A 37-year-old woman who was an instructor died in agony after allegedly being poisoned by her mother-in-law cheating husband and after she discovered his affair.
Larissa Talle Leoncio Rodrigues, had just learnt of her husband’s infidelity when she died on March 22 in Brazil.
Her partner, doctor Luiz Antonio Garnica, and his mother, Elizabete Arrabaça, were both arrested on suspicion of causing death by poisoning on Tuesday.
Rodrigues was reportedly planning on divorcing Garnica after finding out about his lover, but died at the couple’s apartments after being slipped a lethal dose of a powerful pesticide by her mother-in-law, say police.
Civil Police explained the toxicology report on Rodrigues’ body indicated poisoning by the deadly substance commonly known as chumbinho.
When her body was discovered, cops said Garnica’s behaviour caught their attention.
‘His involvement was quite evident to us by the way he found Larissa, she was already in rigor mortis. And he tried to clean the apartment as if he was trying to destroy the evidence for the technical expertise,’ said Detective Fernando Bravo, head of the investigation.
Garnica claimed that he arrived home and called out to his wife who did not respond.
He said that after searching for her in several rooms in the couple’s home, he finally found her on the bathroom floor unconscious.
Garnica claimed that as he is a surgeon, he picked Rodrigues off the floor before carrying her to the couple’s bed to carry out urgent emergency procedures. But when these proved unsuccessful, he then called the emergency services.
Upon the medics’ arrival, they confirmed the instructor’s death at the scene and case was registered as a suspicious death.
The results of the first examination of Rodrigues’ body reportedly came back inconclusive and indicated she had lesions in her lungs and heart, as well as ‘foam mushroom’ – a medical term for froth that commonly appears around the nostrils and mouth of drowning victims.
On Tuesday, the Civil Police served temporary arrest warrants against the doctor and his mother after the toxicology report indicated traces of lead in Rodrigues’ system.
