By Nehru Odeh
It is bizarre and blood-curdling but true. A 24 year old pregnant woman, Flavia Godinho Mafra, has been murdered by a friend’s partner who recently had a miscarriage but is obsessed with stealing a child.
However the spine-chilling thing about the murder is that not only was the pregnant woman murdered , the suspect excised the unborn child from her womb with a blade. The murder took place in Canelinha, in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.
Intriguing? Wait for this. According to Daily Mail, the suspect, who admitted using a brick to kill her after luring her to the scene of the crime on the pretence of a baby shower, also confessed to having become obsessed with stealing a child after she had a miscarriage earlier this year.
The baby girl, however, survived and was taken to the Children’s Hospital of Florianopolis, where she has been given antibiotics and pain medication for the injuries sustained when she was ripped from her mother’s stomach. She is also in good health.
Paulo Alexandre Freyesleben Silva, the detective handling the case also confirmed that the cause of death was a sharp cut to the abdomen and wounds from a brick .The 24- year old woman’s body , which had been dumped in an abandoned pottery yard, was allegedly found by the victim’s husband and mother at around 9am on Friday. Police later found it that the suspect and her husband had taken the woman’s body to the hospital. They have both been arrested.
According to police reports, the arrested woman, who was an old school friend of the victim, said she had lost a child due to a miscarriage in January and had become obsessed with stealing a child. Autopsy will confirm the state of the woman when the baby was removed: whether she was alive or already dead.
Flavia, who studied pedagogy and worked as a substitute teacher, was buried in the Municipal Cemetery of Canelinha after a brief ceremony.
Nehru Odeh is a Nigerian writer and journalist. Author of The Patience of an Embattled Storyteller, a book that foresaw the adoption, rape and murder of females by terrorists in Nigeria, his interests include popular culture, the arts, politics, business and sports.