BASED ON THE PODCAST "ABANDONED: THE WOMAN IN THE DECAYING HOUSE"
BY CHICO FELITTI
THE FOLLOWING AUDIO RECORDINGS ARE AUTHENTIC,
RECORDED BY CHICO FELITTI FOR "ABANDONED: THE WOMAN IN THE DECAYING HOUSE" PODCAST
THE ASSOCIATED SCENES ARE RECONSTRUCTIONS BASED
ON THE PARTICIPANTS' TESTIMONIES AND DOCUMENTS OF THE CASE
THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS DOCUMENTARY
IS TO DEPICT THE FACTS ABOUT 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, PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE AND DISCRIMINATORY ATTACKS
THAT MAY TRIGGER SOME PEOPLE
All of that was just made-up stuff,
everything was invented, you know?
Did she receive any salary?
I'll ask again, did she receive a salary?
Listen, I have no idea,
because I never knew anything about what would go on
between her and Rene.
You see, he would take care of the money.
Why did I go with them?
That's a good question. I don't even know why.
You lived with this person for 20 years,
and you never knew she didn't get paid?
-Or that she had health problems? -No! I never knew.
It was obvious she needed help.
The truth is that Hilda was well looked after.
How was it even possible to have slavery
in the year 2000?
This person they created,
this Margarida Bonetti they created, is simply fictitious.
She's someone who never existed.
It's a character!
ABANDONED: THE WOMAN IN THE DECAYING HOUSE
BRAZILIAN ENGINEER, 51 YEARS OLD
Rene Bonetti was an engineer, a prodigy.
He invented many things.
He was so talented, that he was sought out to work
for a company that had a deal with NASA.
In other words, he was involved with technology used for rockets.
He accepted a job offer and I imagine he was well paid for that time.
And the family went to the United States at the end of the '70s.
I didn't want to go to the U.S.,
but he really wanted to go, you know?
You see, Rene was dying to go.
And so, he went and asked,
I think he asked my parents if she could go.
MARGARIDA BONETTI'S VOICE
I said to Rene: "You want to go for a year? All right.
Then, I'll go, but I won't do anything".
I remember that they said they were from the FBI.
NEIGHBOR OF THE BONETTI FAMILY IN THE U.S.
The Bonetti family was very religious.
So, as soon as they moved to the U.S., they started attending the local church.
And on occasion, they even allowed Hilda to come along.
When I was coming with them from São Paulo to here,
some time went by and things were good.
Everything was fine!
We would go out, and I would tag along
whenever they felt like taking me, you know?
And so, during that time, we ate well, we slept well.
Everything was calm, everything was quiet, and all that.
And as soon as I arrived here,
they immediately looked for a place where I could be baptized.
And her mother came over from São Paulo,
she thought that I needed to be baptized.
She said: "When you die, the devil is going to take you to hell".
And blah-blah-blah, whatever.
I liked the dress that she bought me.
It had a little neck like, it was almost the same as this one, like this.
I really liked that dress.
And then for the shoes, she bought me a pair of gray shoes,
so they would match the dress and everything.
Then things started to go downhill.
I thought the Ms. was starting to go crazy in that house, or something.
It was a very complicated turn of events, you know?
I wanted to go back to São Paulo
after I got there.
I had rheumatism, and I was in pain, a lot of pain.
When I was there, I wasn't even able to walk a block. Ok?
Because I was in so much pain.
One very big contributor to my ailing health
was that I was in a marriage I shouldn't have been in.
Do you understand? And that was reflected in my health.
During that time, she was deeply upset with the church.
But those people were upset with her, too.
You see, Ms. Margo wanted the prayer group to be
exactly how she wanted.
But then, Father Theo and the others in the group said: "No".
And that the prayer group would remain as it was.
I met Hilda purely by chance.
Because she lived near my friend, Vicky.
And Vicky was really worried because she had a neighbor
who was also part of their religious group,
who was going through a very rough time.
Yes, Ms. Vicky was very special in that regard.
She lived behind the house we had there,
the house where we used to live, and all that.
When I got to the U.S., the locals told me that I needed to meet
someone called Vicky, and that she lived in a house nearby.
So, I go to Vicky's house,
she takes a few days to get back to me, but she does.
She said Hilda didn't leave the house often,
just to walk the dog, or to go shopping for Margarida,
or do some chores outside,
and every now and then, she'd run into Vicky.
Vicky is Latina. Vicky speaks Spanish.
Hilda didn't speak English, but she spoke Portuguese
and Vicky spoke Spanish, so they managed to communicate somehow
and they got to know one another.
They talked about religion,
they shared recipes, they talked a bit about life.
And Hilda was hesitant.
She didn't really want to talk about what was going on,
but she gradually opened up to Vicky.
And to the group of friends Vicky would often invite over,
like Angela and Arthur.
Hilda lived in the house's basement in the U.S.
It was a basement with no furniture.
There were times when she slept on the floor,
over sheets and pillows thrown on the floor.
There was no suitable place to eat,
it was poorly ventilated, because it was below ground level.
And when I asked Margarida about Hilda living in the basement,
she said: "It's the basement ".
She had the entire basement to herself.
She had the whole area to herself, okay?
And those places in the United States, which they call "basements",
is the place where young people stay.
Young people use them as their rooms.
It's not like some normal basement.
It's a place that had carpets, and was very neat and tidy.
And she had the whole place to herself.
I didn't have a bathroom where I could bathe.
There was nothing in there, there was no hot water or anything.
It was just a place to put my bed, it was just the place where I slept.
So, I told them it was bad in the basement.
There were places where I wasn't able to put my bed in,
I couldn't put my bed flush against the wall.
The bed had to be in the middle
because most of the walls there were damp.
And the bed had some stakes that went upwards like this
and they would poke my body.
So, I would take a bunch of newspapers and make a big pile on top of it,
over all of that, so that I could put the mattress on top.
And I made do with that.
The machine that she bought had two parts, you know?
They put one in my room and one in her room.
Rene installed the two machines in the rooms.
So, it didn't matter what time of night it was,
I never had a break from that thing.
I would barely be sitting up in bed and she would buzz…
I was supposed to dig a hole from this corner here
over to the corner of that wall.
And the hole had to be…
The hole had to be taller than me.
I had to dig that hole.
I would go for a stroll,
and I would walk around and I saw the houses they were building.
Then I grabbed some planks they were throwing away,
ones that were left over from the walls, you know?
They didn't want those boards.
And carried them to the basement.
And then she started fighting with me
about the refrigerator,
saying that I was eating everything in the refrigerator,
that all the things in the refrigerator were disappearing, and whatever.
And her darling little husband, that sweet man,
went out and bought a padlock.
Then he locked the refrigerator doors.
Then he gave the key to her and she settled down.
Did the fridge have a padlock on it?
Were the kitchen cupboards with food locked up?
No! That was a lie.
- Well… -There was no padlock.
The FBI verified that. There are documents and even photos.
She was a terrible liar.
She had this terrible habit of lying.
And it continued throughout her life,
for as long as I had been in contact with her.
MARGARIDA BONETTI'S VOICE
And so, I would go out with a sign,
and when they didn't have clothes, they would give me money.
And then I would stash it in a hole,
in the insulation in the basement.
I would make a little bundle of money and stuff it inside the insulation.
I decided to take all the money over to a neighbor's house.
Then the lady told me, and I remember it well,
that all I needed was merely 15 dollars.
No, 25 dollars
to have enough money so I could go back to Brazil.
I went home happy,
and I took the money to put it in the same little hiding spot
where it would be all nice and safe.
And, well, I carried on working in the house.
And when it was around 6h or 7h at night, I was getting tired and everything,
so I thought: "I'm going to go downstairs to my room".
Suddenly, I look over…
and there's a hole like this, poorly made,
and a pile of insulation on the floor.
I had no idea that that damn satanic woman
was always watching over everything.
I stuck my hand in the hole and there wasn't even a penny.
There was nothing.
And then she took out a bunch of cash,
and said to Rene, her husband:
"Rene, Rene! Now you have some cash".
When I started to notice it,
this leg right here got really swollen.
And I couldn't even walk on that leg or anything,
and the wound was oozing a lot.
The boss could have helped
and gone out to a pharmacy, or something.
Because on my own, I would end up getting lost,
so it wasn't worth it, you know?
He could have easily gone out
and picked up an ointment or something like that for my leg.
There are some documented moments
where Margarida was violent to Hilda.
Hilda says, for example, that once she made a soup
that wasn't to Margarida's liking.
And Margarida threw hot soup on her face.
I felt so much hatred, so much that it burned, you know?
That kind of feeling, where if I had money in my hand,
I'd get on a plane and never look back.
As for the medical part,
she always complained that she was in a lot of pain.
She had abdominal pains that were severe.
And she had, well, you could see,
it was kind of like a lump.
And we went to the doctor.
I was just lying there so the doctor can examine my leg and all that,
when suddenly the doctor pressed down on my stomach.
I let out a scream to the doctor, because it was too intense.
And he said, "No…
I need to discuss this with Rene,
because you've got this…
He brought you over here because of your leg,
and your belly is much worse than your leg.
It's something that needs surgery right now".
They didn't know how serious it was.
They didn't know if it was a cancerous tumor,
or if it wasn't actually cancer.
They weren't sure, but they did know that she had a tumor,
and that they had to operate.
My belly was growing, and growing.
It grew a lot, because I was carrying a lot of weight,
and working really hard, so my belly kept getting bigger, you know?
There was even a neighbor who compared Hilda's appearance
to someone who's always pregnant.
Someone who's pregnant and never gives birth.
The whole family would go back
and spend three or four months in Brazil at the end of the year,
but Hilda never went.
Every year, there was Santa Claus
and it was always the very same.
Ms. Margo, that cow, would always go to São Paulo
and her son, and husband, would all go to São Paulo,
and I would always stay in the house all alone.
I used to spend Christmas with my family,
because Christmas was very…
Let's put it this way, it was busy.
There were lots of places to go between the 24th and 25th.
It was wonderful.
Anyway, she had the whole house to herself.
She could do whatever she wanted. She had the house key, you know?
MARGARIDA BONETTI'S VOICE
And Ms. Vicky would always say the same thing to me:
"Hilda, if you don't leave that house, you'll end up dying in there".
So, Sister Manuela took me to the hospital.
She took me to the hospital,
and the doctor checked me from head to toe.
And then the doctor told the sister
that I needed to stay in the hospital.
That I wasn't going to be able to go home.
And he didn't know if I was go home alive, or not.
They just used the tumor to create a…
What do you call it? A sense of sensationalism, okay?
MARGARIDA BONETTI'S VOICE
Vicky says that after Hilda's operation,
she spent several days trying to get Hilda to talk to the police,
but Hilda was still afraid, she was hesitant.
Her mood was continuously up and down,
because she felt guilty,
she felt that she had betrayed the Bonetti family,
because she disappeared without warning, without saying anything.
So, since Hilda was really frightened,
they would change her to different rooms all the time,
because nobody knew when the Bonettis were returning home.
The Bonettis returned from their trip,
they're back in the U.S.,
and Rene starts looking around the house for Hilda.
Meanwhile,
Vicky said a nun connected with the hospital stopped by,
she doesn't know her name, but she spoke Portuguese
and went to Hilda's bedside and said:
"Hilda, I went through the same thing as you".
And she said that at that moment Hilda decided to talk to the FBI.
It was going to be a criminal case,
the U.S. Government versus the Bonettis.
MARGARIDA, RENE AND THEIR RELATIVES
DID NOT WANT TO TAKE PART IN THIS DOCUMENTARY >