The brutal murders of a British journalist and an Indigenous rights activist this month in the Amazon hit especially close to home for me. I knew them both; I know the community and the stretch of river where the killings took place. Most uncannily of all, I know the confessed killer. His name surfaced as a suspect within a few days of the pair’s disappearance on June 5 in the Javari Valley, an immense wilderness region of rain forest and snaking rivers along Brazil’s borders with Peru and Colombia.

Dom Phillips, 57, had taken time out from reporting for The Guardian newspaper to work on a book about the Amazon, and we had compared notes on several occasions about our experiences in