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
[reporter 1] 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 never thought
I would've been involved in an event like this.
[reporter 2] During the police operation,
dozens of neighbors and onlookers
gathered to get a glance of the abandoned house.
[Mari] How did the house manage to remain intact up until now,
and why is it in such a state?
[reporter 2] A building that was once a mansion, a symbol of wealth,
is now crumbling to pieces.
[reporter] The case garnered attention thanks to the podcast
"The Woman in the Abandoned House"
by journalist Chico Felitti for Folha de São Paulo.
[Chico Felitti] 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."
[woman] Criminal!
[reporter] 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.
[David in English] This was a case that we could point to and say,
"Look, this is not something that doesn't happen in the United States.
It's happening right here in our backyard of Washington, D.C."
[Don in English] You would never think that in this beautiful community,
you're going to have someone living in such an unusual circumstance.
What exactly do you need to prove the elements of this crime?
[heart monitor beeping]
[Margarida, on a recording] You're a journalist, right?
-[Chico Felitti] Yes. -[Margarida] Then, as a good journalist,
you have to listen to all sides of the story
before publishing anything, right?
You put all that together, and it truly is a recipe for modern slavery.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
ABANDONED: THE WOMAN IN THE DECAYING HOUSE
[barking]
-[kid yelling] -[claxon]
[Chico Felitti] 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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[Mari] 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.
[barking]
[Chico Felitti] 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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
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.
[Rosa] 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 Ms. 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,
"Ms. Rosa, stay for the dinner."
So, I was always in contact with them, you know? We were close.
[instrumental classical music playing] ♪
[cutlery clattering]
[Mari] 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!"
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[static hissing]
[creaking]
[tense music playing] ♪
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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
I walked around the neighborhood, I asked some neighbors,
but she was still nowhere to be found.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
I waited almost 72 hours for her, sitting in front of the house.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[camera whirring]
[camera shuttering]
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[barking]
[Chico Felitti] 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.
[suspenseful music playing] ♪
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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
However, I had given her my phone number,
so she reached out to me.
[suspenseful music playing] ♪
[dialing tone]
[phone ringing]
-[Margarida] Hello? -[Chico Felitti] Hello, Margarida?
[Margarida] Where are you? When I went back out,
you had disappeared. Where'd you go?
[Chico Felitti] 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.
[Margarida] So, why are you so curious about the house?
[Chico Felitti] Because it's an abandoned house
in one of the richest neighborhoods in Brazil, yet someone's living there.
[Margarida] 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?
-[Chico Felitti] When? -[Margarida huffs]
[Margarida] When God is willing and allows it to happen.
I really want it to happen, okay?
[intrigue music playing] ♪
RECENT RECORDINGS
[Chico Felitti] Margarida was evasive during the conversation.
The one who helped me to understand why, was Mari Muradas,
who was also looking into the story.
[Mari] 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, "Oh, 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."
[tense music playing] ♪
[slurps]
[clinking]
[wings battering]
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?"
CAN SHE STILL BE PUNISHED?
CIVIL POLICE SERVED A SEARCH AND SEIZURE WARRANT AT THE HOME OF MARGARIDA BONETTI
[Chico Felitti] After the crime was discovered,
the podcast was released
and people began standing outside the house to protest.
[reporter] 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, uh, 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.
[reporter] The place became a tourist attraction
after a crime was revealed in the podcast,
The Woman in the Abandoned House
by journalist Chico Felitti.
[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.
[banging drums]
SEE WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE
"THE WOMAN IN THE ABANDONED HOUSE" CASE
POLICE PERFORMS INSPECTION INSIDE THE HOUSE
[Mari] It was becoming clear that Margarida was getting uncomfortable,
which was something that she was starting to have in common
with the other neighbors.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
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.
[suspenseful music playing] ♪
[Marcio] 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.
[mystery music playing] ♪
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.
[suspenseful music playing] ♪
[tense music playing] ♪
[door creaking]
LIVE - ABANDONED HOUSE POLICE AWAITS FOR MRS. MARGARIDA'S DECLARATION
[Chico Felitti] 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.
POLICE WILL ESCORT RESIDENT TODAY
[reporter 2] And they're about to break into the decaying house...
[reporter 3] 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
[Luiz] 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.
[tense music playing] ♪
ABANDONED HOUSE MYSTERY POLICE BREAKS INTO MARGARIDA'S MANSION
[Helena] 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.
[Luiz] 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.
[indistinct chattering]
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.
[indistinct chattering]
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.
[Luiz] 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 first time.
-[banging] -[glass shattering]
[reporter 3] The police are prying open the window as we speak,
and people here have started cheering happily.
[glass shattering]
[crowd yelling]
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.
-[banging] -[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter] They smashed the window!
The police have broken a window and are entering the decaying house!
Finally, we managed to get in.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[Luiz] 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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
This is a horrible situation for me.
-I'm being... -Mrs. Margarida, open the door.
-Good afternoon. -Open the door.
-[officer] Just let us in. -[Margarida] You're here! You're...
[officer] Open the door so your lawyer can go in.
No.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[Luiz] 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.
[Helena] 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.
[tense music playing] ♪
[Helena] 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.
[Luiz] 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
[Helena] 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.
[reporter] The doctor has arrived.
The long-awaited doctor with emergency services has just arrived.
[indistinct chattering]
[Helena] 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.
[police siren wailing]
And, in fact, she was in good condition, you know?
Physically and mentally, to continue living there, in her house.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
To be honest, we wanted to serve the search warrant
and finish as soon as possible and clear everything up,
because uh, the environment was kind of, I won't say "hostile."
It was kind of, I guess it was a question of energy.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[Helena] 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?
[intrigue music playing] ♪
[tense music playing] ♪
[barking]
In 2000, I was a correspondent for Folha de São Paulo in Washington.
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
[tense music playing] ♪
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.
[music intensifies] ♪
WASHINGTON, DC UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
GAITHERSBURG 21 MILES FROM WASHINGTON, DC
[Chico Felitti] 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.
[Margarida] When I went to the United States,
I wanted to go back to São Paulo to be with my parents.
MARGARIDA BONETTI'S VOICE
[intrigue music playing] ♪
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.
[intrigue music playing] ♪
GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND UNITED STATES
[suspenseful music playing] ♪
[Silvija in English] I was really happy that I heard about Bonettis.
Brazilians are such warm, talkative, friendly people.
So, one day, my mom and I were walking our dog
right on that trail behind their house,
and Bonettis were outside, and I introduced ourselves, Mom and I,
and they barely acknowledged us.
They just ignored us, and it was very awkward and...
-rude. -[laughs]
[Kari in English] Bonettis moved in after we did
and they were very private, so we never really spoke with them.
Uh. They had a son.
I don't know if he had any friends. He just came and went and...
I never talked to them.
[Silvija in English] And then one day, a woman was outside,
and I hadn't seen her before.
[Kari in English] I thought she was a live-in maid.
I had no idea of her name or what was going on in the house.
None of the neighbors did.
[soft music playing] ♪
[phone ringing]
Hello?
[phone ringing]
[beep]
Hello?
[beep]
Hello?
[woman in English] Hello?
Finally, huh? So, who is this?
[unintelligible chatter]
Huh?
[unintelligible chatter]
I don't understand English.
I don't understand what you're saying.
She needs to... I don't understand anything.
[babbles]
[laughs]
What a clown.
[soft music playing] ♪
[clock ticking]
Oh.
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?
[soft music playing] ♪
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.
[tense music playing] ♪
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.
[soft music playing] ♪
[Chico Felitti] 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?
-[Margarida] Huh? -[Chico Felitti] Did you assault Hilda?
[Margarida] 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.
[soft music playing] ♪
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.
[Ruben in English] There were very dramatic allegations
of physical abuse, mental abuse,
basically keeping the victim enslaved
and unable to, to, to leave.
[soft music playing] ♪
As for my passport, it had been years since I knew where my passport was.
[Chico Felitti] Hilda's passport was with Rene at his company.
Uh, 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.
[soft music playing] ♪
That one there is a broken heart.
[Chico Felitti] 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 English] They saw this as, basically, a civil rights case.
[Dell in English] I think it's just, you know, a neighbor,
a housekeeper, somebody playing with my dog,
and things are not they seem to be.
[police siren wailing]
What's going on?
[Chico Felitti] In fact, the story of Margarida Bonetti
was much more macabre than I expected.
[Don in English] A lot of people couldn't understand
how Hilda couldn't just leave the house.
Just leave.
[tense music playing] ♪
[music fades]
MARGARIDA, RENE AND THEIR FAMILIES
DID NOT WANT TO TAKE PART IN THIS DOCUMENTARY
[eerie music playing] ♪