A man is being accused of hiring a hitman to kill his ex-wife after she came out as a lesbian and left him. Video, police say, shows the hitman shooting her 14 times and the ex-husband had been sending her threatening messages.
Lawyer and country club president Wagner Cardeal Oganauskas has been arrested and faces murder charges in connection to the shooting death of his ex-wife Ana Paula Campestrini, 39, in the city of Curitiba, Brazil on June 22.
Related: Mother who brutally stabbed her son to death for being gay gets 25 years in prison
Campestrini and Oganauskas were married for 17 years and had three children together. Four years ago, she came out as gay and she and Oganauskas separated. She was living with a woman up to the time of her death.
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Then on June 22, she was followed home by a man police identified as Marcos Antônio Ramon, a known friend of her ex-husband.
Security footage from her building shows her arriving in her car and a man in a motorcycle pulls up to the front driver’s side window. He pulls out a gun and shoots 14 times at the car window.
Bank records show that Oganauskas transferred 38,000 Brazilian reals (about $7200 U.S.) to Ramon’s account in April. They believe that he planned the crime for months, planting drugs in his ex-wife’s car to get her arrested and then hiring the hitman when that didn’t work.
Both men have been arrested and Police Chief Tathiana Guzella said that they are investigating it as an anti-LGBTQ hate crime.
Campestrini had previously described her marriage to Oganauskas as abusive and the divorce was bitter, involving a long court over custody and property.
She worked as a cleaner and an Uber driver after the separation to make ends meet, while her husband sent her threats.
“Life will collect the bill for you,” he wrote in one text message to her in 2018, at the beginning of their separation.
“You want to give up without even trying. And I repeat: you’re going to give up on your children. On their happiness. And life will take its toll on you,” he wrote in another.
Many of the messages mention the children. He called her “witch,” “insensitive,” and “selfish.”
“You didn’t think about anyone else, not even your children,” he wrote in a message.
According to local news site UOL, she tried to be calm in response.
“Wagner, I don’t love you as a husband anymore,” she wrote. “This is hard for me too, believe me, it’s not as easy as it sounds.”
Their children lived with their father after the divorce and local media reports that Oganauskas blocked her from seeing the kids regularly.
Campestrini eventually met a woman on an app, Luana Melo, 29. According to Melo, they had plans to renovate the home they lived in together and travel to Greece.
“But Ana Paula’s biggest dream was to be with her children,” Melo said.
“I feel relief and that justice is being done,” she said after learning about the arrests. “I believe that Ana will receive the justice she deserves.”
Both men are being held in custody as they await trial, and both deny the charges.
