RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A Shell executive from Utah and his wife slain in their home last year in a murder mystery that riveted Brazil were killed by a neighbor's caretaker upset about alleged racial slurs, police said Thursday.
The 20-year-old caretaker, Jociel Conceicao dos Santos, confessed he used a crowbar to beat Todd and Michelle Staheli to death Nov. 30 in their bed in a luxurious, high-security Rio de Janeiro condominium, said Renato Homen, a spokesman for Rio's state police.
Dos Santos, who is black, told police he was upset after Todd Staheli insulted him because of his race. Homen did not say what Staheli allegedly said to the caretaker.
The arrest of dos Santos was surprising because police said for months that the crime appeared to be the work of highly paid professionals or a member of the household. There were no signs of forced entry into the home.
Police originally speculated a small ax that one of the Staheli children kept as a toy could have been the murder weapon. They said the killing could have been a contract killing by ordered by someone outside Brazil.
Dos Santos was detained early Thursday morning after he allegedly jumped over the wall surrounding the home of a Greek consular official living in the same luxurious, high-security Rio de Janeiro condominium as the Stahelis.
All four of the Staheli's children, ages 3 to 13, were home at the time of the murder but the older children who found the couple dead told police they had heard nothing.
Staheli, 39, vice president for joint ventures in the Southern Cone gas and power unit of Shell, was a native of Spanish Fork, Utah, and his wife was from Logan, Utah.
Although the Rio homicide rate hovers around 50 per 100,000 residents, violence rarely spills into the city's high-security condominiums.
A maid and a driver worked in the Staheli home, but were not there on the night of the murder, police say.
Following the crime, police interviewed the Stahelis' two older children, a 13-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, and a judge initially ordered them to remain in the country while the investigation was under way before allowing them to leave for Utah with their grandparents. Two FBI agents also monitored the investigation in Rio.
The Staheli family had been in Rio de Janeiro for less than four months when the crime occurred.