The father and stepmother of a 4-year-old girl were arrested on Thursday night (27), on suspicion of murder and hiding the girl’s body. According to the couple, she was dismembered and buried in the backyard of the house where they lived, in Guarulhos, in Greater São Paulo.
Emanuele Lourenco Silva Souza’s death occurred in September, according to police, but was only discovered after the father confronted guardianship council members about the child’s whereabouts and confessed to the crime.
The report attempts to locate the couple’s defence. The police did not say whether they had already appointed a lawyer.
Lucas Silva Souza, 29, was summoned to provide explanations after the child’s mother filed complaints of abuse with the Child Protection Board. Emanuele and another son had been under their father’s care for about two years, due to the medical treatment their mother was undergoing, according to police. The son had already returned to his mother’s house after being attacked.
According to the police report, counselors went to the couple’s home on Thursday and found only Manuela Cristina Cesar, 34, Souza’s wife. When asked about the child’s whereabouts, she seemed nervous. Emanuele was with her mother and they should talk to her father, he said, according to the police report.
The team returned at night and found Souza at home. When asked about his daughter, he said that the child was with her mother. The technicians then invited him to go to the headquarters of the Guardian Council, where they would talk about the issue.
At the scene of the incident, according to council members’ reports, he gave contradictory information and said that if he narrated what happened, he would leave in handcuffs. Then he confessed to the crime. The police were called and the couple ended up being arrested.
He told counselors that on September 15 he left Emanuele in Manuela’s care and went to work. When he returned, he found his daughter dead lying on the sofa. According to police records, when the woman was interrogated, she said that she killed the child because she urinated in the bed while she was sleeping.
The father stated before the Child Protection Council that he tried to call an ambulance, but Manuela stopped him, saying that they would be arrested. Souza also said, according to police, that he removed the body in front of the other two children and then buried it with his wife.
When formally questioned by the police, the father said that the relationship between his daughter and his stepmother was not good. He also stated that the woman had an argument with the child, but without violence, and that Emanuele fainted. He denied that he had assaulted his daughter before, but he stated that he had actually witnessed his stepmother assaulting her, and that he had not reported it for fear of losing custody of the girl.
Souza told the police that the couple decided to dismember the child and bury him on the interior balcony of the house, with the woman dismembering him.
Manuela told police she spent the afternoon with Emanuele and her two children, and noticed that the girl was “very quiet, as if she was feeling sick.” She stated that she did not provide assistance to the child. When the husband arrived, around 7 p.m., he saw the girl lying down, almost motionless. According to her, the decision to hide the body was up to her husband, even after he was alerted that her daughter was still breathing.
Asked if she had attacked Emanuele that afternoon, Manuela replied: “I won’t talk, because we will already go to prison.” She also admitted, according to police, that she helped hide the body.
The girl’s mother was present at the police station, but she was unable to give her statement because she was very shaken.
The incident was registered in Guarulhos IV District as murder, destruction, theft or concealment of a body. The civil police requested the preventive arrest of the couple and will conduct an investigation at the family home.