Overview
- The underlying crime occurred in May 2012 when Marcos Kitano Matsunaga was shot and later dismembered, facts established by police evidence and court records.
- Investigators used security-camera footage, images of three suitcases, phone-location records and recovered remains near Cotia to link Elize Matsunaga to the killing and secure her arrest and confession.
- Elize was convicted of homicide and concealment of a corpse, had her sentence reduced by Brazil’s Superior Tribunal of Justice, served about ten years and was released on conditional liberty in May 2022 with the child remaining in the paternal family’s custody.
- Netflix released the dramatized film 'Elize: Sombras de una mujer' on July 22, 2026, and the movie has quickly entered Top 10 charts while foregrounding motives such as infidelity, stigma about escort work, custody fears and childhood trauma.
- The film joins a 2021 Netflix documentary that contains archival testimony, and the two productions have prompted renewed discussion about how dramatization and documentary sources should be weighed against the factual judicial record.