Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Elize: Shadows of a Woman’ turns the spotlight on the brutal murder of Marcos Matsunaga at the hands of his wife, Elize. It charts the story from their early days of romance, when everything seemed like a fairy tale, to a shocking murder. Because the film primarily unfolds from Elize’s perspective, we get an understanding of her background, the things that shaped her as a child, the desires she had for herself, and the reasons that may have led to blood on her hands. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Elize Left Behind a Trail of Evidence
Elize Matsunaga killed her husband, Marcos, on May 19, 2012. She shot him in the head and dismembered the body in the maid’s bathroom. She put the parts in plastic bags, packed them into three suitcases, carried them 20 miles outside São Paulo, and scattered them in the woods of Cotia. When no one heard from Marcos, his family and friends started to worry about his whereabouts. Reportedly, he was supposed to meet his friends, but he never showed up. Elize tried to cover up his disappearance by telling them about his affair with an MClass escort named Natalia. She claimed her husband had left with some clothes and a substantial amount of cash.
The investigation picked up pace on May 28, 2012, when a decapitated head was found in Cotia. Around the same area, the cops found several bags of body parts, along with an expensive shirt and pants. Soon, the remains were identified as those of Marcos, which turned it from a case of disappearance to a homicide. Since Elize had told the cops that her husband had left the apartment building, they combed through the CCTV footage to figure out the timing of his departure. He was seen in the building’s lobby and elevator, picking up pizza and going back to the apartment. However, there was no footage of him leaving the building.
As suspicion started to turn towards the victim’s wife, the cops took a look at Elize’s phone records, which placed her around the same area where Marcos’ remains had been found. Further, the CCTV footage from the morning of May 20, 2012, showed Elize leaving the building with three big suitcases. She returned later that evening without suitcases. When asked about what she did with the suitcases, she did not have a proper explanation. With the phone records and the footage, the cops had enough evidence to arrest her on the grounds of suspicion. Reportedly, shortly after her arrest, she confessed to her crimes, stating that she had done it all by herself and had not received any help.
Elize’s Claims Paint Marco’s Murder as an Act of Self-Preservation
When Elize confessed to the cops, she reportedly told them that it was “a crime of passion.” She said she hadn’t planned to kill him, and it happened when their argument about his infidelity escalated quickly. It turns out that she had suspected Marcos of an extramarital affair for a while. A few days before the murder, she hired a private investigator to collect evidence proving her theory. Meanwhile, she flew out of the city to be with her aunt for a few days. There, she considered the possibility of a divorce, but she didn’t want to lose her daughter’s custody. When she returned home, she allegedly confronted Marcos about his affair.
In the Netflix documentary ‘Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon a Crime,’ Elize claims that at first he refuted her allegations, allegedly calling her crazy and paranoid. Then she showed him the evidence from her PI. When she talked about leaving him, he allegedly threatened to send her to a mental institution. Elize claims that her husband had already made plans to have her admitted. As a nurse, she had interned in hospitals and seen mental patients medicated and sedated. She felt that once she was in there as a patient, she would have no agency left and would never be able to see her daughter again. The fight allegedly escalated to the point where Elize took out one of the hunting guns and pointed it at her husband.
Elize says in the documentary that she has no idea what came over her at that point. She was going through too many emotions at once. She was afraid for herself, she was scared of losing her daughter, and she was angry with her husband. In the end, she ended up pulling the trigger, and Marcos was dead. According to her story, there had been a physical altercation where he slapped her. This indicated that he was standing up when he was shot. However, in the postmortem report, the cops noted that the bullet from the .380 pistol was fired at point-blank range, and it went from “left to right, downwards and from front to back.”
This suggested that the victim may have been sitting when he was shot. During the trial, the prosecution tried to make the case of premeditated murder, pointing out that Marcos had died around the time when his company, Yoki, was to be sold in a billion-dollar deal. However, the defense argued that there was no proof that someone had been involved in the murder. Elize’s confession also pointed towards her being the sole perpetrator. In the end, the court found her guilty and sentenced her to prison, but no other explanation, apart from her own story, came out about why Marcos was killed.
Read More: Elize Matsunaga: Where is the Killer Now?
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