BASED ON THE PODCAST "THE WOMAN IN THE ABANDONED HOUSE"
BY CHICO FELITTI
THE AUDIO RECORDINGS PRESENTED IN THIS DOCUMENTARY ARE AUTHENTIC
RECORDED BY CHICO FELITTI FOR THE PODCAST "THE WOMAN IN THE ABANDONED HOUSE"
THE ASSOCIATED SCENES ARE RECONSTRUCTIONS BASED
ON THE TESTIMONIES OF THE PARTICIPANTS AND DOCUMENTS OF THE CASE
THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS DOCUMENTARY IS TO DEPICT THE FACTS
SURROUNDING THIS CASE OF SIGNIFICANT PUBLIC INTEREST
WE CONDEMN ANY ACT OF AGGRESSION OR PERSECUTION
IN ANY FORM AGAINST PEOPLE DEPICTED HERE
WARNING: THIS DOCUMENTARY CONTAINS DEPICTIONS
OF PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE AND DISCRIMINATORY ATTACKS
THAT MAY BE CONSIDERED TRIGGERING FOR SOME PEOPLE
There have only been occasional sightings,
such as behind a window or peeking around a door.
Who is the woman living in this house in Higienópolis,
in the Central Zone of São Paulo?
In my 30 years as a cop, I have never
been involved in an event like this.
During the police operation,
dozens of neighbors and onlookers
gathered to get a glance of the abandoned house.
How did the house manage to remain intact up until now,
and why is it in such a state?
A building that was once a mansion, a symbol of wealth,
is now crumbling to pieces.
The case garnered attention thanks to the podcast
"The Woman in the Abandoned House"
by journalist Chico Felitti for "Folha de São Paulo."
I don't think any journalist believes
that their story is going to rally the public
to the point that people say,
"I'm going to do something about this."
Criminal!
And the controversy is growing,
because the owner of the property
is a fugitive of the American Justice System,
wanted for a serious crime she committed in the U.S.
-You're a journalist, right? -Yes.
Then, as a good journalist,
you have to listen to all sides of the story
before publishing anything, right?
ABANDONED: THE WOMAN IN THE DECAYING HOUSE
My name is Chico Felitti. I'm a journalist.
I wrote for a newspaper for ten years, and I had a breakdown.
I left journalism and started writing books, biographies,
and doing podcasts, and when I turned 30,
I moved to this house in a new neighborhood,
which is where I lived during the pandemic.
One of the few things I would do was take my dogs for a walk.
We'd take long walks several times a day
and on one of those walks, I passed a house in total disarray,
it was abandoned.
And the house really caught my attention.
Higienópolis is a neighborhood that has
a very privileged social class,
and there is an appreciation for the architecture in the neighborhood.
It has countless historic properties, so,
I was truly shocked to see a house
that was in such a deplorable state.
In São Paulo, Higienópolis is an island.
And why "an island"?
Because it has trees,
unlike the rest of the area, it's very green.
It has security,
and much of that security is privately hired by rich people,
to keep an eye on the street.
It's a neighborhood of mansions. Some are still there today,
and others have become vertical mansions
worth millions of reais.
It didn't compute, it didn't make sense.
It was a beautiful villa with three floors,
it was like a palace.
At one point, it was a grand house. It had pedigree.
The house even had a name,
the name of the patriarch of the family that built it.
GERALDO V. DE AZEVEDO, MEDICAL SURGEON
But it was completely falling to pieces.
The family's house was a mansion.
It was a marvelous and dazzling house.
People would get there, to the steps, and see a red carpet.
There was a dining room that she used to keep locked
and it was only used for fancy dinners and parties,
for people from high society.
In fact, I would get invited. I would do her hair,
and Mrs. Lourdes would always say, "Rosa, stay for the party,
I'll find you a rich man to marry."
And Mr. Geraldo was very polite, and he would say,
"Mrs. Rosa, stay for the dinner."
So, I was always in contact with them, you know?
We were close.
One day, I was on my way home, and as I passed by,
I saw someone emptying a bucket.
A lady was dumping out a bucket.
And I thought, "People are living in that house!"
I began to see that person more frequently, and always at night.
And months had passed at this point. It was an older lady,
neglected, all alone in the house. "Where is her family?
Is she capable of caring for herself?"
So, that really got me thinking.
I decided I was going to make a podcast
to tell the story of that woman and that house.
I always wanted to speak with her, but she vanished.
The woman disappeared. I went months without seeing her.
So, I used that time to try to tell the story without her.
I walked around the neighborhood, I asked some neighbors,
but she was still nowhere to be found.
I waited almost 72 hours for her, sitting in front of the house.
During the time she was hiding,
I didn't achieve anything, so...
I decided to let my guard down and go for a coffee.
Then her neighbor, Mari, messages me that she's in the garden.
So, I run over and finally see her for the first time in six months.
She had this kind of destitute look about her.
Her clothes were all shabby
and her face was all white from, I don't know what.
Maybe it was makeup or some sort of cream or something,
but she had this very haughty manner about her.
She said, "Fine, I'll do an interview. Wait here, I'll be back."
She goes back in the house, slams the door
and never comes back out.
However, I had given her my phone number,
so she reached out to me.
-Hello? -Hello, Margarida?
Where are you?
When I went back out, you had disappeared.
Where'd you go?
I waited for 30 minutes, but then I had to go.
But I knew you had my number and would call me so we could talk.
So, why are you so curious about the house?
Because it's an abandoned house
in one of the richest neighborhoods in Brazil, yet someone's living there.
Well, first things first, the house isn't abandoned, all right?
It's going to be restored and it's going to be beautiful, okay?
When?
When God is willing and allows it to happen.
I really want it to happen, okay?
RECENT RECORDINGS
Margarida was evasive during the conversation.
The one who helped me to understand why, was Mari Muradas,
who was also looking into the story.
One morning, I was walking my dogs,
and as I turned onto the street,
a neighbor passed by with her dogs, and said, "That woman is evil."
And I thought, "Evil"?
She said, "She owns that house and she's a fugitive."
And she, I, I'll never forgot, she said,
"You're very young, you won't remember,
but many years ago
there was a case of a family who enslaved a maid in the United States,
and it's her."
Apparently, she was currently wanted by the United States.
When I got home, I searched on Google:
"Brazilian couple enslaves maid in the United States."
And then in the search results there was
a report by The Washington Post from 2000.
"What? 2000?" That really got my attention.
"How can that be?"
The case kept hidden for 20 years.
After the crime was discovered, the podcast was released
and people began standing outside the house to protest.
According to the information disclosed in the podcast,
the woman is a fugitive and wanted in the United States.
As you can see here, all these people were passing by on the street
and stopped to take pictures and get a look at the house.
There is a constant flow of people, so many people.
They even parked in the middle of the street to get a photo
and follow the trend.
I'm listening to the podcast and was curious, you know?
Because I know the area, so I wanted to see where the house was.
I knew the house, but I didn't know what was going on in there.
The place became a tourist attraction
after a crime was revealed in the podcast,
The Woman in the Abandoned House
by journalist Chico Felitti.
It became a tourist spot.
Sometimes, there are 50, 100 people in front of the house taking selfies
or doing Tik Tok dances.
SEE WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
ABOUT THE "THE WOMAN IN THE ABANDONED HOUSE" CASE
POLICE PERFORMS INSPECTION INSIDE THE HOUSE
It was becoming clear that Margarida was getting uncomfortable,
which was something that she was
starting to have in common with the other neighbors.
We knew that she was hiding something or other, you know?
Because she was very reclusive, she didn't have a social life.
The older people around here
were friends with her parents and everything,
and they said she had taken an employee with her over there,
but they didn't know that she would bully her employee, you know?
It was a shock to hear about that.
Margarida didn't feel that she was
on the same level as anyone in her neighborhood.
She felt superior.
She felt like a blue blood, an aristocrat,
a "quatrocentona," which is a term used
to describe the elite of São Paulo.
And I thought that as a woman with some kind of skin disease,
that she was a fragile person, or I thought she was a fragile person.
But when she spoke, she didn't speak with fragility.
She spoke with great authority.
She spoke with an air of arrogance.
After all the complaints made by the neighbors,
and a month of repercussions after the release of the podcast,
the police decided to show up at the house.
And they're about to break into the decaying house...
The police just told us that she is refusing
to open the door of the property. That's why officers are now on the scene
with a locksmith in an attempt to open the door
and make contact with the woman.
POLICE AWAITS TO INTERROGATE MRS. MARGARIDA
The police don't get to choose.
If there's a case, you have to investigate. No matter what.
And we received a new case that was linked to two police reports,
which was curious, to say the least.
One report we received was regarding the mistreatment... of animals.
And then there was also a report that came in that stated that there was
an elderly person who was suffering from abandonment.
Something that we call "incapacitated abandonment."
So, we picked up the two incidents,
and we needed to check them out,
to find out what was going on.
ABANDONED HOUSE MYSTERY POLICE BREAKS INTO MARGARIDA'S MANSION
The crowd that formed in front of her house,
in front of my building, on Piauí Street itself
became something that was uncontrollable.
So, I decided to do something.
So, let's try to help and see what's going on.
...the situation in which the victim is living.
They're checking the environment
for possible health violations and signs of neglect.
There were cops from two different stations, a helicopter.
Even a tactical unit came over to raid the house.
Margarida was terrified.
She didn't want to open the door to anyone.
If she had left the house at that moment, I think she would have been lynched.
At that moment, she would have been lynched.
We got there with a search warrant,
we opened the gate and went in,
and we knocked on the door to see if she would let us in.
We knocked and knocked, once, twice, three, four times, and nothing.
Margarida was starting to get desperate with that crowd in front of her house.
So, another 40 minutes go by, then an hour.
But she won't come out, so the lawyer talks to her again.
I asked her several times to open the door.
She says that she will open, and asks us to wait.
But then another hour goes by.
At a certain point, the police just lost their patience.
Almost three hours waiting for her to let us in.
The lawyer even told us,
"Look, I don't think she's going to open the door."
LIVE - ABANDONED HOUSE
FBI FUGITIVE REFUSES TO OPEN DOOR
So, we decided to serve the search warrant in a more effective manner,
since she refused to open the door for us.
The police are prying open the window as we speak,
and people here have started cheering happily.
FBI FUGITIVE REFUSES TO OPEN DOOR
There was no reason for them to enter. She didn't want them to.
It was her house.
There was no reason for the police to break into her house.
I didn't understand what was going on.
They smashed the window!
The police have broken a window and are entering the decaying house!
Finally, we managed to get in.
The whole place was absurdly unfit to live in,
and it was hard to move around.
There was a smell in the house, and we couldn't even identify
exactly what the smell was.
It smelled like rotten food,
and it smelled like, almost like sewage.
We couldn't even figure it out.
Yeah, it wasn't very nice,
but it's a house that's been practically shuttered,
except for a window here and there.
There was garbage on the floor, things scattered everywhere.
There were old rugs.
It turns out she's a hoarder,
but that's no reason to evict someone.
This is a horrible situation for me.
-I'm being... -Mrs. Margarida, open the door.
-Good afternoon. -Open the door.
You're here! You're here!
Open the door so your lawyer can go in.
No.
The interaction with Mrs. Margarida was so difficult.
She didn't want the police to look at anything.
"No, don't look at that. Don't go there."
She didn't want anyone to go and look upstairs, and she didn't...
She just wanted to override the search warrant.
It didn't make any sense for them to search the house,
because, what were they even looking for?
They looked around the house, they moved things around,
but there was nothing. The aim was to get her out of the house.
That was the objective there.
We've asked for the emergency medical service
to come over here and do an evaluation,
and we've also called the Fire Department.
We're going to listen to the technicians to see what condition
the property is currently in.
The police said that she was in no condition
to be living in that house
alleging that the house had structural problems,
and that the house was starting to crumble apart.
They said she couldn't live there anymore.
We then decided to bring in an engineer for the city to verify
the condition of the house
and see if there was any danger of explosion or collapse.
Well, what I can tell you with assurance,
is that as far as the stability of the property goes
everything safe, there's no imminent risk.
The issue of insalubrity is something momentary,
it's merely momentary.
A good cleaning would resolve the problem.
It could be habitable.
POLICE ENTERS IN MARGARIDA'S MANSION
But despite everything,
they continued to tell her that she couldn't live there anymore,
that she would have to leave that house.
All that was left was to wait for a report
on Mrs. Margarida's physical and mental health.
The doctor has arrived.
The long-awaited doctor with emergency services has just arrived.
I managed to get a doctor from the council
to come talk to her for about two hours
and we managed to prove that she could stay there in her house.
And so, after all that, the police finally left.
And, in fact, she was in good condition, you know?
Physically and mentally, to continue living there, in her house.
To be honest, we wanted to serve the search warrant
and finish as soon as possible and clear everything up,
because the environment was kind of, I won't say "hostile."
It was kind of, I guess it was a question of energy.
Look, in my opinion, what happened was a circus.
It all started with that podcast by Chico Felitti,
that it simply changed one person's life from one minute to the next,
a person who lived in the neighborhood.
Why were people doing this?
What right did they have to take away someone's freedom?
In 2000, I was a correspondent for Folha de São Paulo in Washington.
US COURT SENTENCES BRAZILIAN MAN TO 6.6 YEARS IN PRISON
And I heard that a Brazilian couple
were going to be tried in the United States, in Washington
for mistreating a maid they had brought from Brazil to the United States.
6.6 YEARS
BRAZILIAN MAN GETS 6.5 YEARS IN PRISON IN THE US
Years after the trial,
I returned to Brazil and lived in a building,
that was next door to a house where a woman lived
who was very strange
with strange habits.
And it was a divine coincidence,
because I discovered that my neighbor was on the run from the FBI
and happened to be the most important character
from the trial I covered in Washington.
So close, yet so far.
GAITHERSBURG 21 MILES FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.
Margarida Bonetti moved with her family to the United States
at the end of the 70s.
Then arrives in Washington, Rene Bonetti,
her husband, who was a brilliant and promising engineer.
Margarida Bonetti, who had graduated but never worked in any profession,
was a socialite who lived here with the elite of São Paulo
and their son, who was still a child.
And joining the family, was Hilda dos Santos,
who had been the maid of Margarida's mother
since she was a teenager.
She was going with them to the United States
to look after the couple's child
and to tend to their U.S. home the way she had done in Brazil.
When I went to the United States,
I wanted to go back to São Paulo to be with my parents.
MARGARIDA BONETTI'S VOICE
I was really missing my parents, you know?
I missed my family a lot.
One of the ways Margarida's family convinced her to go to the United States,
since she didn't want to go,
was to agree that it would just be for a year
and that Hilda would go along to help.
So that she wouldn't have to do anything in the house, because Hilda,
the maid that she had known since childhood, would be there with her.
GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND UNITED STATES
Hello?
Finally. So, who is this?
I don't understand English.
I don't understand what you're saying.
She needs to... I don't understand anything.
What a clown.
I have so many stories to tell, so many...
I came here from São Paulo over here
to help out and all that.
To help keep them company
and to work for them, and everything, but it all went wrong.
When I first got here, I had a hard time getting used to it.
And so, I wanted to go back to my country.
They never paid attention to me, they only paid attention to themselves!
They never seemed to care about anything at all!
Why did they take advantage of me and bring me from São Paulo to here
and make me suffer like that?
She did whatever she wanted, whatever she could.
And then, when she saw that she wasn't...
That she wasn't winning,
that was when she would hit back.
It was like a hard hit that you just take, you know?
It's something that ends up hurting for the rest of your life.
In the U.S., Hilda had no money, she didn't get paid.
Hilda wasn't allowed to come and go.
She could go outside, but the family forbade her
from having contact with the neighbors.
Hilda's situation was getting worse, and she was becoming
more and more trapped in that house and being exploited.
Did you assault Hilda?
-Huh? -Did you assault Hilda?
Never in my life have I ever assaulted Hilda.
Never. Not ever.
Not even once.
I liked her too much.
If you want to know the truth, she was actually my best friend, FYI.
Margarida always treated Hilda very well.
She was always very well looked after in the family.
Margarida is a person who is very intelligent,
a person who's educated and well,
I don't believe that she would ever do any harm to anyone.
As for my passport, it had been years since I knew where my passport was.
Hilda's passport was with Rene at his company.
But it expired after a while, and because that expired,
her visa also expired.
Meaning, Hilda was illegally in the U.S., as if she never had one.
She was undocumented.
She had ceased to exist on American soil.
That one there is a broken heart.
The isolation and the violence
kept on getting worse.
And that forced Hilda to leave her house and seek help in the neighborhood.
And so, one of the neighbors went to a lawyer
to help broker a contact with the FBI to file a formal complaint
of abuse of labor in line with slavery.
In fact, the story of Margarida Bonetti
was much more macabre than I expected.
MARGARIDA, RENE AND THEIR FAMILIES
DID NOT WANT TO TAKE PART IN THIS DOCUMENTARY