Beatriz Joana Von Hohendorff Winck built a quiet life in Portão, Rio Grande do Sul, with her husband, Delmar Winck. They started as a supervised young couple in the 1950s, married in 1956, and spent decades as steady travel partners. Their routine blended family gatherings, parish events, and the kind of modest trips that leave photo albums filled with buses, churches, and smiling faces at roadside cafés.
Children arrived, grandchildren followed, and their calendar began to revolve around family obligations and devotional outings that worked like clockwork. By 2012, the rhythm of group excursions felt familiar. The family spoke in practical terms about routes, stops, and hotel check-ins. Bags were packed the same way each time, and the couple prepared with the same care.
Friends and relatives remembered Beatriz as gentle and organized, the type who folded clothing with care, labeled small bags for church souvenirs, and kept a mental list of who would enjoy a rosary or a postcard when she returned. She had a way of easing travel days with small tasks that kept nerves down and spirits up during long bus journeys.
The plan that October set out a path across several cities. The final target was Poços de Caldas in Minas Gerais, with Aparecida as a key stop. The National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida had long interested Beatriz. Friends recall how often the sanctuary came up in conversations at home and during parish events.
She wanted to see the great basilica with her own eyes, and she believed the journey north would be worth the long bus hours with fellow parishioners. Their children endorsed the trip without hesitation. This would be a pilgrimage mixed with routine tourism, the kind of outing the couple had done many times before with confidence and care.
What happened to Beatriz Winck in Aparecida on October 21, 2012?
The pilgrimage reached Aparecida on October 21, 2012, a weekend at Brazil’s most visited Catholic sanctuary. The basilica and the grid of streets around it were dense with movement. Shops offered candles, medals, and devotional images. Food stalls gave off heat and sound as visitors moved in lines.
Buses pulled in and out in clusters, spilling groups onto broad walkways that moved like slow rivers. Anyone who has walked those streets on a busy day knows the feeling. You look up for a familiar face and see only a shifting wall of strangers for a moment longer than you expect.
That afternoon, Beatriz and Delmar stopped at Casa das Velas, a devotional shop steps from the sanctuary. Delmar carried a small selection to the cashier. Lines were long, which felt normal on a busy day. Beatriz waited near the doorway, a place that gave her air and a clear view of the entrance.
He paid with a card, turned back with the bag in his hand, and looked toward the spot where she had been standing. The doorway was empty. The counters held new faces. The space outside the entrance was already moving again. The meeting point that had been obvious minutes before dissolved in the flow.
He took the loop that many spouses and adult children learn under pressure. Shop interior first, then the sidewalk, then the near corners, then the return to the interior again because you mistrust your own eyes. He went to the sanctuary and then to the group’s meeting point to ask staff for help.
He checked the hotel and returned to the shop again. He asked for announcements over the loudspeakers. He walked the streets around the basilica. He kept moving until his feet blistered, and the blisters told their own story about speed and distance more than any notebook could capture in a single line.
Later, witnesses recalled that Beatriz had spoken about losing sight of her husband in the crowd shortly before she vanished. That line has anchored the last minutes for years. It appears in early regional coverage and has become part of the standard telling of the sequence in Aparecida for anniversary features.
The framing rarely shifts in those stories. A couple enters a candle shop. The husband pays. The wife waits by the door. A moment of separation becomes a mystery that does not give ground in the hours that follow. Regional television and newspapers have repeated these basic facts whenever public memory needs a nudge.
The context around the sanctuary matters because it explains how a short separation can turn into a difficult search. Aparecida receives a surge of visitors on weekends and feast days. The sidewalks thicken, the vantage points narrow, and the span of a minute stretches as people file past in patient lines.
Bus groups often move like schools of fish. If someone steps into the flow one beat early, a companion can lose a sight line for just long enough that the next turn becomes guesswork under time pressure. That is why local outlets restate the size of the place before returning to the doorway scene at Casa das Velas.
As reported by O Vale in a 2024 feature, the group included more than thirty travelers that weekend, and the piece opened with the crowded sanctuary before restating the Casa das Velas timeline. That staging helps readers visualize why staff and police struggled to lock down a route within the first hours.
How did the Beatriz Winck case investigation unfold in Aparecida and what changed in the city?
The São Paulo Civil Police opened an inquiry after the disappearance. Within the first year, the file passed through formal steps that established jurisdictional responsibilities. On June 26, 2013, the case moved to the Judiciary for routing as part of the standard workflow in such investigations across the region.
On August 27, 2013, it arrived at the Missing Persons Division of the São Paulo DHPP. That transfer placed the case with the specialist wing that handles disappearances in the state capital. The family used those dates as mile markers when speaking with reporters and volunteers who asked for documentation.
Prosecutors in Rio Grande do Sul added a second reference point. On October 17, 2013, the Ministério Público do Rio Grande do Sul publicly stated that it would accompany the matter. This notice served two functions and gave the family a document to cite when asking for help across state lines from local institutions.
It also confirmed for journalists that a second set of state eyes was watching a case centered in São Paulo. Cross-state attention can matter when anniversaries come around and editors debate which cases deserve fresh coverage and resources. The public note sits in the prosecutor’s archive as a pointer for outreach.
Investigators and relatives also pressed for surveillance footage from the sanctuary. Delays hurt that effort. Camera systems recorded over their own archives after a short window. By the time requests moved through the necessary doors, the day in question had cycled out and the images no longer sat on the system drives.
Investigators reportedly considered whether memory issues might have played a role, especially in crowded, confusing settings like Aparecida. But to date there is no public medical record to confirm such a condition.
The family’s recollections about being told that images had been overwritten became a central grievance that helped the public understand why the investigation felt starved of visuals. Each time the case returns to air, presenters remind viewers that a camera tower near the scene stood ready, but recordings were not preserved in time.
The disappearance moved policy inside the city. Aparecida already had a 1998 law on the books that required hotels to provide wristbands for guests, a simple way to list a hotel’s name and number on a person’s arm. After Beatriz vanished, the city signed a decree in December 2012 that tightened enforcement and penalties.
The rule was straightforward. Hotels would hand bands to guests at check-in. Staff could then identify and direct disoriented visitors back to lodging. Fines followed for noncompliance. Trade-group notices and municipal posts from that period show how the requirement moved from paper to policy across more than 170 establishments.
Television carried that change to a national audience. In early 2013, a Jornal Nacional segment told viewers that tourists hosted in Aparecida would receive adjustable plastic bracelets listing hotel contacts. The message was clear for managers and guests who watched the broadcast at the end of the day.
The city would try to reduce disorientation and speed up returns when groups became separated. The same network’s regional bureau later tested compliance in the streets, reporting that adoption varied while the rule settled in, which is common with regulations that touch many businesses at once across a destination city.
These pieces helped shape the public memory of the case by tying an individual’s disappearance to a citywide measure that people could see on visitors’ wrists. The visual stands out in photographs and clips. A small strip of plastic becomes a sign of policy made visible in everyday movement across town.
Prosecutorial attention also extended to incoming calls. In 2013, TV Vanguarda reported that the Ministério Público analyzed phone calls relatives received after the disappearance. The segment confirmed that authorities were checking threads that might seem small from a distance yet still hold value when paired with other signals.
The broadcast did not announce a breakthrough, yet it kept the case present in living rooms across the Paraíba Valley and beyond. Airing a procedural update matters in long cases because it refreshes attention without promising more than the facts allow, a balance local producers work to maintain through careful scripting.
As reported by G1 Vale do Paraíba e Região, the calls had enough detail to warrant review, but investigators did not make a determination that could be shared with the public. The item served to show that tips continued to arrive and that institutions still kept files open for new lines.
How did the family of Beatriz Winck search for answers and what can readers learn from their method?
The family did not wait for monthly updates. João Carlos Winck, the eldest son, filed the missing person report and then moved himself to Aparecida. He stayed nearly two months at first, and he learned the city by foot as a routine that replaced workdays and weekends with a new cadence.
Mornings started with fixed routes that covered the sanctuary, nearby streets, and transit points. Afternoons layered in variations that added shelters, bus depots, and taxi ranks. He carried photographs and identifiers to every conversation. He documented names and places in a notebook he kept in his pocket for speed.
He talked to stall owners and nurses, shelter staff and volunteers, and drivers at shifts that changed throughout the day. He rode to neighboring towns in the Paraíba Valley to ask the same questions with the same patience. He repeated the routes many times to catch different workers and new faces.
A single person can only cover so much ground, so relatives expanded the search and divided tasks. Flávia Helena, one of Beatriz’s daughters, joined her brother in a poster campaign that reached gas stations, highway posts, and toll booths. They returned with lists of locations and dates to avoid duplication.
They worked with hospital contacts who agreed to check unidentified patients against the baseline. When features aligned, staff sent photographs that could be compared at home. The family kept a log of these checks, learned to add dates and locations to every record, and used that simple archive to avoid chasing the same rumor twice.
Because of those reports of lapses, the family also checked hospitals, nursing homes, and shelters where someone with disorientation might turn up, part of the reason their search footprint extended across states.
The poster totals grew toward 15,000 across the region. The number feels abstract until you imagine boxes of paper stored in a spare room, cars loaded from edge to edge, and the dull ache in your forearms after an afternoon of taping signs to metal and cinder block in sun and in light rain.
Distribution became a ritual with its own routes and its own set of rhythms. The family refined the design to make sure the most useful details, including a neck scar and language abilities, appeared at a glance. The phone numbers never changed so people could commit them to memory without trying.
Media became a tool rather than a destination. The family learned how to place anniversary pieces that did not harden into eulogies. They kept the Casa das Velas sequence at the front of each story and asked producers to open with the shop doorway before moving into institutional updates and calls for help.
They made sure the loudspeaker announcements and hotel checks appeared as proof of the earliest efforts. Long cases can drift into soft language if families let distance grow between facts and appeals. The Wincks kept that distance short by testing each sentence for clarity and asking reporters to write plainly for readers.
Practical lessons emerged as the months became years. A family needs an information hub that a stranger can use in one minute. The Onde está Dona Beatriz site fills that role. It lists descriptors, photos, and contact options in a way that works for a person on a phone who has no patience for extra clicks.
It allows anonymous messages so shy witnesses can speak up without fear of exposure. It shows where the case began without requiring any knowledge of Brazilian geography. Small design decisions like those save time for volunteers and avoid losing people in the first seconds of interest when attention is fragile.
For a comparative family-led search that also spans years of unanswered questions, see your in-depth feature on Utah’s most discussed missing-person case — Susan Powell case timeline and analysis.
Common questions about the disappearance of Beatriz Winck
Did Beatriz Winck have a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s?
Reports and family sources have mentioned memory lapses, but no public medical record confirms a diagnosis.
What was the last known location of Beatriz Winck in Aparecida?
The doorway of the Casa das Velas shop next to the basilica is the last verified position where she waited while her husband paid.
Are there any confirmed sightings of Beatriz Winck after October 21, 2012?
No credible, confirmed sighting has been documented; several potential leads were investigated but none resulted in verification.
How has Aparecida changed security after Beatriz Winck’s disappearance?
The city enforced hotel wristband laws more strictly, expanded surveillance camera coverage, and instituted identity measures for tourists.
Many readers confuse Beatriz Winck with other unrelated names such as Beatriz Winckelmann or Beatriz Winckworth. These are entirely different people and not connected to this case.