Authorities in Brazil have discovered the dead body of a woman inside a refrigerator after she was murdered by her daughter’s boyfriend.
Flávia dos Santos, 44, was killed following a fight with her 13-year-old daughter and her 22-year-old boyfriend at her home in the northeastern city of Maceió, the Alagoas Civil Police said.
Dos Santos’ daughter, whose name has been withheld because she is a minor, was taken into custody on Tuesday, March 5.
Her boyfriend, whose name has not been released, was also arrested Tuesday, March 5, and confessed to killing dos Santos. His father, 47, was apprehended for assisting them in hiding the body.
The girl’s boyfriend is facing murder, concealment of a corpse, and corruption of a minor, Alagoas Civil Police chief Thiago Prado said.
Prado told Brazilian news out G1 that dos Santos was angered last Friday night when she arrived home from work and confronted her daughter’s boyfriend, whom she previously banned from visiting the residence in the Maceió neighbourhood of Jacintinho.
The girl told police that they argued with dos Santos last Friday because she disapproved of her relationship with her boyfriend and did not want her to move in with him.
The teenager added that the discussion turned violent and that they hit her mother in the head. Dos Santos fell to the floor before her daughter’s boyfriend stabbed her multiple times with a knife.
The girl’s boyfriend told cops that she grabbed dos Santos and handed him a knife, according to Thiago. He stabbed dos Santos in ‘the skull, neck and chest region.’
The girl added that they cleaned the blood off the floor and then left the residence to sleep at a home they had rented to live in.
Her boyfriend’s father helped them place dos Santos’ body, which was wrapped with a blanket, inside a refrigerator and kept the corpse in it until Tuesday when he instructed his son to remove the body from the home.
They reportedly hired a driver on Monday night to remove the refrigerator from the house and transported it to a forested area about eight miles away in the town of Benedito Bentes, where the girl’s boyfriend and his father dumped the appliance.
However, the man became suspicious because the refrigerator was covered with tape and alerted the police.
Thiago told Brazilian news outlet G1 that the girl attempted to cover up the crime by pretending to be her mother and sending messages via WhatsApp to people who knew her.
‘She told Flávia’s workplace that she was not going to work because she felt ill and had a medical certificate,’ Thiago said. ‘So, neither her co-workers, nor her family, nor her friends missed Flávia.’
They thought, therefore, that it was justifiable that she was not showing up when in reality everything was done by her own daughter,’ said the police chief.
Prado added that her adult brother had moved out of the home because he had grown tired of the fights between his mother and his sister and her boyfriend.
He also indicated that they learned that the boyfriend was sexually active with the teen, a minor.
‘This has repercussions on the crime of rape of a vulnerable person,’ Prado said.
‘She was subjected to a corpus delicti and carnal knowledge examination and all of this was forwarded to the police station so that the crime could be investigated.’