I Used To Love You

Dawn was breaking over the city of São Paulo one March morning in 2017. A 39-year-old resident of the south side awoke to a text from her next door neighbor: "I think there's someone in my back yard". Some of the most affluent neighbourhoods in the city are located in the south side, São Paulo, however, is a metropolis with all of the pros and cons that come with the title. When it comes to surprises such as these, no one is completely safe.

Police had already registered an increase in breaking and entering cases in the area. The officers who responded to the call were not surprised by what they found. At least not at first. The trespasser had skin as dirty as his torn clothes, his body was covered in scratches from jumping the fence, and his eyes looked in fear at the policemen. He refused to give them his name and officers found that most of what he was saying didn't seem to make sense.

"You don't want to know about my life", he said as clarity seemed to straighten his thoughts, and told police he had mistaken that house for his own (clarity seemingly leaving his mind again). After an ambulance drove the man to Campo Limpo Municipal Hospital, police checked the address to the man's house about 2km away. They found, not only a mansion, but they were near by the site of one of São Paulo's grimmest crimes.

At the hospital, staff found a jewelry box in the man's possession. It contained one golden medal engraved with the surname that became known all over Brazil in the wake of the aforementioned crime. The box had not been stolen, it belonged him, Andreas Von Richthofen.

* * *

October 31st 2002, authorities receive a call regarding a possible robbery in the rich neighbourhood Campo Belo in São Paulo. Alexandre Boto, the first officer on the scene, found 13-year-old Andreas, his older sister Suzane, and her boyfriend Daniel Cravinhos on the sidewalk in front of the mansion. The siblings told Boto they arrived home at 4 AM. The lights in the house were on, but the fret of facing their angry parents changed into a different type of fear when Suzane noticed the front door was open.

The two went inside anyway. Andreas first checked the library his father used as his personal office. The windows were open and the room ransacked. Shocked by the sight, Andreas forgot the room was equipped with a panic button and, instead of activating it, called out for his parents. He got no answer.

Fearing there may be someone in the house, Suzane handed her little brother a kitchen knife and the two ran out to the sidewalk. She called her boyfriend and told him her house had been robbed. On his way to the Richthofen mansion, Daniel called 190 (the number for emergency services) to alert police of his girlfriend's suspicions. Meanwhile, the siblings called the landline to their home hoping their parents would come to the phone. They never did.

Manfred Von Richthofen was a German immigrant and held the title of director of engineering at DERSA since 1998 (the state-owned company that oversees São Paulo’s highway system). He was chief engineer in the designing the Mario Covas beltway, which connects all 10 state highways as it circles the largest city in South America. The 177km (110 mi) project is estimated to be completed in 2022, totalling two decades to complete the project.

While studying at University of Sao Paulo (USP), Manfred met Marísia Abdalla. Originally from a small town, Marísia scandalized her Lebanese family when, in 1966, she decided to move to the capitol to attend med school and specialize in psychiatry.

Where Manfred was described as well humored but introverted, Marísia was extroverted and the most popular member of the Richthofen clan. People who knew the couple said their differences completed each other. Together, the couple finished their studies in Germany, where they lived until Manfred received a job offer back in Brazil. The two returned to their home state and settled for good.

The couple’s first child, Suzane was born on November 3rd 1983; four years later, they had their second child, Andreas. The children, like their parents, were educated and spoke multiple languages. Friends and employees of the family said the siblings had a good relationship and never fought – a friend of Suzane’s said the two “protected one another”.

By 2002, Manfred’s paycheck at DERSA was estimated at R$11 thousand. Marísia started her own private practice. Her monthly earnings were estimated at R$20 thousand.

The family lived in a mansion estimated at R$400 thousand, equipped with a pool and a large yard, but rarely threw parties or had people over in any way. Neighbours said, from the glimpses they sporadically got of the Richthofen home life, they seemed to be like any other family with all of it's virtues and defects.

That Halloween morning in 2002, Boto and another officer entered the mansion and found Manfred’s office in disarray as Andreas had described. Every other room on the ground floor, however, was in order. The two men then made their way upstairs to the bedrooms. The first was a messy girl’s bedroom, her stuffed animals tossed on the floor, the closet open and searched. The second room was the boy’s, one of his hobbies displayed as a model airplane hanging from the ceiling. The room was in order except for three pillows under the covers to simulate a sleeping person. Standing at the threshold of the third bedroom, under hallway light, the officers saw Manfred’s bloodied body on the bed. His lifeless hand seemed to reach for the gun that laid on the ground next to him.

Upon closer inspection, officers found that the brain matter spattered on the headboard belonged to the second body on the bed, Marísia. She had a wet face towel stuffed in her mouth and a jar of water - with no glass - was sitting on the nightstand. Still on the scene, Boto eliminated the possibility that Manfred committed suicide, for the couple had not died of gunshot wounds, but had sustained multiple blows to the head with an unidentified object.

Unsure of how to tell two teens that their parents had suffered a painful death, Boto asked 21-year-old Daniel to break the news. The officer watched Daniel hug the siblings, huddle and whisper. Andreas broke free from the group and paced on the sidewalk in shock. Suzane walked up to Boto and asked him “What do I do now? What’s the procedure?”

Boto sealed off the scene, called an ambulance to remove the bodies, and the homicide department of the SP-PD. By the time forensic expert Ricardo Salada got to the scene at seven in the morning, the media circus was already roaring at the gates, desperate for any piece of information on the murders. 2002 saw, in São Paulo alone, 12,535 registered murders, but this was different. A once in a lifetime story. A brutal murder of a prominent, rich couple in their mansion, in their own bed.

When Salada’s team got the call that morning, they were told they were investigating the scene of a robbery followed by murder. After entering the house, however, the team saw what Officer Boto noted before finding the bodies. The office and two bedrooms had been searched, but the rest of the house was in perfect order “as if organized with a ruler” Salada remarked, then added “It looked like a model home, like no one lived there”.

Upon further inspection of the scene, the details began painting a clearer picture of the crime. The jewels that littered the couple's bedroom floor were Marísia’s cheaper pieces that would not sell for much. The only tampered part of the closet was the shoe rack where, behind a false back, Manfred kept the gun that lay next to his body.

Manfred suffered blows that broke his ribs and sustained an injury to the skull that killed him almost instantly. Marísia's fingers were crushed, showing that she reacted to at least the first blow to her head. Forensics determined the time of death to be between 10 PM and 12 AM, and that if either Manfred or Marísia had been attacked first, the other would have woken up. There had to have been two perpetrators.

“The scene talks, you just have to speak the same language. We could see that whoever committed this crime knew the house because their M.O. did not match that of a burglar.” said forensic expert, Ricardo Salada.

While forensics swept their home, Andreas sat at the police station, coiled and visibly shaken, his glassy eyes stared into a void that threatened to swallow him whole. That night, Andreas had lost not only his parents but also his best friend. Like his father, Andreas was an introvert, described as a polite and intelligent young man. Every night he would wait for Manfred to get home so the two could talk about their day. At the family ranch, the two shared a hobby of woodwork and cared for the garden together. And as confusion and grief grew inside of Andreas, his older sister Suzane leaned on her boyfriend’s shoulder and napped until the time came for the siblings to give their statements.

The day before the murders, Suzane told Andreas she was sneaking out with Daniel to celebrate her 19th birthday at a motel and offered to take her brother to an internet café as his share of the celebration. Their parents were early sleepers and were already in bed by the time their children left the house.

Around 10:30 PM that night, Andreas placed 3 pillows under his covers and snuck out. Daniel picked him up and headed back to his house where Suzane was waiting and where Andreas kept a secret from Manfred and Marísia. A Mobylette he bought and maintained with Daniel’s help. Andreas and Suzane each had an allowance of around R$2,000 a month. While Andreas saved most of his money and managed to buy his own motorbike, Suzane often used her to buy gifts for her friends and boyfriend.

Suzane drove the gold VW Gol her parents had given her as a present, and Andreas followed on his bike. Rides like these, along with secretly smoking marijuana in the backyard of the mansion, were pastimes the siblings shared behind their parents’ back. Suzane and Daniel dropped Andreas off at the internet café and drove back to the mansion for Suzane to pick up some cash. The couple went on to spend their night at the presidential suite of a motel. As proof of their alibi, Daniel produced a receipt for their stay. “Receipt #001” joked Ricardo Salada.

A few minutes before 3 AM, the couple went back to the café and took Andreas on a joyride before ending the night. He got to ride his bike through the city avenues with not a care in the world. They dropped Daniel off at his house, and arrived back home sometime between 3:55 and 4 AM.

During her statement, the officer who spoke with Suzane noted she had no questions regarding what would happen to her parent’s bodies or who was in charge of the funeral. Instead, she asked the officer how soon she could sell the family’s cars and if she and Andreas would be allowed to take a trip to the family’s vacation house in Portugal in the next week to “cool their heads”. After giving her statement to police, Suzane told the officers “I want you to torture and kill the people who did this to my parents”, then turned to Daniel and smiled.

Investigators who spoke with Andreas, however, believed he knew more than what he was saying or, maybe, was covering for someone. As sweat ran from his forehead and tears from his eyes, the officers continued to aggressively remind Andreas of the brutality of his parents’ murder and that, if he had anything to do with it, he would have to pay for it. After repeating the same story again and again with nothing new to add, Andreas tried telling the officers about his sister’s relationship with Daniel. The romance between the two was the most recent cause of tribulation in the Richthofen home.

* * *

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in August of 1999, the four members of the Richthofen family went for a walk at Park Ibirapuera, where Daniel Cravinhos was flying one of his model airplanes. Andreas was the first to approach Daniel, interested in learning more about the aircraft. Suzane, however, was interested in the man himself.

Manfred and Marísia agreed to pay for Andreas to attend classes on building and flying model airplanes with Daniel. Two years older than his sister, Daniel quickly became an older brother figure to Andreas, taking the boy biking and kart racing. The Richthofen siblings eventually met Daniel’s brother Cristian, who quickly became a close friend as well.

Sixteen-year-old Suzane made the first move by asking her little brother to deliver Daniel a note. They started a relationship and, soon enough, friends of the couple started noticing a change in behaviour in both of them. The two barely spent any time with anyone other than each other. Some even said it seemed like one’s life depended on the other. They often spent their nights in motels, smoked marijuana together, and experimented with ecstasy.

Andreas never stopped being a part of their relationship. The couple took him on joyrides, taught the 12-year-old how to smoke marijuana, and even snuck him into a motel once so the three could smoke together in a room.

Daniel made a living off building and selling model airplanes, maintaining them, and selling parts. At R$ 1400 per built aircraft, Daniel would, on average, sell one or two models per month.

His brother Cristian, at the time, had a history with drug abuse and was still indebted with drug dealers. Six years older than his brother, Cristian had already been to rehab to treat his cocaine addiction and had served as a police informant.

Oblivious to the couple’s intimate life, Manfred and Marísia believed the relationship was a fling. They were wrong, and their daughter’s relationship with Daniel not only lasted, but grew stronger. The first time Manfred and Marísia were truly upset at the relationship, was when Suzane blew off her own high school graduation party to be with Daniel.

In 2001, Suzane graduated from a bi-lingual German high school, but failed to get into USP Law, one of the oldest programs and largest law libraries in the country. Manfred and Marísia then decided to transfer Andreas to a better high school so as to guarantee his enrollment in the university of their choice. Suzane enrolled in the family’s second choice of school, the São Paulo branch of the private catholic university PUC. There, Daniel became a familiar face to Suzane’s classmates, who said she would only go out, go to parties, or travel with Daniel. He would even tag along to class visits to places like the São Paulo Court of Justice.

In order to maximize his time with Suzane, Daniel skipped his own model airplane lessons and Brazilian jiu-jitsu practices. The boy littered his walls with pictures of the couple together and got a custom pillowcase with Suzane’s face printed on it.

The little mementos, Daniel’s new clothes, the stays at motels, and eventual loans started weighing ever heavier on Suzane’s pocket. Despite her allowance, she started asking Manfred for more money, money he knew would be spent on or with the boy.

By the end of 2001, Manfred and Marísia were already preoccupied with Suzane’s lack of interest in her schooling. Then, they found out about Daniel and Cristian’s history of drug use and tried talking their daughter into breaking off the relationship. Instead, Suzane began lying to her parents, telling them she was spending the night at her friends' house when she was actually at Daniel’s. The lies worked until one April night in 2002, when Marísia called Suzane’s best friend’s house to find her daughter was in fact not there.

The next morning the young woman walked into the house to find her parents waiting to confront her about the lie. After she came clean, Manfred and Marísia forbade Suzane from seeing Daniel all together. Their relationship with their daughter would never be the same. Defying her parents' decision, Suzane stayed with Daniel and pulled away completely from her family. Where before she spent whole afternoons talking to her mother, she now fought her parents every time Daniel came to the house.

When Mother's Day rolled around the following month, the family decided to have lunch at a nice restaurant to celebrate. Suzane refused to go. The argument soon grew into a fight that ended with the eldest child cursing at her father and Manfred slapping his 18-year-old daughter across the face. That was the first time he’d raised a hand at any of his children. The young woman stormed out claiming she would not come back.

She came back later that night – not wearing the ring Daniel gave her to wear on her left ring finger – and told her parents the relationship was over. The family celebrated, but Andreas knew the couple was still together.

In July 2002, Manfred, Marísia, and Andreas took a month long trip to Europe. Suzane chose to stay home. During that time, Daniel moved into the house where they got to live their forbidden romance away from the Richthofen’s reproving eyes. “It was like a dream” to Suzane.

By the time the family returned, the relationship was no longer a secret and Suzane asked her father to buy her a studio apartment. Manfred refused and told his daughter to work for her money and use it to buy her own place.

In early September of 2002, the police received a call to the Richthofen mansion. They arrived to find Manfred in his house clothes and flip flops having a yelling match with 21-year-old Daniel and Suzane trying to calm both of them down. Police managed to separate the two men, who walked away mumbling threats at each other. Manfred reportedly said he would “break that kid”. A calmer Daniel explained that Manfred threatened to beat his daughter if the couple didn’t break up.

This was the third time police had been called to the house to break up or prevent a fight between the two. Twice, earlier that same year, Suzane tried sneaking Daniel into the house at night. Every time, Manfred stopped them and fighting ensued.

* * *

On November 1st 2002, the deputy in charge of the case, Dr Cíntia Tucunduva, visited the Richthofen house. Once inside the mansion’s tall gates, she rang the doorbell and waited a long time in the yard, where a sign reading “Here lives a happy family” adorned a wall. When Suzane finally came to the door, it was clear she had been at the pool, where she and Daniel were celebrating her 19th birthday.

Cigarette in hand, Suzane showed Tucunduva the family home, “like a guide in a museum on a monitored visit” the deputy remarked. Suzane showed the deputy to Manfred and Marísia’s room and informed Tucunduva she had already gotten rid of the mattress “because it was dirty”.

As days passed, investigators kept finding inconsistencies with Suzane and Daniel’s statements, and the couple were asked to return to the homicide division on the request of the investigators multiple times.

During one interview, Suzane recalled seeing a briefcase on the floor of her father’s office that had been cut open. She told investigators the case was where her father kept a large amount of money in reais, American dollars and euros, and recalled the exact total amount that was in the briefcase. Forensic expert Ricardo Salada was the one who found the briefcase the morning after the murders, and only found the rip on the leather once he picked up and handled the case.

At that point in the investigation, it was clear the culprit must have been someone who was acquainted with the house. Suzane recalled a maid that threatened her parents in the past and an old fight with a family friend as possible suspects. Both were quickly cleared by investigators. Not only did they lack a reasonable motive but neither knew the house so well as to leave it so organized after robbing it.

A week after the murders, police received a call from an auto-retailer who told them that, on November 1st, someone had purchased a motorcycle and payed in American dollars. Because the case was so recent, everyone in the city – if not the country – followed every development. The seller made a note of it and informed the police. The buyer was Cristian Cravinhos.

Investigators suspected Daniel’s father might have been involved in the crime and were about to call him in to be interrogated alongside his son and daughter-in-law. Cristian’s extravagant purchase, however, caused investigators to drop their suspicions of his father and earned him, his brother, and the Richthofen siblings yet another trip to the homicide division to be questioned separately.

Convinced that at least one of the four young suspects was involved in the murder, deputy Tucunduva took to her office to write up a pre-emptive arrest warrant. Before she finished the document, one of the interrogating officers knocked on her door and said “it’s over”.

Cristian, who was interviewed by two veteran homicide detectives, broke and confessed first. Daniel, unable to keep the story he had been telling straight, soon confessed as well. Suzane was the last to give up the lie.

With that, the trio was promptly arrested. A few days later, they were taken back to the mansion to separately re-enact the events of that night.

* * *

Sometime in late September or early October, Daniel approached his brother, told him of his and Suzane’s plan to kill her parents, and asked for his help in committing the crime. Cristian did not give his brother an answer right away and, up to October 30th, was unsure if he would take part in the plan.

Daniel reminded Cristian of his share of the profits and told him to think about it. Should Cristian change his mind, he should wait for Suzane and Daniel to pick him up on the night of October 31st at a designated intersection.

After dropping Andreas of at the cyber café, Daniel and Suzane drove a few streets down and found Cristian waiting for them at the agreed spot, ready to take part in the crime.

A few days before the crime, Suzane turned off the alarm and camera system in her parents’ house. The trio arrived at the mansion a few minutes before 11 PM. They did not know it, but a watchman made a note that Suzane’s car pulled up to the house at the same time the football (soccer) game he’d been watching ended. Both Daniel and Suzane maintained in their stories that they went back to the house that night, but their timelines never matched.

Suzane unlocked the doors and led the brothers inside. On the second floor, she turned on the hallway lights and looked in the third bedroom to make sure her parents were asleep. She met the brothers at the bottom of the stairs and gave them the OK to go up to the couple’s room. To prepare for the murders, Daniel and Suzane watched a TV crime show. The brothers copied the criminals' ensemble of medical gloves and stalking caps as a way to avoid fingerprints or hair at the scene.

By hallway light, the brothers walked around the bed, Daniel on Manfred’s side and Cristian on Marísia’s. The two raised their weapons and brought them down hard on the heads of the sleeping couple multiple times, denying them any chance of defense.

Once the beating ceased, a snoring sound filled the room. The sound was coming from Marísia’s mouth. The violence of her injuries had sent her into a deep coma and the sound was, most likely, her death rattle. Scared and frantic, Cristian took the face towel from the couple’s ensuite bathroom, covered Marísia’s face and doused her in water, before finally stuffing the towel into her mouth. Some believe Suzane provided the jar that was left on the nightstand, and was in the room when Cristian water-boarded her mother.

Puzzled by the lesions on the victim’s heads, investigators asked Cristian what objects they had used to bludgeon the couple. He revealed that Daniel used pieces of metal closet frame to build hollow bars (like square tubes) then filled them with the same soft wood he used to build his model airplanes.

According to Suzane’s confession, after sending the brothers upstairs, she sat in the living room couch and covered her ears. She later said, “I didn’t want my parent to die. But there was nothing else I could do, it was too late”. Once the brothers came back down stairs, Suzane asked them “Is it over?” They confirmed it was and moved on with the plan.

Daniel and Cristian placed their clothes and murder weapons in garbage bags provided by Suzane. They trashed the couple’s bedroom, stole some of Marísia’s jewelry to try to sell the robbery story, and tossed Manfred’s gun next to his body to insinuate he was trying to protect himself and his wife from a robber.

In Manfred’s office, Suzane used a knife to rip the briefcase where she knew her father kept R$8000, £6000 and US$5000. The couple used this money to pay Cristian for his involvement and left the scene.

They disposed of the garbage bags containing the bloodied clothing and murder weapons in an unknown location – none of which has even been found. Suzane and Daniel dropped Cristian off at his apartment and then drove to the motel where Daniel made sure to get his receipt. They stayed for a couple of hours, consumed one ham sandwich and one Coca-Cola in their room, then left to pick up Andreas.

During the re-enactments, Suzane never spoke unless spoken to and only spoke to the police officer filming her as she apathetically went through the motions of the murders. Daniel’s re-enactment, however, had to be interrupted once the 22-year-old entered the couple's room and saw the police officer who “played” Manfred bared a striking resemblance to the victim. Shaking and crying, Daniel asked for a break during which he and the police officers prayed.

* * *

On April 5th 2006, Suzane, accompanied by her lawyer, gave an interview to the Sunday night program Fantástico. In the interview, Suzane shares photos of her family and friends and said she had nothing but hatred for Daniel who “destroyed my family, destroyed everything (…)”.

At age 22, her long blonde hair had been cut short with bangs that covered her eyes the entire time. She completed her look with a pink Minnie Mouse t-shirt and bunny slippers. She can be seen holding on to her lawyer like a shy child would try to hide behind her father, not knowing that before the cameras rolled the microphones were already on, and captured her lawyer instructing her to cry. The interview aired on April 9th and the very next day, Suzane was put in jail to prevent her from influencing or muddling the trial to come.

Three month later, on July 17 2006, the eldest Richthofen and the Cravinhos brothers walked into the courtroom, each facing two counts of first-degree murder and each with a different story.

Suzane claimed the plotting and execution of the crime was entirely Daniel and Cristian’s plan. Cristian, on the other hand, denied any involvement in the murders what so ever, claiming he confessed to the crime to try and get his little brother – who he was now accusing of double-homicide – a lighter sentence. He said his only involvement was in trying to talk the couple out of it.

Finally, Daniel claimed he was used by Suzane to act on her plan to kill both of her parents and inherit their fortune, and he did it because he loved her.

After the presentation of forensic evidence, the court heard love letters the young couple exchanged. Daniel, again shaking and crying, had to be removed from the courtroom while Suzane, sitting not too far from her partner, showed no reaction or emotion at all.

On July 22nd – six days after the trial began – the trio was found guilty of the murder in the first degree of Manfred and Marísia Von Richthofen. Cristian received a sentence of 38 years and has since confessed – again – to the murder of Marísia. Suzane was sentenced to 39 years in prison and Daniel to 39 years and 6 months. Since then, all three have been granted “semi-open” sentences, meaning they are free to work during the day and must return to jail at night.

Suzane never answered the letters Daniel wrote her after their sentencing. He has since changed his name, gotten married, and returned to his passion of building and flying model airplanes. On her end, Suzane was briefly married to a woman named Sandrão (Big Sandra), serving time for her involvement in the kidnapping and murder of a 14-year-old boy.

Fifteen years after her sentence, Suzane received a call from her younger brother, whose voice she did not recognize at first. Andreas was 29 years old and had earned a PhD in organic chemistry by then. During the silent years, Andreas filed a complaint against his sister for harassment, probably related to a dispute over the inheritance Andreas received after his parents' death.

Speaking to his sister on the phone, Andreas agreed to meet her for lunch. Suzane anxiously awaited, but Andreas never showed. En route to the encounter, he dwelled on why his sister did what she had done. He turned back, never to speak to Suzane again, and fell into the common trap of remedying his trauma with drugs and alcohol. Suzane was advised not to attempt any contact with her brother.

The infamous case added even more weight to the German surname and proved too heavy for Andreas to carry around the streets of São Paulo. After being released from rehab in 2017, Andreas left Brazil.

Suzane and the case are still relevant today. Puzzled by the brutality and coldness of the crime, the Brazilian people still watch her interviews, buy books with her mugshot on the cover, and provide an audience for two movies about the case released in 2020.

Facing another two decades incarcerated, the last Richthofen in Brazil will one day walk free, forever condemned to side-looks and whispers: “that’s the girl who killed her parents”.