Francisco Costa Rocha killed two women in São Paulo, ten years apart. Margareth Suida died in August 1966. Ângela de Souza da Silva died in October 1976, about two years after he had been released on conditional liberty from the sentence for the first killing. He was convicted both times. His criminal sentence reached its end in 1998, but he did not go free. A civil court, on the request of the public prosecutor, declared him interdicted and ordered him interned, and Brazilian courts have kept that order in force for more than a quarter century.
The case is one of the most cited in Brazilian law on a narrow and difficult question: what the state may do with a person who has served the maximum prison term the country allows, which was 30 years at the time, and who is still judged dangerous. Courts, prosecutors and the family have answered it differently over the years, and the answer has been tested at the Supreme Federal Court and at the Court of Appeals of São Paulo State.
Francisco Costa Rocha was born on April 27, 1942, in Vila Velha, in the state of Espírito Santo. A 2022 law-school thesis on the case, which draws on the criminologist Ilana Casoy, says he was the son of a wealthy coffee exporter and the exporter's mistress, and that he was raised partly away from his mother in his early years. The same thesis lists his work in 1966 as real estate broker. His schooling is not on record.
By 1966 he was living in São Paulo, in the center of the city, and spending his evenings in the district known for its bars and night life.
Margareth Suida was 38. The 2022 thesis and the 2013 Jus Navigandi article by Talita Laércia Gomes Nunes Portela date her death to August 2, 1966; Gazeta do Povo gave August 4. She died in São Paulo. Costa Rocha was 24.
According to Consultor Jurídico, a person who shared his living space reported the matter to the police, and he did not deny what had happened. The thesis and the Portela article both put his arrest at August 5, 1966, three days after the killing. In later years he told a newspaper, Notícias Populares, that he had killed because he was resentful of life, a remark Consultor Jurídico quoted in 2015.
The court that tried him and the year of the verdict are not on record; the sentence is. The 2013 Portela article and the 1986 appeal ruling quoted in the thesis give 18 years of reclusion for qualified homicide, with a further term of 2 years and 6 months on a second count. The body of the thesis gives 17 years, and Diário do Pará, in 2025, gave 18. The accounts thus agree on a term of about 18 years for the homicide, with one account a year short.
Portela reports that he served the first part of the sentence in the state penitentiary until 1972, then in a semi-open agricultural penal colony at Bauru until 1974. He was granted conditional release in June 1974. Consultor Jurídico and Diário do Pará say he was freed for good conduct after about eight years. The Portela article adds that an assessment before release had described his personality as one with a deep neurotic disturbance, a finding that would later be replaced by much harsher ones.
Ângela de Souza da Silva was 34. She died in São Paulo on October 16, 1976, according to the indictment quoted in the thesis; Portela gives October 15 and Ana Helena Rister Andrade's 2018 Jus Navigandi article lists October 26.
The thesis says Costa Rocha was found in a town outside São Paulo about four weeks later; Gazeta do Povo, in 2023, said 28 days; Portela gives 11 days. The date of the second arrest is disputed.
The defense argued that he was not responsible for his act. An examination ordered before trial found him semi-imputable, with a psychopathic personality of the complex type, according to the thesis and to Portela. The 1986 appeal ruling, as the thesis quotes it, spoke of a very unfavorable prognosis.
The case went before the 2nd Jury Court of São Paulo as process no. 635/76. On September 10, 1979, the judge committed him for trial on a charge under article 121, paragraph 2, items I, III and IV of the Penal Code, which is qualified homicide. The jury sat on November 26, 1984. By four votes to three, the jurors found that he had committed the act and that he had been only partly capable at the time. The first-instance sentence, per the thesis, was 15 years reduced by one third to 10 years for homicide, with a lesser term and a fine on a second count, and a security measure of six years on the ground that he had a previous conviction for a crime against life.
Both sides appealed. On June 11, 1986, the 5th Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeals of São Paulo State, deciding Criminal Appeal no. 39.161-3 unanimously under Judge Denser de Sá, raised the homicide sentence to 20 years. According to the thesis, the court also held that the second count, which had been set at two years, was barred by the passage of time. It described Costa Rocha as an individual "excessivamente perigoso" and said that he "precisa ficar segregado o máximo de tempo possível".
The figure of 20 years is the one Diário do Pará gave in 2025. Portela and Andrade give 22 years and 6 months for the second case, which may add the lesser count to the homicide term; the difference is not explained, and the 20-year figure is the one in the 1986 ruling.
In 1994 a criminological examination, described by Portela, found a "personalidade psicopática perversa e amoral" and recommended that he be placed in a custody and treatment institution; progression to a more open regime was denied. The thesis says he was moved that year to the Casa de Custódia e Tratamento at Taubaté in the interior of São Paulo State. Gazeta do Povo, in 2023, described him as declared mentally incapable in 1994.
His sentence reached its legal end in 1998, when he had been in custody for the 30 years then allowed as the maximum. The thesis says that a release order was issued on June 7, 1998, because punishability had been extinguished, but that he stayed in custody under an injunction in a civil interdiction action. Gazeta do Povo gives a different date for the end of the sentence, November 21, 1998.
The action was brought by the public prosecutor of Taubaté. Andrade writes that it was filed in the 2nd Civil Court, citing a 1934 decree on mental illness, and that an injunction kept him at the Casa de Custódia. The thesis says the interdiction was granted by judgment on December 14, 1998. The courts, including the Supreme Federal Court in 2003, have treated the interdiction as separate from the penalty he had served.
Costa Rocha's defense challenged the arrangement. In RHC 82.924, the First Panel of the Supreme Federal Court decided on August 19, 2003, unanimously and on the vote of Justice Sepúlveda Pertence, to deny the appeal. According to the court's news service, the defense did not contest the interdiction itself but asked that he not be held at Taubaté, which it called a maximum-security prison. The federal prosecutor's office answered that the Casa de Custódia is the hospital of custody and psychiatric treatment described in article 99 of the Law of Penal Execution, not the neighboring prison. Pertence wrote that the Casa de Custódia could equally be used for persons interdicted for the same reason, since its purpose is the same as that of a security measure. Portela adds that the interdiction may proceed "independentemente da extinção da punibilidade". A habeas corpus before the Superior Court of Justice, under Justice Ruy Rosado de Aguiar, was also denied; the year is not on record.
In 2015 the family asked the courts to revoke the interdiction. Their main argument, reported by Consultor Jurídico, was that there is no life imprisonment in Brazil. They also said he had done therapeutic work and artwork that showed his capacity to return to society.
On November 25, 2015, the 7th Private Law Chamber of the Court of Appeals of São Paulo State, in Civil Appeal 0005327-65.1998.8.26.0625, rejected the request, following the rapporteur, Judge Rômulo Russo, unanimously. The thesis quotes the court as finding that he "não ostenta condições de vida em sociedade" and that interdiction "não se iguala à prisão perpétua". Consultor Jurídico reported that Russo relied on forensic reports, which he said no one had disputed, describing a dissocial personality and a history of violence, and a textbook of forensic psychiatry on how unlikely it was that the disorder would be reversed. The experts' conclusion, as the thesis and the news report quote it, was that the reports "não convence quanto à possibilidade de não mais cometer crimes". Russo wrote that society could not be left "à mercê de pessoas incontroláveis em suas ações".
In March 2017 Judge Sueli Zeraik de Oliveira Armani, of the sentence-execution court of Taubaté, decided that his confinement was illegal and arbitrary and ordered a gradual release, with the public prosecutor in agreement, Bahia Notícias reported on March 27, 2017. Under the order he was to go first on outings for psychotherapy with a staff member, and then be released to a place found by the state health secretariat. A psychiatrist who had worked at the unit for 17 years told the paper that such patients should not return to society. A prosecutor, on the other hand, called him an exemplary prisoner who had never had any problem.
The release did not happen. Another judge appealed, arguing that he was not fit to return to social life. On December 12, 2017, the Court of Appeals of São Paulo State accepted the appeal and treated the matter as treatment of an interdicted person and not deprivation of liberty. It held that he should remain in custody "para seu próprio benefício", the newspaper DOL reported the next day. The report added that the public defender's office might ask for a new evaluation.
In May 2023 Gazeta do Povo wrote that he was still held at the Casa de Custódia at Taubaté, at 81, in an article about a national judicial council resolution to close psychiatric custody hospitals. On September 15, 2025, Diário do Pará reported that he was 82 and held at the hospital of custody and treatment at Taubaté, that he had that year made his 20th request to end the measure, and that a São Paulo court had rejected it on medical reports pointing to an incurable psychopathy and a risk of reoffending. The court division and date of that decision are not on record.
Accounts disagree on the first sentence (17 or 18 years), on the second sentence (20 years or 22 years and 6 months), on the arrest dates, on the date of the second killing and on whether the interdiction followed a declaration of incapacity in 1994 or the 1998 judgment. The 1986 ruling and the 2003 and 2015 decisions are the best-documented points in the case. No other death has been charged or attributed to him.
1942: born April 27 in Vila Velha, Espírito Santo.
August 1966: Margareth Suida dies in São Paulo; arrest on August 5.
About 1966 to 1972: first sentence served in the state penitentiary, then the Bauru colony.
June 1974: conditional release.
October 1976: Ângela de Souza da Silva dies in São Paulo.
September 10, 1979: committed for trial in the 2nd Jury Court.
November 26, 1984: jury verdict, four votes to three, partial capacity found.
June 11, 1986: Court of Appeals raises the homicide sentence to 20 years.
1994: criminological examination; placed at Taubaté.
June 1998: punishability extinguished; held under an injunction.
December 14, 1998: interdiction judgment.
August 19, 2003: Supreme Federal Court denies RHC 82.924.
November 25, 2015: 7th Private Law Chamber upholds the interdiction.
March 2017: release ordered by the Taubaté execution court.
December 12, 2017: Court of Appeals reverses the release order.
September 2025: 20th request to end the measure rejected; still held at Taubaté.