The man accused of murdering and dismembering British teenager Cara Marie Burke will plead temporary insanity at his trial, his lawyer said.
Carlos Trajano, who is representing Burke’s confessed killer, Mohammed Carvalho dos Santos, 20, said his client was “totally dependent” on a range of drugs including crack, cocaine and a drug known in Brazil as merla — a potent mixture of coca paste and battery acid which is sold openly on the streets of Jardim Novo Mundo, the poor district where Burke spent much of her time in Goiania.
“He took everything you can possibly imagine — he even sniffed cooking gas,” said Trajano, whose client faces up to 36 years in jail if convicted. “The crime took place after he’d been awake for four days using cocaine. When the girl arrived he was using crack. She picked up the telephone and said she was going to call the police and he had an attack of rage.”
As the search for the head, legs and arms of the 17-year-old continued on Sunday, further details emerged about Dos Santos’ background.
Born in a poor suburb of Goiania in 1987 his father was a driver for the city’s military police. In 1989, aged 28, he was tortured and executed with a single shot to the head. His mangled body was recovered two days later abandoned outside the city and taken to the same mortuary where Burke’s torso is held.
In an interview with the Diario da Manha newspaper Dos Santos’ mother, Ivanyr, speaking from London, said her son had never recovered from his father’s murder.
“They shot him in the leg, the face, it smashed his face,” said Ivanyr, who works as a maid in London. “[Mohammed] loved his father.”
Ivanyr dos Santos said her son used to pelt police cars that came near their home with stones.
Trajano said his client had previously been charged with attempted homicide and car theft.
“My son is not this monster that society thinks he is. He always helped people. He has a good heart,” Ivanyr told the Diario da Manha.
Asked what she would say to Burke’s family, she replied: “I don’t have the words.”
ANTIGUA NIGHTMARE
In other crime news, a newlywed shot on the last day of his Caribbean honeymoon has died, a British hospital said on Sunday.
Morriston Hospital in Swansea, Wales, said brain stem tests showed that Benjamin Mullany — comatose since he was shot in the head in Antigua last week — was dead. He had been on life support systems.
His bride, Catherine Mullany, was killed in the same attack.
In Antigua, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer vowed to bring to justice whoever attacked the couple and offered condolences to Benjamin Mullany’s relatives: “We express our deep sympathies to the family of Benjamin and pray that God will give them comfort in this time of sorrow.”
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