Days before Christmas in 2022, librarian Bruna Fonseca tried to explain why she no longer wanted a relationship with her engineer boyfriend Miller Pacheco.
“I don’t love you and I can’t be with someone out of pity,” Fonseca (28), a Brazilian woman living in Cork, texted Pacheco (32) on December 18th.
“That’s why I need to distance myself, because for you, any sign of help is a light at the end of the tunnel and I can’t give you hope because I don’t want us to get back together.”
Less than two weeks later, on January 1st, 2023, the relationship ended violently. Following weeks of being plagued by the Brazilian man by text and voice messages, Bruna lay dead at his apartment at Liberty Street in Cork.
Pacheco strangled Fonseca to death. The two had been in a relationship for five years and he had proclaimed in the run-up to her killing that he loved her and could not live without her following the end of the relationship. On January 23rd last, Pacheco was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his former girlfriend.
At the outset of Pacheco’s murder trial at the Central Criminal Court in Cork, prosecuting lawyer Bernard Conlon SC painted in broad strokes how their relationship fell apart, re-enacting their conversations for the jury.
Bruna had recorded some of their conversations on her phone. Det Sgt Michael O’Halloran read Pacheco’s angry accusations; prosecution lawyer Imelda Kelly BL read Bruna’s patient replies.
The relationship began eight years earlier in Formiga, a city of about 70,000 people in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil – about eight hours from Rio de Janeiro by road. Bruna grew up there with her older sisters Fernanda and Izabel, and their parents, Tadeu Jose Fonseca, a milkman, and his wife Marin dos Reis Palhares Fonseca.
Bruna attended school locally before obtaining a degree in library studies at the local university, Formiga Centro Universitario. Although her family knew the Pachecos, it wasn’t until June 2017, when she was 23, that she met Pacheco on Instagram. They began dating later that year.
In mid-2019, they moved in together in São Paulo when Bruna secured a job working in the library at Universidade de Franca in the Brazilian city. Pacheco had obtained his engineering degree in the same university and continued to live there after graduation.
Miller Pacheco in April 2018
The couple returned to Formiga when the Covid-19 pandemic struck but later moved back to São Paulo only to break up in late 2021.
By the time they got back together in July 2022, Bruna had decided to move to Ireland. She arrived in Cork on September 23rd, 2022 with her niece Maria Luiza Fonseca where they were welcomed by her cousin, Marcela Fonseca.
Bruna had told Pacheco that he could join her in Ireland. Within days of his arriving in Cork on November 18th 2022, after moving into the apartment on Watercourse Road she shared with Maria Luiza, they had split up again.
That break-up triggered six weeks of what amounted to an emotional besiegement of Bruna by her former boyfriend.
At the trial, Sgt Brian Barron outlined how gardaí found almost 2,000 text messages from Pacheco to her and more than 1,500 replies from her from the date of his arrival in Cork on November 18th to her death at his hands on January 1st, 2023.
Bruna Fonseca’s niece Maria Fonseca, friend Juliana Souza and cousin Marcela Fonseca at a vigil in memory of Bruna in Cork in January 2023. Photograph: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision
Days after Pacheco’s sentencing, Marcela reflects on his obsession with her cousin as evidenced by the text messages between them, his attempts to exploit her caring nature and his refusal to accept their relationship was over.
“It was like Fernanda [Bruna’s sister] said after the trial: Bruna was the rainbow between the showers; she had just such a good heart, always putting others first,” Marcela tells The Irish Times.
“And even after she broke up with Miller, she cared for him and was concerned for him especially when [he] threatened to kill himself.”
She says Bruna helped Pacheco find an apartment and a job – and obtain a PPS work number and bank account.
“I would offer to do something for him but no; it was ‘Bruna, Bruna, Bruna’ – always Bruna – he was obsessed with her and could not accept that she did not want to be with him any more and was trying to make her feel guilty over that,” says Marcela.
The couple’s text messages – read into court testimony – showed how he tried to exploit Bruna’s concern for him to persuade her to reverse her decision to end their relationship.
In one message on December 16th, 2022, Pacheco texted Bruna to say she still had all her friendships while he was left alone and “replaced like garbage”. He told her she was putting him through hell and only wanted to hurt him.
“You don’t know, Miller,” she replied by text.
“You didn’t understand that there’s no love left, no admiration in the relationship and still you chose to stay.”
She then sent him a number of messages saying the relationship was over and urging him to move on.
During the trial, Pacheco could be seen weeping when their Shih Tzu dog D’Eagle was mentioned. In several texts he referred to D’Eagle as their son and he accused Bruna of abandoning them.
“I took care of him [D’Eagle] and you were destroying our family,” he wrote in one.
In another message, sent by audio, he said: “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.”
He later seemed to accept their relationship was over, telling her in another message: “My problem Bruna is having loved you and loving you like this and not wanting to forget you and move on without you – I apologise to everybody and if I hurt you but in fact this time, there is no way to win this battle.”
Bruna recorded five conversations she had with Pacheco on December 17th when he called to her apartment on Southern Road. In the conversations – read out in court – his emotions shift from anger to sadness to trying to make her feel guilty.
On December 20th, in a 70-minute conversation between the couple, Bruna apologised for cheating on him in Brazil. She told him he needed to accept the relationship was over and to return to Brazil where he had been getting psychiatric help after their earlier break-up.
Pacheco responded, telling her she could help him. Bruna asked rhetorically how she could do that by “staying with a person that I cheated on … that the feelings I have for you are not true, is that what you want?”
When he asked her what she needed, she said: “For me to move on; I’m already moving on.”
“You play the victim,” she told him.
[ Bruna Fonseca told accused relationship was over and to get help, trial hearsOpens in new window ]
“But now you are obsessed by sadness, that you want to manipulate me with D’Eagle [their dog in Brazil] that you are going to kill yourself, blah, blah, blah. Man, grow up, you’re 30 years old, Miller. React, roll up your sleeves and react!”
Later, her patience snapped.
She told him: “Miller, go back to Brazil – forget me, f**k; forget me – remember you have a life, for the love of God – remember that you have your own life, f**k; you’re not glued to me, motherf**ker! Man, I feel so much like hitting you.”
Bruna Fonseca
Pacheco, when interviewed by Det Garda Padraig Harrington, claimed Bruna had indeed hit him when she called to his apartment on Liberty Street in Cork in the early hours of New Year’s Day, though his version of events did not tally with the findings of assistant State Pathologist Dr Margot Bolster from her postmortem.
Dr Bolster found Bruna had suffered more than 65 bruise injuries including two marks on her neck and these were consistent with manual strangulation from the front and not from a chokehold from behind, a move which he claimed he had seen on television and used to try to restrain her.
His defence lawyer Ray Boland SC had told the jury that Pacheco said his online searches on how to kill someone were carried out with a view to killing himself and not Bruna.
The jury took just 62 minutes to deliver a unanimous verdict: guilty of the murder of the woman he once loved.
In court, Bruna’s sister Izabel spoke in a victim impact statement of how Bruna’s murder had paralysed the family.
Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford imposed the mandatory life sentence on Pacheco, poignantly quoting Bruna’s pithy observation on the demise of their relationship.
Ms Justice Lankford noted how Bruna had told Pacheco he needed to “learn how to lose”.
Bruna had told him: “There’s no winner because here, it’s not fighting for a trophy, Miller; I am not a trophy … it’s my life and no one is entitled to it – no one, apart from me.”