User:Paris1127/Murder of Araceli Cabrera Crespo

Araceli Cabrera Sanchez Crespo (July 2, 1964 – May 18, 1973) was a Brazilian girl from Vitória, Espírito Santo, who was murdered in 1973. Two men, sons of two of Espírito Santo's most prominent families, were convicted of her murder in 1980; after a judicial review, in 1991 both men were released and absolved of the crime. The case remains unsolved. In 2000, Brazil's Congress created the National Day to Combat the Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Adolescents (Dia Nacional de Combate ao Abuso e Exploração Sexual de Crianças e Adolescentes) to take place every year on 18 May, the anniversary of her murder.

Victim
Araceli Cabrera Sanchez Crespo was born in São Paulo on 2 July 1964, the second child of Spanish electrician Gabriel Crespo and Bolivian Brazil resident Lola Sánchez. As a baby, Araceli suffered health issues caused by the city's pollution, so the Crespo family left São Paulo and moved to the state of Espírito Santo, settling in a modest home on Rua São Paulo (today Rua Araceli Cabrera Crespo) in the city of Serra, just outside of the state capital Vitória.

Disappearance
Araceli's father was the first to notice her missing when on 18 May 1973 she didn't return home from her school, the Colégio São Pedro in the Praia do Suá section of Vitória. Fearing she'd been kidnapped, her family distributed her photo to local newspapers.

Six days later, on 24 May, a body was discovered in a thicket behind the Hospital Infantil de Vitória (Hospital Jesus Menino), a children's hospital in Praia do Suá. Though in an advanced state of decomposition, Araceli's father identified it as his daughter. The police, however, considered his identification unreliable due to the extreme stress the family was under, and at a later identification with other family members no one could definitively say the body was Araceli's. At that point, however, the authorities had decided the body was Araceli's, a contradiction that would not be resolved until mid-June.

After the press first reported on the disappearance, speculation and rumor spread. One lead the media followed said Araceli had been seen walking in the company of a blonde woman. In Nova Venécia, 250 km away, police were alerted to the presence of a child who looked like Araceli---responding officers determined that it was not her. The police arrested several suspects in the disappearance, including a fortune teller who claimed to have predicted a burglary at the Crespo home before Araceli vanished, but no leads panned out. After 30 days, the police had no leads and the press was still in a frenzy.

On 15 June, a suspected kidnapper contacted Araceli's family demanding a ransom of Cr$50,000 for her safe return. The family agreed to the ransom and awaited a call to arrange the drop-off, but it never came. Now a month after her disappearance, the press was becoming increasingly critical of the police investigation and even openly suggesting the Army or police in the city state of Guanabara, coterminous with Rio de Janeiro, investigate the kidnapping. On 19 June, Araceli's family offered a Cr$20,000 reward for any clue to her whereabouts.

Unprompted by the press, Espírito Santo police had already called in experts from Guanabara to reexamine the body found on 24 May. The expert Trajano Moreira de Carvalho on 20 June officially identified the remains as being those of Araceli Cabrera Crespo.

Investigation
The suspects in the crime were sons of two of the most prominent families in Espírito Santo: Paulo Constanteeno Helal, known as Paulinho, was the son of Constanteen Helal; Dante Michelini Júnior, known as Dantinho, was the son of landowner Dante Michelini, who was influential in the military regime of the time. In Vitória, the two were known drug users who also raped underage girls. They were even involved in the death of traffic policeman who had stopped them.

One hypothesis the police developed was that Araceli's mother had sent her to deliver an envelope to Jorge Michelini (Lola was alleged to be involved in the trafficking of cocaine from Bolivia to Brazil), uncle of suspect Dante Brito "Dantinho" Michelini, and that upon arrival Dantinho drugged, raped, and murdered her in an apartment in the Apolo Building near the centre of Vitória. At trial, however, the prosecution (and the testimony of Marislei Fernandes Muniz) had Araceli waiting for a bus when she was picked up by suspect Paulo Helal, driving a white Ford Mustang; per Muniz, he asked her to tell Araceli that "Uncle Paulinho" was asking for her to come home.

It was established that Araceli was kept imprisoned for 2 days after her disappearance, in the basement and on the roof of the Bar Franciscano, which belonged the Michelini family. Dante Barros Michelini, father of Dantinho, per the police, was aware of her presence. Dantinho and Helal, under the influence of barbiturates, allegedly biting her breasts, belly, and vagina. They took her to the children's hospital in agony, but died before they could drop her off. They refrigerated the body before pouring acid over it to make identification more difficult, and then dumped it in the thicket behind the hospital where they had originally planned to drop her off.

Paulo and Dantinho were the prime suspects, and the police had witnesses willing to testify against them; however, as the author José Louzeiro recounted in his book about the case Araceli, Meu Amor ("Araceli, My Love"), 14 deaths are associated with the case, ranging from witnesses to people involved in the investigation.

The case went cold at first, after Sergeant José Homero Dias was killed just as he was about to conclude the investigation: shot in the back multiple times. Clério Falcão, elected as a deputy to the Legislative Assembly of Espírito Santo on a campaign platform that included establishing a committee to investigate Araceli's death, managed to do so once in office. The commission concluded that law enforcement in Espírito Santo had sought to not involve the Helal and Michelini families in their investigation.

Paulo Helal's former lover, Marislei Fernandes Muniz, provided key testimony, alleging that Araceli had been drugged with a strong dose of LSD which she had not been able to handle. In October 1975, Araceli's body was transferred to Rio de Janeiro, where an autopsy was performed: Dr. Carlos Eboli found that the cause of death had been an overdose of barbiturates followed by compression asphyxiation.

Trial
The Helal and Micheline families hired of the best attorneys in the state to represent their sons. However, after trial in 1980, Judge Hilton Silly convicted the men of Araceli's murder, sentencing Helal to 5 years in prison and Michelini to 18. In 1991, both mens' convictions were reversed due to lack of evidence.