Murder deprived 'full of the joys' Bruna chance to enjoy her dream move to Ireland

Translations and learning language and nuanced meanings were elements that permeated this tragic case among the close-knit Brazilian community in Cork, writes Liam Heylin

The murder trial heard that Bruna Fonseca had said to Pacheco: 'I want to be single and you won’t let me. What is the other path? Go to a convent? Become a nun?'

Bruna Fonseca was entering 2023 with the tentative beginnings of a new romance with a fellow language school student before the Brazilian 28-year-old's life was taken from her by her ex-boyfriend before the new year could even begin to unfold.

Bruna's dream was to come to Ireland. When the qualified librarian eventually travelled from her home in Formiga in Minas Gerais province, northwest of Rio de Janiero, to start her life here she must have been — to a use a local expression that she may have picked up in her eagerness to learn more English — "full of the joys".

And then there were the tentative beginnings of romance when she met a young Argentinian man at her language school.

Bruna had been in a relationship with Miller Pacheco back home. That five-year relationship had broken up for a few months but they got back together shortly before the Irish adventure. 

(Left to right) Bruna Fonseca's sister Fernanda, niece Maria, sister Izabel, and cousin Marcella after the sentencing hearing of Miller Pacheco, at Cork Courthouse, Anglesea Street, Cork. Picture: Jim Coughlan

Bruna’s sister, Izabel, said Pacheco frequently phoned and contacted Bruna during the break-up and that he followed her to Ireland, unhappy that she had come over before him. 

Izabel said that for Bruna "it was her dream always" but Pacheco "never had the will to come". 

Pacheco's dreams

But he did have his own romantic dreams. Even against the odds when the relationship was running aground, Bruna was at the heart of those dreams. For Pacheco, he could only imagine his life with Bruna in it. Central to those dreams was their pet dog, a Shih Tzu named D’eagle. 

When his relationship with Bruna was falling apart in Cork he would often invoke the image of D’eagle and insist on how happy the three of them had been in Brazil. Pacheco cried in the dock many times during his murder trial. Without fail, whenever there was evidence that referred to the dog, even in passing, he wept.

He struggled with depression. Getting the dog proved very helpful and calmed him. More than that, he referred to the Shih Tzu as their child, their son. What he wanted more than anything was for Bruna to stay with him, ideally to return home to Brazil and to pick up where they left off with D’eagle.

If this seems like a delicate and unrealistic dream, it was nonetheless the one that Pacheco was wedded to. 

Even in rows where Bruna pleaded with him to let her get on with her life, he spoke of the three of them being happy together — himself, Bruna and the dog. He ratcheted up the moral blackmail by telling Bruna that by breaking up with him, she was betraying their ‘child’.

Arrival in Cork

As soon as Pacheco arrived in Cork, where Bruna met him when he stepped off a bus in the city, he realised that something was wrong, something had changed. 

Days later she broke up with him. And he got to hear about Bruna getting together with Gian, the Argentinian student in her class.

Pacheco blamed her for destroying his life and for sending him to hell, as he put it. He said she was wrong to have been unfaithful to him. 

And he later said that whatever chance he had of coping with the break-up, she should have told him when he was in Brazil.

Bruna Fonseca. Far from home it was in someplace called Liberty Street where this beautiful young woman lost her hopes, her dreams, her life.

Bruna had worked as a librarian in a college in Brazil, Pacheco had worked as an engineer. In the two months that Bruna was in Cork before Pacheco, the romantic scenarios that each of them was imagining into the future were diverging hugely. 

Bruna was texting Gian that she missed him when she was at the New Year’s Eve party in Cork as he was visiting Germany. Pacheco could only imagine his future with Bruna, as they used to be.

Weaponised suicide

Many, many times in their texts and phone calls in the weeks before Bruna’s murder, he spoke of suicide. As the prosecution lawyer Bernard Condon put it, Pacheco weaponised suicide and weaponised victimhood. 

Using a bit of Irish to make the point to the jury he said that with Pacheco it was all, “Mo bhrón, mo bhrón.” Poor me, poor me.

Bruna reminded Pacheco — in a recorded phone call that came to light after her death — “I spent eight months walking on eggshells, that you would do something. I lived every day thinking about it… The smallest sign it is not going to work out, you say, ‘I am going to kill myself’. 

"I have to be perfect 24 hours a day. During the eight months I would only be talking to you because I would believe that if I did not talk to you, you would not wake up the next morning.” 

This may explain the reams of text messages — running to over 2,000 — and phone calls between them that became part of the murder trial. 

Throughout, he blames Bruna for abandoning him in hell, she tries to encourage him to seek help for depression, to return to Brazil and to get on with his life without her. But all the time, Pacheco is telling her he is in hell and only she can rescue him.

Depression

This was more than a case of a jilted lover’s heartbreak. Pacheco had suffered from depression back in Brazil, even before that eight-month break-up. 

In Cork, Bruna was telling him over and over that he needed therapy, he needed to go back to Brazil, to the support of his family. 

She told him she was not qualified to treat him for depression. The advice she gave him was the best ‘prescription’ she could think of.

Pacheco’s own diagnosis was more circular, intractable and ultimately disastrous. For him, Bruna was both the poison and the antidote.

How diametrically opposed they were is clear from even a cursory reference to the texts.

“You destroyed me, ” he texted. “You need a doctor, Miller, this love you feel is sick and I don’t want that,” she replied.

Pacheco (pictured) had suffered from depression back in Brazil, even before the eight-month break-up with Bruna. File picture: Dan Linehan

Despite all the suggestions made at length by Bruna, he was not choosing therapy, he was not choosing Brazil, he was not choosing to return his family. 

The only choice he was prepared to make was Bruna. And at this point in December 2022, Bruna did not want to be chosen by him.

Almost like explaining an immutable fact of nature to a child, she told him, “There is not only Bruna on earth.” Tragically, this was something he was not willing or able to accept. He believed that only she could cure him of depression.

And this was the collision course that his obsessive thinking was on with her yearning to be free to live her life.

Turning point

Mr Condon for the prosecution said that when emotional blackmail did not work for Pacheco and the penny finally dropped that threats of killing himself were not turning her in his direction, he decided to change tack – he decided to murder her.

Bruna said: “I want to be single and you won’t let me. What is the other path? Go to a convent? Become a nun?” He did not answer. But by then he had chosen the final path for her.

Caught in the timeline of evidence were the clear and terrible signals of what was in store for Bruna.

Just before midnight on December 19 2022 in a phone call to his sister in Brazil he asked her to look after D’eagle, before telling her: “I’ve kind of decided what I will do and I won’t tell anyone.” 

Sergeant Brian Barron said Pacheco did not expand on what he meant by that comment, but the analysis of his phone showed that five minutes later he visited a website entitled ‘How to kill in three seconds’ which gave details of the massacre of a Brazilian family in Spain.

Closer to the end of Bruna’s life were another three events caught on the timeline. At 2.59am on January 1 2023, Pacheco sent a text to his friend Pedro in Brazil - “Forgive me, bro, sorry for everything.” 

Marcella Fonseca, cousin of Bruna, speaking after the sentencing. Picture: Jim Coughlan

Nine minutes later, CCTV shows himself and Bruna leaving the Oyster Tavern together at 3.08am, following the Brazilian New Year’s Eve party.

She thought she was going back to his place on Liberty Street for a face time call with D’eagle. Sergeant Cormac Crotty said that at 3.16am, CCTV showed her enter the building. It was the last image of her alive.

What Pacheco knew — and seemed to have known for quite a few days — but what Bruna could never have imagined, was that he was escorting her to her death.

Over and over, he tried to woo Bruna with his obsessive vision — Pacheco, Bruna and a dog named D’eagle forever and ever. But that was not Bruna’s romantic vision, it was his, and his alone.

After urging him to go home, to get help and to move on without her, there were occasions where she tried to spell it out for him in unequivocal terms.

The sense of exasperation from Bruna comes through with total clarity, muddied not at all by translation from Portuguese to English: 

No is no. It has no other meaning. No, no, no, no, no, no… When you get treatment you will realise how much you have humiliated yourself here. I am telling you to get treatment. Please let me leave… let me go, let me go, let me go.

Pacheco had one more card to play. Yet again he invoked the image of the two of them with D’eagle where they would have this face time call to Brazil and see their dog. But this time it was a malevolent ruse. A final act, to never let her go.

Translations and learning language and nuanced meanings were elements that permeated this tragic case among the close-knit Brazilian community in Cork. 

But for the Brazilian loved ones of Bruna Fonseca, the cruel irony could not be lost in translation for them, that far from home it was in someplace called Liberty Street where this beautiful young woman lost her hopes, her dreams, her life.