New Arrest in Marielle Franco Case
Over 5 years since the brutal assassination of Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes, Brazil's federal police move closer towards finding who ordered the killings
On Monday, July 24, Brazil’s Justice Minister Flavio Dino announced a new arrest in the 2018 assassination of Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes.
Maxwell Simões “Suel” Corrêa, a former fireman allegedly connected to the Escritorio de Crime organized crime militia, was taken into custody after defendant and alleged fellow militia member Élcio de Queiroz testified in a plea bargain negotiation, that Suel stalked Franco for 2 years and agreed to be the driver in the ambush operation, only dropping out at the last minute and replaced by Queiroz due to a mechanical problem with his car.
Photo: Maxwell Simões “Suel” Corrêa
During his plea bargain testimony, Queiroz stated that Escritorio do Crime member and neighbor of former President Jair Bolsonaro Ronnie Lessa (already in jail for his role in the crime), sat in the back seat of the vehicle and fired the shots that killed Franco and Gomes.
Queiroz said that on the day of the killings,he picked up Lessa and a bag containing automatic weapons in his house in Barra Tijuca, they drove to Lapa to an event that Franco was participating in and waited for her to leave. They trailed the vehicle and when it stopped at a red light on an empty street, Queiroz pulled up next to it and Lessa opened fire. Afterwords, they went to Lessa’s brother’s house in the Meier neighborhood, left the vehicle, and took a taxi back to Barra da Tijuca. The next day, Corrêa picked up the Chevy Cobalt used in the killings, changed the license plates, torched the car and disposed of the weapons in the ocean. Corrêa’s arrest raises the number of defendants in the case to three.
Circumstantial evidence and the Bolsonaros
Carlos Bolsonaro was a declared enemy of Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro City Council who refused to ride in the same elevator with her. The doorman at the Vivendas de Barra luxury condo complex where both Jair Bolsonaro and Ronnie Lessa lived initially testified that when Queiroz arrived at the gate that day, he said he was going to the Bolsonaro residence (Jair Bolsonaro was in Brasilia that day). When he was called into the police station to clarify his claim he backed down and denied it. Then he quit his job and left town. In November, 2019, President Bolsonaro admitted that he had confiscated all of the intercom recordings from the security gate of his condominium on the day of the murders to “protect them from being doctored”.
Photo: Vivendas de Barra, the luxury, beachfront condo complex where both ex-President Bolsonaro and alleged trigger-man Ronnie Lessa lived at the time of the crime
In January, 2019, it was revealed that both the wife and mother of Escritorio de Crime militia leader and former Military Police Capetian Adriano Nobrega had been employed in the Rio de Janeiro state congressional cabinet of Flavio Bolsonaro for over a decade. Nobrega went into hiding and was ambushed and killed in rural Bahia by a group of military police officers a year later.
In 2019, news came out that youngest son Jair Renan Bolsonaro used to date Ronnie Lessa’s daughter. President Bolsonaro said at the time that his son was a “stud” who slept with “everyone,” and that this was no sign of involvement in the crime.
A photo circulated on the internet in 2019, of Queiroz standing next to Jair Bolsonaro in front of his swimming pool, leading to speculation about their relationship.
Too poorly taken to be a photoshop, this photo of Élcio de Queiroz with arm around Jair Bolsonaro viralized in 2019
This year, after Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential personal assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, was arrested in the investigation, the federal police uncovered a social media chat message in which retired army officer and former candidate for Rio de Janeiro state congress Ailton Barros, told him that he knew who ordered Franco’s murder. Barros, who studied at the same military academy as Bolsonaro has bragged of being his friend for decades.
Fellow alumnae of Agulhas Negras Military Acadamy, Ailton Barros and Jair Bolsonaro
While it is clear none of these facts prove any causality linking the Bolsonaro family and the murders, at the least they show a pattern of relationships between the Bolsonaro family and a group of shady characters that begs for further scrutiny.
During the 4 years of the Bolsonaro presidency, solving Franco and Gomes’ murders was clearly not a priority for the federal police. Justice Minister Flavio Dino has repeatedly stated that solving the murders is a top priority of the federal government. The new arrest has risen hopes that we will soon know who ordered the assassinations of Marielle Franco and Anderson Gomes.
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