"They will not silence his voice' Grief and defiance as journalist's widow visits the site of his death

Alessandra Sampaio fell to her knees and wept as she clambered on to the boat's deck and came face to face with the remote riverside clearing where her husband's life was extinguished and hers was turned upside down.

- Tom Phillips

The sound of Sampaio's lament mixed with birdsong and the voice of an Indigenous shaman echoed through the jungle where the British journalist Dom Phillips and his Brazilian comrade Bruno Pereira were shot dead in June 2022.

"Dom and Bruno are here! Save them! Their spirits are lost here! We can't see them but they are here!" the 85-year-old medicine man, César Marubo, cried out, imploring his people's god and creator, Kana Voȧ, to guide their souls towards paradise.

"Take them by the hand and lift them up into heaven!" Marubo pleaded, his eyes also filling with tears.

On the riverbank before them, framed by Amazonian money trees laden with bright red fruit, two wooden crosses marked the spot where Phillips and Pereira were ambushed and murdered, allegedly by a trio of men accused of illegal fishing who are now in prison awaiting trial for the killing.

"What I most want is to leave this pain behind," Sampaio had said the previous evening, as she prepared to make her first journey to the place where Phillips's final reporting mission came to a sudden and brutal end.

Sampaio's visit, marking the second anniversary of a crime that shocked the world, was part of a deeply personal quest to come to terms with the loss of her husband, a longtime Guardian reporter who was writing a book about the Amazon when he was killed.

"I'm not angry. I've never felt anger... I just miss him so much," said Sampaio, wearing the wedding ring recovered from her husband's body around her neck.

But the pilgrimage was also designed to announce the creation of the Dom Phillips Institute, which will honour his legacy through educational initiatives raising awareness of the complexities and magnificence of the Amazon and its original inhabitants.