Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 21 - Godinho - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: A very English scene, enjoyed by a young Brazilian couple, but the relationship
of Aliny and Ricardo Godinho was built on troubled foundations. They decided to actually go ahead with the move to the UK
by using a fake marriage certificate. NARRATOR: Aliny wanted a better life in the UK.
It would be her husband who got in the way. She said that he was threatening her,
that he was going to kill her, and she was scared. NARRATOR: On a school drop off, Aliny could be seen
holding her daughter's hand. Would that fact be enough to save her? DUARTE MENDONCO: It was when Ricardo,
after waiting and stalking and just being on the lookout for the right time, got out of his car
with a knife in his possession and grabbed Aliny from the back. NARRATOR: They had escaped poverty in Brazil
for the comfort of a leafy English suburb. But was theirs a marriage destined for murder?
[music playing] NARRATOR: Growing up in Brazil, Aliny Mendes' childhood was tough.
Lots of responsibilities. ALAN CUPERTINO MENDES: [speaking portuguese] DUARTE MENDONCO: Aliny was the oldest of the four siblings
living together in Brazil. And as both of their parents were often absent, particularly
because of their father's problems with alcohol, that made Aliny, as the older sister, step into a role of almost
like a mother. ALAN CUPERTINO MENDES: [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: In 2001, aged 22, Aliny
met local boy Ricardo Godinho at work in Belo Horizonte. It was the start of what would be
a tempestuous 17-year relationship. She was working at a clothing store in Brazil,
and Ricardo was like a motor boy. Basically, he was picking up deliveries and distributing
them from that same store. NARRATOR: In March 2003, the couple began dating. DUARTE MENDONCO: She was pretty much in love.
It just felt like it was something in the works that looked really promising, really.
It's clear that from the onset, Aliny was really hopeful about the relationship.
She was one of those really optimistic individuals. She enjoyed life. And her vision for the future was a really positive one.
NARRATOR: Things developed quickly. Young, and apparently in love, they planned a future life
together, but not in Brazil. They started looking elsewhere, and the fact that Ricardo found out that he had access
to having an Italian passport, that obviously opened doors into Europe. NARRATOR: Specifically, to London.
Using a fake marriage certificate. Mr. and Mrs. Godinho settled in Britain for a better life.
Moving in from Brazil into the UK, I believe that Aliny and Ricardo were both looking
for the same things, like most immigrants look for when they move into a foreign country,
which is better opportunities. ALAN CUPERTINO MENDES: [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: Aliny found work in a hostel in Central London,
where she befriended another Brazilian. [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: By 2007, the couple seemed set.
DUARTE MENDONCO: Aliny and Vanessa decided to both start a small business in London where both of them
would bake Brazilian treats. NARRATOR: Birthday cakes, a speciality. Aliny was working with her friend, Vanessa.
EVANESSA PASQUETTO FERRO: [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: The Godinhos had made England their life.
Before long, they were expecting their first child. LUCIENE MONTERIO: She was very happy.
And then she got pregnant, and she was really, really happy. She said that she born to be a mom.
She was very happy. [speaking portuguese] LUCIENE MONTERIO: As a mother, I think she was amazing.
And she was always very, very nice, loving, caring, looking after them. She was doing everything for fun.
She never cares how much work she has. NARRATOR: In 2008, when their son was a year old,
the couple made the surprise decision to return to their hometown in Brazil. LUCIENE MONTERIO: What I heard is that the first child,
they need to have a little surgery. Nothing very complicated. So that's what he said.
He made sure that time that they were leaving. At first, it was supposed to only Aliny go with the child.
But then Ricardo decided that he wants to go as well. So they moved back to Brazil.
NARRATOR: In Brazil, the couple had two more sons. But for Ricardo, the move back home was a disaster.
He spiraled into drug addiction. Within a few years, the couple were at breaking point.
She was having problems with Ricardo. He was having problems with drugs. He wasn't doing really well.
And she was afraid that something bad will happen to him. [speaking portuguese] They broke up for few days and then he--
Ricardo asked her if she could to go back to him. NARRATOR: Aliny accepted him back
in the family home in Brazil. But things got worse. EMMA KENNY: In spite of them having children together,
there was violence pretty much from the get go. So abuse did formulate part of their relationship
from the early days. And unfortunately, it's one of those scenarios where a lot of women choose to stay because they think
about the kids and the wider implications of leaving that relationship. DUARTE MENDONCO: The matter of the fact
is that during those times, Ricardo became quite abusive in his power over her, manipulating her emotionally,
being verbally abusive, and just making sure that he had some sort of reach over Aliny
during that time. We know that from the onset of the relationship that Godinho did have some concerns
about Aliny leaving him. And in fact, this represented itself acutely when he grabbed her by the throat.
NARRATOR: Ricardo Godinho begged Aliny not to leave him. She agreed, on one condition.
She would give him another chance if they came back to London. That's why they decided to come back to London.
And when I spoke with her by telephone and she said to me that she was coming back, I was so happy
and I say, oh my God, I feel like my sister is coming back, live near me. I was really, really happy.
NARRATOR: Luciene may have been. But Aliny and Ricardo were returning to England with issues.
Ricardo was a drug addict, the relationship was troubled, and the couple was struggling to find somewhere to live.
Not the recipe the cake maker, Aliny, had wanted on her return to Epsom. But Aliny's return to Britain was
welcomed by all of her friends. They left in 2008 and then they came back in 2014.
And they left with only one child, the first child, and when they came back, they have three
boys, three beautiful boys. NARRATOR: They settled in the leafy suburb of Epsom, 13 and 1/2 miles to the south of London.
And they moved in with Aliny's friend, Vanessa. EVANESSA PASQUETTO FERRO: [speaking portuguese]
DUARTE MENDONCO: Back into the UK, Epsom was naturally their place of choice because Vanessa was already quite well established there
and fitted in. HANNAH DALTON: I think what would have attracted Aliny and Ricardo to Epsom and this area is the strong Portuguese
community. The fact that it's very, very close to London, took great lengths to that in terms of jobs
but also excellent schools, green spaces, somewhere really where if you're going
to come and settle and have a family, it's just a fantastic place to do it, and it provides opportunity to do it.
NARRATOR: For three years, to the outside world, everything seemed normal. LUCIENE MONTERIO: They were a really, really nice couple.
That was my impression. They were really in love to each other. They have, like, very lovely nicknames to each other.
They used to cook together. They used to clean the house together, everything together.
It was really beautiful. I really like it. And I had very, very good times when I was living with them.
NARRATOR: But everything was not OK in the Godinho relationship. The couple, now with four children,
were occasionally at each other's throats. As another housemate found out all too graphically.
EVANESSA PASQUETTO FERRO: [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: They'd arranged a marriage of convenience
to make their home in England. Settled, they'd started a family. But Ricardo Godinho was far from the perfect husband for Aliny.
Would she stay with him? And how would he react if she did not? [music playing] He had physically abused her.
He was using drugs. But by 2013, Aliny Godinho was persevering with Ricardo. She told me, like, she wasn't in love with him
anymore, because, like, all the problems they had, he was-- she just-- she told me that she just want a good father.
She just want him to be good to the children. That's the only thing she wants too.
And, you know, I think he tried really hard, but people who take drugs, you know,
one day they are very happy, another day they are very unhappy. NARRATOR: No one but they knew, inside the Epsom home
they now shared with their children, Ricardo Godinho would occasionally attack Aliny.
It happened whenever she threatened to leave him. Things started escalating quite a lot.
As their situation developed, unfortunately into a very dire situation, Ricardo then became increasingly
more controlling and-- and a bit more aggressive as well in his posture. Aliny had indicated that Ricardo tried to strangle her.
But then actually, Aliny was quick to retract what she had said and say, you know what,
I think I got things confused. In the heat of the moment, I was very nervous. And I think it was actually as Ricardo was describing,
I think he was just placing his hand over my mouth. NARRATOR: Aliny was hiding with daily abuse
inflicted by her husband. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: Women get into relationships with men
like Ricardo Godinho because they don't know that they've got into a relationship
with a man like him. It's very, very hidden. He would become very upset, very easily
over the smallest of things. She then became sort of the person that he would vent towards to and unleash
the sort of the frustrations and the anger. NARRATOR: Despite the tempestuous relationship,
Aliny had a baby girl to add to her three boys. She wanted to create a beautiful life for her children.
She has this gift to make any place like a home. She would put pictures of the child-- the children--
on the wall, were our friends with the children. She was really, really nice to make like a lovely home.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: Aliny was in a very, very difficult position. She's in a relationship with a man who's dangerous,
and she knows he's dangerous. She's trapped financially. She's got four children.
Her life is being threatened. We know that because she's been strangled. So for her, it's probably, right, keep everything
nice and calm whilst I'm in the relationship until I find a point where I can leave it.
And that's probably the safest thing for her to do. DUARTE MENDONCO: Aliny never shared
with most of her friends and family because she seemed to be quite reserved. And to a degree, you know, some suggest
that she was a little bit embarrassed of the situation as well, and also protective of her family too.
NARRATOR: In October 2016, Godinho setup a company, Godinho Maintenance. It grew fast.
Aliny did the paperwork and the administration. He started feeling the pressure of dealing
with a business, with a growing business, essentially, and not being able to quite cope with it.
NARRATOR: Ricardo was out of touch with the accounting side of the business, and at one point,
he became suspicious of Aliny. Seems to be a really critical moment, which is why Godinho
accuses Aliny of not telling him that he's in profit with his company. Now, even though that seems like a strange connection
that he makes, that somehow she's betraying him in that way, it does suggest that he's
looking for an opportunity to become blameful towards her. So he's seeking out a desire to find her guilty of betrayal
in some way, and he uses this to pinpoint that issue. NARRATOR: Professor Jane Monckton Smith
has traced the causes of escalating violence in cases of domestic abuse. Reviewing the facts of this case,
she spotted the tracks of potential tragedy. This is all about something called the loyalty code.
The loyalty code is a series of hidden tests that people like Godinho will bring into the relationship.
And when he saw something in the company accounts that he felt that she had been disloyal about,
hadn't told him about, she just failed the loyalty code. And that would have had repercussions, consequences.
NARRATOR: Aliny had done nothing wrong. Ricardo was seeing something that simply wasn't there.
Having hidden her abuse from the world during a visit with friends one weekend, Aliny revealed the truth.
LUCIENE MONTERIO: We went to the house to have, like, a lovely weekend, as usual.
And then suddenly she sat with another friend, then she told him, like, they are getting divorced.
And I was like-- I was, like, I could not believe it. I was really sad. I was no--
I thought it wasn't true. But then she said to me that he ask-- was he that asked for a divorce.
So it wasn't her. [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: Ricardo would later admit that he thought Aliny was planning on leaving
him some time in 2018. Despite him appearing possessive of Aliny, Ricardo himself confessed to an affair.
LUCIENE MONTERIO: He told her that he had another woman that he met, and he want to get
married with another woman. I think it's, like, he really didn't want to. He just said that because he thought she
was going to beg him to stay. Because he was, like, she had four children. She has no place to go.
She depend on me so she-- of course she will stay. NARRATOR: Godinho wasn't about to leave Aliny.
It was all a bluff designed to elicit promises from her to stay with him. She is trapped.
She is a prisoner in this relationship. She knows that, and she's probably waiting
for her opportunity to get out. And he will know that she's looking for that opportunity.
NARRATOR: Over Christmas 2018 while her best friend, Luciene, was visiting family in Brazil,
everything escalated. Aliny had had enough. I was in Brazil at that time for holiday,
for Christmas a holiday. And first-- at first, when she told me she was getting divorced, I was really
sad and scared because I said, I won't be here to help you. There was a point, the turning point, actually, for Aliny,
where she was like, I can no longer be in this relationship because it is not working for myself and the children.
So there might have been a moment where everything clicked for her, and it made sense
to turn her back on Ricardo. This is where he actually fully snapped. NARRATOR: Never far from the Godinho's story,
their status in the UK, they had claimed to be married. Ricardo claimed to have Italian citizenship,
but the right to be in the UK was far from certain. And he actually ripped up her passport
because he was so convinced that she was going to leave him. When he destroyed the passport of the kids--
because he was really upset because she was going to get a visa because of the children,
the children's passport. And he was really upset. The fact that Godinho decides to destroy
the Italian passports of his children, well, that makes perfect sense, because he's
putting an obstacle in the way of Aliny taking them away from him. DUARTE MENDONCO: When she confronts him
about leaving and taking the children with her, Ricardo's reaction was to say that he would denounce
her or turn her in, rather, to the home office due to the fact that, obviously, they came in with a fake marriage
certificate. He's a very volatile person. He's a paranoid person. And that makes him very dangerous.
He is not going to accept the end of the relationship. He knows that, and she knows that.
She was really afraid of him because he was taking a lot of drugs. And she told me that one day she was locking the bedroom, like,
for whole one-- one whole day and night because she was really scared of him. So she locked the door, and then she
had to call a friend of her-- to her husband to call Ricardo so he could get out the house so she could give the children
some food and drinks. And she was really scared. DUARTE MENDONCO: He's willing to go
to the extent of threatening, denouncing her to the home office, of wrecking the passports,
and this is just, like, the tipping point. You know, because things then, obviously, became a lot worse.
Then it was clear for her that she had to do something about it. And that's when she eventually went to the police
and made a formal complaint against her husband. NARRATOR: Fearing for her life, on December 27, 2018,
Aliny Godinho felt that she had no choice but to turn to the authorities for help.
That would have been his control starting to break down. So she's actually taken a big step there.
NARRATOR: He had throttled her, blackmailed her. What depth of violence was Aliny Mendes,
known as Godinho, now facing? Her friends used what they thought was a private social media group to keep an eye on her.
EVANESSA PASQUETTO FERRO: [speaking portuguese] And during this period where she's living in this house,
she and her friends developed this WhatsApp group that really worked as a support network for Aliny
and her kids while living in London. NARRATOR: Unbeknown to the group, Godinho had tapped into the WhatsApp messages
and began monitoring their conversations. It was weird in the sense that without Aliny ever being aware,
Ricardo was able to get a hand, or get control, over the WhatsApp group and making sure
that he was actually into that WhatsApp group, because he had access to an old SIM card
that used to belong to Aliny. And no one in the group ever noticed it, but for a long period, Ricardo was
able to keep track of every single conversation, of every single move. NARRATOR: Far from having a secret support group,
Aliny was unwittingly letting Ricardo Godinho know where she was at any time of the night or day.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: This was like a trigger for him. And he escalates in his attempts to control her.
But now they're outside of the relationship, these attempts at control actually become what we call stalking.
NARRATOR: In December 2018, 41-year-old Ricardo Godinho showed that he intended to keep control of the woman he was, officially in the UK,
married to. He destroyed his children's passports, leaving his wife, Aliny, unable to easily
leave the country without them. But having left Ricardo, Aliny did at least feel she was in a safer place.
LUCIENE MONTERIO: She was very happy. She thought that she was at peace, and she was feeling safe.
And she said to me that she-- all she wants to do was looking after her children.
HANNAH DALTON: Aliny was incredibly brave to get herself out of that situation. And it's an incredibly difficult thing for anybody to do.
I think, especially for somebody that has moved here from Brazil, I don't think anybody
can ever underestimate how hard that must have been for her to do. NARRATOR: Forensic criminologist, Jane Monckton
Smith, recognizes this moment as a turning point in the escalation of Ricardo's threatening behavior.
Ricardo was stalking Aliny. And she goes to the police, tells them all this because she absolutely knows that he
is capable of killing her. The police took this very seriously because all of these behaviors, every single one of them,
is a massive red flag. NARRATOR: The local authorities helped the police protect Aliny
by finding her a safe house. Aliny may have felt protected, but mobile phones leave traces,
and Ricardo Godinho began electronically tracking her. Data expert, Phil Ridley, believes it
would not have been difficult. PHIL RIDLEY: Find My iPhone is a system that Apple has that allows you to locate your lost iPhone.
When you first get your iPhone, you register it with Apple using what's called an iCloud account.
So that ties your phone to your account. In the event that you lose your phone, you simply sign into your iCloud account,
click on that I've Lost My iPhone button and Apple's servers will effectively talk to your iPhone.
He would have logged into the Find My iPhone service and been able to see exactly where that iPhone was.
EMMA KENNY: And that stalking behavior is very much part of a dangerous perpetrator's profile,
because it means that they feel a level of ownership and possession over the individual
that they are trying to locate constantly. PHIL RIDLEY: Godinho was reading messages,
reading emails, using the location identification services. It was obvious he was obsessed with everything
about his ex partner. Where she was, what she was doing, who she was talking to.
NARRATOR: Aliny was far from out of his grasp. EMMA KENNY: Even though she's been taken to somewhere safe,
he finds her and on two occasions, turns up and tries to break in, and yes, he's arrested.
But he's also giving her a very clear message-- you know, you can run, but you really can't hide.
I'll find you. And that is sinister. His stalking, his need to understand where she was,
who she was talking to, what she was doing, the only way it's possible is by using this technology.
He knew exactly what she was doing and when she was doing it. Now, at the time that he was doing this,
the relationship's gone. It's never coming back. He can see that. So it's more than possible that he
was monitoring and tracking her to look for an opportunity to kill her. NARRATOR: In fact, Ricardo was reading
every WhatsApp exchange. Because he had access to an old SIM card that used to belong to Aliny, and no one in that group
ever noticed it. So for the longest time, I'm not entirely sure how long this went for, but for a long period,
Ricardo was able to keep track of every single conversation, of every single move.
And it was only up until the day that Ricardo decided to leave the group and they saw the stamp saying,
Aliny has left the group, that triggered the group to make the realization that he
was there the whole time. NARRATOR: By this point, Godinho's own family was so concerned about his behavior
that they sent Aliny text messages warning her of his violent threats. Was somebody from his family who used to send
her message saying that he-- Ricardo say that he was going to kill her. So I told her, go to the police and show
this message from this person. And then she said to me that she didn't want to cause any problem between him
and this person of his family. She was really worried about, like, the relationship
between those people. Ricardo Godinho's online activity suggested the state his mind was in.
PHIL RIDLEY: It was shown that Godinho had been using Google to search for how a Brazilian man had
murdered his wife. It's very straightforward for us to recover information that's
been deleted from a computer. The fact that he would have deleted these searches
would have made no difference to our ability to recover them. NARRATOR: Police bring Godinho in for questioning,
but no charges are brought against him. EMMA KENNY: By the time Godinho is released,
he now meets a new problem, and that is that social services have got involved with the family,
meaning that he can only have access to the children under supervised conditions.
He becomes obsessed with his children. Godinho feels that Aliny is going to take them away from him.
So this is a man completely transfixed on keeping ownership of what he feels is rightfully his.
NARRATOR: The stress was having an impact on Aliny. At the beginning of February 2018,
Luciene was shocked when she saw her friend. LUCIENE MONTERIO: I saw her. She was very, very skinny.
She told me she wasn't eating much. She was getting much sleep. And I was really sad for her, like, when I saw her,
I didn't know it was like that. So then she explained-- she started to tell-- speaking
to us, and she said that he was threatening her, that he was going to kill her, and she was scared.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: It's exhausting living with somebody who is controlling you, monitoring you, tracking you,
threatening you, and this had been going on for about 17 years for Aliny. LUCIENE MONTERIO: And then I asked
her, Aliny, do you think Ricardo will do anything bad to you? And then she said to me, I think if I get to him
in the bad moment and I am alone without the children, he would do it. But if I am by with one of the children, he wouldn't do it.
So she believed that she was safe because of the children. So from that week, she took her little child, the girl,
with her to school every day, because she felt, like, protected. Like, the little one was his favorite one so she thought,
like, he won't hurt her. NARRATOR: Aliny told friends that she might consider changing the children's schools, but she was reluctant.
They were settled. EVANESSA PASQUETTO FERRO: [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: On the 8th of February 2019,
Aliny had an appointment with the police. She canceled it so one of the children
could attend a birthday party. Surely, she told friends, he wouldn't attack me if I
was with one of the children. This idea, as far as Aliny is concerned, that somehow being
with the children will protect her from being harmed by Godinho is a myth. So it doesn't make sense that she believes this but her bias
is this man would never kill me in front of the children. I know this man. NARRATOR: In the afternoon, Aliny starts the school run.
She takes the bus from Central London, where her safe house was, to Epsom, along with
her three-year-old daughter. Her every step was being monitored. PHIL RIDLEY: We see Godinho using
the Find My iPhone function to track his daughter's iPhone. He sees they're on the bus, and he
makes sure that he's there waiting for them when they get off. NARRATOR: 17 years after setting out for a new life in Britain,
what fate lay in store for Aliny and Ricardo Godinho in a leafy English suburb? 39-year-old Aliny was relying on being on a school run
with a child to protect her from the man she was officially married to, who was stalking her.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: Aliny knew her-- her life was in danger, and I think she was fully expecting that he would
make an attempt on her life. It wouldn't have been the first time, after all. But she thought that he wouldn't do it in front of people.
She thought that if she wasn't on her own that she would be safe. So she thought, at some level, if I'm out in public,
as long as there are witnesses, he won't do it. NARRATOR: Around 3 o'clock on a winter's day in England,
Ricardo Godinho makes his move. EMMA KENNY: On the 8th of February 2019, Godinho waits for Aliny on the school run.
It's as simple as that. He sits there in wait for her. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: He was absolutely fixated on the task.
He had decided today is the day. No matter what happens, today is the day. So he sees her.
He knows where she's going to be. He's been tracking her and monitoring her. Just right there she is, get the car up on the curb,
let's just get out the car, doesn't even consider that his little daughter is there.
NARRATOR: And he strikes. In spite of there being children, his own child being there, the mothers on the school run being present,
he goes across to her and he stabs her to death. It takes 17 seconds to actually go through with the plan.
But actually, if you think about that, while 17 seconds seems like a short amount of time, if you are being stabbed
repeatedly during that time, it's an enormous amount of stabbings. And also, that period would feel like it lasted forever.
NARRATOR: Godinho had savagely murdered the mother of his four children in broad daylight.
News of the heartbreaking attack filtered to Aliny's friends. We were watching TV or something when my phone rang
and then when I pick up the phone, a friend of ours, he said, Aliny's just been killed, stabbed by Ricardo.
I throw my telephone away and I start to scream and I-- I-- I-- I never felt so bad in my life like that day.
I believe the day of the murder came in as a shock to most people when they found out about it.
For a lot of them, there was lot of things beneath the surface that people were just-- weren't aware,
because Aliny was never the person to share those things with them. She didn't have time to defend herself.
She didn't have any marks on the arm or anything here. She didn't have time. It was really fast.
And-- and then what they said that he stabbed her and then she was falling down and he keeping
stabbed her without saying anything and then when he'd done that, he just look at his little one,
and then he walk away. EMMA KENNY: When you think about how Godinho attacks Aliny,
it's on the school run. It's in front of all the parents. It's in front of his three-year-old daughter.
That is so symbolic of how fixated he was on ending her life. He doesn't care about witnesses.
He doesn't care about the future. LUCIENE MONTERIO: As a mother, I guess, can you
imagine in her mind, like, to be going, like, that away and scared that something was happening with her little one.
So this lady came, say to her, your baby's OK. So I hope she went on peace. [music playing]
It was really hard to see in the news. NARRATOR: For Aliny's younger brother, Alan,
the news of his sister's death was devastating. ALAN CUPERTINO MENDES: [speaking portuguese]
This led him to a really dark place because he had just lost his sister to the hands of her partner, someone who was also
the father of the children. So also there's this instant reaction of thinking, what does this mean for the four kids?
You know, because they just lost their mother, and it seems like they're going to lose their father too.
It was a genuine sense of disbelief that this could have happened. This is a really peaceful, leafy suburb of London.
I think that was compounded also by the fact that it had happened when Aliny was on the school run,
she had her youngest child with her, and there were other parents and children present.
I know people who were there with their children in their vehicles and witnessed it.
And were just, just shocked and upset by what happened. NARRATOR: After committing the fatal attack,
Godinho all but gave himself up. Now, once the murder took place, he dropped the knife
and fled the scene. Apparently, he spoke to a good friend of his by the name of Ronaldo and confessed to his crime.
And Ronaldo picked him up and as they were discussing what to do next, it seems like Ronaldo
was suggesting that he should turn himself to the police. NARRATOR: During his 12-day trial at Guildford Crown Court,
Godinho pleaded not guilty to Aliny's murder but guilty of manslaughter. The fact that Godinho decides to plead not guilty to murder
because he alleges that he was not in control of his faculties, that again shows
a lack of being willing to take responsibility for his actions. He says it wasn't my fault. It was a heat of the moment thing.
It was manslaughter. I was driven to it, essentially. But the problem with that is that manslaughter
would show that there was no premeditation. The level of premeditation and the execution
of the actual crime shows not only planning, but a huge amount of planning behind it.
Who's going to buy that story, you know, when a mother is killed holding the hand
of her three-year-old child? There's nothing he can say. Nothing he can say that's going to justify what he did.
EMMA KENNY: And it's unsurprising, and also incredibly positive, that the jury see
straight through that, and rightfully so, he's convicted of murder. NARRATOR: On July 18, 2019, Ricardo Godinho was
sentenced to life in prison. He will serve a minimum term of 27 years before being eligible for parole.
ALAN CUPERTINO MENDES: [speaking portuguese] NARRATOR: Aliny's death was met with sadness
throughout what had become her community in Epsom. HANNAH DALTON: What has really impacted
the community is that there were mums and children that saw what happened, and there are friends of the children,
of Aliny's children, who are living with the impact of this. And also, her friends and those people known to her.
[speaking portuguese] She was like my little sister but he was my friend. I never thought, like, he would do something this to her.
Because, Aliny, she was like-- I think she was not from this planet. She was so kind, so calm, so nice, full of grace, harmless.
She was like this. She was, like, so sweet. NARRATOR: Aliny's brother, Alan, moved his family to the UK
to take care of his niece and nephews. They remain in the southeast of England. ALAN CUPERTINO MENDES: [speaking portuguese]
DUARTE MENDONCO: It's difficult to say or even imagine how life moves forward after an incident like this.
And I do feel like there's obviously quite a lot of the incident that is still very much ingrained
into their own memories, and to how they even behave on a daily basis. But their choice has been to focus
on the positive and the good memories that they have of Aliny. NARRATOR: Theirs was a complicated relationship, begun
in shared poverty in Belo Horizonte with twists and turns which led to an unhappy marriage in England
and ultimately, to the death of Aliny Godinho. [music playing]

Aliny Godinho believed her estranged husband Ricardo would never harm her in front of their children. Tragically, she was wrong.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Aliny Godinho was murdered by her abusive husband Ricardo in a tragic domestic violence case in Epsom, UK.

Key points

Aliny's Troubled Foundations. Aliny and Ricardo's relationship was built on troubled foundations, leading to a tumultuous life.
The Fake Marriage Certificate. To move to the UK, Aliny and Ricardo used a fake marriage certificate.
Escalating Violence. Aliny faced increasing violence from Ricardo, leading her to seek help.
The Stalker’s Obsession. Godinho's fixation on Aliny reveals a dangerous level of control and ownership.
The Fatal Attack. In broad daylight, Godinho brutally murders Aliny during a school run.
The Aftermath. Aliny's death leaves a community in shock and mourning.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She is trapped. She is a prisoner in this relationship.

Narrator's description of Aliny's situation.

18:18WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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