A husband who stabbed his wife to death and then buried her chopped-up corpse in the garden has been seized by police.
Bricklayer Jose Carlos Martins Esperidiao is accused of slashing his wife's neck with a knife and then cutting up her corpse and burying her in the garden of the family home, local media has reported.
Esperidiao has insisted his wife left the couple's home in Nova Iguacu, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, for work one morning and never returned.
His story soon came crashing down, however, when his in-laws realised he still had his wife's mobile phone.
Police then soon found her mutilated remains over a week later on July 12.
Victim Claudia Goncalves de Moura, 51, had been missing since 4th July, following a blazing row with her husband Martins Esperidiao.
Claudia - a carer for pensioners - had failed to show up for work and her mobile phone was switched off, so her employers sounded the alarm.
Martins Esperidiao was arrested and taken to the police station, where he confessed to the killing, claiming he argued with his wife after discovering she had cheated on him.
He also claimed she had threatened him with a knife before the two began scuffling for the blade.
Martins Esperidiao said the struggle ended with his wife's death and, in a moment of despair, he chopped up her body to bury it because "the body would not fit in the small space he had to bury in the yard".
He told officers he had cut her into pieces because their garden was too small to contain an entire body in one piece.
Analysis of the victim's phone revealed she had long been a victim of her husband's aggression.
One audio message apparently showed how he once banged her head against a wall, leaving her head throbbing for days.
Martins Esperidiao was remanded in custody and faces charges of aggravated murder and concealing a corpse.
The case of was the second in a week. Marcielly Araújo, 29, was killed by her boyfriend, Glauber Morais, in Rio das Pedras, in the West Zone of Rio and the woman's body was found by a friend on Monday afternoon.
