A Bizarre Murder Mystery Grips Brazilians’ Attention

First he said he did it. Then he said he didn’t. Next he blamed the killings of the American couple on two thugs who scared him into taking the rap. Then he retracted that statement as well.

Jossiel Conceicao dos Santos, 20, is out of jail and about to undergo psychological testing. But as far as police are concerned, he’s still the prime suspect in a gruesome double homicide here that has gripped people’s attention with its bizarre twists and unusual cast, including the wholesome couple, a troubled handyman and a failed presidential candidate who has turned the investigation into something of a spectacle.

Since the discovery of their bludgeoned, mutilated bodies in their posh Rio home, the slayings Nov. 30 of Todd and Michelle Staheli have triggered headlines in a city where violent death is commonplace. Everyone, it seems, has a theory as to why the couple from Utah were slain in their bed while their four children slept: a contract killing, a robbery that went awry, revenge.

No reason has been ascertained by detectives, who have been stymied by a lack of physical evidence and, critics say, their own ineptitude in handling such a high-profile case.

Now, five months after the slayings, some botched police proceedings and legal wrangling in Brazil’s convoluted justice system have forced authorities to go back and “start from scratch,” prosecutor Ana Cintia Serour said.

“There are very strange things about this case,” Serour added. “It’s almost supernatural.”

From the first, there were elements that baffled police, clues that pointed in different directions -- or no direction at all. If it was a robbery, then why were items of value not taken? Todd Staheli’s Rolex watch lay untouched on a nearby table; the family’s expensive car sat in the driveway.

There were no signs of forced entry. In fact, investigators couldn’t figure out how the killer managed to get into the Stahelis’ exclusive, gated and guarded community, which is popular with diplomats and expatriates sent to Brazil on lavish executive packages.

Todd Staheli, 39, worked for Shell Oil Co. and had moved his family to Rio four months before he died. Michelle, 36, was an at-home mom. Together they made a handsome, successful foreign couple -- ripe material for the obsessive, often lurid media coverage that followed.

“First of all, it was because they were Americans. In Brazil, there are murders like this every day,” said Antonio Carlos Araujo, the public defender assigned to Dos Santos, seeking to explain the intense interest. “The second reason was [Todd Staheli’s] prominent position.”

Rumors sprang up that the killings were the work of hit men dispatched by possible enemies of Staheli in the murky world of global oil interests. Before transferring to Rio, his assignments included Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, but Shell maintains that Staheli never alerted the company to any death threats or fear on his part.

For a brief period, the detectives’ attention turned to the Stahelis’ 13-year-old daughter, thanks to a television appearance by Anthony Garotinho, a politician who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2002.

Now the security minister for Rio de Janeiro state -- his wife is governor -- Garotinho went on TV to display a toy hatchet that he said was discovered in the daughter’s bedroom, clearly implying that it might have been the murder weapon. A judge ordered the newly orphaned girl and her 10-year-old brother to remain in Brazil until the end of the investigation.

But tests for blood on the tiny hatchet came back negative and all four of the Stahelis’ children were allowed to return to Utah with their grandparents. Many Brazilians were shocked that Garotinho had tried to link the children to the slayings.

Other lines of investigation went nowhere. Police tried, but failed, to connect the Stahelis’ driver or maid with the slayings.

They apparently never thought to interview Dos Santos, the live-in handyman of the Stahelis’ neighbors. He was apprehended by security guards at the housing complex April 1 after he allegedly broke into the home of the Turkish consul, which is near the Stahelis’ residence. He then confessed to killing the American couple.

Within hours, police trotted Dos Santos before the cameras at a news conference presided over by Garotinho, who asked the young man some questions in much the same manner he used during his former career as a radio show host.

“It was me. Yes, sir, I did it with this weapon. A crowbar,” a handcuffed Dos Santos replied, indicating a tool on the table before him.

Garotinho pronounced the case solved, though he expressed doubts about Dos Santos’ stated motive: revenge for having been called a racial epithet, in Portuguese, by Todd Staheli.

The next day, Dos Santos recanted his confession, which had begun to look fishy after the Stahelis’ relatives said Todd spoke little if any Portuguese. The handyman’s new story was that he had been pressured into acting as an accomplice by two men, who then threatened to kill his relatives if he didn’t take the rap. Within 24 hours, Dos Santos went from suspected killer to protected witness.

Three weeks ago, police announced that Dos Santos was once again their prime suspect. They said DNA from traces of blood found on a pair of his shorts and on his backpack matched that of the Stahelis.

Dos Santos was back before a judge last week, offering yet another version of how he came to confess -- out of fear of police brutality and of Garotinho, he said. He maintained his innocence, suggesting that the DNA evidence had been planted. The judge refused to grant the prosecutors’ request to keep Dos Santos behind bars until trial and ordered psychological tests.

Now it appears as though the legal process may have to start all over because of a technicality involving the charges filed against Dos Santos. Serour, the prosecutor, is frustrated but thinks the case is -- finally -- a strong one.

“I’m convinced he went in there to steal,” she said. “In January, he was seen trying to change dollars.”

But Araujo, the defense lawyer, isn’t so sure. He fears that his client may be a scapegoat for embarrassed police officials desperate to close the case. If nothing else, Araujo said, Dos Santos’ short stature should make it obvious that he didn’t have the strength necessary to bludgeon to death a larger man like Todd Staheli, and also his wife, with such brutal efficiency and force that no one heard a cry.

“If he was involved, he didn’t do it alone,” Araujo said. “I’m not saying he’s innocent -- just that the evidence doesn’t match the facts.”