Murder in Brazil #5 – The von Richthofen Case

Manfred von Richthofen.

When they hear that name, most folks think of this guy, the famous WWI fighter pilot shot down over the Western Front in April of 1918.

But in São Paulo, in the spring of 2002, everyone would have thought you were talking about someone else: a distant relative of the Red Baron who shared his name - and whose life also came to a sudden and violent end.

Here’s the happy family before the tragedy. The Brazilian Manfred was an engineer. His wife, Marísia, was a psychiatrist. Andreas, their son, was fifteen. Suzane Louise, their daughter, was just short of her nineteenth birthday.

They all lived in a comfortable house, beyond this wall, in the Campo Belo neighborhood of the city.

At the time of the murders, and for the previous three years, Suzane been carrying-on a torrid love affair with a young man her parents deeply disapproved of. Twenty-one year-old Daniel Cravinhos de Paula e Silva didn’t study, didn’t work and had introduced their daughter to drugs.

They pressured her to break-off the relationship. She refused.

And when they threatened to cut-off her allowance, she decided to murder them.

On the night of the 31^st of October, 2002, (Yes, I did say it was springtime; this is the Southern Hemisphere, remember?)  she took her brother to a cyber-café to meet friends and play video games. Then Suzane, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s brother, twenty-six year old Cristian, went to her home.

Earlier that evening, she’d disengaged the burglar alarm and turned-off the video security cameras. Upon arrival, she actuated the electric gate. They drove into the garage. The men put on hoods and entered the house.

She preceded them up the stairs to her parents’ bedroom, turned on the light in the hall, and verified that Manfred and Marisía were asleep.

Then she went downstairs and sat on the couch, in the living room, while her accomplices set to work with bludgeons they’d previously prepared.

The killers thought to make quick work of it, but they were in for a surprise:

In cases of severe brain trauma, when the individual doesn’t die immediately, the tongue often loses support at the base and drops back into the throat.

Causing a loud and most disturbing snore.

Daniel ran to the bathroom and came back with two wet towels. They put them over their victim’s faces in an attempt to drown-out the sounds. It didn’t work. So he ran down the kitchen, returned with a pitcher of water and set to drowning them with it.

That did it for Manfred, but not for Marisia. So they tied her head into a plastic bag until she finally expired.

Once it was over, Suzane came up for a look – and then she went downstairs and started ransacking the house.

The brothers did the same on the upper floor, all designed to make the house look as if it had been burglarized. But they didn’t do a good job of it. They left valuables, they left cell phones, they left a firearm, all things burglars would be unlikely ever to do. They did, however, take the von Richthofen’s stash of cash, a considerable amount of it in both US Dollars and Euros.

Then they left – and Daniel and Suzane checked-into a motel to establish an alibi.

Just before three in the morning they checked-out. Suzane dropped her boyfriend off, picked up her brother and they went home to “discover” their parents dead.

As the investigation progressed, it was ultimately discovered that, only ten hours after the crime, Cristian had bought himself a motorcycle, paying with thirty-six bills of one-hundred-dollars each. And he couldn’t prove where he got the money.

 They grilled him. He broke down. And then the others did too.

The investigation was over within a week.

But Brazilian law is such that, if an individual isn’t apprehended in the commission of a crime, it’s likely they’ll await their trial in liberty – and that’s what happened.

Suzane was free for a year, even launched a lawsuit to take over complete control of her parents’ estate (to the tune of more than five million US Dollars) and she might have won it, too, if investigators hadn’t feared for the life of her brother – and found a revolver hidden in a teddy bear in her room.

In July of 2006, almost four years after the murders, the trio finally went to trial. (There’s a considerable backlog of cases in the Brazilian justice system.)

The lovers were sentenced to thirty-nine years and six months each. Cristian got a year less.

In 2009, Suzane tried to get her sentence changed to house arrest. Her appeal was denied.

She tried again, two years later, with the same result.

But she’ll keep trying, and people who know about these things have told me it isn’t likely she’ll do all of her sentence as hard time.

In 2011, Andreas sued his sister for her half of the inheritance, including the money paid-out on her parents’ life insurance.

He won.

Leighton - Monday

Murder in Brazil #2

Brazilians have an expression: neste país, os ricos não vão para a cadeia.

It means, in this country, rich people don’t go to jail.

Not true in all cases, but…

…consider the case of Antônio Marcos Pimenta Neves, well-to-do, politically well-connected and a confessed killer.

The former managing editor of the Estado do São Paulo (Brazil’s newspaper of record; our equivalent of The New York Times) he spent four years carrying on a love affair with a young journalist named Sandra Gomide.

For much of that time, he abused her physically.

Finally, she summoned the courage to end their relationship and went to the cops. They photographed her bruises and abrasions and told Pimenta Neves to leave her alone.

He didn’t.

On the 20^th of August, 2000, he showed up at her family’s farm, in the countryside near São Paulo to force a reconciliation.

She refused.

So he drew this revolver and shot her.

Once in the back.

And then, to make certain she was dead, again in the ear.

Arrested, he was released to await final judgment in liberty.

Final, is the operative word.

Final, in Brazil, is after all appeals have been exhausted.

The constitution that defends Pimenta Neves’ rights is one of the most modern and democratic on earth.

It exists, in part, to make sure that no one suffers unjust punishment.

And, to that end, offers numerous safeguards, numerous opportunities for appeal.

Of course, you need good lawyers to take advantage of them.

Pimenta Neves has very good lawyers.

It took six years to get him convicted.

(Yes, he confessed, but, in Brazil, murder cases still have to be submitted to a jury.)

He appealed.

In 2008, his conviction was confirmed.

But then his lawyers sought grounds for a second appeal – and found them.

And have been finding other ones ever since.

He continues to inhabit his mini mansion in São Paulo.

He continues to spend summers at the beach in Guarujá.

In this cartoon, entitled Meanwhile, in Gurarujá, a guy’s wife is saying (black balloon) “Isn’t that Pimenta Neves, the guy who confessed to killing his girlfriend? Look, he’s got a new one.” The guy replies, “Be more discrete. Don’t comment on promiscuous relationships.” The new girlfriend is, of course, justice. And Pimenta Neves is declaring his faith in her.

People are outraged.

Pimenta Neves doesn't care. His permit to carry a firearm has not been revoked; he’s gone out and bought himself another pistol.

He’s 72, and in excellent health for a man of his age.

Meanwhile, Sandra’s father, four years younger than Pimenta Neves, living with the frustration of seeing his daughter’s killer getting away with it, has undergone quadruple bypass surgery, has had one of his legs amputated because of a circulatory problem, has lost his job and is living on a small pension.

Living, he says, for the day he’ll see Pimenta Neves behind bars.

But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Pimenta Neves is lucky to be Brazilian.

Leighton - Monday

Murder In Brazil #1

Someone commented recently that this blog is misnamed, that Murder Is Everywhere seems to deal with just about everything except murder. It wasn’t meant as a criticism, but it did give me pause. After all, folks, we’re crime writers. Writing about murder is our stock-in-trade.

So, this week, I’m gonna do it.

Let me start by asking you a question:

How many people do you know, know personally, who’ve been murdered?

Here in Brazil, unfortunately, it’s a pretty safe bet that most people know at least one.

Me? I know three. One was a young woman I’d known since she was a child of eight, another a close friend, and the third was my wife’s maternal uncle.

The sad reality about this place is that the great cities of Brazil have murder statistics that top those of many small countries – and most big cities in any country. When a murder occurs, the competition for media space is fierce. Many of them get no mention at all.

Over the course of a few posts, spaced about a month apart, I’m going to try to give you some feeling for what does get into print – and onto the television news. And with it, hopefully, furnish you with some insight into this country and it’s people.

If a given murder gets more than ten percent of the air time in the country’s most popular nightly newscast (Rede Globo’s Jornal Nacional) and then goes on to capture a front-page headline in my local newspaper (O Estado de São Paulo) I’ll consider it a candidate. If it goes on doing so for a week, I’ll write about it here.

So what makes for a “winner”? What propels a given murder to the top of the headlines?

Well, let’s see.

Brazilians love kids, so the killing of a child is usually a contender.

We had one of those in Rio de Janeiro this week. Not really a homicide, more like an accident. The cops were shooting it out with some bad guys, and an eleven-year-old boy got taken down in his classroom by a stray bullet. It hit him in the heart. He died on the spot. But the media storm over that one blew up and died down rather quickly.

Totally innocent people being murdered by the police is something else that usually attracts a few days’ frenzied indignation. We had one of those a couple of months ago in São Paulo. They took the victim, a motorcycle messenger, back to the precinct house and beat him to death. That crime, too, has pretty much sunk without a trace. Other murders by the police have longer-term repercussions. You might want to check out this one, which made world headlines back in 1993:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candel%C3%A1ria_massacre

And then there was the case of an attractive woman murdered by a major sports star. Even here in Brazil, that sort of thing doesn’t happen all too often. And last week, when it did, the case occupied fully twenty-percent of the Jornal Nacional for five nights in a row.

And takes center stage for this, the first installment of Murder In Brazil.

Here’s a photo of the victim, Elisa Samudio.

And here’s the guy who’s accused of killing her. His name is Bruno Fernandes, and he’s one of the biggest stars in Brazilian football. (Soccer.)

Bruno is the goalie for Flamengo, the Brazilian team that engenders the most fanatic support in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Elisa was one of his mistresses.

She got pregnant.

She even had the baby, although he told her not to.

And, apparently, she wound-up dead.

Apparently, because they haven’t been able to prove it.

According to a young man, a relative of Bruno’s who claimed to be in the know, she was spirited away to Bruno’s country house (above) and strangled.

The story goes that it was done for pay, and it was done by this guy, an ex-cop.

Who then cut her body into pieces and fed it piecemeal to his pack of ferocious Rotweilers.

Apparently there were some bits and pieces the dogs didn’t want, and they were buried in the cement poured to make some additions for his house.

But they can’t find those parts, and DNA tests with the dogs have been inconclusive.

And now the kid who squealed to the cops is changing his story.

And, as a result, it’s even possible that the superstar, now being held in police custody will get off. (Sound familiar, America?)

Bruno’s wife, with whom the baby was found, isn’t talking.

And neither is this woman, Fernanda Gomes Castro, Bruno’s current mistress, purportedly 

being treated for a nervous breakdown.

Leighton - Monday