Some people must ask themselves why Leonor should put her trusted lawyer through such an ordeal and cost if it wasn't true?To summarize, Leonor claims that her brother Joąo (John) Cipriano had arranged to sell Joana to foreigners but that the deal collapsed which left him in a quandary of what then to do with the girl. Leonor claims that he killed her and buried her in an abandoned house up in the hills above Figuera.
Could it be that the deal went ahead and that Joćo is in fact lying to Leonr?
There doesn't seem to be anything concrete in that direction, though. Neither Leandro nor Leonor seem to have
excluded the possibility that Joćo
might might have sold her, but my impression is that her lawyer seemed more convinced of the Joćo-sale-gone-wrong theory than the other two for some reason.
Joćo doesn't seem to have been terribly popular: a taciturn, drifting casual labourer, who took drugs and had a criminal conviction. In the days before the disappearance, he'd been staying with their brother, but they'd had an argument and the brother took him over to Leonor's place early on the day of the disappearance.
On the other hand, one of the witnesses testified that when he had employed him, he'd had no problems with him, and someone else, possibly Leandro, said that he was fond of his niece.
Money by any means could have been a motive, but it's not clear how he could have organised it.
- If there hadn't been the argument with the brother, he might have tried to stay there longer and wouldn't have ended up at Leonor's that day.
- Joana wasn't due to come back home from Leandro's family until the Monday. It's not clear who made the decision to bring her back home on the Sunday. According to one of the statements, Leonor went to the birthday party and brought her back because there was the village fiesta and because her uncle was there. I haven't found any indication as to whether the younger kids went to the party or not. She might have decided to bring Joana back on the Sunday because she could leave Joćo to look after the little ones at home, thereby possibly making transportation / organisational issues easier.
- Joćo seems unlikely to have masterminded provoking an argument with his brother to get him to dump him on Leonor's doorstep and to get Joana home a day early so that he could sell her by getting Leonor to send her out on an errand for tuna fish and a carton of milk that he wouldn't have known they'd run out of.
- The "buyers" could have masterminded the operation. But, if they'd had contact... how? Did he have a functioning mobile phone? Did the PJ check his phone records?
- If the "buyers" had known that she was staying with Leandro's family, wouldn't it have been easier to grab her from there? If he wasn't there, it would have avoided any connection with him.