On June 5, 2022, British journalist Dom Phillips and his Brazilian guide Bruno Pereira disappeared in Brazil’s Javari Valley, in the Amazon. Reporters investigated the illegal fishing gangs thought to be behind their deaths.

Perched on a pile of wooden planks on the banks of the Itaquai River in the Amazon’s Javari Valley, Dom Phillips sits listening attentively. Next to him, an illegal fisherman from the area talks with animation, gesturing to something outside the frame of the picture.

The photograph is one of the last ever taken of Phillips, an environmental journalist who was in the valley researching a book about how to save the Amazon rainforest. Two days after it was taken, he and Bruno Pereira, an expert on Brazil’s indigenous peoples, were gunned down while out on the river.

Five men have reportedly been charged over the murders in two separate cases. According to the indictments, they allegedly belonged to the same illegal fishing gang as the man pictured with Phillips, who goes by “Caboclo.” (Reporters couldn’t reach him for comment.)

The picture, taken from one of Pereira’s phones, was almost buried in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon forever.

His colleagues from a patrol within the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja) found the phone four months after his death when they were scouring the area for clues with a metal detector. The device, which was buried under a pile of mud and sticks, was so badly damaged it took months to extract the data.

“The phone spent months in the water before the river levels went down,” said Sônia Bridi, a journalist who was there at the time making a documentary about the killings for Brazilian streaming platform Globoplay.

The phone was turned over to police, who used pictures and metadata extracted from the handset to reconstruct the last moments of Phillips and Pereira’s lives.

The photographs were also entrusted to the “Bruno and Dom Project,” a collaborative investigation led by French nonprofit Forbidden Stories. More than 50 reporters have continued Pereira and Phillips’ investigations into the destruction of the Amazon, from land grabbing, and ranching’s ties to deforestation, to illegal mining and illegal fishing.

Last year police arrested three fishermen who are accused of killing the two men, though their trial is yet to begin. Their lawyer denied they had committed murder, saying Pereira had opened fire first.

Over the weekend, reports emerged that two other men had been charged in the second case, including the alleged mastermind of the killings, Ruben Dario da Silva Villar. Also known as “Colômbia,” he is accused of being the leader of the illegal fishing gang that killed Phillips and Pereira. His lawyer did not reply to requests for comment.

Alessandra Sampaio, Phillips' widow, said holding the killers to account would send a powerful message that the organized crime groups destroying the Amazon can’t operate with impunity.

“I want justice, but not for myself: for the protection of the Javari Valley and the Amazon,” she said.

A Deadly Encounter

It was in the Javari Valley — a region as big as Austria on Brazil’s western border that is home to the greatest concentration of indigenous people in the country — that Phillips and Pereira first met in 2018.

Pereira worked for the government to coordinate relations with isolated Amazon tribes, including those who only recently came into contact with the outside world, and he knew the area intimately. The two men stayed in touch after the trip, and Pereira agreed to guide Phillips when he returned to the Javari Valley last year.

Dom Phillips photographed by Bruno Pereira, two days before their murder, as he speaks with “Caboco,” an illegal fisherman from the Javari Valley in the Amazon. (Photo: TV Globo/Globoplay)

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