Brazilian tells court of chopping up Briton
From correspondents in Goiania | May 15, 2009
A BRAZILIAN man accused of murdering a British teenage girl told a court in central Brazil today how he stabbed her in a cocaine-fuelled frenzy and cut up her body.
Mohamed D'Ali Carvalho dos Santos, 21, told a judge and jury in the city of Goiania he committed the crime on July 26, 2008 because the victim, Cara Marie Burke, 17, had threatened to reveal his drug habit to police and family, news websites Globo and Diario da Manha reported.
She wanted money and "told me she was going to call the policeman she was dating to come and get her part of the drugs and sell it for cash", he said, claiming Burke had shared his cocaine and marijuana and that he had been taking cocaine for three days before the murder.
"When she had the telephone to her ear, I turned up the volume from the stereo, covered her mouth and began to stab her in the back" with the knife used to cut 50 grams of cocaine he had just put on the table, Santos told judge Jesseir Coelho de Alcantara.
"I didn't know what I was doing. It was only afterwards I saw what I did," he said, explaining that Burke had tried to grab the knife and he bit her while continuing to stab.
After she was dead, he said he took her body into the bathroom and took photos with his mobile phone. He then went to an all-night party.
The next day, he detailed how he bought a $US5 carving knife and dismembered the body.
"I put the torso in a plastic bag inside a suitcase. The head and limbs I put in plastic bags in another suitcase," Santos said.
Burke's torso was recognised by a friend in Britain who identified a tattoo in a television report.
After his arrest, Santos allegedly tried to offer a 70,000-real $US45,000 ($59,700) bribe to be let go, the court head.
Santos's defence lawyers argued their client should not be given the maximum 35-year prison sentence for murder because he was psychologically disturbed and drug-dependent.
A psychologist brought in by the defence, Fred Lacerda, told the court that Santos's mental profile was generally "equivalent to psychopathy, but clinically should be called 'antisocial personality shift'".
Throughout the one-day trial, Santos was mostly calm, sitting in jeans and a white T-shirt. He laughed occasionally, notably when his aunt talked about crimes he committed while a teenager.
He testified that, contrary to initial information from detectives, he and Burke were just friends, and not romantically or sexually involved.
He met her in 2006 in London, where both their mothers live. Burke came back to live on-and-off with him in Goiania to discover Brazil, he said.
Santos's girlfriend and mother of their eight-week-old baby, Helen de Matos Victoria, 19, testified that Santos has behavioural problems, but that she never feared for her own life.
But Santos's older brother, Bruce Lee dos Santos, said he had long been afraid of his brother because of his volatile temper and fascination with pistols and knives.
He also testified that their father, a policeman, had been murdered and cut up by unidentified assailants when they were young.
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