RIO DE JANEIRO | Brazilian deputy Flordelis dos Santos, famous for having adopted fifty underprivileged children, has been accused of orchestrating the assassination in 2019 of her husband, with the help of several of her children, the prosecution announced on Monday.
Evangelical pastor Anderson do Carmo was riddled with around 30 bullets in June last year, at the age of 42, in the garage of the couple’s home in Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro.
“Flordelis orchestrated the homicide”, she convinced her sons to execute him and claimed that it was a burglary that had gone wrong, said the Rio prosecution in a statement, after the indictment of this evangelical and 59-year-old gospel singer.
She had previously attempted at least six times to poison her husband’s food or drink.
According to investigators, Flavio dos Santos Rodrigues, Flordelis’ biological son, shot Anderson, with a gun purchased by Lucas César dos Santos, the couple’s adopted son. Both have been in jail for a year.
Anderson was reportedly killed for exercising “tight control over family finances” and “preventing those closest to Flordelis from being treated any better than other members of the large family”.
In total, 11 defendants will have to answer in court, including Flordelis, who can be arrested if his parliamentary immunity is lifted.
“The MP is very disturbed by everything that is happening, because she is innocent,” said her lawyer, quoted by the local press. She was forbidden to leave the territory.
“The investigation showed that his whole image of altruism and morality was only a means to arrive at a financial and political position”, accused on TV Globo the commissioner Allan Duarte, of the civil police of Niteroi.
Flordelis was handily elected as an MP under the banner of the Social Democratic Party (PSD, conservative) in 2018.
Born in a favela in Rio, the “mom” of the inner city had four children with Anderson, then she adopted 50 babies, children or vulnerable adolescents, and founded an evangelical community.
His colorful story inspired a 2009 docufiction on TV Globo.