tomb steps, apparently dead, with his eyes bulging from their sockets. Joe returns in This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, in which it is revealed that he survived his encounter with Terezinha and Anthony's ghosts, though he was temporarily blinded. After recovering and going to trial, he is found not guilty for his crimes and returns to his mortuary business. Still desiring a son, he orders his henchman, Bruno, to begin kidnapping women from the town that he has dubbed superior, subjecting them to a series of tortures to see who endures. A woman named Marcia seems impervious to fear or pain, prompting Joe to declare her his "perfect woman", though she rebuffs him when he tries to make love to her while listening to the rest of the women being fatally bitten by venomous snakes. Joe permits her to leave alive, then sets his sights on Laura, the atheist daughter of a prominent colonel. Sharing Coffin Joe's beliefs, the pair become lovers, and Joe conspires to blame his crimes on the Colonel's protege. Although Laura becomes pregnant, both she and their son die in childbirth. Meanwhile, Marcia, wracked with guilt, confesses her experiences, and a lynch mob forms to pursue Joe. They chase him to a swamp, where he is shot. As Joe sinks into the water, a priest offers him salvation, and Joe agrees to die as a Christian before apparently drowning. Joe returns again in Embodiment of Evil, with a flashback revealing that Joe only momentarily faked his death, surfacing seconds later to deny God and mock the priest before blinding him with his fingernails. Captured and tried for murder, Joe is sentenced to 40 years in prison before being released onto the streets of 2008 São Paulo. Reuniting with Bruno, Joe discovers that a cult has formed around his teachings and beliefs. Joe begins dispatching his followers to bring him women, whom he subjects to mental and physical torture; several women voluntarily fall under his sway, including a eugenicist. Throughout the ordeal, Joe is haunted by visions of his past victims, as well as disturbing hallucinations foretelling his own death. Meanwhile, Joe is pursued by a fervently Catholic police captain and a mentally unhinged priest named Father Eugenio, the son of one of his victims. The pair ultimately pursue Joe to an abandoned amusement park, where he succeeds in killing the captain before himself being stabbed