Jury finds man guilty of murdering former girlfriend Bruna Fonseca in Cork

Twenty-eight-year-old Bruna Fonseca did everything she could to persuade her murderer to get help when he accused her of plunging him into hell in Cork with the break-up of their relationship, but he searched online for ways to kill and then he murdered her at his room in the city in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2023.

But not alone did he murder her, he traduced her by claiming that this kind and beautiful young woman had been attacking him and that he merely tried to stop her. That was how the prosecution described 32-year-old Miller Pacheco’s actions. 

He was found guilty of murdering his former girlfriend by the unanimous decision of a jury after only one hour and two minutes of deliberations today. The seven women and five men of the jury reached their unanimous guilty verdict just after 4pm.

He will be sentenced to the mandatory life sentence by Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork tomorrow when members of the deceased woman’s family will have an opportunity to give their victim impact evidence.

After a nine-day trial where there were scarcely any emotional outbursts from the public gallery, despite often harrowing evidence, there was finally a release of emotion from family and friends of Bruna Fonseca this afternoon as they burst into tears and embraced each other at the unanimous verdict in Courtroom 6 at the Anglesea Street courthouse in Cork where the Central Criminal Court was sitting.

The now convicted murderer gave no visible reaction. His parents had travelled from Brazil to be present with him in court.

Prosecution senior counsel, Bernard Condon, asked for the sentencing to be imposed tomorrow to facilitate family, friends and witnesses who had travelled from Brazil for the trial which went into its ninth day today.

The bottom line for the prosecution was that Mr Pacheco reached the decision that if he could not have Bruna Fonseca, nobody else could. They said that moral blackmail and the weaponising of his victimhood and apparent suicidal thoughts did not work in getting the 28-year-old back into a relationship with him, so he decided to murder her.

Restraint

Restraint was, in a word, the defence. Miller claimed he and Bruna were about to have face time with their pet dog back in Brazil after the New Year’s Eve party in The Oyster Tavern but that she attacked him. He said he fell on her and that this enabled him to do something he had seen on television, namely to restrain her from behind with his arm around her neck.

This account has clearly been rejected by the jury. Strong evidence against this ‘restraint’ explanation came from assistant state pathologist, Dr Margaret Bolster, who gave details of over 60 bruises and abrasions and said that the cause of death was asphyxia due to manual strangulation. 

The pathologist demonstrated in the witness box by placing her hand across her neck — the thumb pressing on one side, fingers pressing on the other.

Dr Bolster testified: “Extensive bruising is in keeping with manual strangulation, in keeping with a hand constraining the neck, fingers on the left side, thumb on the right side. It would have been the right hand.” By this account Mr Pacheco would have been looking at Bruna Fonseca as he literally strangled the last of her life from her.

The family will have an opportunity to describe the impact that this murder has had on them here and in Brazil.

Other powerful prosecution evidence that would have assisted the jury in reaching this unanimous guilty verdict included what he told his sister in Brazil and the internet search he made moments later.

Mr Pacheco sent a message to his sister, Millena, in Brazil just before midnight on December 19, 2022, in which he asked her to look after his dog, before telling her: “I’ve kind of decided what I will do and I won’t tell anyone.” 

There was evidence from his phone that five minutes later he visited a website entitled ‘How to kill in three seconds’ which gave details of the massacre of a Brazilian family in Spain.