Killers claim shocking murder of family was all part of a game

THE crime was shocking by any standard a family of three bound, drugged and shot in the head at close range in their beds.

Then, a twist: the killers said it was all a game, and the penalty for losing was death.

When they were arrested on May 13, Ronald Ribeiro Rodrigues, a 22-year-old glass worker, and Mayderson Vargas Mendes, an unemployed 21-year-old, confessed to the murder of 21-year-old physics student Tiago Guedes and his parents, Douglas and Heloisa, in Guarapari, a seaside city of 370 kilometres north-east of Rio de Janeiro.