MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former Brazilian Deputy arrested for the murder of her husband

“They are arresting me for something I did not do,” Flordelis said in a video she posted before being taken into custody

Former Brazilian Deputy Flordelis dos Santos de Souza was placed under arrest Friday, just two days after being stripped of her parliamentarian immunity to stand trial for masterminding the killing of her husband.

The evangelical pastor and gospel singer turned to politics was sought for having had her husband killed with help of some of her children.

Less than an hour after a Rio de Janeiro criminal judge issued the warrant, the Civil Police arrested her at her residence in the neighboring city of Niteroi.

“The day has come that nobody wants to come. They are arresting me for something I did not do, for something I did not practice. I do not know why, but they are taking me by force. I expect your strength. Pray for me,” the pastor said in a video which posted on social media and that she recorded at the time she was arrested.

She is believed to being involved the murder of Anderson do Carmo, her husband and fellow pastor, who took 30 bullet shoots at the doorsteps of the couple's home in Niteroi at dawn on June 16, 2019.

According to the Police, the murder was due to financial disputes between the two and Flordelis was assisted by seven of the couple's 55 children (51 of them adopted).

According to witnesses, the pastor's church was a center for blood rituals and orgies in which the deputy herself participated together with her faithful and some members of her family.

Flordelis, 60, first adopted Anderson do Carmo, who was 18 years her junior, but things changed with the passage of time and they got married in 1994. Together they shaped a career that first projected her as a gospel singer and later as a pastor until she finally decided to try her luck in politics.

In 2018 she was elected federal deputy for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which supported the candidacy of current President Jair Bolsonaro and had dozens of evangelical pastors among its bases.

The police maintains she had tried at least six times to poison her husband with arsenic before the murder. The investigation found seven of her children took part in the plot, one of them even as the actual shooter. There are 10 people altogether involved in the assassination, including a granddaughter of the couple.

According to the prosecution, De Souza “designed the entire criminal operation, prepared, encouraged and convinced other defendants to participate in the murder.” Her motive was that her husband kept strict control of family finances and did not allow privileges to be granted to her closest relatives.

Prosecutor Sérgio Luiz Lopes Pereira said she had told one of her children that she could not divorce so as not to “violate the name of God.”