The Kiss: The group led by a Portuguese teen that instigated school massacres in Brazil

Mikazz was sleeping in his room in northern Portugal when agents from the Special Counterterrorism Unit of the Judicial Police woke him up to arrest him on May 1, 2024. Mikazz, 17, was likely sleeping because he had spent the night engaging in activity related to The Kiss, the group he had led since August 2023 on Discord and other platforms (Telegram, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook), where he encouraged other minors like himself to self-harm, torture animals, humiliate themselves in public, and attack classmates. Just as Luluzinho, 16, did in October 2023 at his public school in Sapopemba, a neighborhood of São Paulo in Brazil, where he had suffered bullying since deciding to dress as a girl.

Before entering the school, the teenager had joined a group call to livestream the attack. He then killed a 17-year-old girl and injured two others, chosen at random. “They asked me to carry out a massacre, and I did,” the perpetrator confessed to his interrogators. To Luluzinho, Mikazz “was God,” states Portuguese prosecutor Felismina Carvalho Franco in the indictment filed this month. “He became his mentor. He supported, encouraged, and reinforced his desire to commit violent acts,” she notes.

Connecting Mikazz and Luluzinho — two virtual identities — took time. They lived in different time zones, thousand of miles apart, though they shared a common language. The Brazilian’s arrest was swift, but uncovering the identity of the leader who encouraged him to carry out a massacre took several months, partly because the platforms’ servers were located in the United States.

“We gave absolute priority to the investigation when we received the reports in January 2024 because minors were involved and there was an imminent danger, but there’s always a delay when procedures take place abroad and require letters rogatory,” inspector Armenio Pontes, head of the Counterterrorism Unit that led the investigation, told EL PAÍS.

Mikazz — who has been in pretrial detention in Portugal since he was woken by the police — was Gotten 1, the leader of a community that paid homage to him, obeyed his orders, and submitted to an iron-clad hierarchy. To scale up in the order, members had to prove themselves with actions such as drinking detergent, carving the group’s name into one’s skin with a razor, or decapitating animals.

One of the members who scaled up thanks to acts of brutality was a 14-year-old Portuguese girl, who put a cat in a blender and turned it on, “with a blood stain visible inside.” DYNI — her online handle — was the only girl close to the leader. Most of the teenagers belonged to the bottom-rung “suditas” category, who were asked to share nude photos of themselves or to self-mutilate to satisfy those in positions of power. Mikazz also sold child pornography on the internet.

Cult-like methods adapted to the virtual world, sustained by a structure that required nothing more than a phone or a computer. “They operate in a similar way, where charismatic leaders use deception and manipulation to make followers obedient and dependent,” explains Pontes.

Mikazz — who glorified Nazism and was sometimes called Fuhrer — gave orders from Portugal, and wherever his followers were, they obeyed him. The demands on women carried an additional humiliating burden. “He demanded that they lick the floor, vomit and lick the vomit, and also that they bark at him, calling them bitches or whores,” states the indictment, which highlights the leader’s misogyny. One young woman, who, according to the prosecutor, “no longer had room on her legs and arms to cut herself,” was asked by the group members to cut a vein.

According to the police, Mikazz had no friends in real life, but he had around a hundred followers on The Kiss, whom he encouraged to create “lulz” — live broadcasts of violent acts — to help grow the community and, as the prosecutor notes, “gain popularity among others of the same kind, as well as visibility in the community and in national and international media.”

A sinister club of teenagers who worshiped violence and loathed their own vulnerabilities. An ideal place to manipulate misfits and the vulnerable. “Mikazz was aware of what he was doing; for them, getting more views and members justified the actions,” says Chief Inspector Armenio Pontes.

Portugal’s Special Counterterrorism Unit has already dealt with several cases of radicalized youth ready to carry out violent attacks. Pontes believes they all, including Mikazz, share certain traits: “They tend to be very introverted and have difficulty integrating socially in real life. They have very low self-esteem and seek refuge in an environment where they build a sense of belonging. They also have a fondness for extreme violence in films and TV series.”

However, his defense lawyer, Carlos Duarte, in an interview at his office in Porto, described Mikazz as a “normal” young man, from a “structured family,” with no problems in his school environment. After his parents’ separation, they shared custody of Mikazz, who lived with his mother, her new partner, and his brother. He attended a vocational training center in his hometown. His family’s main concern is that Brazil may request his extradition.

Because it was in Brazil where the most serious crimes occurred and where new school attacks and other crimes were being planned. The Sapopemba school massacre illustrates the group’s dynamics, as perverse as they are terrifying. Luluzinho joined The Kiss seeking a community of racist kids and refuge from school bullying. He would self-harm in front of everyone. To prove his loyalty to his new virtual peers, he offered to kill those who tormented him at school. Mikazz embraced the idea, convinced, according to the prosecution, that it would bring visibility and power to The Kiss.

The Portuguese teen encouraged Luluzinho and instructed him to record the scene. Meanwhile, other members of the group threatened Luluzinho with reprisals if he backed out. He didn’t. On October 23, 2023, he left with a .38 revolver that his father had kept hidden since his days as a security guard and fired without selecting victims. “What hurts the most is that we were friends. What was going through his head? Why did he do this to me?” reflected E., 16, days later in a televised interview.

Luluzinho was tried, convicted for the murder of a girl and for injuring three others, and placed in a juvenile detention center. He will remain there, subject to socio-educational measures, until the teams of psychologists and social workers determine that he can be released, explains his lawyer Douglas Oliveira by phone. His recent request for partial release was rejected.

After the Sapopemba massacre, Mikazz continued instigating attacks from his phone for six months. His ability to control others remotely was limitless. He encouraged Matiaz, a 13-year-old Brazilian undergoing psychiatric treatment, to kill himself. When he refused, Mikazz suggested he murder as many classmates as possible at his school in Carlos Chagas (Minas Gerais). He agreed, but was intercepted beforehand. He was carrying a knife with a 17-centimeter blade and a skull mask in his backpack. Convicted of terrorism, he is now being held in a juvenile detention center.

The young Portuguese and his lieutenants instigated other attacks in Brazil that were thwarted. In one case, they planned to charge admission to watch a homeless person be murdered live. In another, they encouraged Taiv_caniba4l, a 12-year-old also bullied and undergoing psychiatric treatment, to carry out a school massacre in Guarapari (Espírito Santo), which had even been announced the day before on Discord. Police detained him in time.

Brazil has experienced 27 school attacks in three years. What was once sporadic became recurring after the pandemic. In 2023, much of the media agreed not to publish the names, photos, or videos of the attackers to avoid glorifying them and to curb copycat incidents.

The book Aconteceu com Minha Filha (It Happened to My Daughter, Geração Publishing) is a real account written under a pseudonym by a 55-year-old widowed father who describes the harmful online world his teenage daughter entered. Julia used to self-harm, and at 13, in the midst of a crisis, begged him to commit her to a psychiatric hospital.

“I wrote it solely to warn other parents, to draw attention to the issue,” he explains over the phone. “If I had read a book or a report like this, I would have found out about Discord earlier, taken her cell phone away, and we would have been spared 90% of this hell,” he says. Published two weeks ago, it is now the sixth best-selling book in Brazil. The proceeds will go toward digital literacy training in the public education system.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition