José Ramos was born to Manoel Ramos—a cavalryman who fought under Bento Gonçalves da Silva during the Ragamuffin War— and Maria da Conceição. His childhood was shadowed by tragedy: during a family dispute, his father attacked his mother, prompting a teenage José to dangerously defend her with a knife, fatally wounding his father a few days later.

Seeking to reinvent himself, Ramos settled in Porto Alegre and became a police inspector. He established residence—either by purchase or lease—on the Rua do Arvoredo (now Rua Coronel Fernando Machado, 707), in a house originally owned by German butcher Carlos Claussner.

But the law didn’t suit him for long. One dramatic incident cast a lasting shadow over his career: Ramos was caught attempting to behead Domingos José da Costa—known affectionately as “Campara,” a local Robin Hood figure—under claims of an escape attempt. This brazen act led to his expulsion from the force, though he remained involved as a police informant.

Culturally sophisticated, Ramos still mingled with the city’s elite—attending performances at the newly opened São Pedro Theatre, where he met Catarina Palse.

From 1863 to 1864, a haunting terror gripped Porto Alegre’s Rua do Arvoredo. José Ramos, a former police inspector, and his Hungarian wife, Catarina Palse, orchestrated a chilling predatory campaign against vulnerable German immigrants. Palse, unable to speak Portuguese, exploited this language barrier and seduced potential victims in social hotspots—elite venues like the São Pedro Theatre—before luring them under false pretenses to their secluded dwelling.

Victims were enticed to appointments at Beco de Ópera (today’s Rua Uruguai), where Ramos lay in ambush. There, victims were robbed, beheaded, dismembered, and skinned with clinical efficiency. The butcher, Carlos Claussner, allegedly helped dispose of the evidence—he suggested turning the flesh into sausages for sale at his shop, while disposing of bones in acid or by burning.

By August 1863, the disappearances had created a wave of panic throughout the city. Claussner, fearing exposure, planned to flee to Uruguay. Ramos, sensing the threat, murdered Claussner and buried him in the backyard, then moved into and took over his butcher shop—claiming it had been sold to him. But operating the business proved disastrous; neither Ramos nor Palse knew how to run it.

The murders came to light in 1864, when two traveling salesmen—José Ignacio de Souza Ávila and Januário Ramos da Silva—were reported missing after their last known visit to Ramos’s house. At the police station, he claimed they left for São Sebastião do Caí early the next morning. His answers didn’t sit right with the delegate, who ordered a search of the house. Ramos had kept personal items from the victims.

Inside the basement, investigators found decomposing body parts—identified as Claussner. In the well lay the mutilated bodies of the two merchants—and the butcher's dog, torn open in a macabre display. Palse, by then arrested for unrelated offenses, eventually confessed to six murders, revealing the human-sausage operation; her diary became a cornerstone of the case.

At the trial, Dario Rafael Callado—both Chief of Police and presiding judge—pushed for proceedings to move fast, likely to avoid political embarrassment, since Ramos had been his informant. Ramos was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging, later commuted to life imprisonment. He denied guilt until his death in 1893 at Santa Casa de Misericórdia Hospital. Palse received a 13-year sentence, and was released on May 6, 1891.