Nuno Melo, “Twinkle”
Conspired by a Portuguese expression and by stains on his hand. Nuno Melo, known as Twinkle, “was the worst person on the darknet when it came to child abuse.”
Nuno Melo He was arrested in June 2017, in Águeda, but only now have new details emerged about the international mega-operation that led to the capture of what is considered the biggest Portuguese pedophile.
“Twinkle”as he was known on the dark web and by authorities, the criminal appears in the documentary by the British broadcaster BBC, .
According to the documentary, the suspect was found in a remote area of Águedawhere he lived with his parents, after many months of searching.
Twinkle “self-proclaimed operator of the” Babyheart websiteavailable on the dark web, where sexual abuse of children was shared, researchers reveal in the documentary. “He was not only the administrator, but also a major contributor (…) there were times when he contributed an almost unbelievable amount of material. We could at that point attribute to him somewhere between 12 and 15 children [cujas imagens foram partilhadas no site]”.
“Twinkle was the worst person on the darknet when it came to child abuse”says the Portuguese investigator in charge of the case. “We started working with Interpol, everyone was after him.”
The documentary shows how Nuno Melo used several maneuvers to cover his tracks, but also how one of these maneuvers set him up. When writing in several languages online (including Portuguese), he confused researchers, until he made a mistake, using the typical and exclusively Portuguese expression: “it cost me the eyes of my face” (“it cost me my eyes”).
When an arrest in Brazil revealed a connection to Twinkle, investigators noticed similarities in handprints detected online in the abuser and on a Facebook profile associated with Portugal.
An international team went to Portugal to arrest Twinkle and, especially, seize the suspect’s hard drives. In an isolated house, almost in the middle of the forest, the BBC showed video details of the house and Nuno Melo’s arrest.
Inside the house, inspectors they found Nuno Melo with two children “about 5 years old”, in the bed in his room.
“He was surprised. Imagine a thin guy, around 25 years old, scared and, in a way, fragile”, says the Portuguese researcher in the documentary, who was present at the time of the Babyheart creator’s arrest.
Nuno Melo cooperated with the authorities in practically everything. He had the hard drives buried a considerable distance from home, in a forested area, where he had hidden thousands of child pornography files.
The bag with the evidence would have been buried hours before the police arrived. Nuno Melo allegedly abused the two children who were with him, filmed and photographed the abuse and, in the middle of the night, went to bury the evidence.
Melo was preparing that day to leave for a weekend of child abusepossibly with the same two children. His car was ready to leave in the morning, he later admitted: would meet another pedophile in an Airbnb to abuse several children.
The authorities held the meeting to detain the other suspect, “The Forgotten”, who arrived at the appointed location at the appointed time with Twinkle, on the same morning, accompanied by his two children, who would later be two of the victims of sexual abuse.
“The material published by Twinkle was brutal to see and hear”, confesses the North American investigator involved in the case.
Nuno Melo would later be sentenced to 25 years in prison for hundreds of crimes related to sexual abuse and pornography of minors. He is in Carregueira prison, in Chamusca, Santarém, serving 23 years in prison, after deducting two years. According to Correio da Manhã, he is in a ward for sexual offenders, with special protection.
