Aída Jacob Curi (Belo Horizonte, December 15, 1939 – Rio de Janeiro – July 14, 1958) was a Brazilian girl murdered in the Copacabana neighborhood, Rio de Janeiro.
Biography
Aída Jacob Curi was the third of five children of a couple of immigrants from Syria, Gattás Assad Curi and Jamila Jacob Curi, who belonged to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. At the age of five, Aída lost her father, which made her mother move to Rio de Janeiro and work. At the time, all of her brothers — Nelson, Roberto, Maurício and Waldir — were under ten years old, with the exception of the eldest son. Dona Jamila went with her children to Escola Moreira do Riachuelo, and remained there for eight years. At the age of six, Aída was sent to study at a school run by Spanish nuns, part of the Filhas de São José congregation, Educandário Gonçalves de Araújo, a boarding school for orphaned girls, in São Cristóvão. She studied there for the next twelve years. After this period, the young woman left Educandário to start her life abroad. At the time of her death, Aída was taking typing, English and Portuguese courses, and working in her brother's store.
Aída Curi was a fervently practicing Roman Catholic and her motto was to die rather than sin.
Aída's murder
On July 14, 1958, Aída was walking with a classmate on Rua Miguel Lemos after leaving the typing class at Escola Remington, when the two were approached by some boys: Ronaldo Castro, nineteen years old, Cássio Murilo, seventeen, and the doorman Antônio Sousa, 27. At a certain point, Aída left her friend and tried to recover objects that had been taken from her by the young people — her glasses and her purse, which contained the money for the vehicle. Their strategy was to use her belongings to lure her to the building, the Rio Nobre Building on Avenida Atlântica. It was premeditated sexual violence — known at the time as "curra". Aida was pulled into the elevator and, screaming, reached the top of the building. A newspaper at the time reported that it was in an apartment on the twelfth floor, still in the finishing phase, that the attackers fought to immobilize Aída. Ronaldo and Cássio were helped by the building's doorman, Antônio.
According to witnesses, Aída was forcibly taken by Ronaldo Castro and Cássio Murilo to the top of the Rio Nobre Building, on Avenida Atlântica, where the two boys were helped by doorman Antônio Sousa to sexually abuse the young woman. For thirty minutes, the young woman was beaten with great violence, in addition to the attackers trying to rape her. The victim reportedly fell unconscious due to physical exhaustion. To cover up the crime, the attackers threw the young woman from the terrace on the twelfth floor of the building, trying to simulate suicide. Aída died as a result of the fall. There were three trials. In the end, Ronaldo Castro was cleared of the murder charge, being convicted only of indecent assault and attempted rape. His sentence was eight years and nine months. The doorman, Antônio Sousa, also cleared of the murder charge but convicted of the others, disappeared. Nothing more was heard of him. Cássio Murilo, a minor at the time of the crime, was convicted of Aída's murder and sent to the Minor Assistance System (SAM), from where he left straight to perform military service.
The defendants
Ronaldo Guilherme de Souza Castro: born in Espírito Santo, lived and studied in Rio de Janeiro, was nineteen years old at the time of the crime. He belonged to a traditional family. He had a bad reputation in the neighborhood and at school. He was always a bad student, he got very low grades, he failed at school. He had been expelled from schools, accused of several assaults and having participated in the theft of a car belonging to the Department of Agriculture. He had also been arrested for indiscipline when he served in the Army and similar things. Ronaldo's cousin, Mariza Eneider Castro, said that the young assassin was debauched, had made her suffer several times and that, above all, he was burglar. Disregarding the family robberies, he is the author of the theft of jewelry and money from a guesthouse in Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas. The crime was discovered, but his father's money silenced the police and compensated the victims. The girl said that once, in Vitória, Espírito Santo, her cousin tried to hand her over for 20 thousand cruises to a guy known as "Mãozinha". Ten thousand cruises would be for him, Ronaldo Castro, the other ten for her. He also stated that his cousin's father covered up his delinquent son's nonsense through bribes. Mariza also said that she felt guilty for not having revealed the facts sooner and that she only kept it confidential at the request of Ronaldo's parents.
Cássio Murilo Ferreira: He was the nephew of the building manager. He had already been expelled from the Ensign's Gymnasium for bad behavior, he had also been expelled from another school for trying to lift the girls' skirts and he had already broken down the door of a building next to the one he lived in to steal a scooter. The young man was a minor at the time of the crime, he was sixteen years old.
Antônio João de Sousa: he was the doorman at the Rio-Nobre Building, where the crime occurred. He was 26 years old at the time. Little has been said about his life.
Investigations
According to the medical report from the autopsy, carried out by coroner Mário Martins Rodrigues, from the Legal Medical Institute, Aída died a virgin. The sexual abuse was never consummated. According to the report, the victim's body showed abrasions and bruises caused by nails and punches. On the chest, on the left side, there are signs of deep nails. Scratches on the thighs, belly, neck and bruises on the abdomen. There was an internal rupture of the upper lip due to a punch. Strangulation attempts. Signs of severe trauma to the chin. Marks on the arms, forearms, wrists and back of the hands (meaning "defensive wounds"). Some marks on the chest that could be the result of a bite. The young woman's clothes were examined in the laboratories of the Criminalistics Institute of the Federal Department of Public Security. In order to reconstruct the crime scene, experts found that for thirty minutes the young woman was subjected to cruel suffering, violence and beatings.
The criminal experts made it very clear in their reports that, to bring Aída to a state of exhaustion, a single attacker, even using a lot of violence, would not be enough. It would take at least two people acting simultaneously to beat Aída until she passed out. The coroner, Mário Martins Rodrigues, declared that he did not find any state of organic weakness in the victim. The young woman would not easily be led to a state of "stress", that is, total exhaustion. Ronaldo claimed to have left the building to meet a girl called Zilza Maria Fonseca at 8:15 pm, well before Aída's body was thrown from the terrace. Expert Murilo Vieira Sampaio calculated, with the greatest possible accuracy, the duration of the crime on the terrace, according to the timing taken during the reconstruction of the crime. This timing showed that there was no way Ronaldo could have left the terrace at 8:15 pm to meet the faker. This is because at 8:20 pm he was still hanging around the Rio-Nobre Building next to Aída, trying to find a place to take her to practice curra. There are several people who have seen them; one of them, Luiz Beethoven Cabral Leme, who presented himself to the police to say that he was on Rua Miguel Lemos accompanied by two young women, Suely Weydt and Ivani Prado. That was when another boy, a corporal at Fort Copacabana, Amaury Freire, passed by, and Luiz Leme asked the time. It was 8:20 pm. A few moments later, the three saw Ronaldo pass by Aída.
Attempts to defraud the process
Alleged suicide
The defense presented a version stating that Aída had killed herself, throwing herself from the 12th floor to escape the attack by Ronaldo, Cássio and Antônio, the doorman. However, there was evidence that refuted this version and led us to believe that the girl was actually murdered and did not commit suicide. Among the evidence is the blood-stained handkerchief found in the young woman's bag. Aída's autopsy revealed injuries to her lips, resulting from Ronaldo's slap, confirmed by himself. Furthermore, Ronaldo confessed, in court, to having torn Aída's skirt and all her underwear. The young woman's petticoat was found covered in blood. Other signs are the punctate, semicircle wounds on the face, the diameter of which coincides with that of the doorman's ring. However, all of this was disregarded by the jury. On the outer wall of the terrace's parapet, experts found marks left by Aída's sandals, which scraped when she was thrown from above, proving that she had not thrown herself. The body fell close to the building.
Changes to the crime scene
There were signs that the criminals altered the crime scene. Aída's books fell or were placed right next to the victim's body, as if she had jumped from the building with them. However, it would be unlikely that she would still have the books in her hands after thirty minutes of violence and intense struggle against three attackers.
False testimony
Ronaldo's father, Edgard Castro, would have hired a young woman named Zilza Maria Fonseca as his son's alibi. She said she was talking to Ronaldo on a bench on Avenida Atlântica when Aída was thrown. However, the girl hired did not attend the trial. Instead, the defense preferred to take another witness: Lecy Gomes Lopes, who claimed to have seen Zilza with Ronaldo at the time of the crime. Leading society to question: "Why did they bring the woman who 'saw' Zilza instead of Zilza?" .According to the magazine O Cruzeiro, Ronaldo's testimony and Lecy's were contradictory. She stated that she was walking with her daughter and the maid, and sat on a bench on Avenida Atlântica, facing Rua Djalma Ulrich, where a couple, Ronaldo Castro and Zilza Maria Fonseca, were already there. Ronaldo, on the other hand, stated in his statement that he was walking along the beach with Zilza and that, when the two arrived at the bench, there was already a lady, a girl and a three-year-old child there. Furthermore, Lecy describes Zilza as blonde, but she was brunette. She also stated that Zilza sang a song by Maysa, who talked a lot about "you". The song would be "Because of you" which Maysa only recorded in 1959, after the crime.
Judgments