Overview
- Police say a 73-year-old French woman, a retired doctor living in João Pessoa, was killed in her apartment on March 8.
- Her 59-year-old companion is accused of placing her body in a large suitcase and paying a homeless man about 40 reais to burn it in the street.
- Surveillance footage reportedly shows the companion leaving the building carrying the suitcase two days after the killing.
- Preliminary findings cite thoracic injuries likely caused by a blunt object, probably a knife, with the full forensic report still pending.
- On March 12, as police moved to seek his arrest, the companion was found with his throat slit, and investigators are considering a local criminal faction’s retaliation as a working hypothesis.