Questions still hang over Brazil slayings

A Brazilian prosecutor Monday sought an arrest warrant for a handyman in the murders of Utahns Todd and Michelle Staheli, but the couple's family and other observers in the case say they still question his guilt.

Shell Oil executive Todd Staheli, 39, and his wife Michelle, 36, of Spanish Fork, were bludgeoned to death in their home in an exclusive Rio de Janeiro neighborhood on Nov. 30.

A neighborhood handyman, Jociel Conceicao dos Santos, 20, confessed to the slayings early this month, after being arrested April 1 for allegedly trying to break into another home in the condominium where the Stahelis lived.

A judge refused to charge dos Santos for lack of physical evidence, and dos Santos later recanted his confession and has since offered six different versions of the crime.

But on Monday, officials again focused the murder investigation on him.

"Official DNA tests of blood traces found in some of the clothes of dos Santos match that of the American couple. For me, there is no doubt, and I am asking for his immediate arrest," prosecutor Marcele Navega told The Associated Press.

However, details of the crime continue to generate more questions than answers for the victims' family, journalists and law enforcement officials watching the case

"There is a lot of mystery in this thing," said Gary Neeleman, who serves as Utah's de facto Brazilian consul and has assisted the Staheli family in translating Portuguese and other communications with Brazilian officials.

Neeleman said the Staheli family doesn't believe dos Santos is behind the murders. "The family — like so many others —feels like this guy didn't have the brainpower to do this," he said.

According to Brazilian reporter Roberta Novis, who has worked closely with the Deseret Morning News in covering the case, dos Santos jumped the wall of the Stahelis' mansion and watched them until 3 a.m. the morning of the killing. He then invaded the house and went straight to the couple's bedroom, using a crowbar to kill the sleeping couple.

Dos Santos reportedly told Brazilian police he committed the crime because Todd Staheli called him a "negro" — a racial slur toward Brazilian blacks — months earlier when dos Santos was hired to fix a water tank for the Staheli family.

But family members in Utah said Todd would never use a slur like that and didn't know Portuguese well enough to use the term, anyway.