Finding boy's body a 'miracle'

• Photo Showcase: The Szczepanik family

• Video: Omaha Police Chief and Douglas County Attorney talk about finding remains

The images reel in Joao de Brito's mind.

The Omaha man, a native of Brazil, knew 7-year-old Christopher Szczepanik. He helped teach and take care of him in an after-school program for much of the year before Christopher, his mom, Jaqueline, and his father, Vanderlei, disappeared from their South Omaha home in December 2009.

He had watched the shy, well-behaved boy clutch his violin and keep his distance from the rowdy kids at the school. Took pictures as Christopher shed his bashfulness and danced in a 2009 Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Saw, and still can see, the sweet boy rushing to him on the last day of school in 2009, throwing his arms up and squeezing de Brito in a tight hug.

Now, de Brito must reconcile those images with disturbing ones of the boy's death, images that are the very reason why prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the purported ringleader of the murders.

The latest news was both miraculous and morbid: The recovery of little Christopher's remains, a Thomas the Tank Engine bedsheet tethered to them, from the Missouri River bottom where his body was dumped 22 months ago.

As authorities on Tuesday announced the discovery, de Brito said he couldn't help but cringe and, at the same time, commit himself to a cause: helping Jaqueline Szczepanik's daughter, Tatiane Klein, persuade Brazilian authorities to extradite the third man accused in the killings to the United States.

“Christopher was so young and so defenseless,” de Brito said between tears. “Surely, he could have been spared. The details are so sad — so full of things that you cannot imagine that human beings could do to another human being, let alone a child.”

The discovery of the boy's remains in the river — his parents' bodies still have not been found — brought a sobering reality to a point prosecutors have pressed since last year: That the family was killed by workers who resented Vanderlei, their boss.

De Brito, who talked to Klein on Tuesday, said the discovery of Christopher has her reeling and resolved to bring all the killers to justice. Authorities say they will continue to search for Vanderlei and Jaqueline Szczepanik.

“I can see such a change in Tatiane,” de Brito said. “For the first time, she mentioned these guys as animals, as people with no feelings, no emotions. And you can understand why she feels that way when you consider the inhumane way they killed her mom and her little brother and her stepfather.”

As prosecutors continue to press their death-penalty case against purported ringleader Jose “Carlos” Oliveira-Coutinho, they also are focused on ways to secure the return of co-defendant Elias Lourenco-Batista from Brazil.

Prosecutors dropped theft charges against Lourenco earlier this year — and federal immigration officials deported him to Brazil in April.

After authorities notified her that DNA tests confirmed the identification of Christopher's remains, Tatiane Klein talked with prosecutors about efforts to return Lourenco.

Prosecutors have been in contact with the U.S. Department of Justice, and any extradition likely will have to involve negotiations between the two countries' State Departments. Brazil traditionally does not extradite its residents to face trial in other countries.

Authorities are hopeful that the discovery of the body will bolster their case that Lourenco should be extradited. Unlike before, no one in Brazil can argue that U.S. authorities are just speculating that Christopher died.

Last week, Klein implored supporters to plead with Brazilian authorities to return Lourenco, who has denied involvement in the Szczepaniks' deaths.

“For God's sake, help me to fight for justice,” Klein wrote in an email. “It is not fair that only two pay for the crime.”

Prosecutors said they were floored when they learned last week that a diver from the Yutan, Neb., volunteer fire department had made the discovery nearly two years after the December 2009 disappearance of the family.

The diver did so by feeling for the boy's remains at the river bottom, then joining with other divers to carefully raise the remains to the surface.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said he had assumed that this year's massive flood would have swept the bodies away. However, Christopher's skeletal remains were anchored to the river bottom very near where Valdeir Goncalves-Santos told investigators he and his two workers had dumped the bodies.

“It's just unbelievable,” Kleine said. “Nothing short of a miracle.”

The discovery was the latest in a series of jaw-dropping developments in the case of the disappearance of the Szczepaniks — a Brazilian family who had moved here from Florida to renovate a former church-school in South Omaha.

In August, Goncalves shocked courtroom onlookers with a sob-filled, last-minute conversion in his first-degree murder trial. After denying involvement in the deaths for nearly 20 months, Goncalves offered to tell police everything he knew.

That night and the next day, he told police that he and his fellow workers, Oliveira and Lourenco, killed the Szczepaniks. Goncalves took detectives to an area of the river where, he says, they slit the bodies open and dumped them in the river.

Thursday's search-and-recovery came just a day after authorities testified, in chilling detail, as to how Goncalves says he, Oliveira and Lourenco killed the Szczepaniks at the former school.
Goncalves told detectives the three beat Vanderlei Szczepanik to death with a bat and metal rod. They then locked Christopher and his mother in a bedroom, while Goncalves and Oliveira drove around looking for a place to dump the bodies.

Upon their return, the three men hanged Jaqueline in a stairwell, then did the same to Christopher.

At last week's hearing, Oliveira's attorneys grilled an Omaha police detective on whether they had found any evidence of remains. Todd Lancaster, a court-appointed attorney for Oliveira, argued that investigators couldn't prove there had even been a murder.

He said the state's case fell far short of the evidence used to convict Christopher Edwards in another murder case prosecuted without finding a body: the disappearance and death of Jessica O'Grady.

Detective Robyn Ostermeyer acknowledged that a handful of searches for the Szcze­paniks had yielded nothing.

Then came Thursday's search. Kleine said he believed the search was planned for that day because the river had finally receded, not because of the attorneys' repeated questions.

Kleine said a forensic examiner — the same one who examined 12-year-old Amber Harris'
skeletal remains — will study Christopher's.

Then it will be up to Tatiane Klein to decide how to memorialize her half brother.

“He was very different from the other boys, the other kids,” de Brito said. “Never loud. Never pushing. A very well-behaved boy.

“I remember after he hugged me, his mama (Jaqueline) took him by the hand and walked him to the door. She turned and said, ‘I think he likes you' — and Christopher smiled. And that was the last time I saw him.”

Contact the writer:
402-444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com

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