Danilo Cavalcante is now the subject of an escalating manhunt in the Pennsylvania countryside, where hundreds of police officers have been scouring the wooded terrain and farmland for almost two weeks, since he clambered out of the Chester County Prison on Aug. 31.
He was being held there for the murder of his former girlfriend, Déborah Evangelista Brandão, in April 2021. After killing her, Mr. Cavalcante had tried to flee, making it as far as Virginia before he was caught and sent to jail, reported The New York Times.
He was convicted and sentenced this August, and just
days before beginning a life sentence in a Pennsylvania state prison, he made
his next attempt to get away.
After more than a week of hiding out in the quiet
communities south of the jail, he slipped through a perimeter set by law
enforcement and stole a delivery van over the weekend. On Saturday night Mr.
Cavalcante was seen on a doorbell camera miles away. Police are now searching
an area deeper in the Pennsylvania countryside, where he abandoned the van,
apparently after it ran out of gas.
On Monday, officials told reporters that Mr.
Cavalcante’s recent movements had changed the nature of the search. They urged
people in the area to be vigilant and warned of consequences for anyone who
helped him. They said that Mr. Cavalcante’s sister, who lived nearby, “chose
not to assist” the authorities in the manhunt, and as she had overstayed her
visa, is in the process of being deported.
But the thrust of the officials’ remarks was
unmistakable: this search would likely take a while. “Now we’re planning for
the long game,” said Robert Clark, a supervisory deputy United States marshal.
Neither of his attempted escapes in the U.S. was the
first time he had been on the run and proven maddeningly difficult to
apprehend.
He vanished from the remote stretch of northern
Brazil, too, after Mr. Moreira was shot and killed in 2017, allegedly over an
unsettled debt. State prosecutors said an arrest warrant against him was issued
on Nov. 21, 2017.
The first time Mr. Cavalcante escaped justice, he found refuge in the rural outskirts of Figueirópolis, a town of about 5,000 people tucked deep in the Brazilian state of Tocantins. After fleeing the crime scene, he hid out on a ranch less than an hour outside town, according to local residents.
“Once you get out,” said Kelton Meneses, a priest in Figueirópolis, “it’s just ranches and bush beyond here. It’s not hard to disappear.”
Mr. Cavalcante was at ease in the Brazilian outback,
said Raimundo Campos dos Santos, a longtime resident of the area. “When you’re
used to the ranch, you know how to hide. He spent a lot of time in the bush.”
Mr. Cavalcante had moved to this region just over a
year before the murder, arriving with his mother and brother from the
neighboring state of Maranhão, according to four residents.
He worked on a nearby ranch called Mula Preta,
managing livestock and machinery. His family bought a plot of land in a rural
community next door, where they raised cattle and horses.
“They were hardworking people,” said Mr. Campos, who
lives in the same community, which stretches across 12,000 acres. “A humble
lot.”
The family’s farm sits on a remote corner of the
rural settlement, reachable by a steep, rocky road. On a recent visit, barbed
wire circled a modest farmhouse with a red-tiled roof. On the porch, saddles
hung from hooks and a hammock swung in the shade. About a half dozen chickens
and four pit bulls roamed around the dusty front yard. Vultures flew overhead.
Aroaldo Cavalcante, the fugitive’s brother, still
lives on the ranch, according to neighbors. On Sunday afternoon he did not
emerge from the farmhouse, and did not respond to text messages requesting an
interview.
“Nobody
really knew these people well,” said Darci Gomes Neve, 75, a neighbor who has
lived in the area for two decades. “Danilo didn’t stay long. He took off;
nobody heard from him again.”
But when he arrived in the area, he struck up a
fast, unlikely friendship with Mr. Moreira, a popular figure in town.
“He was sweet,” said Mr. Feitosa of Mr. Moreira. “He
talked to everyone. He liked to dance and to joke around.” Mr. Cavalcante was
quieter. “He kept to himself, didn’t talk much,” Mr. Feitosa said. “He didn’t
look you in the eye.”
Even before Mr. Moreira’s death, Mr. Cavalcante was
feared by some around town.
“He had this reputation that he kept a lot of guns
at home,” said Carlos Humberto Jacob, a friend of Mr. Moreira’s who knew Mr.
Cavalcante. “People used to say he had heavy weapons at the ranch.”
The friendship between the two men apparently soured
when Mr. Cavalcante lent a car to Mr. Moreira, who allegedly damaged the
vehicle and never paid for repairs, according to police.
Mr. Cavalcante then began to send death threats to
Mr. Moreira, said Mr. Moreira’s sister Dayane. “He kept saying, ‘I’m going
to kill you, I’m going to kill you.’”
In November 2017, Mr. Cavalcante went to the square
to confront Mr. Moreira, who had moved to a different city but had returned
home to pick up a new driver’s license.
After the fatal encounter, Mr. Cavalcante allegedly
hid out in the region for several weeks before leaving Brazil under a false
identity. He has been considered a fugitive in Brazil since 2017, according to
authorities in Tocantins.
As the manhunt in Pennsylvania intensifies,
residents of the Brazilian town from which he vanished six years ago are also
reeling, said Maria Cardoso, a retired schoolteacher who taught Mr. Moreira and
is close to his family.
“It’s like a wound that was healing,” Ms. Cardoso
said. “Now, it’s all coming back. People are shaken. People are scared.”
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