rather than take the longer way around.

What they found crouching against a wall would follow them for the rest of their lives.

Liliane testified at the press conference about that moment, describing what she saw in detail. The being was short. Its eyes were red. Its skin was brown and appeared to be covered in some kind of oil or grease. She could see veins running visibly from its neck down to its arms. And when she looked at it — when her eyes met whatever passed for its eyes — she said she felt like the world had stopped. Time itself seemed to pause. She also said she had the sensation that the creature was suffering, that it needed help somehow.

But fear won out. Liliane grabbed Kátia and they ran.

Kátia Xavier provided her own account, and the details lined up with her friend’s recollection. She described oily skin, a head that seemed too large for the body beneath it, hands with only three fingers, and feet that were shaped like the letter V. Kátia said she had actually wanted to approach the creature — something about it made her feel like it needed assistance — but Liliane pulled her away before she could get closer.

Valquíria, the youngest of the three, described the being as appearing both frightened and frightening at the same time. Its body was shining, she said, as if it had been coated in oil.

Their mother, Luiza Helena de Silva, was not with them during the encounter, but she went to investigate the location afterward. When she arrived at the vacant lot, the creature was gone — but she found something in the grass. A footprint. It showed a foot with three long toes. And there was still a smell hanging in the air, something strong and unpleasant that lingered even after whatever had made the print had departed.

What happened next, according to Luiza, gives you a sense of how seriously someone was taking this incident. Shortly after the sighting became known locally, four men showed up at the family’s home. They were wearing dark suits. They offered the family money — actual cash — if they would agree to leave the area and go on television saying they had seen an animal, or perhaps a sick person. Anything other than the creature their daughters had described.

The family did not take the money.

ONE WEEK EARLIER: THE CRAFT THAT FELL FROM THE SKY

The story of what happened on January 20 gets most of the attention, but the Varginha incident actually started a week earlier. On January 13, 1996, a man named Carlos de Souza was driving along the Fernão Dias Highway, heading from São Paulo toward Minas Gerais. Carlos was — and still is — an ultralight pilot and geography teacher at the Jorge Dupra Figueiredo School, where he has worked for over two decades. He was heading to meet some friends for an ultralight flight demonstration when he noticed something in the sky that did not look right.

Carlos described the object as cigar-shaped, roughly the size of a school bus, and it was flying erratically. White smoke was trailing behind it — and that detail stuck with him, because black smoke is what you would expect from a conventional engine fire. White smoke suggested something else was happening. He compared its struggling movements to those of “a broken washing machine,” a phrase that has become somewhat famous in UFO research circles. The craft looked like it was fighting to stay airborne and losing the battle.

Carlos assumed he was watching an aircraft in distress. His instinct was to follow it and see if he could help. So he did.

He followed the object to a location near a farm outside Varginha, where it came down. When he arrived at what he believed was a crash site, he found debris scattered across the area. And there was a smell — a powerful stench of ammonia mixed with something like rotten eggs, so noxious he had to cover his face to keep from gagging.

Carlos picked up a piece of the wreckage to examine it. The material was metallic, light as aluminum foil. He crumpled it in his hand. Then he watched as the crumpled material sprang back to its original shape on its own, as if it had never been touched. This detail echoes accounts from the 1947 Roswell incident, where witnesses described similar “memory metal” among the debris.

He did not have long to investigate. Army vehicles arrived at the scene, and soldiers ordered him to leave at gunpoint. Carlos complied — he was not in a position to argue with armed military personnel — and drove away.

But the encounter was not over. Carlos testified that he pulled over down the road to compose himself, and while he was stopped, a dark car pulled up alongside him. Men in suits got out and approached his vehicle. One of them knew Carlos’s name. He knew his home address. He knew details about Carlos’s family members. And then the man delivered a message that Carlos has not forgotten in thirty years: You never saw anything.

At the press conference, Carlos concluded his testimony by acknowledging the toll this experience has taken on his life. Thirty years of ridicule. Thirty years of people doubting his account or mocking him for telling it. He emphasized that there was no advantage to be gained from his story — no financial profit, no fame he was seeking. He gave one interview back in 1996, then stepped away from the spotlight for twenty-six years before agreeing to appear in Fox’s 2022 documentary. He simply wanted, after all this time, for people to take his experience seriously.

THE DEATH THAT STILL HAS NO EXPLANATION

Of all the threads that make up the Varginha story, the one that unsettles people most is what happened to a twenty-three-year-old Military Police Corporal named Marco Eli Chereze.

According to accounts that have emerged over the years — and which were reinforced by testimony at the January 2026 press conference — Chereze and his patrol partner were driving through Varginha around 5:30 in the evening on January 20, 1996, the same day the three young women had their encounter. A creature reportedly darted across the road in front of their vehicle. Chereze, acting on instinct or training or both, jumped out of the car and grabbed the being with his bare hands.

He wrestled it into the vehicle and transported it to a hospital.

What followed is where the story takes a more troubling direction. Within days of this alleged contact, Chereze began complaining about a strange greasy residue on his skin that would not wash off no matter how hard he scrubbed. There was also a persistent smell of ammonia that seemed to cling to him. A small abscess developed under his armpit. He started experiencing severe pain and developed a high fever.

On February 12, 1996, Chereze was hospitalized with intense pain in his lumbar region. His condition deteriorated with alarming speed. Three days later — on February 15, 1996, less than a month after his alleged encounter with the creature — Marco Eli Chereze was pronounced dead.

He was twenty-three years old. By all accounts, he had been a young, healthy soldier before the incident.

At the press conference in Washington, a medical examiner who had performed the autopsy in Varginha shared his professional assessment. He said it was highly unusual for someone of Chereze’s age and physical condition to die from what had initially presented as an abscess. The official cause of death was attributed to a highly virulent, drug-resistant bacterium that had overwhelmed his system.

A pathologist who conducted analysis on tissue samples from Chereze’s body also provided testimony. This was not some fringe researcher — the man had performed over 50,000 autopsies during his career and conducted more than a million microscopic analyses. He described the bacteria found in Chereze’s body as highly aggressive, behaving in ways that were difficult to explain. In translated remarks shared at the press conference, he characterized the bacteria as having acted “like a lethal weapon” against Chereze’s immune system.

The medical examiner noted that the bacterium is found on Earth but does not commonly infect humans. The pathologist stated that efforts were underway to have Chereze’s body exhumed so additional testing could be performed — specifically to investigate the hypothesis that the bacterium might be extraterrestrial in nature.

Marta, identified at the conference as Marco Chereze’s sister, also gave testimony. Her brother, she said, had been involved in the capture of the creature and subsequently died of causes that were never adequately explained to the family. She pleaded for anyone with additional knowledge about what happened to come forward with the truth. For Marta, this is not about UFOs or aliens — it is about her brother, who went to work one day and never really came home.

The official position has remained consistent over the years. Maurício Antonio Santos, former commander of the 24th Military Police Battalion of Varginha, has maintained that Chereze’s death was caused by a hospital infection contracted after surgery for a pre-existing condition. According to Santos, Chereze “was not involved in any incident with extraterrestrials.”

But the family was reportedly denied access to complete medical records. Pages were missing from the documents they received. And the questions surrounding Marco Chereze’s death have never gone away.

FOUR MINUTES WITH SOMETHING NOT HUMAN

For nearly thirty years, rumors circulated among UFO researchers that a neurosurgeon at the Regional Hospital in Varginha had done more than just hear about the captured creatures — he had interacted with one directly. James Fox and his team spent years trying to track this doctor down. They eventually found him, though Fox emphasized at the press conference that Dr. Italo Venturelli did not approach them seeking publicity. Fox had to seek him out.

Dr. Venturelli’s decision to finally go public came after a personal health crisis. He suffered a near-fatal heart attack, and the brush with death apparently changed his calculation about remaining silent.

His credentials are not in question. Dr. Venturelli has spent decades specializing in neurology and neurosurgery. From 1998 to 2002, he served as Director of Finance for the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Hospital Regional do Sul de Minas, Hospital Bom Pastor, and Hospital Humanitas — the three largest medical facilities in Varginha. He currently serves as the leading neurosurgeon at Regional Hospital while also maintaining a private practice. His colleagues describe him as someone known for technical rigor, medical ethics, and responsibility in managing complex cases.

This is not a man with a reputation for telling wild stories.

According to Dr. Venturelli’s testimony, he was working at the hospital in 1996 when a colleague pulled him into a room. The colleague showed him video footage that appeared to depict a child suffering from a severe case of hydrocephalus — a condition where abnormal buildup of fluid in the brain causes the skull to become enlarged. Then the colleague directed Venturelli to a bed in the room.

What Venturelli saw lying on that bed, he said, was something he immediately knew was not human.

He described the being in clinical terms, as you might expect from a trained physician. It was roughly the size of a seven-year-old child. The cranium was teardrop-shaped. The eyes were also teardrop-shaped and lilac in color — not the red eyes described by the three young women, suggesting perhaps that more than one type of being was involved in the incident, or that the creatures’ appearances varied. The being had white skin, a small mouth, and hands with three fingers plus an opposing thumb. It had no nipples.

There were indications that a small surgical procedure had already been performed, and another doctor had stitched the being up.

Then the being looked at him.

Dr. Venturelli described what happened next as a form of communication that did not involve spoken words. He said he sensed that the being was aware of what was happening in the room. It understood that the doctors intended to help it, and it felt something like gratitude for the care it was receiving. He also sensed that it wanted to leave — that it did not want to be there, wherever “there” was.

More than anything, Venturelli said he was struck by the intelligence he perceived. He described it as vast, higher than that of human beings. And in its gaze, he interpreted something that felt like understanding and compassion.

The encounter lasted approximately four minutes. Then it was over.

Fox’s team asked about the video footage that Venturelli had been shown — the recording that appeared to show the being on what looked like medical monitoring equipment. Fox acknowledged at the press conference that despite years of effort, his team has never been able to obtain that video. If it still exists, no one has come forward with it.

Dr. Venturelli has now stated publicly what he says he experienced. “The truth is, I saw the being,” he said. “It was not a being from our planet.”

THE AMERICAN ANGLE

One of the more explosive claims presented at the January 2026 press conference came from Retired Colonel Fred Clausen. Clausen is a former fighter pilot who, according to his own testimony, encountered a UFO during a flight in 1980. He said the military subsequently confiscated video footage from his aircraft’s gun camera.

But it was his claims about January 1996 that got the most attention in the room.

According to Clausen, a U.S. cargo plane secretly took off and flew into Brazil in January 1996 without authorization from Brazilian authorities. The aircraft landed, loaded what Clausen described as “unusual cargo,” and then departed for an unknown location.

Clausen said he had researched the potential paper trail such a mission would have left behind — flight records, cargo manifests, personnel assignments. He estimated that thirty to forty Americans would have direct knowledge of the operation if it occurred. At the press conference, he pleaded with those individuals to come forward with whatever information they possess.

A soldier whose identity was protected — his face obscured during the presentation — also provided testimony. He claimed to have participated directly in transporting what he called an extraterrestrial. According to his account, he saw the being at a hospital in Varginha, helped move it to another location where different soldiers took over, and later heard that Americans had taken possession of the creature and transported it to a facility whose location he did not know.

If these accounts are accurate, the implications extend far beyond Brazil.

BLOCKED FROM INVESTIGATING

Nyei Nadeia was a journalist in Varginha in January 1996, and when reports started circulating about strange creatures and military activity, he tried to do what journalists do — investigate.

He did not get very far.

According to Nadeia’s testimony, soldiers blocked him from reaching the locations where witnesses had reported sightings. When he asked why, he was told it was a matter of national security. He went to a local hospital and observed unusual commotion among the medical staff — doctors rushing around, an atmosphere of urgency that seemed out of the ordinary.

Nadeia also described hearing people in the nearby woods shouting to each other. The phrases he recalled hearing included “surround it” and “it’s smooth.”

When he continued asking questions about what was happening, he received a warning: if he kept pressing, he would be arrested.

WHAT THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT SAYS HAPPENED

The Brazilian Army conducted an investigation into the Varginha incident. Their conclusion was straightforward: the creature that the three young women saw in the vacant lot was not an alien. It was a local resident.

Specifically, the Army’s investigation identified the “creature” as a homeless man nicknamed “Mudinho” — Luis Antonio de Paula — who had mental and physical disabilities. According to the official findings, Mudinho often crouched in corners around town due to his condition. The three young women, the investigators concluded, had likely encountered this man in the weedy lot and, in their fear, misidentified him as something otherworldly.

As for the military activity that residents reported seeing in Varginha during January 1996 — the trucks, the soldiers, the sense of something unusual happening — the Army attributed this to routine operations. A troop convoy had been delivering vehicles to a garage for maintenance. There was nothing clandestine about it.

The Pentagon has maintained its position that there is no evidence unidentified anomalous phenomena are connected to extraterrestrial life.

Not everyone accepts these explanations. The witnesses who spoke at the January 2026 press conference certainly do not. They point to details that the official investigation does not address — the physical descriptions that multiple unconnected witnesses provided independently, the smell of ammonia that so many people reported, the strange death of a young soldier, and the accounts of threats and intimidation directed at anyone who talked about what they saw.

Dr. Fortunato Badan Palhares, a forensic pathologist whose name has been connected to allegations about autopsies performed on alien bodies from the incident, issued a categorical denial back in 2012. He called claims linking him to the case “fruits of fantasy authors” and said they did not deserve his respect because those making the claims were “liars.”

The truth, whatever it is, remains somewhere between these competing narratives.

A TOWN THAT EMBRACED ITS STRANGE HISTORY

Whatever actually happened in Varginha in January 1996 — whether it involved extraterrestrial beings or tragic misunderstandings or something else entirely — the city has not tried to bury the story. Instead, Varginha has leaned into its reputation.

A water tower shaped like a flying saucer now stands in the city, visible to residents and visitors alike. UFO-themed attractions have sprung up around town. The city hosts events centered on the incident, drawing curious tourists and serious researchers from around the world. The Varginha ET Museum was inaugurated in November 2022, and the case has been featured in multiple documentaries, including Fox’s original Moment of Contact from that same year.

The three women who first reported the creature sighting — Liliane, Valquíria, and Kátia — are no longer the teenagers they were in 1996. They are now adults approaching middle age, and they stopped giving free interviews years ago. After spending years telling their story over and over to journalists and investigators without compensation, they began requiring payment for their time in the early 2000s. Their reasoning was simple: everything they saw and experienced had already been described repeatedly. If people wanted to hear it again, they could pay for the privilege.

Their descriptions of what they saw, however, have remained consistent across three decades. The oily brown skin. The red eyes. The feeling of time stopping. The sense that the creature was suffering and needed help. These details have not changed, whether the women were speaking to local reporters in 1996 or to documentary filmmakers in 2022.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW

James Fox’s expanded documentary, Moment of Contact: New Revelations of Alien Encounters, was released globally in early January 2026, timed to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the incident and the press conference at the National Press Club. The filmmaker has become famous in UFO research circles for his persistence — he has described himself as “a dog with a bone” when it comes to the Varginha case.

Fox has publicly offered a $200,000 reward for the alleged thirty-five-second video of a captured creature that multiple witnesses have claimed exists. Despite this substantial bounty, the footage has never surfaced publicly. Fox acknowledged at the press conference that his team has not been able to obtain the video that Dr. Venturelli says he was shown, either.

The pathologists who examined Marco Chereze’s remains are awaiting permission to exhume his body so they can conduct additional analysis on the bacteria that killed him. If that exhumation happens, the testing could potentially provide more concrete answers — or raise even more questions.

Representative Burlison, at the conclusion of the press conference, urged the American public to contact their representatives in Congress and demand transparency on the subject of unidentified anomalous phenomena. Whether that pressure will translate into any kind of official investigation remains to be seen.

Dr. Italo Venturelli, the neurosurgeon who kept silent for nearly three decades, has now put his name and reputation behind his account. He has described, in clinical detail, standing in a hospital room with something that he says was not human — something that looked at him and communicated without words, something that possessed an intelligence he believes exceeded our own.

The three young women who ran screaming from a vacant lot in January 1996 have now seen a respected physician corroborate the essential shape of their story: something was there, something was captured, something happened that the official explanations do not adequately address.

The January 20, 2026 anniversary has come and gone. The witnesses have spoken. The official denials remain in place. And the small Brazilian city of Varginha continues to sit at the center of one of the most persistent UFO mysteries in the world — still waiting, after thirty years, to learn what actually happened.

REFERENCES

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.