Police in Australia will ramp up their efforts to find the ex-lover of murdered businesswoman Cecilia Haddad by linking with Brazilian law enforcement officials.
Guardian Australia understands New South Wales police will begin liaising with Brazilian counterparts through the Australian federal police in an effort to speak to Mario Marcelo Santoro, a former boyfriend and business partner of Haddad.
There is no suggestion Santoro is a suspect in Haddad’s death and police continue to investigate other leads in an attempt to understand what happened in the 24 hours that ended in the discovery of the 38-year-old Brazilian’s body in the Lane Cove river on Sunday.
It comes as Haddad’s family speak out about Haddad’s murder, telling the Guardian they are “devastated” and “shaken” by the death of the mining executive.
Her shattered older brother has described his sister as a vibrant, popular and successful woman with time for everybody.
“I am devastated because I love my sister very much and I am totally shaken by her death and the way it happened,” João Müller Haddad, an artist living in Rio de Janeiro told the Guardian. “It is very difficult for me to talk about her. It is still very recent.”
Cecilia Haddad was found dead in the Lane Cove river in Sydney’s lower north shore on Sunday.
After initially saying the death was not being treated as suspicious, police now believe Haddad was murdered and are painstakingly piecing together the missing 24 hours between Saturday morning when she was last heard from and Sunday when her body was found by passing kayakers, submerged in the river.
Police have confirmed that they are trying to reach a man known to Haddad, who flew home to Brazil over the weekend. The man has been named as Mario Marcelo Santoro. A police source told the Guardian that Santoro was an ex-lover of Haddad and that the two had broken up some months ago.
Santoro is not a suspect but a “person of interest” who police are keen to speak to.
On Wednesday the Guardian reported that Haddad had been working as a disability support worker at a company called Hireup since August 2017, and Santoro’s LinkedIn profile states that he also worked at the same company.
Australian Security and Investment Commission documents also show that Santoro and Haddad were both partners in a company called D.Care, which was registered in November last year.
The company is registered at Haddad’s address in Ryde. An online profile describes D.Care as “a new partner for people with disabilities, looking for customised support solutions”.
Haddad and Santoro also attended the same university in Brazil, according to their online resumes.
As detectives continue their search for Haddad’s murderer, more details about her life continue to emerge. She had lived in Australia for more than a decade, working as a mining logistics executive in Western Australia and more recently as a consultant for the Australian Rail Track Corporation in Newcastle.
Her brother João described his younger sister as a hard and dedicated worker who had graduated in business and logistics at Rio’s upscale Pontifical Catholic University, where she later mastered in logistics. She had also studied ballet at the city’s municipal theatre.
“She was a very beautiful girl, she danced ballet,” he told the Guardian. “She was very intelligent, very happy, very loving.”
Christian Kurzhals, 38, works at an engineering company in Rio and previously worked with Haddad, whose friends called her Cissa.
Kurzhals is close friends with her former husband, Felipe Torres, and stayed with them both in Perth in 2016 when he studied English there.
“She was a very good person, a hard worker,” he told the Guardian. “She was a very capable person, very intelligent, any place she worked she would have a brilliant future, as she was having. She always stood out in whatever position she reached.”
He said Haddad was as dedicated to her friends as her career.
“Wherever she went she was always advancing in her career and was admired by everyone who worked with her,” he said. “She had a lot of friends, she was always available to help people.”
Though police say they believe Haddad was murdered, the exact cause of death is still unknown. On Wednesday forensic pathologists conducted a postmortem on Haddad’s body but the findings are yet to be released.
Writing in Portuguese from her home in Rio de Janeiro, Haddad’s mother, Milu Muller, told Fairfax Media that she “does not know if [she] will survive the tragedy” of her daughter’s death.
“I would love to be there with my beloved and adored daughter, but I had cardiac surgery and I still do not have [my] doctor’s permission for long flights,” Muller said in her email to Fairfax, which was translated into English.
“I want people to know that Cecilia has always been a very talented, intelligent girl with a pure heart. She did not believe that people were cruel and selfish. She always forgave and gave people one more chance. I think she was too good for this world.
“I do not know if I will survive this tragedy. Maybe if they arrest the murderer I may have some relief.
“Thank you and please do everything to help catch the monster that did this.”
Police have appealed for assistance in piecing together Haddad’s movements in the hours before her death. On Friday night she had been at a barbecue with friends close to where she lived in Ryde. She went home and the next morning spoke to friends on the phone between about 8am and 9am.
Her body was discovered in the water 24 hours later.
