Marielle Franco, a Brazilian politician and activist, was fatally shot on 14 March 2018, in Estácio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The assassins were in a car that pulled up alongside the Rio de Janeiro councilwoman's car and fired several shots, which also killed the driver, Anderson Gomes. Former military police officers Ronnie Lessa and Élcio Vieira de Queiroz confessed to the killings and, on 31 October 2024, were convicted by a jury and sentenced to 59 and 78 years in prison, respectively.
On 24 March 2024, brothers Domingos Brazão and Chiquinho Brazão were arrested after being denounced as masterminds of the attack against Marielle Franco. Detective Rivaldo Barbosa was also arrested, suspected of obstructing the investigations and also intellectually orchestrating the crime. On 25 February 2026, Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão were unanimously convicted by the Supreme Court for ordering the hit against Marielle and Anderson Gomes and both were sentenced to 76 years in prison.
Assassination
Marielle arrived at the Casa das Pretas, on rua dos Inválidos, in Lapa, to mediate a debate promoted by the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) with young black women, around 7:00 pm. According to images obtained by the police, a Cobalt with a Nova Iguaçu license plate, a city in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro, was parked near the venue.
Around 11:00 pm, Marielle left the Casa das Pretas with an aide and a driver and was soon followed by a car of the same model that had been parked near the site. Around 11:30 PM, on Joaquim Paralhes Street in Estácio, thirteen shots were fired from a vehicle pulled up next to Marielle's car. Nine hit the car frame and four hit the windows. The councilwoman was hit by three shots to the head and one to the neck and the driver was shot at least three times in the back, killing them both. The aide was hit by shrapnel, taken to a hospital, and was later released. Police stated that they believe her car was pursued for about four kilometers. The executioners fled the scene without taking any property.
Investigation
Images taken from local cameras revealed that a second vehicle might have provided cover for the criminals who fired the shots. In addition, other images showed two men sitting inside a vehicle for two hours at the site of an event that the councilwoman had attended shortly before. According to the police, the ammunition used, a 9mm caliber, cannot be sold to civilians in general. Rede Globo reported that the ammunition belonged to a batch sold to the Federal Police, a fact confirmed by the Civil Police. Investigators believed that the councilwoman was followed from the Lapa event, for four kilometers, until she passed through a place of less traffic, where the attack took place.
Chief of police Rivaldo Barbosa was investigating the possibility of an execution, since the passengers' belongings were not taken by the shooters and the councilwoman was an activist in poor communities, having been active in defense of the human rights of the residents of these localities, especially black people and women, and had even denounced killings by police officers. On the Saturday before the crime, Marielle had denounced on social networks the 41st Military Police Battalion, in Acari, which had been indicated by the Public Security Institute as the deadliest in the previous five years.
Forensics discovered that the 9mm caliber ammunition that killed the Rio de Janeiro councilwoman was from the same batch as part of the projectiles used in the largest massacre in the state of São Paulo. The murders of seventeen people occurred in Barueri and Osasco Greater São Paulo, on 13 August 2015. Three military police officers and a civil guard were convicted of these killings. According to the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, this lot had been sold to the Federal Police of Brasília by the company Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos on 29 December 2006. Technical analysis also revealed that the ammunition was original. That is, it was not reloaded because the primer, which causes the propellant to ignite, was original. The Federal Police opened an investigation to determine the origin of the ammunition and how it arrived in Rio de Janeiro.
The Extraordinary Minister of Public Security, Raul Jungmann, said that the ammunition used was stolen from the Post Office headquarters in Paraíba, years before. PF sources said that the lot with two million rounds was widely distributed among the corporation's units and that the units in São Paulo and the Federal District received the largest amount, more than two hundred thousand rounds each. In addition, the minister said that the Federal Police had already appointed a fingerprint and DNA expert to examine the ammunition, and would compare the results with its database, in order to find out who committed the crime.
On 18 March, the police received an anonymous tip and discovered, in Minas Gerais, a car that could have been used in the murder of the councilwoman. The car, with Rio de Janeiro plates, was suspected to have been abandoned on 15 March, but since the police only received the tip on Saturday, the vehicle was seized around 9 pm that day. Rede Globo also released new images, in which one can see the white car that Marielle was riding in passing and being followed by two silver-colored vehicles. The police are also investigating the hypothesis that Marielle's assassins had been monitoring the councilwoman through social networks, since she made a call on the Internet the day before the event on Rua dos Inválidos, from where she left before she was murdered.
On 1 April, O Globo newspaper published a story in which two witnesses, who were not interviewed by police, gave details of the crime scene. The journalists heard separately from the two witnesses who had similar versions of the crime. They said that the assassins' car rammed the vehicle driving Marielle, almost driving up onto the sidewalk. Contrary to the camera images, these people only saw one car at the scene. Also according to their accounts, a black man was in the back seat and extended his arm out, carrying a long-barreled gun with a device that looked like a silencer. The car then swerved and fled down Joaquim Palhares Street, not Joao Paulo Primeiro Street, as the police suspected. The witnesses claimed that military police officers ordered them away from the scene of the murder, without listening to them. GloboNews asked the Civil Police about the attitude of not hearing the witnesses, but did not receive a response from them. However, an investigator told the newspaper that the councilwoman's projects were under analysis and that the agendas were considered to generate conflicts with certain groups, including militiamen. The week before, Rio de Janeiro's Security Secretary, General Richard Nunes, admitted that political motivations for the crime were undeniable.
On 10 April, the investigators in charge of the case found fingerprints on partial fragments of the 9mm shells used in the murder. The shells were found at the corner of João Paulo I and Joaquim Palhares streets, in Estácio, where the attack took place. Eight were from the same lot sold by Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos to the Federal Police Department in Brasilia and distributed throughout the country. The ninth shell was part of an imported shipment, and, according to investigators, had special characteristics, similar to a projectile fired in a homicide that took place elsewhere in the metropolitan region of the state. The fingerprints were fragmented, which made it difficult to compare them with the fingerprints stored in the databases of the Civil and Federal Police, but it would still be possible to compare them with the fingerprints of suspects in the crime.
On 6 May, RecordTV aired a report that pointed out errors in the investigation. The station reported that the car used by the victims was abandoned in the courtyard of the homicide police station for 40 days without all the evaluations and exams being completed. According to the report, the bodies of the councilwoman and the driver did not undergo X-ray examinations, since the state did not have the equipment. The TV program also predicted - which would be days later confirmed by the police - that Marielle and Anderson were not killed by a pistol as investigators thought, but by a HK MP5 submachine gun, which are not easily seized from criminals, being used by elite troops. Record also recalled that City Hall cameras on the street where the crime occurred were turned off days before the double homicide. Alleging secrecy, authorities and official bodies did not want to comment on the report.
On 8 May, a witness told police that Councilman Marcello Siciliano and former military police officer Orlando Oliveira de Araújo Curicica wanted Councilwoman Marielle Franco dead. According to the witness, the motivation was Marielle's community actions in areas of interest to the militia in the West Zone. The information was reported in the newspaper O Globo, according to which the witness said that she was forced to work for Orlando and told in detail the entire planning of the execution. The person cited as a witness reported that he was present at meetings between Orlando and Siciliano, since June 2017. Also according to the account, Orlando had said in a meeting that the councilwoman was getting in his way and commented to Siciliano that the situation needed to be resolved quickly. In three statements, the witness reported dates, times and meetings between the two men, and provided the names of four men chosen for the murder, which are now being investigated by the police. The order for the assassination was given from inside the cell of the Bangu 9 penitentiary, where Siciliano was being held.
On 11 May, the police conducted a reenactment of the crime, which took five hours between late night and early morning. The goal was to reenact the moment when the assassins shot at the car that Marielle and Anderson were in, shooting with real weapons and ammunition, so that witnesses could hear the sound of the weapon used in the crime. The police concluded that the assassins used an HK MP5 submachine gun, a weapon capable of firing eight hundred rounds per minute. Four witnesses participated in the crime simulation, including Marielle Franco's parliamentary aide, who was the sole survivor and moved out of Brazil shortly after the councilwoman's murder.
In October, there was a breakthrough in the investigation. The Public Ministry of Rio de Janeiro (MPRJ) announced that the use of information technology allowed the identification of the shooter's biotype. In addition, the analysis of images discovered other places where the car of the suspects had been driven by. The Ministry notified the councilwoman's family, but did not announce the information publicly. The prosecutors also visited the imprisoned Orlando Curicica and the Attorney General of the Republic, Raquel Dodge, referred to the MPRJ the testimony given by him to the prosecutors, whose content was also kept private, to maintain the secrecy of the investigation, which was a concern to all the authorities involved.
On 3 July 2019, the Civil Police and the Navy announced an operation to find the weapons that would have been used in the crime. The suspicion originated from the testimony of a boatman in the Quebra-Mar area, in Barra. According to him, a man, later identified as Márcio Montavano, a.k.a. Márcio Gordo - who would have taken the weapons from addresses linked to retired military police officer Ronnie Lessa, who is pointed out as the ringleader of the crime - hired him for a trip to the Tijucas Islands, to practice underwater fishing. According to the police, in addition to Márcio, Lessa's wife Elaine, her brother Bruno, and a man named Josinaldo were also involved. According to the boatman's statement, the contractor put a heavy cardboard box into the boat, inside of which were smaller boxes, and a suitcase. Then the man opened the suitcase, took out six rifles, and threw the weapons and the box overboard. Then he gave the boatman three hundred reais to pay for the transport, called a cab, and left. The police knew that this was a friend of Lessa's.
Also in July 2019, the minister and president of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Dias Toffoli, suspended the investigation regarding the murder of Marielle. Toffoli's decision temporarily affected all inquiries in the country, on the grounds that they were founded on financial intelligence reports made with information obtained without judicial authorization. That is, they were information shared by the Council for Financial Activities Control (Coaf) and the Tax Authorities, without authorization from the Justice Department.