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February 3, 2026 53 mins

Flordelis dos Santos de Souza is a politician and cultural icon in Brazil. For a time, she and her husband Anderson do Carmo were an evangelical power couple - along with their more than 50 adopted and biological children. In June of 2019, Anderson was murdered. The family said it was a robbery gone wrong. The investigators disagree.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We're returning with a classic
episode that takes us to Brazil. It's a murder mystery,
it's a bit of an evangelical story, and it's got
a lot of really messed up adoption going on. Guys,
did you ever want to start a cult?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
You know?

Speaker 3 (00:19):
He did?

Speaker 4 (00:19):
Ben, We all do. Who doesn't.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Every time I start a cult, I wish I didn't,
But then I just keep starting them.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
No, it's a hard impulse to ignore. But today we're
talking about a cult started.

Speaker 5 (00:30):
By a particular individual over there in Brazil, a cultural
and political icon by the name of Floria del Dos
Santos Desuza. We're getting into political corruption at the highest
levels of government that also take on a very cult
like status.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
And this is also the story of Desuza's husband, Anderson Docarmo,
who was murdered in June of twenty nineteen. The family
says it's a robbery gone wrong. The investigators disagree.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Let's jump right in.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Mett, my
name is Nolan.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you
are you. You are here and that makes this stuff
They don't want you to know. This is a doozy.
Trying to figure out an entry point into this story
was pretty tricky. Let's just say cults exclamation mark, question.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Mark, cults and family strife right right.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Today's story takes us to Brazil, and we want to
start by thanking multiple listeners, including friend of the show
EMW for hipping us to this very strange case that
is currently unfolding. A lot of times, we're careful when
we explore unfolding cases because the information may change, you know,

(02:23):
at any given moment. But we're going to give you
the facts as they stand now. You're right, Matt. This
story includes family at the heart of it, right, which
is misleadingly wholesome in the sound. It includes allegations of cults, gospel, government, conspiracy,
and crime. This is the yet unfinished story of Flora

(02:45):
Delche dos Santos de Sosa. We are not Portuguese speakers
so please pardon any mispronunciation speedbumps here. The name might
be unfamiliar to a lot of our fellow listeners outside
of Brazil. Well, it's tough to figure out how to
unravel this Gordian nod of grizzly crime. Let's start at

(03:08):
the beginning to hear the facts. For anybody who was
not Brazilian, who is Florida.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
De Liche Yeah, Florida Lis dos Santos des Susa. Hope,
I did that Okay. Was born in nineteen sixty one
in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, and that's essentially
a slum if anyone, If anyone's ever seen the movie City.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Of God, that's a great kind of.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
Inroad into the a little bit of the politics, the
crime in her workings and also the living situations of
this part of the country. Florida Ly's early life was
defined by a lot of tragedy, but also kind of
the notion of being saved and being taken in by
religion in a very, very transformative way. At the age

(03:53):
of fourteen, she lost both her father and her brother
in a car accident, and she found peace and comfort
and solace in church. In the church when she was
very very young. Her family was active in evangelical communities,
and as a child, flor de Leis would visit different
churches which were referred to in the area, often as

(04:16):
evangelical cults, and she was a big part of the
what we got I guess we could probably describe as
gospel singing in various church choirs, but it was much
more of that very kind of highly energetic and almost
a form of a reverie that you know, experience where

(04:37):
like the Word of God is moving through you in.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Song, yeah, in song.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Music within the church really would be one of the
biggest defining things in her life. I mean also as
well as the tragedy also that we've we've mentioned there,
But the music is what ends up making this a
story that we are telling you about right now in
this weird way, the music takes her on this path to.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Wear a lad really.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point, Matt. So she
was like many many people of faith in Brazil, she
was active in the evangelical movement. She lived a very
wholesome life from the outside. Eventually she married, she had
several children, and she was later tragically abandoned by her husband,

(05:31):
but her charitable work began attracting media attention. In nineteen
ninety three, when she was thirty two years old, she
began conducting social work programs to assist impoverished drug users,
drug abuse being a huge problem in a lot of
low income areas of the world, not just Brazil, and

(05:54):
she met one Anderson do Carmo de Sosa. She would
go to Mary Anderson. There is way more to this story,
but just remember those facts for now. There was also
a marked age difference. Flora de Leash was sixteen years
older than Anderson. You know, no judgment. A lot of
people have beautiful relationships with age differences, right, And she

(06:19):
reached another incredibly unusual milestone that same year she adopted children.
And you know, a lot of us in the audience
today we are maybe adopted ourselves, or we have adopted children,
or we know someone who has, and we know that
it can be a tremendously difficult process, right. I think

(06:43):
we talked about foreign adoptions too in the past briefly.
But what made what way Flora de Leash's adoption process
so unique.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Well, she didn't adopt one child or you know, maybe
siblings or something. She adopted did victims of a tragedy,
children whose families were killed in a major incident there
in the favella where she lived, and there were thirty
seven children that she adopted.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Thirty seven.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, you heard that correctly, thirty seven all at once.
By the way, there's a strange note there, right, a
little bit of a discordant note in our song, or
an inspiring one, depending on how familiar you become with
this story. It didn't stop there. As of today twenty twenty,
Flordelish has a total of four biological children and more

(07:42):
than fifty adopted children. She did not stop at thirty seven.
This massive adoption was seen as an unbelievable, almost superhuman
act of charity. It catapulted her into the public eye
as one of the kind, most wholesome people in the country.

(08:03):
And now there's even a film based on her life.
The English title is floor Delish. It takes but one
word to change Basta uma palava para mudak.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
It's also like it's starring a lot of very very
big names in Brazilian cinema, So I mean, she is
absolutely a household name and the story would have resonated
in the same way a story about like a massive
celebrity or political figure here in the United States would
have So it was like a big deal over there,
but we just don't really get any of that over here.
It's something we had to kind of do a lot

(08:37):
of digging for.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, think about that a woman decides to take on
the lives of all of these children, to support them,
to be the mother to them, right, I mean, that's incredible,
and and she's continuing to do that. You can totally
imagine why that part of her life, that that story

(08:59):
in her life is worth making a film about that.
That's that's an inspiring thing if that's all you know.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
And yeah, this is this is comparable in some ways
to uh to the fame enjoyed by Mother Teresa in
her heyday before the the abuse witnesses came out. Your
right know about the actors. These are Brazilian A List stars,

(09:31):
the kinds of people who make millions as actors. Many
of them refuse to be paid for their performances because
they thought they were doing a kind of a good
deed a mitzvah by by spreading the story of this
this legendary grace. You know, this near saintly action, and

(09:52):
the profits from the film, which did quite well, went
to support her enormous family. And and so now here
we are, if we're her, we have a gigantic family.
We have at the very least become one of the
most popular, well known people in Brazil or all of

(10:15):
Latin America. We finally have enough money to buy a
new house. What's what's next?

Speaker 4 (10:23):
And all of this led to I mean, first of all,
she's got this almost saintly kind of profile in her
in her country, and all of this leads to a
very high profile and fascinating and multi tiered career that
we're going to talk a little bit more about after
one quick sponsor break and we're back as we were

(10:52):
talking about before the break. You know, Florid de Ly
is almost attained already this kind of legendary staff these
you know, a lists Brazilian actors or saying no, I
refuse to take any salary. I want to do this service,
you know, to this amazing human being, to spread the word,
to tell her story. You really hit right on the headbend,

(11:15):
very much a Mother Teresa type figure. So the film
is an absolute blockbuster in Brazil, she then uses that
clout and notoriety to pursue her first love. I guess
after God would have been singing about God gospel music.
She already has this kind of captive audience, this fan

(11:36):
base that she just wants to grow even further, and
she does just that because she's basically this cult of
personality at this point, she's this absolutely curated cult of personality.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
And should you wish, wait till the end of this episode,
But should you wish, you can find her music on YouTube,
and you can find her albums on Spotify. I strongly
advise you wait for the rest of the episode before
you make that decision. But she she wasn't alone in

(12:12):
her rise to fame because her husband, Anderson, was no
sit at home kind of guy.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
Right, No, now, he was out there pounding the pavement
for the Lord as well.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, he's an enormously successful evangelical pastor. You can read
a little bit more about the rise of the evangelical
movement in the Atlantic. There's a great article called the
Rise of the Brazilian Evangelicals that gives a good sense
of the cultural context. But for our purposes today, just

(12:47):
picture Anderson as one of the most famous religious figures
in you're part of the world right living religious figures.
I mean, it's not quite the Pope, of course, but
he is. He is someone that is very well known.
If you are an evangelical in Brazil, you're very much
aware of this man. He and his wife are a

(13:09):
countrywide power couple.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
But things are things are getting weird behind the curtain.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Things are definitely getting weird. By the way.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
I imagine Anderson as Robert Tilton. I don't know if
you remember that guy, but that's who I imagine him
as in my head. I don't know if any of
you know who Robert Tilton is. He he became famous
for his compilations or compilations that were made of him
where he flatulates a lot, but he's not really But
it's the farting preacher. If you don't know what that is,

(13:39):
then yeah, but Robert Tilton is a real preacher and
he's a real evangelical guy. But I'm just imagining this
guy as that. It might not be a good one
to one, but that's what I've got in my head.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
I used to watch him when I was a kid
growing up.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
Really weird stuff is He is the far arding just
part of his stick or is it happening video catching
him farting.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
No, he's not actually tooting at all. There's no touting whatsoever.
It was just something the Internet made anyway. Sorry, that's
just how people know him, I guess. Now, So the
problem here is you've got you've got several avenues of
money for this family, right, You've got anything that's like
coming in from that movie that was made. You've got

(14:25):
Anderson's stuff going on over here with the Evangelical Church,
all the money I guess the money that comes in
tax free for all of that. Then you've also got
her whole career as a singer, right, there's money coming
in there. You've got really three major tiers of money.
I'm assuming there's other stuff too, with real estate or
other things that we just don't know about our privy

(14:46):
we're not privy too. But Anderson really starts grabbing the
reins for all of that stuff. He starts taking over
all of the family finances, and in a lot of relationships,
controller finances and become a major issue. And in this
family it became a very big problem.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Oh no kidding, yeah, I mean financial imbalance leads us
to the problem of hierarchy and consent. Right Can someone
consent to one who controls them? Can they truly do so?
It's a huge problem with human society, and it's compounded
when the stakes are this high. I would add one

(15:27):
more income stream, which would be non church related donations
to the family, but those are those are inconsistent, you know.
So Anderson is not just taking control of the family finances.
He's also taking control in a way. He's almost fighting

(15:49):
a cold war with Fleur Deliche over the over like
things as small as the chores in the house, over
the decision making process for the family, and this small
army of children, and we want to plant that seat.

(16:11):
That's what's happening behind the scenes. But if you are
the average Brazilian at this point, it's still hunky dory,
you know what I mean. Mother Teresa got married and
these children are growing up, they're doing well. What an inspiration.
This fame, this religious base and this secular fame in
music became a wonderful avenue into politics. There was a

(16:36):
calculation here and Florid Deliche first ran for a city
council position in two thousand and four. Then she ran
for a mayoral position in twenty sixteen and in twenty nineteen.
Very recently, to give you a sense of how the
story develops, she was elected to the federal Congress in Rio.

(17:00):
She was I think she got two hundred thousand votes.
She's commonly referred to in the Brazilian media as the
most voted woman for Congress, meaning that she was the
most popular candidate there. And there is absolutely no denying
that her religious background, her charity work all played a
role in this election. I mean, if you had the
chance to vote for someone you genuinely believed was the

(17:22):
nicest person post Jesus Christ, how could you not. Well.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
Brazil is also like infamous for having one of the
most corrupt political systems like on the planet. I mean,
apparently there are so many people that just like use
their vote as a protest vote and just make up
like joke candidates because the kind of I don't know,
status quo is so corrupt and everybody knows it, they
don't even want.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
To participate in it.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
Like I think in the fifties, Black Rhino got more
of the popular vote for like a city council position
in Sal Paulo, but obviously couldn't be elected because you
know it's a black rhino. But it makes sense to
your point, Ben, that someone like this would be just
seen as a beacon a light in such a you know,

(18:07):
rotten and corrupt system.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, we've got a quote here from Kamara dot l
Eg dot b R website. Here it's Camorrow dos Deputados
and it's just a quick quote from her when she
was elected. I'm just gonna read that to you right now.

(18:30):
Says I will fight for the family, for life, for
the woman. I also want to look for resources for
the communities, for the construction of sports courts in areas
at risk. I will fight for children and adolescents to
have an occupation and the traffic does not embrace them.
Now that has gone through Google Translate, and it is
not perfect, but you can at least get a sense

(18:52):
in English of what she's fighting for, and you can
see that, you know, those are values that I think
a lot of us would want to s work on
the face. If you were going to go into a
voting booth and cast your vote for somebody that maybe
you identify with, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Who's going to disagree? You're going to vote for the
monsters in the race. I mean, it reminds me of
the way that so many sketchy private or government institutions
and initiatives always have these innocuous, benign names like Project
for a New American Century, or you know, children and

(19:29):
Puppies playing Incorporated. It's calculated, right, you would feel like
a bad person if you didn't cast that vote. Perhaps
it's an appeal to emotion, and it's quite an effective
when she becomes a federal deputy for the state of
Rio Deationeiro and at the time of this recording early September,

(19:53):
she technically retains this position today. Unfortunately, as so often
happens in life, she met with triumph and disaster, you know,
one in each hand. That same year, twenty nineteen, her husband,

(20:14):
the evangelical leader Anderson, was found murdered. Police began investigating.
His body was found as he you know, he had
been clearly returning home on the night of June sixteenth.
The family claimed that Anderson had been murdered in a
botched robbery attempt. And this is perhaps where our story

(20:40):
actually begins. Here's where it gets crazy. So the police
are very well aware of who this woman is, right,
they think the same. They have the same kind of
public image burned in their mind as everybody else. But
they have to do their job, so they begin investigating,

(21:02):
and that's when they discover some bizarre facts. We talked
about that age difference earlier. There's a reason that Florid
Deelish is sixteen years older than her husband. Yeah, yep,
you see, before he was her spouse, he was her
adopted son.

Speaker 4 (21:20):
Oh yeah, I feel like we need a dun dunt
dunk sound que there? And that's like the twist in
the movie.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Oh yeah, maybe that's in the sequel for the two
thousand and nine film. Before the two married, Anderson also
dated one of one of Florida Dills's other children, biological
child named Simon.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
That's right when Simone and Anderson broke up. Anderson and
Florida de Lys began dating then. So police also found
that before adopting that total of fifty one children, Florida
Le's had a smaller family of about seven child The
older kids, the biological kids, and the first five adopted

(22:05):
kids were considered the A kids. Let that sink in
for a second. Yeah, and then if you got an
A team, uh, you got you gotta have a B team,
and that's what the.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Other kids were considered the B kids.

Speaker 4 (22:20):
The A kids could go to certain they had like
free run of the house basically. Uh, they had all
the privileges. The other kids were confined to certain parts
of the house.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
They also received better food. The younger children were given
nothing but scraps in the B the B kids old pasta,
you know, stale bread, stuff like that that you would
probably typically feed to like the dog or toss.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, and this is important. People were not aware of
this hierarchy outside of the family for a long time. Uh.
This is what witnesses are talking about when they say
that the public image did not match the practice in private. Reportedly,
the parents kept so many children as kind of a

(23:15):
marketing ploy and a source of income, so it was
perhaps not as altruistic as it appeared to be in
the media. One deputy involved with the homicide case has
said that the money from the ministry was directly used
to maintain the luxuries to which this individual had become accustomed.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
That's right, And there's one other thing here, but you
know what, it's the next part is really messed up,
and we're going to save it until we get back
from this next break, and we'll tell you why this
very strange situation. As we're beginning to see it come

(24:00):
to shape, it gets weirder, and there may have been,
as we said at the top, some kind of cult
going on here.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
I'll tell you right after this break.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
We've returned. Anybody with siblings knows that the feeling of
favoritism is a horrible thing, even if it's just a
kind of a narrative we've made up in our own minds,
this is real favoritism, and this was dangerous. There were
allegations of abuse, but there were also first hand reports,

(24:40):
eyewitness reports, and allegations of a cult. The following material
may not be suitable for all listeners. One of these
sons adopted by the couple, told the media that in
the nineteen nineties, he was forced to undergo an initiation
process become a member of the family. He was isolated

(25:02):
locked in a room, dressed all in white. He was
on a subsistence diet of vegetables and rice. He said
that he witnessed other children using their blood to write
psalms in religious rites, and eventually he was forced to

(25:23):
undergo a purification ritual this purification ritual was that was
sleeping with his adopted mother.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Twist number two, Yeah, well, yeah, it's a rough one.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
And again, these are alleged things, right. That certainly isn't
to say that we don't believe these children and you
know younger adults who they're younger adults now who are
coming forward and seeing these kinds of things, but they
are alleged at this point, we have to we have
to keep that in there just so you're.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah, and as you said Ben at the top of
the show, this is an ongoing story. So we're reporting
what we know based on things that have been that
have come to light thus far, and it is developing,
so more of this will be confirmed or whatever where
there's going to be more information that's going to come
out in the coming months and beyond.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, the fog of war, right, it's touches for a battlefield.
If this stuff is true, it has the makings of
a cult. And we are typically on the show pretty
pretty careful with the C word because one person's cult
is another person's deeply held religious belief system, so we

(26:42):
have to be careful with this. But it does seem
pretty cult, Like there were other strange religious rituals, bizarre
sexual rights.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yes, all kinds of things. I just wanted to bring
up our past discussions of cults in One of the
primary ways to identify cult is whether or not there
are people being targeted for recruitment who are at the
lowest levels on their luck right there. They're not doing well,
they have nowhere to turn to, and then the cult

(27:14):
or the organization reaches a handout and says, hey, we're
here for you. Let us be the ones who take
you in. And you know, I can't say for sure
that's what happened with all of those children that were
taken in by the family early on, but my goodness,
I mean, who wouldn't be better to be shaped mind

(27:37):
and body, everything, but younger people who lost their families.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
That is a really good point. This reminds me getting
where you're going. We do. We did construct a guide,
a checklist for the defining characteristics of a cult. Check
out our video on YouTube dot com slash can conspiracy stuff.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
This do.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
As you mentioned this, Matt, this does tick a lot
of the boxes that we mentioned in that video. Deprivation
of material goods and sleep task that you can never
quite accomplish to the satisfaction of your superiors. Control of
sexual relationships, that's a big one in cults, and also

(28:25):
physical abuse, you know. Floyd de Leash was known to
keep up. Was alleged to have a baseball bat that
she kept handy to hit the children, usually the Bee
kids that she found misbehaving. Her biological daughter Simone was
kind of an overseer and used as a spy.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, I mean just it's just it's so disturbing, and
you know that again that is all happening here. But
the other thing is the thing we mentioned at the
top of the show.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
A murder.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
The husband was murdered, and just before we jump in
to the the unfolding events that are having right now
and what went down over the course of a couple
of days there, I wanted to mention something that I'm
not proud of. I for a long time would frequent
the website LiveLeak dot com. It's nothing against live leak
as an organization. I don't know anything about you. Live

(29:18):
leak not talking down to you in any way, but
the content that's posted there is often very grizzly or
something I don't want to watch. But I almost almost
feel like I have to watch sometimes when whenever we're
reporting on something where there's a video that the news
won't show or you know, some other organization won't put
up and post or repost live leak generally is gonna

(29:40):
have it. And one thing that there's there's one type
of video that is posted there a lot, and it
is robberies that occur in and around Rio Rio de Janeiro,
and a lot of times it they are attempted robberies
as a vehicle is coming home to their house and

(30:03):
there are generally gates. This is a massive generalization. It's
not true for every home, but if there is a
gated area for that home, many of these videos feature
someone trying to get into that gate or stopping the
gate from closing, or ambushing.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Someone just as it's occurring.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
I just want to put that in your mind as
a very common, not extremely common occurrence. I'm not going
to paint the entire city region Rio Dejeniro is a
dangerous place like that, but it is an unfortunate side
effect of having vast inequality existing in such close quarters
in a city.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
And it's also it's a point to the plausibility of
what happens next.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Right, and what we're about to hear.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, So the police investigation, it starts with a tragic
but plausible event, and police learn that things were, as
we alluded to earlier, not well in the house. You know,
when the cameras were off and when no one's doing interviews.
Things were pretty chaotic leading up to the day of

(31:08):
the homicide. Again, on June sixteenth, Anderson u See wanted
a divorce. Floyd Delise was against this for several reasons. First,
financial reasons, a divorce would create pandemonium in the family
because if they split it fifty to fifty. Think about
it this way, Anderson would get fifty percent of the

(31:30):
family fortune and then everybody else, probably weighted toward Floyd
de Leice and the a kids. Everybody else would have
to split the other half between fifty plus people. That
was a non starter. And then the second reason is
we have to consider this carefully crafted public image. A
divorce would be a terrible, terrible look for such a

(31:52):
highly regarded religious family. And there are quotes from Florida
Delice itself saying we can't of where it would be
scandalous to God. So with that note, it does feel
that at least in that because that was an internal
explanation to some of the adopted children. It feels like

(32:13):
maybe there's some genuine belief there in terms of religious values,
but it's kind of hard to square with the later behavior.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Okay, So outside of the divorce, the tensions that were
existing there between Florida Leash and Anderson to the Campo.
I believe Anderson, there was some other family tension going
on between some of the children and Anderson the father, right,

(32:46):
the father of the family, and it's you know, this
is stuff that we're reading. Specifically, the English sources are British,
I believe the ones that we're looking at, BBC, the Guardian.
That's mostly where I'm looking at sources for this. But
there are stories that are coming out about what is
going down, about perhaps what the what some officials know,

(33:12):
some law enforcement officials, but it's a bit tough to
know exactly where some of.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
The some of the information is coming from.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, we'll alert you whenever we can tell you, like
it's more specifics, but here's here's the story that we
know as of right now on what is this September ninth, today,
September ninth, twenty twenty. Apparently, flour de Leiche and at
least one daughter, Simone, were attempting to poison Anderson prior

(33:42):
to his death several times.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
According to the stories there.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Exactly there were some weird things going on with internet
searches with Simone where she had been looking up how
to use what were they talking about?

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Cyanide?

Speaker 1 (34:00):
I think cyanide. It's it's strange to see people's Internet searches.
It's stuff like poison that is legal assassin where to
find you.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Know, authorities if you're out there, don't ever look at
our internet.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Gosh, yeah, I think about that every time they get
a new every time the company changes ownership or we
get a new IT person, I always think, just for
a second, should I send them an email or should
I just let this surprise be something they uncover organically.
It's about the journey. But you're right there were also

(34:38):
there are also a lot of sexual tensions because the
the unfortunate person who talked about the purification right was
not the only person. The only child sexually evolved allegedly
with the mother, and Anderson himself apparently was also known

(35:00):
to sleep with some of the other adopted children. Some
of the other adopted and biological children were also involved
sexually with one another.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, I mean, there's some weird stuff going on there. Again,
like Ben said, all allegedly same with the poisoning. But
one story that did come out of that poisoning, just
before you jump back into too far to the other stuff,
is that you know, the target, at least according to
the story, was always Anderson to get rid of this

(35:31):
father figure, but a ton of people in the family,
multiple people in the family ended up getting poisoned in
all of these or in several of these various attempts
where they're poisoning food, right, that's how it was done.
Something that was can be consumed, and then there's a
ton of other people in the house and somebody else

(35:52):
ends up having a little bit of that poison and
getting very sick but not dying.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
So, as you said earlier, Matt, it is completely plausible,
if tragic, for a robbery of this type to occur
and for a homicide to result. However, this story makes
national news because it is incredibly unusual for federal congressperson's

(36:20):
spouse to be murdered in cold blood. Again, consider the
fact that This is essentially the murder of a celebrity.
You know, the odds are that the robber, well, the
odds are pretty good that the robber, whomever they may be,

(36:40):
if they got a good look at this person, they
would have known who they were robbing.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
And even if this person was unaware of who they
were robbing, the method in which Anderson was killed is
unlikely in that scenario. So just think about all these
things as we continue down the path here.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yeah, I mean when he was quote unquote robbed and
murdered on June sixteenth, the story became a massive sensation.
The murder of a federal congress person's partner.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Was a huge deal.

Speaker 4 (37:13):
The news and social media absolutely ran with it, and
floridalyzed in an interview. During the funeral, wept openly and
begged for justice to be done for her slain husband.
Brazilian media was absolutely on fire with increasingly sensationalist claims.

(37:35):
There was all kinds of salacious little details.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
Coming out of the woodwork.

Speaker 4 (37:40):
Things like allegations of swingers clubs were kind of front
and center. For a time, the story kind of became.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
Less of a big deal.

Speaker 4 (37:49):
It sort of fizzled until that is this year, when
police finally got a break in the case, they accessed
the phone records of Anderson's immediate family and found out
some pretty shocking things.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, and part of the reason this investigation continued is
because this person was a celebrity, because they were also
in a relationship with a prominent political figure and a
prominent religious figure. You know, the hard truth of the
matter is that a person standing in society has a

(38:26):
tremendous influence on how deeply crimes against them are investigated.
That holds true for almost every part of the world.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
And he was shot twenty to thirty times right in
the groined legs are at all of those things up.
That's why the case kept going.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
And this is an important, if grizzly note, because imagine
if you were robbing someone and you threaten them with
a gun and you discharge your firearm. Would you stay
this was from a shotgun, by the way, would you
stay long enough to discharge that firearm that many times?

(39:12):
Or would you high tail it so that you were
not apprehended? There are obvious questions simply in the method
of the murder here. And as you said, no, this
investigation eventually shakes something loose. Law enforcement accesses the phones
of Andersen's immediate family, and then one dark revelation after

(39:34):
another falls like Domino's. All of those a kids that
we mentioned earlier were in on a conspiracy to murder Anderson.
At least that's what the police believe they are accused
of doing. That They all were on board with this.
Apparently again they're the upper echelon of the family and

(39:56):
the people who pulled the trigger multiple times not just
random robbers. First, one of the adopted children named Flavio
or Flavio, is apprehended for this, and he said, you know,
he is the one suspected of actually shooting Anderson. And

(40:16):
he turned and said that his adoptive brother, Lucas, is
the one who purchased the firearm. So this shows us
two things. This shows us, first off, multiple actors in
the homicide, and secondly, it shows coordinated planning. We've had
enough time now to think about this murder that we

(40:37):
realize it's smarter to put some distance between the person
who purchases a gun and the person who discharges it,
because in that gap and that chain of custody, there
there's the perfect opportunity to say, well, my gun was
stolen exactly.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
And then again you go back to those phones and
keep in mind, you know, even if you're not thinking
about it, if you use a cellular device, any kind
of smart device whatsoever, to do anything to communicate with people,
no matter how normal, how benign, or how salacious that

(41:16):
communication is, it doesn't matter if like what you do
to that phone, that information is there and authorities can
access it if you ever get apprehended for any reason
or another, or if they just decide they want to
look in your phone for one reason or another. When
some moan's phone, one of the children was looked at,
it showed very explicit searches for poison. Like we mentioned

(41:41):
at the top, it it was poisoned specifically that you
know what do we say it was ben sinide like
something about how how much sanide kills somebody, or I
forget exactly what it was looking at.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
The usage, whether it's legal to buy it, and and
and this was explained by by Simone as an attempt
to help figure out what had sickened neighbor's pet, a dog.
So this again, this is a attempt at an alibi.

(42:21):
I don't want to be glib here, but first, don't
kill people. Don't plan a crime if you do. If
you do want to research something for any reason that
you do not want people to know about later, then

(42:43):
for Pete's sake, puts put some time into you know,
browsing a library or something. Because this this kind of
stuff is available. They took the phone, and like you said, Matt,
it was very easy to follow the breadcrumbs here in defense, if.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
You do want to commit a crime, use your phone,
use like, make sure you log into Google.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Google. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, please please do that.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
This is this goes back to our our earlier conversation,
which is a true story about our our very strange
search histories on our work computers and probably on our
phones as well. I don't know about you, guys, I'm
always reading something about this kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
The way I was thinking about this, we took a
little break off air and I took a time to
look at my search history, and yeah, there's troubling things
like Brazilian religious cult and then there's other stuff like
role of kislar Aga in the Ottoman Empire. It's the
unuch in charge of the harems and so, you know,

(43:47):
throw some obscure history in there so they'll think, look,
keeping may not be.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Perfect, but they're just a podcaster, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Just type. I'm just a podcaster search history like every
two days. But you're right, they did find this stuff.
That explanation, as you can imagine, did not completely satisfy
law enforcement. All in all, up to this point, eleven
people are gonna end up being arrested in relation to

(44:19):
this homicide. And there is a cinematic movie moment here.
These suspects because they have not been convicted, these suspects
a rounded up in something called Operation Luke twelve. And
matt uh, you know, for years I have deferred to
your biblical knowledge, So what's going on here? Why would

(44:43):
they Why would they call it that? I love the
high drama of the name, but I'm wondering, is it apropos?

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Relying on me for biblical information is your first mistake?
But I'll roll with it here. I spent some time
in some churches. It's a reference to Luke twelve, which
is in the New Testaments, a chapter of Luke, and
in this moment, like in a lot of the New

(45:10):
Testament books, Jesus directly addresses his followers, right, his disciples,
whether it's you know, the twelve major ones or just
other people who are into what he's saying. In this case,
he's talking to his disciples and he says this, there
is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden

(45:32):
that will not be made known. What you have said
in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and
what you have whispered in the ear in the inner
rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. Gotta say, great
job law enforcement to find a Bible verse that connects
to this case and really tells the story of what

(45:55):
was happening here.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
There's something there's one note about that I'd like to make.
Knowing the powerful role of religion in this case, I'm
wondering if someone on the law enforcement side was, up
until the point of this murder themselves, you know, a follower.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Or just fans, right, or just appreciative of what they're doing, right.
I can imagine there were probably numerous people in law
enforcement that felt that way about that family, especially after
that movie. I think that changed the hearts and minds
of a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Right, And so the scandals continue to unfold. Two other
children in the family are arrested on unrelated charges of
domestic abuse and drug trafficking. So things are getting increasingly
disturbing and ugly here. So what about the person that
Noel mentioned earlier. What about Florida Leish herself weeping, holding

(46:59):
an interview at a funeral for her decease spouse, begging
for justice to be done. Where does she square into this. Well,
police believe that, you know, as we said earlier, police
believe that she was the force behind the murder, that
she was the brain behind the trigger, right, and she,

(47:24):
there's another twist, was not arrested.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
This is fascinating. Another part of what we talked about
on the topics of the show possibly what leads to
the Brazilian political system being so corrupt. In Brazil, a
congress person can only be preventatively arrested to avoid the
destruction of evidence, for example, if caught in the act.

(47:49):
So they have this thing there called parliamentary immunity, which
Florida Le's holds. And I was reading some articles about
this and about the brazil In political system, and you know,
there's a sense that this loophole has the potential to
attract people that intend to do crime to these political

(48:13):
posts because it's literally like immunity from any prosecution. Detectives
have pushed for her congressional status to be revoked, but
thus far, no go on that.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Yeah, remember we're still pretty early in the stages here,
so we'll see how everything shakes out. But we do
have to go back now and slightly alter our advice
we were giving everyone about if you want to commit
a crime, we're just gonna say, go ahead and just
get elected if you really want to commit some crime,
and it'll be good to go.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah, what's that old saying? What is it if you
want to go to prison for robbery, rob a bank,
if you want to get rich for robbery, start a bank,
I can't. I'm paraphrasy there, I'm styling on it a little.
But we've been pretty careful to note that these are suspects. Again,

(49:04):
no one's been convicted. We are very careful to note
that there are allegations, even when they're eyewitness accounts. There
are still allegations until proven in a court of law.
But there are some people who don't share that same
kind of careful caveating, and that hesitancy those people are
literally all of the detectives involved in the case. Like

(49:27):
they said, you know, she can't be arrested parliamentary immunity.
They've pushed for her congressional status to be stripped, to
be revoked, and the investigators have publicly stated multiple times
that they have zero doubt that Flordellis was the ringleader

(49:49):
of this conspiracy. In fact, Homicide chief Antonio Ricardo Lima
Nunez noted that all in all, about twenty percent of
the family seems to be involved in this homicide.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
So this is certainly something we're gonna have to continue
to look at. Hopefully, you know, justice whatever whatever that
means in this case, will prevail in some way or another.
But again, we're not going to know for a while,
so we're gonna keep looking at it. We asked that
you keep looking at it too, just you know, if
you find something interesting, let us know, if you hear anything,

(50:27):
let us know. If you're in Brazil, especially and you
speak Portuguese and you're able to read some of the
initial reporting coming out with some of the first the
primary documentation that's coming out, that would be huge for
us because we're having to rely a lot on translation
and reporting from Western sources. I would just put that

(50:48):
out there. But the biggest question we have for everyone
listening is what do you think about all of this
everything that was going on with this family, with the
way money was made by them, by this incredible story
that Florida Leash had. Let us know what you think
about the fact that there is certainly more than that
initial movie about Florida Leish that will be coming out.

(51:11):
This is gonna make for maybe a whole series on
Netflix or something.

Speaker 4 (51:16):
Absolutely please let us know. You can do so in
the usual ways on social media or we are Conspiracy
Stuff Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You
can also join our Facebook group where we tend to
have pretty regular conversations about new episodes that drop, and
this one I think is going to be a particularly
interesting conversation because it is such an ongoing story. So

(51:38):
look to Here's where it Gets Crazy on Facebook for
posts and updates around the story, and you join in
the conversation. If you don't want to do any of that,
you can also give us a call at one A
three three STDWYTK, where you can leave us a voicemail
and maybe be featured on one of our listener mail episodes.
Just be sure and let us know if you're okay

(51:59):
with that.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Hey, and remember, maybe you're watching this on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Maybe you're not.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
But if you want to watch us do this whole thing,
which you know is fun for us, hopefully it's fun
for you too. You can find us at YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy Stuff. We'll be posting as many videos
as we can. They'll mostly be shorter clips from these podcasts,
but you'll get little moments here and there from a
lot of the episodes. We think you're gonna like it.

(52:26):
Let us know what you think there. The comment section
is open again and we will be in it, especially Ben.
He assures us that Ben will be in that comment
section looking for everybody. So no trolls, you control if
you want to, no, I'll say that it's gonna happen.
There's nothing we can do about it.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Oh, you're right, you're right, but don't invite it. Come on, man,
you're right. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
If you don't want to do any add stuff, then
you can just reach out to us the old fashioned
way by sending a good old email.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com stuff they don't

(53:19):
want you to know. Is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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