Brazilian partner of Algerian believed to have fled country
The body of an 85-year-old man – living in a “host family for the elderly” until he disappeared last month – has been discovered in a makeshift grave in a pine forest close to the sea in Ofir (Esposende).
With this discovery, police appear to have foiled a despicable plan by the host family – an Algerian man, aged 38 and his Brazilian partner.
“The plan hatched at the start of December, 2024, seemed perfect”, writes Correio da Manhã today. It involved killing the 85-year-old, in the house in Apúlia, burying his body and then abandoning his mobility scooter close to a hotel in Póvoa de Varzim”, the town in which he used to live.
The two carers are then believed to have reported the elderly man’s disappearance to GNR police, saying this was not the first time that he had ‘escaped their care’, and therefore must have done so voluntarily…
And they then began purchasing items with the dead man’s bank card, to the tune of around €1,000.
This appears to have been the couple’s undoing: “The payments were discovered” – leading police to arrest the Algerian yesterday, but not before his Brazilian partner managed to ‘vanish’.
“PJ police suspect the woman, who has taken in elderly people for several years, may have been involved in the death, and the hiding of the body”, says CM. “She has not, however, been located. Authorities admit she may have fled to Brazil” (a country with no automatic agreement for extradition with Portugal).
For now, the Algerian remains in preventive custody – awaiting a decision on bail terms expected tomorrow. He is cited for ‘qualified murder, concealment of a body and the undue use of a bank card’ – while an autopsy will try and determine the cause of death of the 85-year-old, whose body was “in a state of decomposition which could hamper forensic expertise”.
Other reports stress the police investigation actually goes back to the end of November last year, with December 11 indicated as the day of the 85-year-old’s alleged murder.
Questions do need to be asked as to what kind of qualifications this couple was deemed to have that allowed them to be left them in charge of vulnerable old people. There were three other pensioners in their care at the same time as the 85-year-old. They have all been removed from the house in Apúlia and placed in “other institutions”, writes CM.
No news source has yet appeared to have had contact with any of the elderly people’s families, but online e24 has stressed that “this tragic episode has shattered the tranquility of the local community where the elderly (victim) was well known”.
