Former nurse Mariana Fonseca, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison for the 2020 killing of an IT technician in the Algarve, has been captured by Interpol in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, after several years on the run.
Together with her girlfriend Maria Malveiro, who took her own life in prison at the end of 2021, Mariana Fonseca murdered 21-year-old Diogo Gonçalves in his own home. They later dismembered the body, with the head eventually discovered at Pego do Inferno, near Tavira, around 150 kilometres away. Parts of the body were found in Sagres, while others were never recovered.
Diogo Gonçalves was an IT technician who worked at the same hotel as Maria Malveiro. The victim had received €75,000 in compensation following his mother’s death in a hit-and-run incident in 2016, and stealing that money was the couple’s motive. On 20th March 2020, they drugged and suffocated their friend, rendering him unable to resist the pair’s grim machinations.
In a statement, Portugal’s Judicial Police (PJ) said an international arrest warrant had been executed and that she has been held in an Indonesian detention centre since Thursday, 5th March.
“The Judicial Police are currently handling the legal procedures with a view to her extradition to Portugal so that she may serve the prison sentence handed down by the Portuguese courts,” the statement reads.
The court had initially ruled that Mariana Fonseca could remain at liberty until the verdict became final, but she subsequently fled. At first instance, the court considered it proven that Maria Malveiro had killed Diogo Gonçalves and she was therefore sentenced to 25 years in prison, while Mariana Fonseca was acquitted due to insufficient proof of her involvement in the homicide.
However, the ruling was later overturned by the Court of Appeal of Évora, which sentenced Fonseca to 23 years in prison. By then, she had already fled the country before she could be detained.
On 30th December 2021, Maria Malveiro was found dead in her cell at Tires women’s prison, in the municipality of Cascais.
Source: JN
