Manoel da Costa Franca

Manoel da Costa Franca was a Brazilian who killed 12 members of his family in Jaguari, Brazil, on June 14, 1999. He was sentenced to death and executed.

Life
Manoel was born on June 3, 1974, in Jaguari, Brazil. He was the first child to his father Fernando and his mother Michelle. His parents later had three more children, including a pair of conjoined twins, one of whom was deaf and blind. For a while, Manoel lived with his parents and three siblings, but in 1985, the family was joined by his fathers aunt, who had severe dementia. Manoel married Gianne Franca in 1994, and they had 5 children together. According to neighbors, Manoel's youngest child had microcephaly. Due to his child defect, his mental state began to deteriorate.

Murders
On the night of June 14, one of Francas' neighbors was awoken by two gunshots. Unsure about the sound she tried to go back to sleep, but about ten minutes later she heard a burst of about 20-30 more shots from the home, and shortly afterwards Francas' house burst into flames. When firefighters arrived at the scene they rescued Francas' sister, wife, and two of his children. The four had all escaped the house after being struck multiple times on the head with a blunt instrument. Inside the house they found the charred bodies of Francas' father, mother, three children, two brothers, and grand aunt.

According to his testimony during the trial, Manoel first shot both of his parents with a revolver as they slept, and when his wife awoke from the noise, he struck her several times with a hoe. He then continued to attack the sleeping occupants with the hoe until five of them managed to escape. He afterwards grabbed an uzi he had illegally bought, and began firing into the street, killing his grand aunt. Escaping the scene, he set fire to the house, burning his daughter, who was hiding from the killer in a closet.

The following morning, two of Franca's children died of their injuries in the hospital.

On July 26, Franca's sister died of brain trauma in the hospital.

The last surviving victim, his wife, remained in a coma for 11 months, but was taken off of life support and died on May 23, 2000



Victims
A large manhunt was launched to capture Franca, but was unsuccessful, and it was eventually assumed that he had died. Manoel was eventually found in a favela inside Rio de Janeiro on October 2, 2002. During his trial, he told the judge that he killed his family because their defects and diseases were ruining them.

On August 6, 2005, a judge sentenced Franca to death, and he was executed on February 28, 2017 by lethal injection.