In the interior of Brazil and in some regions of large metropolises, there is a legend about a gang formed by clowns who kidnap people from Kombi at night. In an almost fanciful way, they lure people, preferably children, at night in cities where there are circuses working or in front of public schools during the day, take them inside the van and steal their organs, killing the victim in the process.
Modus operandi
Little is known about criminals, but what little is known leads to some indications of the way they tend to act. Clowns lure the victim with games and circus events, sometimes with jokes, sometimes with balloons and mischief, and call her inside the van. From there, only the empty body will be found lying in some ditch on the side of the road, with no valuable organs still inside. There are also reports of female members, with some alleged witnesses talking about a “ballerina dressed in white”.
The organs typically taken, according to the coroners, are the liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, part of the marrow, the corneas and all the available blood, but there are also gangs that do not steal a single organ, executing the victim for pure sadism.
The killer clown
Each of the gangs has a clown responsible for executing the victim. In gangs specializing in organ theft, typically the victim has their organs harvested while still alive and conscious, usually by a surgeon, but in gangs not intended to steal organs it is claimed that the troupe's murderer eradicates the victims with a club and then executes them by injecting urine, vinegar, and other noxious substances into their veins, causing them to die.
The truth
During the 1970s, there was a case in the USA involving a clown (John Wayne Gacy) who, after being arrested, found the remains of twenty-nine people aged between nine and twenty-seven in his basement. Nearly two decades later, he was sentenced to 21 life sentences and 12 capital sentences.
The case ended up being publicized in a series of reports in Brazil known as “The Crimes that Shaken the World”. During the 1990s, some cases began to spread, inspired by the story, all fictional, involving a man who owned a blue van, who waited in front of public schools for the end of class and lured children to get in the vehicle, from where they had never been. more would come out alive. The stories grew as they were passed on by word of mouth, and, as the internet was not very popular in Brazil at the time, it got to a point where it was impossible to find the origin of the reports, or even if there was any truth to them.
It is said that the cases were even investigated, but there was no case involving a gang of organ-stealing clowns. The most obvious conclusion is that this is just an urban legend, something much closer to a creepypasta, like Slenderman, than reality.
