A 41-year-old woman, Marcia Martins Miranda, was allegedly buried alive in an abandoned house in the Rio Pequeno area of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, by her partner’s parents to enable them get custody of her children.
The woman was found beneath a concrete slab, after having arranged to meet her in-laws at a bank to open a new account for her children, reports Mirror UK.
Marcia, a social services manager, had recently separated from her partner.Her body was found in the house said to have been rented by her parents-in-law, Fernando Antonio Martins de Oliveira, 62, and Maria Izilda Pereira Miranda, 60.
It’s alleged that her parents-in-law hatched their plan because they were obsessed with the children and wanted to ‘have them as their own.’
Investigator Mario Sergio de Oliveira Pinto said: “She was convinced to get into the car and see the house.
“They went into the house and probably in the back room, they attacked the victim with a blow to the head, from there she could have been buried alive or asphyxiated.”
Pinto said he believed the parents-in-law had “absolutely” premeditated the crime, saying they “dug very deep” and put a concrete slab on top of the body once it had been buried.
He added, ‘The suspects rented the property three weeks before the victim disappeared.
They had all the tools to dig a deep hole and material to lay a concrete slab on top of the grave to mask the smell of the corpse.
“It appears they wanted to raise the children as their own. Relatives told us they even got the kids to call them mum and dad instead of grandma and grandpa.”
The body was reportedly found in a plastic bag.
Both suspects remain in detention and investigators say their son, the victim’s husband, was not involved in the crime.