Goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes is held over claims he masterminded the kidnapping and execution of his former lover, Eliza Samudio
One of Brazil's best-known footballers was last night behind bars in a high-security Rio jail after allegations that he masterminded the abduction and execution of his former lover.
Police in Belo Horizonte, Brazil's third largest city, claimed that Bruno Fernandes, until recently captain and goalkeeper of Brazil's most popular club, Flamengo, plotted the killing of 25-year-old Eliza Samudio, who disappeared in June.
Edson Moreira, the homicide investigator in charge of the case, told reporters that while fans saw Fernandes as an "idol", the footballer was "a monster for what he did to this young lady".
"Bruno was there and he saw how the woman was completely broken," he said. "According to witnesses he accompanied Eliza to her sacrifice and to her death".
Samudio, a former model and actor, reportedly met Fernandes last year at a party and became pregnant during their first encounter. Police believe the 25-year-old player was infuriated by her decision to keep the child, who is now four months old, and claim that Samudio was lured from Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte, around six hours away by car, where she was killed by a former policeman named as Marcos Aparecido dos Santos.
Before her disappearance on 4 June Samudio had approached police to report receiving threats from the goalkeeper, who was recently linked with a multi-million dollar transfer to AC Milan. "You don't know me and you don't know what I am capable of – I'm from the favela," he allegedly told her, according to a statement given to authorities in Rio and reproduced in the Brazilian press.
While police have yet to find Samudio's body, investigators say they are certain she is dead, having been beaten, bound and then strangled in the former policeman's home. Police claim parts of her body were fed to a rottweiler.
According to Moreira, Fernandes was present when Santos strangled the former model. Santos's lawyer last night said his client denied taking part in the killing.
"Shortly before dying, she said: 'I can't take being beaten any more'", Moreira claimed, adding that her alleged killer had replied: "You're not going to be beaten any more, you are going to die".
As the scandal grew yesterday and TV news channels gave the case virtually uninterrupted coverage, candidates in the upcoming presidential election spoke out. "This is a barbaric crime," Dilma Rousseff, current president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's favoured successor, told the Record news channel. "The whole of Brazil is disgusted by such a barbaric and perverse crime".
Marina Silva, the rainforest defender who is also running for president in the October elections, told reporters the killing was part of a worrying trend of violence against women. "We have repeatedly seen this kind of episode against the lives of women," she said.
Recent months have seen increasing concern about the off-field actions of Brazil's high-earning footballers.
In May the Rio-born striker Adriano, who recently signed for Italian club AS Roma, was summoned for questioning after the Brazilian press uncovered photographs of him and a friend brandishing what appeared to be automatic rifles and making the sign for the Red Command drug faction with their hands.
Adriano denied the reports, claiming that one of the rifles was a Philippe Starck lampshade in the shape of a gold plated AK-47. But his exclusion from Brazil's World Cup squad was largely attributed to his troubled personal life and other reports about Adriano have claimed he has links to one of Rio's most notorious gangsters.
Earlier this year former CSKA Moscow striker Vagner Love found himself in hot water after police obtained a video showing the player at a dance party in Rio's largest slum, surrounded by men with assault rifles and a bazooka.
Speaking to the Guardian before the latest scandal involving Fernandes, the head of Rio's civil police, Allan Turnowski, said footballers who had grown up surrounded by drug traffickers needed to take greater care in their choice of friends.
"We know of their roots [in the favelas], the friendships they have there… But it is hard to explain to our kids – who see [these players] as idols – that [their idols] are hanging around with armed people, bad people, people who kill, rob and traffic drugs. [People] who do everything that we try and advise our children not to do," he said.
"The bad example they set for our children is what upsets us".
