Brazilian cops have unraveled the Christmas Day murd3r of three people by food poisoning during the festive season in December last year.
A long-standing family feud has been identified as the root cause of the incident as a woman, Deise Mour, who is the daughter-in-law of Zeli Dos Anjos, the woman who baked the k!ller cake, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.
Deise Moura, who was arrested yesterday, was said to have a long-standing dispute with Zeli Dos Anjos, her mother-in-law who baked the cake.
Deise Moura was picked up in her home which she shared with her husband, Diego in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
The cake Zeli Dos Anjos made killed her two sisters as well as her niece at a family Christmas party at Torres near Porto Alegre in southern Brazil on December 23.
Mother-of-one Zeli is still in hospital fighting for her life, while her two sisters Maida da Silva, 58, and Neuza Dos Anjos, 65, both died along with Neuza’s daughter Tatiana Dos Santos, 43.
They lost their lives within hours of tucking into the cake, and traces of deadly arsenic were found in their bodies, authorities later revealed.
Tatiana’s 10-year-old son Matheus, Zeli’s great nephew, was treated in hospital and only released on Friday, while Maida’s husband Jefferson was also treated but Neuza’s husband Joao did not eat any cake and was unaffected.
Police are set to expand on what they believe lies behind the horror poisoning, with reports in Brazil pointing to the suspect and Zeli having quarrelled in the past in a dispute said to be linked to what subsequently occurred.
It comes after MailOnline revealed that Zeli’s first husband Paulo Luis, 68, died after eating a banana that had been contaminated, with officials set to exhume his body from its final resting place next Thursday as part of their probe.
The dramatic development of Deise’s arrest was shared exclusively with MailOnline by Torres police chief Marcus Vinicius Veloso who said the mother of one had been arrested at her home in Nova Santa Rita late on Sunday.
He said: ‘The woman was arrested for triple homicide and a triple attempted homicide.
‘She was taken initially to a police station at Canoas, then to Torres police station and is now in the women’s jail in the city, at this moment we cannot say anything else.’
It was at Paulo and Zeli’s seaside property that she made the cake on December 23, which she took to Maida’s apartment for the party, and at the house police have seized ingredients including dried fruit and flour, as well as pesticides.
Last week police said they are ‘not aware of any disputes within the family’ but are keeping an open mind while waiting for results from lab tests which are due back any day and provisional reports revealed arsenic in the blood of the victims.
Investigative sources confirmed Paulo’s body would be exhumed next Thursday for further analysis as none were taken after doctors at Torres hospital ruled he had died from food poisoning.
Family members have told MailOnline that he and Zeli suddenly fell ill after eating some mashed bananas they had grown from a plant in their garden, and which may have been contaminated after floods swept through the region in May.
At the time, Zeli was also taken to hospital but recovered while Paulo died within hours of being admitted.
The group of seven at the Christmas party complained the cake she baked tasted ‘bitter and peppery’ within minutes all were vomiting and a fleet of ambulances was called to take them to hospital.
Maida, a retired teacher, was the first to die on Christmas Eve, Neuza passed away a few hours later, followed by her daughter Tatiana.
Zeli’s ten-year-old great nephew Matheus, Tatiana’s son, was also taken ill and spent a week in intensive care before being moved onto a paediatric unit on Friday night from the Senhora dos Navegantes hospital in Torres.
Paulo’s brother Joao – married to Neuza – did not eat any cake but Maida’s husband Jefferson had a few mouthfuls and was also taken ill but did not require a stay in hospital.
Just days ago, Jefferson’s sister Isabel Moraes, 54, exclusively told MailOnline that she thought someone with a ‘grudge’ had been responsible for targeting the family describing the tragedy as ‘strange’.
