Ex-lawmaker behind husband’s murder gets 50 years

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Former Brazilian congresswoman Flordelis dos Santos was sentenced Sunday to 50 years in prison for the murder of her husband in 2019, a Rio de Janeiro court ruled.

Famous for adopting dozens of street children from Rio de Janeiro’s slums, Dos Santos, 61, and her husband, pastor Anderson do Carmo, were a power couple in Brazil’s burgeoning Evangelical Christian movement until he died in a hail of bullets at their home in a Rio suburb in June 2019.

Prosecutors charged Dos Santos in August 2020 with “orchestrating the homicide, enlisting (several of her grown children) to take part in the crime and attempting to disguise it as an armed robbery.”

Prosecutors said the suspected motive was to gain power over the couple’s finances, which Do Carmo, then 42, managed with “rigorous control.”