A Christian pastor has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a missing 13-year-old girl was found dead.
Stefany Vitória Teixeira Ferreira left her house to visit a friend, but she failed to arrive.
Her worried mother reported her disappearance to the police and the family began handing out missing person flyers.
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They soon received a call from a witness, who said he’d seen a girl getting out of a car later on Saturday (8 Feb) afternoon.
According to the witness, who was out fishing with his wife and daughter, a man grabbed the girl and threw her back inside the car.
The witness confronted him, but the man claimed the girl was his daughter and that she was “crazy”.
The witness’s daughter managed to take a photo of the car’s number plate, which they gave to the police.
Thanks to the photo, detectives were able to identify João das Graças Pachola as the vehicle owner.
Pachola, 54, lives in the same neighbourhood of Ribeirão das Neves, north of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as Ferreira’s family.
The police contacted his wife, who told them he’d been missing since Sunday (9 Feb).
They later received intel that he was hiding at his mother’s house in nearby Contagem.
Officers arrested him there on Tuesday (11 Feb) and he reportedly confessed to killing Ferreira.
He later led them to the area of woodland on the edge of Ribeirão das Neves where he’d left her body, which had signs of violence.
Blood was found in his car, which he’d parked in a neighbour’s garage.
Local media say Ferreira’s family attended Pachola’s church every Sunday and that the pastor would also visit their home.
A friend of the family, Kelly, told local media: “Up until then, we thought it was just a coincidence that the pastor and the girl went missing on the same day.”
As well as being a pastor, Pachola also had a job driving local kids to and from school, as reported by Need To Know.
Kelly said: “He took my four-year-old son to school for a year, he took my nephews, he took lots of kids around here.
“Who knows what he might have done to those children.”
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