The Truth About Elize And Marcos Matsunaga's Marriage

On May 19, 2012, Elize Matsunaga shot and killed her husband Marcos in their apartment in São Paulo, Brazil. According to Newsweek, she claimed that the murder had been a crime of passion. "I still don't know how to explain what kind of emotion made me pull that trigger," she said in the true crime documentary on Netflix titled "Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon a Crime."

So, as you might guess, their marriage wasn't exactly a happy union. In her defense, she claimed that her husband Marcos, the CEO of a family-owned Brazilian snack food company, had been unfaithful to her, as well as physically abusive. Elize said that on the night she killed him, Marcos had slapped and threatened her during an argument. However, despite her statement about being unaware of her actions at the moment of pulling the trigger, the autopsy report revealed that she had also slit his throat while he was still alive before cutting his body in to seven pieces and scattering them around the countryside in plastic bags. But how did their relationship get to such a critical point? Let's take a look into their past to see.

If her husband's alleged infidelity surprised Elize, it really shouldn't have. In fact, that's exactly how she met him in the first place. Newsweek reports that she had been working for an escort service called M.Class to help pay for law school when they met. He was a client of hers. She worked under the name Kelly. The two quickly began an affair that lasted three years before Marcos finalized his divorce. They even lived together while he was still married to the other woman. The two then got married, and Elize became pregnant. Marcos' alleged infidelity almost led Elize to divorce him, but she remained in the marriage for the sake of her unborn baby. The two had tried for years to conceive, and she was determined to make it work.

But it didn't take long for the relationship to return to suspicions and resentment after the arrival of their daughter. Whether Elize's suspicions about Marcos were true or not, they were enough to drive her to the point of murder. Despite her claims of being unaware of her actions, Elize is now serving just under 20 years in a Brazilian prison.