Paula Ellen Neves da Silva is 24 years old and until the early hours of that Sunday was just a mother living with her two children and her partner in Itaquaquecetuba, Brazil.
According to her own statement to the police, that night she pretended to be asleep on the living room floor. From there, she said, she saw 32-year-old Daniel dos Santos open the diaper of her 3-year-old son. She did not wait. She picked up a knife and attacked him. He managed to defend himself with another knife and injured her hand, but it was not enough: Paula decapitated him, dragged the body to the bathroom, and washed the scene with soap and water, leaving the head inside a backpack in the living room.
Hours earlier, the couple had been drinking alcohol and using drugs with a friend at a bar. After the crime, Paula herself sent photos and videos to her mother, who alerted the police. She now faces charges of aggravated homicide and tampering with the crime scene, while the Brazilian justice system tries to reconstruct what really happened that night within those four walls.
