Ex-cop confesses to involvement in 2018 death of adviser Mariel Franco and exposes accomplices

In a plea deal (joint testimony in exchange for criminal benefits) to the Federal Police, former Rio de Janeiro military police agent Elcio de Queiroz admitted to participating in the ambush that killed then-leftist adviser Mariel Franco on a street in that Brazilian city on March 14, 2018. The suspect is in Rio this Monday.

Dino stated that in his confession, Elcio, who has been arrested as a crime suspect since 2019, admitted that he was the one who drove the silver Cobalt that chased the councilman through several streets of Rio de Janeiro that night until a fatal attack occurred on a dark, dead street in the Estacio neighborhood. Elcio accused his friend, as well as former police officer Ronnie Lessa, who has also been arrested since 2019, of being the one who fired a machine gun at Mariel’s car, instantly killing her and her driver Anderson Pedro Gomez.

In addition, thanks to denunciations made by the arrested former police officer, the Federal Police launched a major operation this Monday in Rio de Janeiro against seven targets to gather new evidence and arrest other suspects. One of them, the only one whose identity was revealed, was a former firefighter (in Brazil, firefighters are part of the military police) Maxwell Simoens Correa. Suel was known to be involved, promoted the minister in all the planning of the conspiracy that led to the adviser’s death, followed her for several days to follow her routine, and he was supposed to drive the assassins’ car, but at the last minute he was replaced by Elcio.

Even with the advances made since Elcio de Queiroz’s award-winning exposure, it remains unknown, or at least undisclosed, who ordered Mariel’s assassination and why. Since the crime, a number of leads and suspects have sprung up, which subsequently disappeared in a vast web of complicity within the police itself and a lack of full evidence, such as the one that linked the now former President Jair Bolsonaro and one of his sons, also Rio de Janeiro adviser Carlos Bolsonaro, to death.

Ronnie Lessa, accused of the shooting, lived in the same residential condominium as Bolsonaros in Barra da Tijuca, was close to Jair, and Carlos, who even dated the alleged killer’s daughter, had a big fight with Mariel in the days before the attack. Another detail that seemed to link Bolsonaro to the death was that Elcio, a few hours before the crimes, managed to break into the condominium where Lessa, Jair and Carlos Bolsonaro lived, after permission allegedly given by the then presidential candidate, but nothing was subsequently proven.