On December 29, 1982, the ex-president of the republic, Fernando Collor de Mello, resigned from office, but the headlines and newspaper cover only spoke about the brutal murder of actress Daniella Perez. Daniella played Yasmin in the De Corpo e Alma, the eight o’clock soap opera from Rede Globo at the time. It was so successful that the character became known as Brazil’s girlfriend.
Guilherme de Pádua, the murderer, played Bira in the same production. And, in this case, fictional characters turned into reality. Bira’s role, at first, was written for Alexandre Frota, but the actor was in the seven o’clock soap opera and was not released for the new plot.
Glória Perez, Dani’s mother said: “I always wanted the truth of the process to appear, for this story to be told the way it happened and not for it to be told like a soap opera, a cheap serial”.
THE MURDER
The day dawned usually: Daniella and Raul Gazolla, actor and widower of the actress, woke up and had their breakfast. The couple separated for the day’s recordings. Dani had lunch at her mother’s house and Glória regrets that day, since she was busy with the end of writing the chapters of the soap opera De Corpo e Alma, and not able to enjoy the last moments with her daughter. At that time, the actress had bought a car, but it had a problem and after lunch, she went to the dealership to fix it before heading to the studio.
Raul, who was also at Tycoon, the former Rede Globo studio, left his recording at the end of the night, saw that his wife’s car was not in the parking lot and, when he arrived home, he didn’t find her. With the delay of the actress, he retraced the route to see if he could find her, but without success.
The two were rehearsing for the same play, but upon arriving at the rehearsals, Raul found that she wasn’t there either. So he called Marcela, the producer, and she informed him that Daniella had already left the recordings and had gone home to meet him and go to rehearsal together.
They begin calling family members and the actress was nowhere to be found. The worry started. Desperate, Raul went to his ex-mother-in-law’s house and the two started calling friends and family. Their biggest suspicion was kidnapping, since, at that time, Rio de Janeiro was marked by a wave of captures.
Glória called Caco, the telenovela’s producer, who provided new information: he had seen Daniella, Marilu Bueno, and Guilherme de Pádua leaving the recordings together. Very distressed, Raul went to Marilu’s house, since she wasn’t answering the phone. Upon arrival, the puzzle was forming: she was going to catch a ride with Dani, but the actress was talking to Guilherme and taking pictures with fans in the parking lot. Meanwhile, the actress’s mother called the killer, who claimed to have left earlier and not to know of Daniella’s whereabouts.
At the same time, the military police received notice of an abandoned car on Avenida dos Bandeirantes. Hugo da Silveira, a lawyer, passed by the place and was surprised by the fact that there were two cars parked, an Escort and a Santano, in the middle of the Avenue and wrote down the license plates of both cars. He also noticed that in the second car there were two people: a man, in the driver’s seat, and a woman in the passenger seat. Upon returning, Hugo warned a manager who went to the place and noticed that there was only one car: Raul Gazolla’s.
Raul was called to the police, however, since he was accompanied by Marilu, the police chose to speak only with her in private, leaving the widower alone. In the meantime, another policeman finds him at the police station and informs him that they found where his car, but they didn’t know what had happened to the actress.
Deducing, the husband calls Gloria and warns her about the kidnapping. The young woman’s mother calls Guilherme to find out more about the fans who were with Daniella at the moment when the actor claimed to have left her alone.
Sadly, Marilu returns from the conversation with the police and informs Raul that Daniella had died. Family members began to head to the scene. The first was Saulo, Dani’s uncle, who found Raul’s car key in the undergrowth, then Raul and Rodrigo Perez, the actress’s brother. Raul told the documentary Brutal Pact: “That day, I knew that we have a soul because there was a body there that had no more life, which had been Daniella, I just wanted to know what happened because someone had to kill my woman”. The last to arrive was Glória Perez with Nilson Raman, the actress’ manager.
Daniella was stabbed to death. Several friends and family members went to the crime scene and the police station, including Guilherme de Pádua, who was questioned and embraced by Raul Gazolla.
At 3 A.M., Hugo da Silveira was called by the police to find out the license plate of the second car. Deputy Cidade de Oliveira, commander of the case, called the family into his office and passing from name to name of the De Corpo e Alma’s cast, stopped at Guilherme de Pádua: the murderer had been discovered in just a few hours, but they could only enter his house after six in the morning, according to the Constitution.
THE INVESTIGATION
The next day, the delegate went to Tycoon, Rede Globo studios where the scenes of the soap opera De Corpo e Alma were recorded, to see the license plate table of the cars that entered and left. Both cars left at the same time. However, there was a controversy, the license plate noted by Hugo Silveira was: OM 1115, and Guilherme’s license plate was LM 1115.
When apprehending the suspect’s car, the police saw a change in the license plate. The actor tried to claim that he had gone to pick up his wife at Barra Shopping, but the investigations were denied. In addition, he had several marks on his body, including scratches noticed by actress Claudia Raia, at the police station, the day before.
After more than ten hours of interrogation with the criminal, Guilherme confessed but tried to defend himself, saying that he was being harassed by Daniella during the recordings and to try to solve the problem. He claimed that the two went to talk the night before, and who took him to the place was the actress.
The killer tried to create a ‘crazy and dangerous image of the victim. According to him, Dani was crying and when he opened the glove compartment to get a handkerchief, the dancer saw scissors and tried to hit Guilherme, but, to defend himself, he asphyxiated her. Thinking he had killed the actress, he opened Dani’s throat to try to make her breathe again and when he saw that she was dead, he faked a robbery: Guilherme stabbed Daniella and stole her purse that had the 6,000 dollars that Dani had taken to fix her car.
“I am 100% a faithful husband, I respect people’s love, I am very shocked by what happened, very sad. Daniela has a faithful, handsome, intelligent husband who likes her. She, out of some madness, began to push a bar. My wife is pregnant. My personal life was threatened”, said Guilherme to the press.
At the police station, the criminal called his ex-wife, Paula Thomaz, and said he had assumed everything. At that moment, the policeman orders Paula to be brought under arrest. In her interrogation, the woman confesses that she stabbed Daniella after her husband gave the actress a tie. The criminal’s father was involved in the crime at Petrópolis’s House, a torture and murder center during the dictatorship, also known as the Death’s House. Deputy Mauro Magalhães, responsible for the case, tried to cover up the woman.
However, the day after the confession, the newspaper O Globo ran the headline: “Actor’s wife helped him kill Daniella Perez”. From that moment on, her preventive detention was decreed, but she was on the run. At the same time, Guilherme de Pádua was released to await the trial for freedom. The prosecutor in the case asked for the decision to be overturned, but the main suspect, just like Paula, was already on the run.
The criminal couldn’t take the pressure and gave himself up, meanwhile, Thomaz was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. The case was considered closed. The police did not go deep after the weapon. Guilherme claimed to have thrown it into the sea, but they did not want to investigate and discover the location.
Magazine covers said: “The forbidden passion ends in tragedy”, followed by photos of the soap opera, where the characters Yasmin and Bira kissed. This implants the idea in the popular subconscious that the two had a real-life affair. Co-workers claim that Daniella never flirted with Guilherme, but that the actor harassed, pressured, and disturbed her.
Fabio Sabag, director of the soap opera, says that after recording the scene in which Yasmin and Bira broke up, the last scene on the day of the murder, Guilherme cried uncontrollably, a real cry. The studio maids told the press that the killer was desperate, thinking that Daniella had left before him.
Glória Perez received an anonymous call to go to a gas station. In the same week, the killer’s lawyer says that the attendants didn’t know anything, and had only seen the cars go by. At the same time, Raul Gazolla made an appeal in the newspaper for the group of children and fans, who were taking a picture with the two at the studio door before the crime, to appear.
The father of Marcela Nunes, one of the children, contacted the victim’s family and said that his daughter, after taking the pictures, wanted to follow the actor’s car to a gas station, where it was parked. Guilherme was followed by the victim’s car, but, from that moment on, the family chose to return home and not invade the artist’s privacy.
Eliseu, who was at that same gas station on the night of the murder, looked for Glória and gave his statement: he had seen Daniella being assaulted, passed out, and placed inside the car of her, until then, co-worker. At this point, it becomes apparent that something has happened at this gas station.
The victim’s mother began to visit the place daily and every time the gas station attendants ran, even threatening the author of the soap opera. However, the manager fired them, in addition to telling Glória that he didn’t know the names of his former employees and that the check the victim had paid the night of the murder had been wired.
One Sunday, the investigating mother got a breakthrough. A gentleman who guarded the gas station gave a brief description of one of the fired gas station attendants: a resident of the nearby community and a stutterer. That was all Gloria needed to keep going.
She knocked from door to door after that man until she reached his mother’s house, Dagmar Bastos. The lady refused, out of fear, to speak or testify, but after weeks of much insistence, Flávio Bastos was convinced to testify against Guilherme de Pádua, the murderer. He said he saw Bira, from the soap opera, punching Yasmin and putting her on the back of his Blue Santana, while he took over Raul’s Escort.
After that, new witnesses emerged: a group of students hooked the criminal at Barra Shopping, at two in the afternoon, but he claimed that he could not keep talking because he had to pick up his wife, Paula Thomaz, on the second floor. The doorman of the building where the murderous couple lived also said that he had seen them with sheets and blankets. Furthermore, Hugo da Silveira recognized Paula as the woman who was in the Santano.
In 1993, Guilherme de Pádua took all the blame for the murder and Paula withdrew. The woman spoke in court very banally. He was defended by a public defender and she was defended by famous lawyers. The weapon was never found. Criminals always spoke of scissors, but experts claimed it was done with a dagger, due to the cuts on the victim’s shirt.
THE DANIELLA PEREZ LAW
The law of primacy was created during the dictatorship, where the person who kills for the first time remains the first offender. Glória Perez began to revoke that law to transform qualified homicide into a heinous crime.
In Brazil, according to the Constitution, for a law to be created by society, 1,000,000 signatures are needed, and that’s what family members and friends did: they took to the streets, publicized it in newspapers and on television, communicating the proposal to change the law. The delivery of the document with 1,300,000 signatures took place at a concert that brought together more than 60,000 people. Thus, the Heinous Crimes Law was created in 1990.
HISTORY OF CRIMINALS
Guilherme de Pádua made the musical Blue Jeans, directed by Wolf Maya, in 1991, and was involved in several controversies with a punch on the scene in Fábio Assunção and offered to help the stagehand with the knife used in the musical, in that same day, the knife was without the edge and the actor who used it was injured. According to Fábio himself, where Guilherme was, there was confusion.
In that same musical, Paula Thomaz began to attend all the performances and became obsessed with Guilherme. The two of them loved some follies, Guilherme had PAULA tattooed on his sexual organ and Paula had the GUILHERME tattoo on her crotch. There were huge rumors that the couple was part of some rituals. Maurício Mattar said that one day, the criminal arrived in the dressing room of Blue Jeans with an image of a saint, and Paula went to the musical with a backpack. When the musical started, she removed a saint and put it to watch the rehearsal. Guilherme wore a white and red ribbon on his head and didn’t let anyone mess with it.
Daniella’s murder also had many ritualistic facts: it was the last day of the full moon, a circle was made where she was killed, an object was removed from her and a lock of her hair was cut. In addition, the body was placed in a ritualistic manner: with legs and open arms, and belly up. For rituals, the murder weapon, a dagger, is also used.
THE DEVELOPMENT
When the criminal was arrested, he did not appear to have feelings, on the contrary, he felt happy for being on top of the other prisoners, and is the most famous. Everyone wanted autographs and photos, and he received visits from fans and thousands of letters from passionate women. There were several complaints that Paula and Guilherme went out to meet, in addition to privileges such as a plasma TV.
After some time in prison, Paula and Guilherme began to accuse each other, after the woman said that her husband had committed the crime alone and asked her to take the blame with him. The criminal placed the blame for devising the plan and forcing him to kill his co-worker, out of jealousy, on his ex-wife and would have assumed it just so that the pregnant woman would not rot in jail. Thus began a marital war. Guilherme de Pádua even said that he had an affair with Daniella, a fact he denied in the first statement, and Paula Thomaz accused him of trying to kill her parents.
As if the family tragedy were not enough, the tense and sad moments continued. Constant attempts and threats to open Daniella’s coffin happened until 1999 when they left a note on the tomb saying that they would take her out at a certain time and date. Glória asked for it to be exhumed and left in a safe at the Santa Casa.
“They left it in the safe so that we could move Dani to another place, but this transfer could only be done after New Year’s Eve. And that was very painful for me because it was New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 and look, my whole generation fantasized about what the year 2000 would be like and Dani too, how she would be in the 2000s. And she spent the year 2000 in the vault of Santa Casa”, said Glória Perez in the documentary Pacto Brutal.
The murderer wrote the book The story that Brazil does not know, banned in the same year, and in it the ex-actor’s desire for fame is explicit, and how success was the motivation for everything he did, including murder. Colleagues behind the scenes of the soap opera say that he took polls to find out who Yasmin should be with and went up in the production room angrily when his character did not appear in two chapters.
The criminal wanted Glória Perez’s phone number to charge her, however, from the beginning, the synopsis said that Yasmin would stay with Caio, Fábio Assunção’s character. “She was the daughter of the author of the soap opera, she even helped with the plot, you know? I had incredible anxiety to talk to Daniella that day to understand what was going on”, said Guilherme to Luciléa Cordovil in 1996. In another interview, days before the crime, he declared that he would do everything for Bira to stay with Yasmin.
Ivana Crespaumer, a visitor from a prisoner at Polinter de Niterói, says that she heard Paula say that she hated Daniella, offended her with several bad words, and confessed that she would kill her a thousand times if she could. Paula also said that she wanted Daniella to wake up and see Guilherme killing her. She also confessed that Guilherme said that he should have gone after his “mother” because “Daniella was a snotty, worthless person, in love with that guy [Raul]”. Gloria claims that the stab wounds were for her.
THE JUDGEMENT
Glória Perez showed up at the trial with Daniella’s pair of sneakers. Raul Gazolla went to Los Angeles afraid of doing something stupid. Guilherme de Pádua and Paula Thomaz were judged from 1997 onwards, being divided, due to the difference in the testimonies between the two accused.
In the jury, Guilherme recants, placing all the blame on Paula Thomaz. “There’s no doubt. It wasn’t Guilherme who delivered the blows that killed Daniella. And even if it had been, he believed she was already dead”, says the criminal’s lawyer at the trial. He also claims that he followed Daniella to the gas station, talked to her for 5 minutes and the actress wouldn’t let him go, instigating Paula’s fury, who got out of the car and started the fight.
“The only impulse I had was to defend Paula, so I held Daniella, at the time, I was very strong, according to her with one arm and pushing Paula with the other. In that, she weighed in, and I went with it because I wasn’t expecting that weight. She fell to the floor and I saw that she was strange, that she didn’t speak, didn’t move. Paula was stabbing out of desperation and not out of anger”, said Guilherme de Pádua to Glória Maria.
On the day of Paula Thomaz’s judgment, she said: “On the day [of the murder], I went to Barra Shopping because I like to walk around. I wanted to see baby clothes, I wanted to see clothes for me in the new year when my belly was starting to grow”. The lawyer for the Perez family protests when the murderer says she has no evidence that she was there since the mall itself denies that the woman was there and that the doorman saw them leaving with a sheet and pillow. All this exposes the premeditation of the crime. “I think Guilherme was defending him as the expertise came out, time passed”, said the murderer to Pedro Bial.
Paula remained in a state of alienation, she wasn’t there and didn’t know anything, but she didn’t show any surprise when hearing facts about the crime. “I think Paula was cold and 100% rational because she knew Guilherme was going to do the show, that dramatic thing. In front of that stage was the jury, he wasn’t going to hold back. She was much cooler. I’ll let him burn himself”, says psychiatrist Ana Beatriz Barbosa.
The defense of the former actor said that the crime was improvised, in an attempt to reduce the sentence. During Guilherme’s trial, the defense lawyer, Paula Ramalho, was cursed by actor Duda Ribeiro and took advantage of that moment to interrupt the session, restarting only after the actor was removed. Another fact contested by the killer was the punch in Daniella’s face. Experts said that it happened minutes before the death, but Guilherme says that it was Raul Gazolla during rehearsals for the play. In addition, the gas station attendant claims he saw the punch. The defense was trying to disprove all the witnesses, humiliating them, and relying on the attendants and the car washer.
66 hours after the start of the trial, the judge declared his sentence:
“The defendant’s conduct expressed a violent, perverse, and cowardly personality, when he destroyed the life of a defenseless person, with no chance of escaping the attack of his tormentor, because, in addition to the disadvantage of physical strength, the fact took place in a place where the victim’s desperate and agonizing scream would never be heard. The defendant proved to be a person unadapted to social life because feelings of friendship, generosity, and solidarity did not flourish in his spirit, placing his personal ambition above any value. Faced with these circumstances, in which an intense degree of culpability is accentuated, a criminal response consistent with the requirement of necessity and sufficiency for disapproval and prevention of crime is imposed. The accused, despite his personality previously portrayed, is a primary defendant. Under these conditions, I set the base sentence at 19 years of imprisonment, making it definitive, in the absence of a legal circumstance or special case that justifies its alteration. I also order the defendant to pay the costs of the lawsuit. The prison regime for the beginning of the sentence is closed”.
Guilherme de Padua went on to say that injustice had been done about the ruling. In court, the accused tries to greet author Glória Perez and is ignored by her.
In May 1997, Paula Thomaz’s sentence was also approved, and she got 18 and a half years. The other author of the crime was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
YEARS LATER
Guilherme de Pádua served a third of his sentence and left prison. In 1998, Paula’s sentence was reduced to 15 years, and in 1999, after passing the law entrance exam, she received parole. Until his death, in 2022, Guilherme de Pádua was a pastor, and used the crime to make his church known and advertise that “he was used by God for a miracle”. The killer continued to give interviews wherever he was called.
Paula Thomaz has a normal life: she works as a lawyer, got married again, and refuses to speak to the press. The killer studied at the college where Daniella studied and where Rodrigo, the victim’s brother, graduated. Furthermore, she chose the prosecutor in her case, the one who convicted her, as her teacher.
GUILHERME DE PÁDUA’S DEATH
The killer suffered a heart attack and died on November 6, 2022, in Belo Horizonte. The information was disclosed by the founder of the Lagoinha Baptist church, Pastor Márcio Valadão, in a live broadcast on social networks.
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The article above was written by Sophia Claro and edited by Júlia Pupo Mucha Fagá. Liked this type of content? Check out Her Campus Casper Libero for more!