The delay in coming to trial is due to bureaucratic problems, according to Judge Fernando César Rodrigues Salgado of the 2nd Civil, Treasury and Public Registry Court and a substitute judge of the Rio Verde Criminal Court. The oral hearings were postponed on at least three occasions. The first time was because Joana’s defense counsel requested she be tried separately, then because one of the defendants had not been located, and finally because the Rio Verde municipality had no place to hold the oral hearings for two years because of ongoing repairs to its premises. During the time some trials were held in the law school lecture rooms.

As of March 2006 there were 70 oral hearings on the waiting list. “An oral hearing upsets the usual pace and there is only one criminal judge, who is on leave taking a course,” Salgado reported at that time. The volume of work in that area is large – 5,000 criminal trials and 26,000 hearings concerning treasury matters in Rio Verde. Salgado will be standing in until a new substitute judge is appointed. “There is a shortage of judges and prosecutors in Goiás state,” he said. In addition, priority is given to oral hearings in the most long-standing cases or those involving defendants in jail. Santana and Joana are not in custody.

The trial of the two defendants, if it finally comes about, will not only put an end to the impunity surrounding the case but will bring a closing chapter in the history of a newspaper that sparked off great debates in the town due to Ribeiro’s controversial nature.

Differences

On the day of the murder Joana and her husband, Alzemiro José dos Santos, at the time a Rio Verde police captain, were lunching with friends at the home of a former police officer. One of them was Santana, a driver working directly with Santos, regarded as “thoroughly trustworthy” and “almost a member of the family.” When police captain Loester Cristiano da Cunha arrived with the latest edition of the Independente containing allegations about local police officers, they were all outraged. According to Joana, she right away decided to go to Ribeiro’s home to raise a ruckus “so as to call the attention of the authorities” and thus be able to put a stop to what they saw as the unfair reporting by the newspaper. She left in her car and on the way came across Santana, who decided to join her. He was had a 38-caliber revolver stuck in his belt.

Santana confessed to the police that he and Joana went into the house and entered the room where Ribeiro’s companion, Cimei Cristina de Oliveira, was. Lying naked on his bed in the bedroom, Ribeiro heard people outside and asked who was there. Leaning against the bedroom door, Santana told Ribeiro to get dressed, that they wanted “to talk to him.” But Ribeiro had already got up from the bed and was going towards the door. Santana said he felt scared, because Ribeiro was a lot stronger than he. Santana pulled out his gun and shot at point-blank range, he said later, in a bid to immobilize Ribeiro. There were two shots. He fled to the home of some relatives and later turned himself in to the police and confessed to the crime.

The police inquiries determined that Ribeiro’s differences with members of the Civil Police had originated in the classes at the University Of Rio Verde School Of Law. Classmates there included the clerk Joana D’Arc de Souza and police officer Joana Freitas, deputy police chief in the city of Castelandia, with whom he frequently argued over stories he published against the police and involving Santos, Joana D’Arc de Souza’s husband.

He also argued with Tania Guimaraes Fonseca Arantes, whom he accused of falsifying the signature on the attendance list of a classmate who had in fact not turned up, railing against such “bogus students.” Tania and other classmates believe that Ribeiro was very upset after losing his bid to be elected the school president, so much so that the students signed a petition that he be transferred to another lecture room.

The winner in that election was Carlos Augusto Nunes, who had been the town public works secretary in 1993-95. According to the police investigation report, Nunes had once called on Ribeiro to refute in the Independente allegations made about wrongdoing during his administration made in the newspaper Folha do Sudoeste, but for this to happen he would have to pay a publication fee. Nunes did not accept the proposal and believes that might be why Ribeiro began to print articles in his paper calling him “a thief and embezzler of public funds,” although Nunes denied all the allegations.

What is more, Ribeiro offered him to publish in the Independente, for a price, a positive article on the construction company he was representing. The article would counteract questions raised in the City Commission on the legality of a grant of land by the government to the construction company. According to Nunes, the company made a down-payment, but he tried to halt the deal and stop Ribeiro from entering the construction site, which led to more accusations against him personally appearing in the Independente.

The police investigation report contains other negative statements, such as that by a former partner in a bakery that rented an apartment to Ribeiro. The former partner accused him of having used his newspaper to try to discredit him after they had a falling-out. The report also said that Ribeiro attempted extortion. Deputy police chief Joana Freitas Santana, for example, was accused in the paper of being a “forger” and she filed suit charging him with criminal libel. When questioned about this, Ribeiro said he would continue with the allegations until Joana apologized for having signed the petition requesting his transfer at the law school.

His notoriety as an “exasperating person” had originated a long time before. Ribeiro had previously worked at a bar named Lanche Betel. At that time the correspondent of the Folha do Sudoeste newspaper in the city of Jatai invited him to come and work as a crime reporter. But when the correspondent introduced Ribeiro to the local police chief it was discovered that he had a criminal record – in April 2004 a complaint had been filed against him for burning the arm of a young man who was drunk and refused to leave the bar. Given such a record, the police chief said he would not give Ribeiro any information should he become a Folha do Sudoeste reporter.

A short time later Ribeiro founded the Independente. Whenever he received a threat he would report the threat in the paper. According to his common-law wife, Cimei, some days before he was murdered he and she were stopped by police officers who searched his briefcase and told him they would kill him if he did not withdraw the allegations made in his newspaper against police chief Alzemiro and his wife. On the advice of the Public Prosecutor’s Office Ribeiro and Cimei field a formal complaint at the police station. There was immediately a new death threat, this time outside the Folha do Sudoeste newspaper plant.

The recommendation of the public prosecutors was that Ribeiro should not publish any further edition of his newspaper that contained allegations. He promised that the next edition would come out after May 2, following his conversation with the public prosecutors. He did not, however, keep his promise and on Sunday, April 30 that year he took copies of the newly-printed paper to the bakery for distribution. One of them reached the home of the police chief where several members of the Civil Police, including Santana and Joana, were meeting.

It continues to be a difficult situation

Ribeiro made good grades and was regarded as an enthusiastic student at the law school, the police were told after his death by Elza Soares Batista, a lawyer and president of the university. But she said she had had to reprimand him more than once over complaints from fellow students. Ribeiro made enemies everywhere. Testimony by those accused in the Ribeiro murder during the preliminary hearing stage tended to reinforce the view of him as a troublemaker. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that practically all the statements were linked to the police, the target of Ribeiro’s most ferocious criticism in his newspaper.

“He was very critical and aggressive, he did not mince his words,” recalls Rogierio Silva, host of the television journalism program “Telejornalismo” in Tocantins. Silva was working as a correspondent of the newspaper O Popular at the time he knew Ribeiro. In those days Ribeiro told him that he planned to run for office as a city commissioner, he hoped to become mayor and he proposed a popular program, but they did not come to any agreement. He then said he would launch a newspaper to attack city hall. Regarding the denunciations published in the Independente, Silva recalls that Ribeiro printed allegations about wrongdoing in the local government and the police which were legitimate. He believes that a police officer relieved of his duties was Ribeiro’s news source.

“He pointed out where the potholes were, he would speak of abuse of power by the police and the law school directors, and that annoyed a lot of people, said Lázaro José de Almeida, who roomed with Ribeiro for a year and a half when he was a Rio Verde city commissioner. Almeida was a news anchor at Radio 96 FM and said that he, too, was in trouble over his criticisms of city hall.

The situation changed, but not much. Radio journalist Dionezio Costa Magalhaes, known as Costa Filho, has been working in radio for more than 10 years. He is currently with Radio Morada do Sul FM in Rio Verde as host of a call-in program featuring interviews called “Patrulla 97” and aired Mondays through Saturdays from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m. “Marcos Ribeiro fought with the police, but he did not base himself on concrete facts,” Costa Filho said. “To be sensationalist against crime is one thing, but to be against the police is complicated.” Nowadays, in timeslots set aside for crime news, Costa Filho only reports on incidents. Radio reporters only rarely go beyond that, out of fear of being sued or facing reprisals, he explained.

Costa Filho said that he had indeed faced trial and had even been threatened by the local mayor over criticisms he had aired about the city government, and he now feared for his life. As in many other towns and cities in Brazil, in Rio Verde the radio stations belong to politicians or are used as campaign tools by one political party or another.

Elecir Perpetuo Gracias, currently a city commissioner for the PMDB party, even went so far as to try to keep the Independente going after Ribeiro’s death. At that time he was an advisor to a member of the City Commission. “But there was pressure, because the newspaper used to attack a lot of politicians,” he explained. Following the murder, requests to stop publishing the Independente arrived at the newsroom. And that is exactly what happened.