Brazilian couple identified as Maria Izilda, 60, and Fernando de Oliveira, 62, have been accused of burying their daughter-in-law alive to gain custody of their grandchildren.
41-year-old Marcia Miranda, who split with her partner, the couple’s son, and the father of her four-year-old son and nine-month-old daughter, was found 1.7 metres underneath a newly built patio in a rented house in a residential suburb of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The social services manager, reported missing on October 2 after having arranged to meet with the couple at a bank to open a new account for her children, is believed to have been lured into the car under the pretense of seeing the property, which had been rented for the sole purpose of burying the body.
The couple accused of burying their daughter-in-law, were said to have hatched their plan because they were obsessed with the children and wanted to ‘have them as their own’. It was gathered that the elderly couple rented the property for three weeks before the murder. A few days before the crime, they also acquired the necessary tools and building materials.
However upon investigation, husband and wife claimed Miranda “was kidnapped by some criminals in the car”. However, this was contradicted by the surveillance footage and witness statements. According to the police, their daughter-in-law’s body was found so badly decomposed, that she could only be identified through her fingerprints.
Detective Mário Sérgio de Oliveira Pinto said:
“We believe Marcia was lured to her death by the suspects on the pretext that they had rented a property for her and the children to move into after she separated from their son.
“She was invited to enter their car to see the house, there they got access to the property and probably in the last room they hit the victim with a blow to the head, and from there she may have been buried alive or asphyxiated.”
