Cavalcante is serving a life sentence in the US for killing someone. He is also accused of killing a man in Brazil, where he can’t get a life term.
The judge in charge of Danelo Cavalcante’s murder case in Brazil said he thought the convicted killer was on his way to his home country when he escaped from a jail in Pennsylvania last month.
Cavalcante was caught on Wednesday after being on the run for almost two weeks. He had left Brazil in 2018 after reportedly killing a guy who owed him money. Rafael Pinto Alamy, the state prosecutor for Tocantins, told The Associated Press on Thursday that his sentence in Brazil for killing his girlfriend in 2021 will be much lighter than the life term he got in the U.S. for the same crime.
Alamy said, “I thought he wanted to run away to Brazil.” “He would have to follow the much less strict rules of the prison here.”
If he is found guilty in Brazil, Cavalcante could spend up to 30 years in jail. Since Brazil does not have life sentences, he could get out after about 12 years if he is good.
In Brazil, Cavalcante is accused of killing 20-year-old Valter Jnior Moreira dos Reis on November 5, 2017. He is said to have shot him five times outside a restaurant in Figueiropolis, a small rural town in the state of Tocantins. A witness told police that after the killing, Cavalcante yelled at his car and drove away.
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According to a police report seen by The Associated Press, the victim’s sister later told police she thought Cavalcante attacked him because he owed money for damage he did to a car.
The AP said that Brazilian authorities started looking into Cavalcante and a judge ordered his arrest within a week, but the police never found him.
A Brazilian TV show called Fantastico that looks into crimes said that Cavalcante went to Braslia in January 2018. It’s not clear if he used his own ID to travel, but Alamy said that he was only on the run in the state of Tocantins until June 2018, when he was added to a national warrant information system.
In Brazil, Cavalcante has a court date on Oct. 11 for the case, which is likely to go to a jury “probably next year,” according to his lawyer Magnus Lourenco and Alamy.
Lourenco also said that the October date might be pushed back because he doesn’t know if Cavalcante will know about it in time.
Similarly to how the American media covered Cavalcante’s escape and eventual capture, the Brazilian press also covered the story, and his eventual capture was on the front page of many Brazilian newspapers.
