The Wall Street Journal; January 6, 1998
Matt Moffett

There's no mystery concerning who committed a murder that riveted a nation. The only question is what motivated the confessed killer, the victim's younger brother, caretaker and only friend, Dirceu de Souza.

"Dirceu acted out of brotherly love and simple human mercy," asserts his lawyer, Alexandre Valverde. Dirceu says he was merely complying with the last wishes of his brother, who was too weak to commit suicide. "If you love me," Dirceu says Joao Roberto told him on the night of the killing last February, "end my life." Dirceu says his brother even specified the murder weapon, a dagger used in rituals of the Afro-Brazilian religion that Joao Roberto adopted as his condition grew more desperate.

Authorities in Assis, a provincial town of feedshops and western-wear outlets, are skeptical of Dirceu's account. "The violence of the murder suggests a crime of passion, not religion," says the city prosecutor, Eduardo Henrique Amancio de Souza (no relation). "It's unclear whether Dirceu acted to end his brother's suffering or his own suffering, the constant struggle to care for an increasingly troublesome and demented brother." The state has charged Dirceu with second-degree homicide, punishable by six to 20 years in prison. Trial is expected to take place sometime this year.

The six other de Souza siblings have condemned Dirceu's action. "Joao Roberto wasn't an animal," Mario de Souza, a brother, told a TV station. "He wasn't a dog, a pig or an ox." While emphasizing that taking a human life is wrong under any circumstance, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Assis has argued that Dirceu should be pardoned, given his amply demonstrated devotion to his brother prior to the killing. Local mental-health officials, meanwhile, have diagnosed Dirceu as psychotic. They can't say, however, whether the illness triggered the crime or whether it emerged only afterward, in the frenzy of publicity.

Free under his own recognizance while awaiting trial, Dirceu, 33 years old, still lives in the one-story house in the working-class neighborhood where the killing took place. The reporters beating a path to the door are about the only people who will come near the notorious residence. Though Dirceu is a fastidious housekeeper, he hasn't been able to clean up all of the blood stains spattered on the wall of Joao Roberto's now-empty bedroom. Elsewhere on the cream-colored wall are faint black smudges, spots where Joao Roberto pounded his head in a self-destructive rage during the final stages of his illness, witnesses say.

The story of the brothers offers a hint of why AIDS remains an intractable problem in the developing world even as it increasingly becomes a treatable illness in wealthier nations. "These brothers endured all the problems of AIDS in poorer countries: lack of treatment, abandonment, ignorance and superstition," says Sister Terezinha de Fatima Casarin, head of the Assis AIDS support agency.

Sister Fatima's organization tried assisting Joao Roberto, but operating on an annual government stipend of just $4,000, its capacity to deliver services was limited. New anti-AIDS drugs weren't widely distributed by federal health officials here until the end of 1996, too late to help the by-then debilitated Joao Roberto. And both the de Souza family and many neighbors in Assis ostracized the brothers.

The horrific killing was a lifetime's distance from the brothers' idyllic boyhood in a rural town not far from here. "Joao Roberto was the one who protected me at school, taught me how to fish and play soccer," says Dirceu, who was four years younger than his brother.

As a young man, Joao Roberto moved on to the city of Sao Paulo and more dangerous pleasures. Working as a bouncer at a bar, Joao Roberto became addicted to injected narcotics, his brother says. Four years ago, Joao Roberto told Dirceu, who had gone to live with him in Sao Paulo, that he had contracted the AIDS virus.

The rest of the family had little sympathy for Joao Roberto. "He didn't do honest work," Mario de Souza later said. The family found Joao Roberto a house in Assis, near a regional hospital, and charged Dirceu, who is single, with taking care of him. "Then they washed their hands of us," says Dirceu.

Having only a $100 a month pension to support himself and his brother, Dirceu compensated with boundless devotion, acquaintances say. Sister Fatima recalls Dirceu calling around the clock for treatment advice. Says Celio Ramalho, a merchant from whom Dirceu shopped: "The attention that he gave to his brother would have astonished anyone."

Despite Dirceu's best efforts, a host of infections made his brother's health progressively weaker and his behavior more erratic. "Dirceu had a hard time, because Joao Roberto became angry and deranged to the point of being unmanageable," says Dr. Juliana Penco, the physician who treated him. One neighbor says she started giving Joao Roberto a wide berth when she encountered him at a public phone, swearing and banging the receiver so hard that the booth shook.

Almost alone among neighbors, Sueli Barbosa tried reaching out to the brothers. "No family deserves to suffer a sickness like that, and worse, to be left alone because of it," says Ms. Barbosa, who baked the de Souzas cakes and other treats. She also distributed informational brochures to other neighbors explaining that casual contact doesn't spread AIDS. But friends abandoned her as well. One neighbor who had always allowed Ms. Barbosa to use the telephone in her house barred her from entering.

Increasingly ill and isolated, Joao Roberto put his faith in the Afro-Brazilian religion called Umbanda, specifically in a fringe variant in which blood sacrifice is seen as a route to eternal salvation. "Joao Roberto made me the instrument of his spiritual beliefs," says Dirceu, recounting the killing while seated on a sofa facing the room where it happened.

Dirceu says that upon returning to the house from the grocery store the evening of the killing, he found his brother beating himself on the head with a wooden plank. Too weak to deliver the death blow himself, Joao Roberto pleaded with Dirceu to hit him with a hammer, Dirceu says. When one smash with a hammer wasn't enough to kill Joao Roberto, Dirceu says his brother begged him to finish the killing with a foot-long dagger used in Umbanda rites. After he buried the blade in Joao Roberto's thorax, Dirceu says, his brother clung to life for three minutes. According to Dirceu, his brother's dying words were: "Obrigado irmao." Thank you, brother. Dirceu then telephoned the police to turn himself in.

The bizarre killing has prompted locals to do some soul searching about the brothers' abandonment. When Joao Roberto was alive, Rejane Marcondes recalls passing by the de Souza's house and hearing Joao Roberto repeatedly beckoning a "girl" in a hoarse voice. "You can bet I kept myself -- and my daughter -- at a distance," she says. Only after Joao Roberto's death did she discover that "Girl" was the name of his pet dog. "I felt really bad," says Ms. Marcondes.

Yet Dirceu remains largely alone, especially since his own health has made national headlines: Recently, Dirceu himself tested positive for the AIDS virus. He says he isn't sure how he got it, but suspects he may have been infected in the course of caring for his brother.

Copyright (c) 1997 Dow Jones and Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The Wall Street Journal, 200 Liberty St., New York, NY 10281.
980106
WJ981201

Copyright © 1998 - The Wall Street Journal. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the WSJ Permissions Desk.

Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 1998. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.

Copyright ©1980, 1998. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .