The Richthofen Case * Case Study * Estudo de Caso

It’s the kind of thing you hear about in the newspaper right when you wake up, cause everybody’s talking about it. This is how it was for the city of Sao Paulo with the Richthofen murder case.

Sao Paulo is the third largest city in the world. It’s only behind Tokyo and New York in size and population. It is by far the largest city in Brazil. Crowded, traffic is hell, but it has its charms. Nowhere in the world you eat as well as one does here. There are millionaires and miserable people. A city of contrasts. The richest nightlife, unlike nowhere else again. At Avenida Paulista, the heart of Sao Paulo’s huge financial center, people in suits cross the streets side by side with punks, with kids, with whites blacks and asians. There’s plenty of violence too, robberies, kidnappings, Primeiro Comando da Capital. We’re used to hearing about that all the time. A story like the Richthofen case, on the other hand, is very rare. It shocked the whole country.

On November 1st, 2002, Sao Paulo woke up with the news that the night before, a well-to-do couple from an upclass neighborhood had been murdered in their sleep. Manfred and Marisia Von Richtofen were found severely beaten, dead in a pool of blood in their own bed. He was an engineer for Dersa, the state of Sao Paulo’s department of roads and freeways. She was a psychiatrist, who held a successful clinic and had a large number of clients. They had money, a beautiful large house, they were respected and loved by their family and friends. The couple’s two children, Suzane,19 at the time, and Andreas,15, were said to be both out at the time of the murders – she was with her boyfriend, Daniel, and he was at a local lan house playing video games. When they returned on that Saturday morning, they found their house opened, the burglar alarm off, and their parents savagely murdered in their room. They immediately called the police.

Of course the police immediately got to work on trying to find a good reason for something this brutal – revenge? Maybe the work of a madman? One of Marisia’s patients? Some money from the Richthofens was missing, Manfred’s things all over the place in his study. But if pure and simple robbery was the motive, why not take all the other stuff?

Meanwhile, the country sadly watched a pretty 19 year old blond girl and her younger brother hugging and crying as if there was no tomorrow on their parents’ funeral. Family and friends gathered all around them for support, the girl’s 21 year old boyfriend Daniel always by her side, with red, swollen eyes.

It is not clear exactly when the police started suspecting Suzane, but we know that they checked pretty much everybody around her. Then they found out that boyfriend Daniel’s older brother, Christian, had bought a new motorcicle just a couple of days after the murder. He didn’t have a job at the time. Under questioning, Christian broke down and named the other two, Suzane and Daniel, as participants. He said he and his brother did the actual killings, but that it was all Suzane’s idea.


(more on the Richthofen case soon)

***

O texto em inglês acima é uma breve introdução do caso Richthofen. Aqueles que lêem este blog em português dificilmente precisarão ser relembrados deste crime tão repercutido e tão famoso no Brasil. Suzane Von Richthofen, 19 anos na época do assassinato de seus pais, foi julgada e condenada recentemente junto com Daniel e Christian Cravinhos – os irmãos que fisicamente cometeram o hediondo crime, em 31 de outubro de 2002.


(mais sobre este caso em breve)