Woman adopts a boy, marries him years later, then orders his murder through her other adopted children

Between 2018 and June 2019, someone inside a family home in Niterói, Brazil, was quietly poisoning the man of the house. It happened at least six times. The man survived each one. So the family moved to a different plan.

On the morning of June 16, 2019, Anderson do Carmo de Souza was shot 30 times outside the home he shared with his wife and their children. Many of the shots were aimed at his lower body. He did not survive.

The woman who ordered it was his wife. She was also his adoptive mother. And at the time of his death, she was a sitting member of the Brazilian Congress.

How Anderson and Flordelis Became a Family — and Then a Couple

Flordelis dos Santos de Souza took Anderson do Carmo into her home in 1991, when he was 14 years old. She was already known in her community as a woman who opened her doors to children from Rio de Janeiro's favelas, children who had no stable home, no reliable food, no real path forward. Over the years, she and Anderson grew into something the outside world did not see as unusual — in 1998, seven years after she adopted him, they married.

Together, they built a household that became the centerpiece of their public identity. By the time Flordelis ran for Congress, she and Anderson had 55 children between them — three biological and 52 others, most of them taken in from the streets of Rio. That number was not a footnote in her campaign. It was the headline. She won her seat in 2018 as the most voted woman in Rio de Janeiro, joining the new government of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro as a member of the Chamber of Deputies. She was an Evangelical pastor, a gospel singer, and now a lawmaker. Anderson stood beside her as the other half of one of Brazil's most visible Evangelical couples.

The Poisonings Nobody Talked About

What the public did not know was that the marriage had quietly fractured. Anderson kept strict control of the family's finances. With over 50 children in the household, he managed resources rigidly and refused to grant preferential treatment to anyone, including those closest to Flordelis. That tension, according to prosecutors, was the root of everything that followed.

The poisoning attempts began at least a year before Anderson was shot. Flordelis and several of her children tried to poison him at least six times between 2018 and June 2019. Each attempt failed. The plan then shifted. Lucas dos Santos do Carmo, 18 years old at the time, sourced a gun. Flávio dos Santos, 38, used it. On the morning of June 16, 2019, Flávio fired 30 rounds into Anderson outside their home. The court would later note that a significant number of those shots were aimed at the region near his genitals — a detail prosecutors used to illustrate the level of personal hatred behind the killing.

Lucas pleaded guilty and implicated Flávio. Both were convicted. But the person prosecutors said had ordered and orchestrated the entire thing was Flordelis herself.

Parliamentary Immunity and the Road to Conviction

Because Flordelis held a seat in Congress at the time of Anderson's murder and throughout the initial investigation, she could not be arrested. Parliamentary immunity in Brazil protects sitting legislators from detention, and she used that protection to remain free while charges were built around her.

In August 2020, prosecutors formally announced charges against Flordelis and several of her children, alleging that she had masterminded the murder. The case attracted national attention, partly because of who she was and partly because of the scale of what was alleged — a sitting lawmaker, a pastor, a gospel singer, coordinating the killing of her own husband inside the home they shared with dozens of adopted children.

In June 2021, the Ethics Council of Brazil voted 16 to 1 to strip her of her congressional mandate. With her immunity gone, she was arrested.

The Sentences

In November 2022, a Brazilian court convicted Flordelis of Anderson's murder and sentenced her to 50 years in prison. The court described the sentence as a reflection of her hatred, cold-bloodedness, and disrespect for human life. Her biological daughter, Simone dos Santos Rodrigues, received 31 years. Her biological son, identified as the shooter who fired the 30 rounds, received 33 years.

Anderson do Carmo de Souza, the boy Flordelis adopted at 14 and married at 21, was 42 years old when he was killed in the driveway of his own home.