Perfectly Horrendous

 "Everything seems to indicate that Marcelo killed his parents and relatives."
Itagiba Franco, Sao Paulo Civilian Police homicide department

"He always told me he wanted to become a hired killer. He had a plan to kill his parents during the night, so that no one would notice and escape in the parents' car and live in an abandoned place."
Unidentified friend of Marcelo Pesseghini

"He was a boy who was loving and loved by all. He never even got into a fight at school. If it was Marcelo who did it, then it was a force of evil"
Sandra Alves Feitosa, Marcelo's cousin

Murdered: 13-year-old Marcelo Pesseghini is now believed to be the victim of a cover-up in the murder of his parents Luiz and Andreia. It is believed she may have been targeted because she was a police informant -- Mail online

Police in Sao Paulo, Brazil, have been busy investigating a grisly murder scene. One that is, furthermore, fraught with mystery and deep in disbelief. For this was, as his cousin testified, a child who was well loved and cared for. Thirteen-year-old Marcelo, with his angelic face, and the comfort of his emotional security well evidenced in a photograph taken with his parents -- both Sao Paulo police officers --  in all likelihood envisaged himself following in his parents' professional footsteps in his adult future.

Now the city of Sao Paulo is absent two serving police officers and one future member of the police force. A few days ago, on Monday, the bodies of St.Luis Marcelo Pesseghini, 40, his 35-year-old wife (and mother to Marcelo), Andreia Bovo Pesseghini, together with her mother, 65 years of age and the mother's sister were found shot to death in their home. No evidence of a break-in was seen, leading police to rule out "an act of revenge by a criminal group."

The ensuing investigation led police to the conclusion that the young boy killed his four family members on Sunday or early on Monday. After which he attended school, returned home in the afternoon, and then committed suicide. He died of a single shot to the head, his father's police revolver close by. The boy's mother had been on her knees in her bedroom when she was shot dead; all had been shot in the temple. The other three were found dead, in their beds.

A very heavy police-issue revolver that might be thought to be too awkward and heavy for a young boy to handle -- and a little boy who just happened to be a deadly-accurate shot.

Police theorized further that the boy could have been inspired by a 1974 family murder that itself inspired the horror thriller The Amityville Horror. They said that Marcelo Pesseghini had posted a picture of the "Ghost Boy" from Amityville, representing the phantom of the young teen who had been massacred with his family.

Dreadful assumptions, but the police obviously felt they had the inside track to solve the atrocity that had devastated a family. But things are never as simple as they seem at first, or are conveniently made out to be. Sometimes a theory is just that, a theory. And sometimes another theory raises the possibility of an entirely other explanation.

One has been advanced by the commander of the 18th Military Police Battalion where Ms. Bovo had worked in administration for the past sixteen years. She had, he informed a radio station, passed on suspicions about other officers, claiming they were involved in illicitly appropriating cash from bank cash machines.

She had, he asserted, given incriminating details relating to a number of colleagues suspected of alliance with a criminal gang that existed within the police force. Her insider knowledge had resulted in their removal from duties. None of the accused were yet charged with criminal acts since the investigation was ongoing. Those suspected of criminal involvement had been transferred to other police departments.

"Those ones, we removed them from the picture, those who were supposed to be part of the 'group' inside the battalion." Sao Paulo police are notorious for corruption, and numerous scandals have erupted with death squads within the force suspected of carrying out mass killings, extra-judicial executions. Six military police officers were charged in January with the deaths of seven people in a bar.
 
And, he added, he had serious doubts about Marcelo's role in the macabre deaths. Calling on lead investigators not to 'rule out' his hypothesis; that the boy could very well have been made a scapegoat for murders criminal police who wanted his mother dead, committed. "Let's not throw it out, let's look at things carefully, let's see if there is reasoning in what we already have, if the pieces of the puzzle really do fit together."

For his part, Police Chief Itagiba Franco, heading up the investigation, said he intended to examine Col. Pereira's accusations of police wrong-doing, and their possible involvement in wiping out the family to protect their interests from further investigation. He did also insist, however, that the new theory advanced by Col. Pereira, while interesting, "wouldn't alter the direction of the investigation".

Viva Brazil.