The wife of former Brazilian soccer player Joao Rodrigo Silva discovered her husband’s severed head in a bag on her doorstep in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as she was leaving her house for work on Tuesday.
Police are now on the manhunt for the perpetrators of the gruesome and horrific crime in Brazil, a nation that will host the World Cup in 2014.
Santos was reportedly kidnapped in front of his health food store and the “player’s eyes and tongue had been cut out and his head placed inside one of his own rucksacks,” according to police.
Santos “retired from football two years ago after a successful career playing for several teams in Rio de Janeiro, as well as for clubs in Sweden and Honduras.” He was described as a “humble hero” and was 35.
Because Santos’s wife is a policewoman, investigators are looking into the possibility that her husband was murdered because of her line of work:
Lead murder investigator Rafael Rangel from the 14th Military Police Battalion (BPM) in Rio, said witnesses saw armed men kidnap the businessman. ‘We believe that the people who took him knew the family’s routine,’ said Rangel.
Investigators are working on the hypothesis that Mr Santos could have been murdered by a drugs gang because of Mrs Silva’s work at a military police base in a local slum.
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