I’m not surprised that some of you keep defending Leonor Cipriano. After all between Leonor and Mrs. McCann there are more similarities than differences.
Madeleine was the babysitter for her twin siblings while her parents went out at night, and according to Kate, she was a “little mother”. Joana was also the only one that took care of her younger siblings, preparing food, cleaning the house and even had to beg money from the neighbours to buy food for the babies and cigarettes for her mother – her case had been denounced to the Minors Protection Commission by neighbours and teachers, five months before she disappeared.
Like the McCann, Leonor also appealed to the Media, crying out that her daughter had been “taken” – bad luck that her brother (and later herself) confessed to the murder describing every sinister detail of it, which was backed up by forensics.
Like in the McCann case, also with Cipriano, the PJ took too long to follow the homicide hypothesis, deluded by the abduction argument presented by the mother.
Like in the McCann case, also Leonor Cipriano changed her version of events numerous times: first she said it was abduction, then she confessed to have participated in the murder with her brother, later on she affirmed that it was her brother that had convinced her to sell the girl to a childless couple and the “business” had gone wrong, with João Cipriano killing the child.
Like the McCann, Leonor was also advised to turn up against the PJ, by making up a fake torture accusation – curiously enough by the man that had confessed on several interviews that he was out to get Amaral, paid by Metodo 3. The Trial that condemned 2 PJs was based on photoshoped photos that the President of the Bar, Marinho Pinto, had used in his chronicles in a newspaper. The testimony of the doctor that treated Leonor more than a week after she had been in the PJ headquarters was not accepted. Must add that an inmate's testimony that swore she had been beaten inside the prison was also not accepted by the Court.
The only difference between the McCann and the Cipriano is that Leonor is poor and the McCann managed to get money from donors to make them wealthy.
Leonor was a mother of 6 by 5 different fathers. She abandoned her older daughter, now 23 y.o., when she was 11 months old. Abandoned her next son (now19 y.o.) when he was 2 months old. The 4th was left with relatives as soon as she was born. The only children she kept were Joana and 2 younger children by her last partner.
Joana’s teacher said she was a sad kid and that on her first day in school she arrived late and alone. But her troubles had begun earlier. When Joana was 5 months old, and later when she was 3 y.o. she was sent to her father. In September 2003, her mother left her for 3 weeks with an alcoholic couple, in a miserable house where also lived a person with an infect-contagious disease. But Joana always went back to her mother to take care of her and of the babies.
According to the Public Ministry accusation, at the beginning of the night in September 2004, after having gone to a café to buy milk and tuna, the little girl surprised her mother and uncle in an incestuous sexual act, on the living room sofa, and menaced she was going to tell to her stepfather. Immediately Leonor and João banged her head several times against a wall, until they killed her.
Afterwards, they slaughtered her body in order to better dispose of the cadaver. The several parts were put into plastic bags, which were for several days inside a freezer. After this the Public Ministry doesn’t risk to point a place to where the body was taken (after confessing and accepting to cooperate with the PJ, the arguidos gave more than 20 false leads about the whereabouts of the body).
Face and palm prints were found on the walls, and on the door sill, where by the position of the palm prints it is admissible that it was an attempt of the child to escape while being beaten to death (even though Leonor had tried to clean the house with petrol).
When in 2010 her lawyer wanted to request her being paroled, her family refused to accept her back - Her younger children’s aunt even requested that the children had their names officially changed in order to exclude the Cipriano surname, since it was a looked at as a stigma.
Leonor did in fact fake a suicide attempt by jumping down the stairs in the PJ headquarters, but on the 13th of October (not the 14th when she alleged the torture occurred), when her lawyer was in the interrogation room and she was coming from the rest room where she had requested to go. Of course she was blocked by the officer that was accompanying her back into the room and the only injuries she suffered were bruised knees.
In February 2013, the Court of Faro tried Leonor and condemned her for having lied about her alleged “torture”. She was sentenced for another 7 months to add to her previous 16 years as a murderer.
I hope that the McCann remaining children never feel the way Leonor’s children feel.
Some sources:
Revista Visão nº657, 6 de Outubro 2005
http://www.dn.pt/inicio/portugal/interior.aspx?content_id=1564608&seccao=Sul&page=1http://expresso.sapo.pt/caso-joana-leonor-cipriano-admite-tese-da-venda=f492359http://www.publico.pt/sociedade/noticia/leonor-cipriano-condenada-a-sete-meses-de-prisao-por-falsas-declaracoes-1589891
