A man accused of murdering his former girlfriend texted his sister telling her that he had reached a decision about what he was going to do minutes before he began researching online how to kill people, a trial has heard.
Miller Pacheco (32), a Brazilian national whose full name is Miller Mizerani da Cunha Belo Pacheco, has denied the murder of his former girlfriend Bruna Fonseca (28) at his apartment at Liberty Street in Cork on January 1st, 2023.
Sgt Brian Barron told a jury of five men and seven women at the Central Criminal Court in Cork on Friday that gardaí had carried out an analysis of Mr Pacheco’s Samsung phone where they found text messages to his family and friends as well as to Ms Fonseca.
Among the messages they found was one that Mr Miller sent to his sister, Millena Pacheco, in Brazil, just before midnight on December 19th 2022. In it, he asked her to look after his Shih Tzu dog, before telling her: “I’ve kind of decided what I will do and I won’t tell anyone.”
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Sgt Barron said Mr Pacheco did not expand on what he meant by the comment, but the analysis of his phone showed that five minutes later he visited a website entitled How to Kill in Three Seconds which gave details of the massacre of a Brazilian family in Spain.
Minutes later there was a visit to another website on “what are the necessary conditions to kill someone” anda minute after that, to a website addressing “three ways to fight well with knives.
Cross-examined by Mr Pacheco’s counsel, Ray Boland SC, Sgt Barron said he could not say what search terms Mr Pacheco used to reach the websites or whether he entered a term that brought him to one site and clicked on a hyperlink on that site to bring him to the other sites.
Mr Boland said it was his instructions from Mr Pacheco that he was searching how to kill someone in relation to taking his own life. He put it to Sgt Barron that Mr Pacheco also carried out searches to find out the cost of repatriating a body to Brazil to which Sgt Barron agreed.
The jury previously heard that Mr Pacheco and Ms Fonseca had been in a relationship for five years, but she had ended it and come to Ireland on September 23rd 2022. He followed on November 18th, 2022, in a bid to resume the relationship.
Sgt Barron said analysis of Mr Pacheco’s phone revealed he had sent her almost 2,000 texts and Ms Fonseca had sent him more than 1,500 texts between his arrival in Cork and her death on January 1st 2023.
On December 16th, after the couple had split up again in Cork, Mr Pacheco texted Ms Fonseca to say that she still had all her friendships while he was left alone and “replaced like garbage”.
She sent him a number of messages saying the relationship was over and urging him to move on.
Mr Pacheco later sent an audio message: “You don’t feel anything about me really, only wish to hurt me, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt and more and more and more and then go and be with someone else instead of me, that’s what you feel – it can only be that ... go f**k yourself.”
Two days later, Ms Fonseca reiterated the relationship was over.
The case continues before the jury and Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford.
