Márcio recalls that there were not many people about at the time, just some going to the local market, but they were already inside a store. He saw a taxi and started to hail it, seeking help. The cab driver and Márcio took Santana to hospital. He was still alive, but in critical condition. His radio colleagues broadcast a call for blood donors. He died shortly afterwards.

Santana’s son has not been able to give an exact description of the men who killed his father. He says it all happened very fast and he was busy trying to help his mortally wounded father. On top of that, the man on the motorcycle wore a helmet, making it difficult to see his face. At the time, Márcio was working as a radio engineer at Rádio Jornal. Santana hosted a morning crime show. The day before he died, he had announced that he would be airing allegations of drug trafficking. In one of his programs he had talked of drug dealers in schools, in particular the Anésia Guimarães school.

Santana’s criticism of the city administration of Mayor Paulo Ernesto Ribeiro da Silva, also known as Paulo Dapé, was another constant feature of his show. He went after police officers, politicians and local residents alike. In one show, he complained about the poor quality of school meals. His comments led Education Superintendent Maria de Lourdes Vieira do Nascimento to demand a right to reply on the radio. The two clashed at a special session of the City Commission. Afterwards, the superintendent’s husband, Tércio Pereira, followed Santana in his car, hurled abuse at him and tried to kick him. On June 27, 1997, Santana filed a formal complaint against Pereira at the Eunápolis police precinct.

Santana did not usually talk to his wife, Manuelina Moura de Araújo, 42, about the threats he received. But she noticed that lately he had become tense and worried. The night before his murder, he had hardly slept. According to Manuelina, Santana got up at 4:00 a.m., saying he couldn’t sleep. He drank coffee and left for work at the usual time with his son.

The family was not very well off. Manuelina and Márcio had to move after the murder because they could not longer afford the rent where they were. Manuelina now lives in a simple house in a working-class neighborhood. She lost her job at the hospital where she worked and is currently running for a City Commission seat. Márcio Alan moved out and has been living on his own for a year. He now works at Rádio Jacaranda.

Lima’s initial statement to police

The Santana case appeared to have been solved when on November 10, 1998 former military police officer Paul Sérgio Mendes Lima was arrested in Goiânia for another crime – the murder of Sebastião Alves Nogueira on November 8 in that state. In a statement he gave to police in Goiânia, Lima described in great detail how he had hired a hitman to kill Santana.

He said he had been first approached by a former policeman, Josvaldo Muniz Lopes, alias Lopão, who told him that an employee at city hall, Maria José Ferreira de Souza, also known as Maria Sindoiá, was looking for someone to provide a "service" – to shut Ronald Santana up – at the request of Eunápolis Mayor Paulo Dapé.

Lima already knew Dapé. He had worked as a guard at his food distribution company and later as his chauffeur during the election campaign. Angered at not being given any job in the mayor’s administration after the election, he joined the local opposition.

According to Lima, after talking to Maria Sindoiá he met with the mayor and asked him for 500 reais (about $250) for initial expenses in hiring the hitmen. In his statement, he that the money was deposited by an official named António de Oliveira Santos, alias Toninho da Caixa. Lima’s last contact with Dapé was in the Colônia neighborhood during an anti-city hall demonstration. Dapé had asked Lima, "So our business is not going ahead?" To which Lima replied, "The person who is going to do it is traveling."

The day before the murder, Lima said, he went on a rented motorcycle to Porto Seguro to collect some money for a local merchant. He gave a ride to the owner of a meat shop, Alexandre Borges da Silva Neto, nicknamed Alex. Halfway back, the motorcycle had a flat and Lima hitched a ride to a liquor store, where he and Alex parted company. Lima had a few drinks in a nearby bar while his tire was being fixed. At that moment, he said, two guys arrived, one of them short, dark-skinned, with short hair, around 45 to 50 years old, known only as "Doctor," who asked where Santana lived.

This "Doctor" was hired by Lima as the hitman – the gun used to kill Santana belonged to him. According to Lima, on the day of the murder he and "Doctor" went by motorcycle to the scene of the crime, where "Doctor" shot at Santana while Lima waited for him on the motorcycle. After the murder, Lima returned to Colônia, had a bath and went out with an acquaintance. That same day, a friend – a fellow police officer – to whom he sold a gun told him that Eunápolis Police chief Aluizio Villas Boas wanted to talk to him.

According to Lima, once he was at Eunápolis police headquarters he was quizzed by police officers as to who was responsible for the crime. He asked for more time to find out. On leaving there, he left his motorcycle at a closed gas station. He telephoned city hall employee Waldemar Batista Oliveira, also known as Dudu, asking him to deposit 700 reais (about $300) in a friend’s bank account so he could flee to another state. He went to Rondônia, going on from there to Goiânia.

Lima gave names times and places. He confirmed everything some days later at the Salvador police headquarters. Called to testify, all the city hall officials named by Lima denied any involvement.

There were contradictions in the statements to police. Former police officer Josivaldo Muniz Lopes, known as Lopão, for example, told the police chief that he had been contacted by Maria Sindoiá two or three months before the murder, asking him to find someone to teach a person a lesson. Lopão said he would do no such thing, try Lima. Sindoiá in turn admitted that she had been to Lopão’s workplace but she had only been "joking around" about the possibility of teaching the radio show host a lesson. She said she tried to get in touch with Lopão again to assure him that it had only been a joke, but she could not find him. Lopão is now working at a bakery in Eunápolis and does not want to talk about the matter. Contacted by the IAPA in April, he said he would only talk if called to testify in court.

Alex, the person with whom Lima claims to have gone to Porto Seguro, the day before Santana was killed, left Eunápolis shortly afterwards. According to information received by the police, he made several telephone calls to Espírito Santo state, to the owner of some property that he rented in Eunápolis, to ask him if he had any work, as he was short of money, and what repercussions there had been to Santana’s murder.

Lima changes his statement and denies that Dapé ordered the murder

On February 5, 1999, Lima gave an affidavit at the 5th Notary Public Office in Goiânia, Goiás state, that his initial statements regarding Santana’s murder had been obtained under duress, because he knew that certain police officers in Bahia wanted to kill him. He claimed that he had never received any money from city hall that was not in payment for expenses he had incurred during the mayor’s election campaign. He regretted having implicated other people and admitted to making up that someone known as "Doctor" had shot and killed Santana.

One month later, on March 4, he again withdrew his accusations against city hall employees in a new statement at the Goiânia Criminal Investigation Department to Mauro Moraes, assistant director of the Bahia Civil Police Inland Police Department. Lima was accompanied by his lawyers – João de Melo Cruz from Salvador and Antônio Carlos Trindade from Goiânia.

According to Lima, when he was interrogated the special investigator in charge of the case, Júlio Souza, had told him that another investigator, Aluizio Villas Boas in Eunápolis, had been paid 100,000 reais by Mayor Paulo Dapé to go to Goiânia to kill him. If Lima failed to solve the crime, the blame for Santana’s murder would fall on him.

Interviewed in prison by the IAPA on April 10 this year, Lima again reiterated that he had been pressured to accuse Dapé and he had made up the first statement using names of people he had come to know during the election campaign. Bible in hand – he has become a Seventh Day Adventist – he swore he was used as a scapegoat for the murder by the Eunápolis police and was in jail only because he was poor. "I know that if I get out of jail I am going to die. That’s why I began to read the Bible," he declared. Before his conversion, he thought about "showing how somebody really is killed." He added, "The police has the means to find out who the murderer is."

As of April of this year one of the police officers Lima accused, Villas Boas, was still living in Eunápolis. "I can only speak personally with you, responding to questions in writing and initialing each page," he replied to the IAPA in a telephone call. An almost 20-year veteran of the Civil Police, Villas Boas claimed he was a victim caught up in "police affairs." He said he had been fired from his job in Eunápolis under political pressure.

Júlio Souza, now working in Santo Amaro, also said he was fired for political reasons. "It is not an unsolved case," he told the IAPA. "Arrest warrants were issued." As to Lima’s changed statements, he declared, "I have nothing new to say – he is the murderer. His word was accepted by the justice system. If Lima is not responsible for the murder, then why did he flee the city? Was it because he was known there as the trigger man?" Souza said.

Mayor Dapé said that he had called for an immediate investigation into Santana’s murder as soon as he learned of it. He said Lima had been pressured to say the mayor was behind the murder and did so only to save his own skin. The mayor accused Souza of being an accomplice in the conspiracy and that was why he had bee pulled from the murder inquiry.

Dapé denied rumors that Lima’s brother Abenílcio had been promoted to the city’s neighborhood manager following the murder. He also denied suggestions that the police department had paid for Lima’s lawyers. For the mayor, the crime could be a difficult one to solve because Santana had been a controversial person who criticized everyone "from the street-corner drunk to the woman cheating on her husband to the cop who steals."

Meanwhile, the case remains unsolved. Inland Police Department Assistant Director Moraes, currently in charge of the investigation, says he expects Alex to be arrested in Espírito Santo to confirm Lima’s statement. "The crime is practically solved, but it is not enough to know who did it, we have to prove it," Moraes said. Alex had already given a statement during the investigation, on October 12, 1997, to Júlio Souza.

CHRONOLOGY

10/9/97 – Ronald Santana de Araújo is shot four times and killed on Duque de Caxias Street as we was going with his son, Márcio Alan, to the Rádio Jornal radio station in Eunápolis where he worked. He died several hours later in hospital.

10/16/97 – Police Chief Júlio Souza requests a warrant for the arrest of Paulo Sérgio Mendes Lima be issued on suspicion of having taken part in the murder.

11/10/98 – Mendes Lima is arrested in Goiânia, Goiás state, for his alleged participation in the murder of Sebastião Alves Nogueira in that state on November 8, 1998. He confesses that he was contacted to hire people to kill Santana and says that the person behind the murder is the mayor of Eunápolis, Paulo Dapé.

11/18/98 – Mendes Lima makes a new statement to police in Salvador, confirming everything he said in Goiânia.

11/18/98 – Souza calls for warrants to be issued for the arrest of Maria José Ferreira Souza (Maria Sindoiá), Antônio Oliveira Souza (Toninho da Caixa) and Waldemir Batista de Oliveira (Dudu), mentioned by Mendes Lima in his statement as intermediaries in the murder. They are taken to Salvador to give statements. They deny any part in the crime and are freed immediately.

11/19/98 – In a hearing to compare his statement to that of city hall employee Maria Sindoiá, Mendes Lima sticks to what he had said, while Sindoiá says she did talk to him but not to arrange for Santana to be killed.

12/10/98 – On the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 61 groups sign a Charter of Eunápolis calling for an end to impunity.

1/22/99 – The Justice Ministry’s Human Rights Department sends the Bahia Public Prosecutor’s Office a request to speed up the investigation into Santana’s murder.

2/5/99 – Mendes Lima makes a new statement, lodged with the Goiânia Public Notary Office, denying everything he had said before about Mayor Dapé. He says he made the first statement under duress.

4/4/99 – Mendes Lima makes a new statement at the Goiânia Criminal Investigation Department and once again denies Dapé had given the order to have Santana killed and other details contained in his first statement.

3/15/00 – Mendes Lima is found guilty of grievous bodily harm in connection with the murder of Sebastião Alves Nogueira. He is sentenced to imprisonment of one year, four months and 15 days – time he has already served since being jailed in November 1998. But he is kept in the local penitentiary under terms of the arrest warrant regarding the Santana murder in Bahia. He says he has become a Seventh Day Adventist.

Ronaldo Santana was loved and hated in the city: A profile

Ronaldo Santana de Araújo was a Christian, though not a devout one. He went to church when invited to do so. "He was keen to get on in life, he was smart," his wife, Manuelina, says. His friends say he went with a lot of women.

Radio announcer Paulo Rogério Argollo met him in 1990 when he was running Rádio Santa Cruz in Ilhéus and Ronaldo was hosting a music show. They later worked together in Eunápolis. When Argollo moved to another radio station, for a while the two competed for audience in the same time slot. But they remained friends.

Today, Argollo hosts a midday show on Rádio Jornal sponsored by a company with links to city hall – something Santana’s family sees as a betrayal. "If I were convinced of Mayor Paulo Dapé’s participation in the murder, I wouldn’t be with him," Argollo said. "I cannot miss a professional opportunity just because of suspicions. There is no real evidence." Now 47, he has been blind since he was 10 and he has had one leg amputated because of health problems. Saying he would like to find the murderer, he went to Goiânia to interview Mendes Lima in March this year. In that meeting, Mendes Lima said the mayor was innocent.

Santana’s son Márcio Alan recalled that Mayor Dapé had shortly before his father’s death threatened to withdraw commercials from the radio if he carried on with his criticisms. There are rumors in the city that Dapé had won Santana over by offering him money. This was confirmed by Argollo, but vehemently denied by radio announcer João Batista Alves Pereira, 23, who hosts a call-in show on Rádio Jacarandá featuring listeners’ allegations, not always backed up by evidence – similar to the one Santana used to host. "They want to smear serious journalists, those who won’t be bought," Batista said.

Difficulties, dark spots and irregularities in the process

1.District Attorney Antônio Maurício Soares Magnavita, currently working in Porto Seguro, was serving in Eunápolis at the time of Santana’s murder. He accuses the Civil Police of having been slow in getting to the crime scene and failing to cordon off the area. He himself arrived there before the police, one to two hours after the murder, and says that there was no sign of blood or spent bullets. He filed a formal complaint and called on the Public Safety Department to name a special investigator to carry out an investigation. The person who took on the case was Júlio Souza. The question has been asked: Why was the investigation carried out in Salvador, rather than in Eunápolis?

2.Despite shortcomings in the Santana case being pointed out, Magnavita said he was not surprised. According to him, 99% of homicide inquiries in the hands of the Southern Bahia Civil Police are solved only when they involve serious circumstances or someone points to the murderer. "The Civil Police have no infrastructure, no staff and no material to carry out investigations," Magnavita said. The public prosecutors also complain of lack of staff to take cases to trial. Allegations of mismanagement in hiring officials in some court jurisdictions is another cause of delays in legal proceedings.

3.On November 30, 1999, Eunápolis District Attorney João Alves da Silva Neto asked the local county court judge to issue a warrant for the arrest of Josadack Alves de Oliveira Barbosa, known as Josa, and Carlos Roberto Soares, nicknamed Uncle Patinhas. Silva Neto alleged the two were members of a gang of automobile thieves and drug traffickers and were involved in a homicide. Among the gang members, he said, was police officer Aluizio Villas Boas, who had been police chief in Eunápolis at the time of Santana’s death. Asked about this, Silva Neto said that one of the accused had implicated Villas Boas in Santana’s murder, the motive being allegations Santana had been airing.

4.The investigation has been seesawing, complicated by the runup to municipal elections scheduled for October this year. Among the candidates for office are Santana’s wife Manuelina and his lawyer, Raimundo Teixeira Galvão. Also running are Mendes Lima’s brother, Abenílcio, and city hall employee Waldemir Batista de Oliveira, known as Dudu.

5.The police inquiries began with police officer Aluizio Villas Boas in Eunápolis, then was shifted to officer Júlio Souza from the Inland Police Department (Depin) in Salvador as a mayor was among the suspects. When Souza was fired, the case passed to Mauro Moraes’ precinct. It is now at a standstill. Moraes said he is waiting for Alexandre Borges da Silva Neto to be arrested so as to clear things up.

6.Mendes Lima’s three statements contain a number of contradictions. He himself stated that he was never put on an identity parade in Eunápolis. He said that he is being used by the police as a scapegoat and accused Souza and Villas Boas of persecution. He is convinced that when he gets out of prison he will be a dead man.

7.Santana’s son Márcio said he does not have the tapes of the allegations his father made ion his radio show. He said they were all handed over to radio announcer Paulo Rogério Dórea de Teive Argollo, a close friend of Santana’s who now works for Rádio Jornal hosting a show sponsored by a company with links to the Eunápolis city hall. Argollo does not know the whereabouts of the recording of Santana’s last show, in which he aired allegations of drug trafficking.