Brazilian in Framingham Gets Life in Prison for Two Murders

Carla de Souza and her son, Caique, on her wedding day in 2005. (courtesy photo: Carla de Souza's family, for EthnicNEWz.org)

A jury at Woburn Superior Court in Massachusetts ordered Brazilian national Jeremias Bins on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, to two life sentences in prison for the murders of his wife, Carla de Souza, 37, and stepson Caique, 11, with a hammer.

The verdict sent a wave of relief among Brazilians in the US and abroad, nearly a week after another Brazilian in Massachusestts was sentenced to 40 years in prison for planting a bomb in a fellow countryman’s car.

On the night of May 20, 2006, Souza and Bins got in a heated argument concerning her involvement with a Mormon temple in Framingham, Mass.  Caique, who stood 50 inches tall and weighed 94.6 pounds, interceded on his mother's behalf.  Both mother and son were killed.

According to medical examiner William Zane, Carla de Souza suffered at least six blows to the head, which penetrated her skull and affected the region of the brain responsible for breathing and heart function.

Caique’s skull was hit at least three times, one to the top of his head, and two below the right ear.

In his final remarks, Earl Howard, Bins' state-appointed attorney, said his client “acted in the moment of deep passion,” and that “Carla provoked him when she threatened to call the police.”

Howard did not call on any witnesses during the two-week trial. Prosecutor Lee Hettinger brought 15 witnesses and introduced 60 pieces of evidences to prove that Bins committed the crimes.

The jury took into account that after the brutal incident in the couple's apartment in Framingham, Bins surrendered to local police wearing a shirt and shorts both covered in the victim’s blood, and he was carrying Phillipe, his then-4-month-old son with Carla de Souza.

“Today it has been proved that men’s justice is alive in the US. Now I can go ahead with my life,” said Elvio Maia, Souza’s only brother in the US, who lives in Milford, Mass.

Maia has gained legal custody of Phillipe and is deeply concerned about how he’ll tell his three-year-old nephew that his father murdered his mother and will spend his life in prison.

“He destroyed three lives: Carla’s, Caique’s and his own,” said Antonio Junior, Caique’s father.

After the life-in-prison sentence was read in the courtroom, Junior said he endured two-and-a-half years of "angst” and that “he couldn’t sleep, eat or work during the last three weeks.”

“We don’t have much to celebrate. But I am relieved that he’ll pay. Because if he took away my right of seeing my son, he shouldn’t have the right to his, either,” said Junior.

Bins and Souza, who met in the US, came from humble backgrounds in different parts of Brazil.  They married in April 2005 after dating for about a year.

One of seven children, Bins left school before the sixth grade to work on his family's small farm, growing coffee beans, corn, rice and beans. He worked there until he came to the United States in 2003.

Souza was the second eldest of eight children, and her father ran a small store selling produce in Feira de Santana, a city in the northeastern state of Bahia.

source:  EthnicNEWz.org

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