Incident in Varginha

About the Author

Vitório Pacaccini is an Italian-Brazilian engineer, raised in Três Corações near Varginha, with more than eighteen years as a member of CICOANI (Civil Investigation Center for Unidentified Aerial Objects), described as Brazil's oldest civilian UFO field-research group, and over thirty years in UFO research overall. He is identified in his own publisher biography as the case's main researcher since its inception in January 1996 — consistent with this site's own case file, which cites his and Portes's original 1996 book by name as the specific work whose naming of Army Police personnel prompted the formal 1997 Military Police Inquiry.

Fernanda Pires, born in Uberaba, Minas Gerais, is a MUFON Director for Central and South America, a MUFON Canada Regional Director, a Certified Field Investigator, and a member of MUFON's Experiencer Resource Team. She has researched UFO phenomena since 1997, founded CIFE (a Brazilian UFO and space-research organization), produced a separate documentary, Encounters Latin America, and served as field translator and co-producer on James Fox's Moment of Contact — giving her direct, independently verifiable involvement in bringing the Varginha case to English-language audiences beyond this book alone.

Historical Context & Origins

This article could not independently confirm the precise relationship between this 2025 English edition and the 1996 Portuguese original beyond what the cover itself states: it is explicitly labeled a "Second Edition," and Goodreads lists both the 1996 Portuguese book (credited to Pacaccini and Portes) and this 2025 English book (credited to Pacaccini and Pires) under Pacaccini's own author page, treating them as related but formally separate catalog entries. This article did not find a publisher statement, preface, or interview specifying exactly what changed between the two editions or Portes's role, if any, in this later one, and states that gap plainly rather than assuming continuity or a clean handoff.

The book's publisher, Un-X Media, functions as a small independent press for paranormal and UFO-phenomena nonfiction that solicits and publishes work from multiple contributing authors, rather than as Pacaccini or Pires's own personal imprint — a real, findable publisher rather than a self-published listing under a company name invented for this one title.

This site's own case file documents the 1996 original's specific historical role in far more granular detail than this book review needs to repeat: the naming of Army Police personnel that led the ESA commander in Três Corações to order a formal internal sindicância in May 1996, led by Colonel René Jairo Fagundes, interviewing 23 military personnel over eight days — the first of the case's two formal military investigations, and one this 1996 book's publication helped set in motion. That internal inquiry concluded the named personnel had not participated in any creature-transport operation, a finding the case file treats as one data point among several rather than a final resolution, given the second, later 1997 Military Police Inquiry the book's publication is separately credited with triggering.

Pacaccini's decades of continuous involvement with CICOANI place this book's investigative lineage within one of Brazil's longest-running civilian UFO research efforts, rather than a one-off treatment assembled after the fact by a researcher new to the case. That continuity is part of what this article treats as this edition's real value: a case whose most consequential early document was written by the same person who had access to it from the very first weeks in January 1996, rather than reconstructed years later from press clippings and secondhand testimony.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

Per the publisher's own case-summary description, the book presents the January 20, 1996 sighting by three teenagers, including Liliane Silva and Kátia Xavier, alongside eyewitness interviews, cited confidential military sources, and a reconstruction of events building toward a government-concealment conclusion. This article could not confirm any specific new interview subject, document, or piece of evidence unique to this edition beyond that general framing, and does not attribute more granular claims to the book than its own available description supports.

What distinguishes this book's argument from Roger Leir's 2005 UFO Crash in Brazil, also covered on this site, is standing rather than content: Pacaccini was the case's original, on-the-ground Brazilian investigator from January 1996 onward, whose own published naming of personnel is independently cited in the archival military inquiry record, whereas Leir was an American outsider who arrived in 2002, working through interpreters. This book is the earlier, primary-source account; Leir's is a later, secondhand field investigation built partly on top of it.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Varginha UFO Incident case file documents the full record in far greater depth than this book review needs to repeat: the original sighting, the zoo-animal deaths, the two formal military inquiries, the disputed circumstances of Corporal Marco Eli Chereze's death, and the 2010 official report identifying a local resident with a documented disability as the likely source of the original sighting. Readers wanting the complete, independently sourced record should consult that case file directly.

This site's separate essential-reading article on Roger Leir's UFO Crash in Brazil covers the same case from an outsider investigator's later vantage; this article is not a repeat of that one, since Pacaccini's book is the case's actual founding investigative document rather than a subsequent field account.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), this 2025 English edition has no ratings or reviews on Goodreads, and no trade, journalistic, or skeptical-press review could be found. The 1996 Portuguese original carries a modest Goodreads rating of 3.17 out of 5 across 6 ratings — too thin a sample to characterize as any kind of consensus. One review of the 1996 original, the only substantive review this research located for either edition, noted that readers expecting named military personnel and their specific testimonies "shouldn't expect much" from the book itself, suggesting its historical importance rests more in what its publication triggered (the 1997 inquiry) than in the granularity of its own sourcing.

Both authors appeared together discussing the case generally on the Alien UFO Podcast (episode 276, May 2025), with Pires identified there as the book's Associate Director; the available episode description covers the case's general facts rather than detailing specific new content in the book, and this article does not overstate what that appearance confirms.

Influence & Legacy

The 1996 original's legacy is concrete and independently documented: this site's own case file cites it directly as the book whose naming of Army Police personnel prompted the Estado-Maior's formal internal inquiry just months after the sighting, making it one of the few UFO books anywhere that can be shown to have directly triggered an official military investigation rather than merely commenting on one after the fact.

This 2025 English edition's own legacy is, as of this research, still being written: it extends the original investigation's reach to English-language readers and pairs it with Fernanda Pires's own independent, ongoing work bringing the case to international audiences through Moment of Contact and her other documentary and MUFON work, though this article found no evidence yet of the English edition itself generating new investigative developments.

The Book

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