HEAVILY pregnant with her first child, Flávia Godinho Mafra’s close friend claimed she was throwing her a surprise baby shower.
But her so-called pal, Rozalba Maria Grime, had no intention of celebrating her soon-to-be-born child – because she wanted the baby for herself. Flávia’s killer sliced open her stomach and stole her baby from her womb, leaving her in a pool of blood. Here, the police officer who was first on the scene reveals the horror he faced and how her cold-blooded killer showed no remorse.
Blindfolded, the 36-weeks pregnant preschool teacher from Canelinha, southern Brazil, was unaware she was being lured to her death.
Flávia, 24, had no reason not to trust her friend, who she thought was also pregnant – but there was no baby shower.
Instead, Rozalba had driven her to an abandoned pottery factory on the edge of the town, and when Flávia stepped out of the car on August 27, 2020, she was mutilated by the crazed killer.
There, Rozalba, 27, hit her over the head with a brick, knocking her out.
After slashing open Flávia’s stomach with a box-cutter, evil Rozalba snatched the unborn baby from her womb and left her for dead in the abandoned factory.
Rozalba planned to pretend the child was her own, and had been faking a pregnancy to everyone – even her partner. The callous killer had carefully researched symptoms and had studied how to remove the foetus.
She left Flávia to bleed out in the abandoned factory, where the preschool teacher died from her injuries. Her body was found on the floor, with a huge cut across her stomach and some of her internal organs exposed.
Police chief Paulo Freyesleben led the investigation into Flávia’s murder.
He told The Sun that the callousness of the killer was shocking, and “deeply moved” everyone involved.
Freyesleben says: “She showed no emotion or remorse.
“She simply cut open the victim’s abdomen while she was still alive and removed the baby.
“In our line of work as police officers, firefighters, and first responders, we generally get used to facing barbaric scenes.
“However, this crime shocked everyone involved in the investigation due to the perpetrator’s cruelty toward the victim.”
Freyesleben says the murder was so brutal that some jurors fell ill when they heard details of the charges and were shown bloody crime scene pictures.
He said: “The sheer cruelty, the victim’s suffering, and the injuries inflicted on the child left everyone profoundly shocked.”
Yet Flávia’s is just one case in a disturbing trend.
Foetal abduction is the twisted crime of cutting open a pregnant woman’s womb to steal her child – and it is on the rise.
The sinister spike in cases like Flávia’s
Before 2005, there were just eight recorded cases of foetal abduction worldwide.
Yet in the two decades since then, there have been at least 30 cases of the brutal crime.
Brazil has the second-highest number of foetal abductions in the world, after the US – the South American country has recorded 16 cases of the crime in the 14 years since its first case.
Freyesleben spoke to Flávia’s family and her husband during the investigation.
“They were all in a state of shock,” he said. “It was Flávia’s first pregnancy, and the family was very excited about it.
“The entire city was devastated by the brutality of the crime because Flávia was a preschool teacher and very well known in the area.”
Foetal abduction is often fatal for both mother and baby, yet miraculously, Flávia’s baby, Cecilia, survived her violent birth.
The child suffered cuts on her back during the brutal assault but made a full recovery.
Flávia’s cousin, Jennifer Costa, told local media during the trial that baby Cecilia was “doing very well”.
Jennifer said: “She is very healthy, a beautiful girl who will have a bright future, unfortunately without her mother around, but we as a family, both her father’s family and her mother’s family, are very close.
“We will always support and care for her like our princess.”
Flávia’s sister-in-law, Daniela Mafra, told reporters that Flávia “will never be forgotten, she will always be in our memory”.
How the cruel killer was caught
Killer Rozalba’s plan went awry when concerned locals noticed she was covered in blood, stopping her car to ask if she needed help.
Police chief Freyesleben told The Sun: “They noticed the child in the back, and she claimed she had just given birth.
“These bystanders called for paramedics, who then took her to the hospital.
“Her initial plan was not to go to the hospital, but to go home and tell her husband she had given birth in the street.
“However, because these men found her, this was the first part of her plan that went wrong.”
When Rozalba arrived at the hospital with little Cecilia, claiming to have given birth, doctors saw the cuts on the baby’s back, realised that the baby was not her own, and called the police. Investigators quickly joined the dots between the stolen baby and Flávia, who had been reported missing.
The murderer was arrested, cracked under interrogation and was later sentenced to 56 years behind bars.
Freyesleben thinks desperation for a child inspired the horrifying crime, saying: “Rozalba’s obsession was very clear – something extremely pathological.”
Brazilian lawyer Hannah Celtan believes there are many similar cases that go under the radar because of the high numbers of women who go missing or are killed in the South American country.
She told The Sun: “I think many, many cases go unreported. We work with the cases where it goes wrong, because the cases where abductors succeed, we may never find out about them.”
In 2024, 3,700 women were murdered in Brazil – that’s more than ten women killed every day.
Of these killings, 1,492 were ruled to be femicides, meaning that the women were killed because of their gender.
Almost all women who have their foetuses stolen die of their injuries.
Desperation for a child or delusions that a baby might save a failing relationship are common motivations behind the sick surgeries.
Yet there can be an even darker motivation for foetal abduction: in a 2019 case, a baby was ripped from its mother’s stomach in exchange for cash.
Cátia Barros Rabelo was dating a gold miner and was desperate to marry him.
So she hatched a plan, recruiting a 13-year-old girl to help her steal a baby.
The 13-year-old had a pregnant older sister, 23-year-old Fabiana Pires Santana.
Rabelo convinced the teen, who already hated her older sibling, to kill Fabiana and steal her unborn baby in exchange for cash.
The girl’s sister, Fabiana, was eight months pregnant at the time, and defenceless.
The teen bludgeoned her own sister to death with a metal pole before slashing her stomach and grabbing the child.
She even killed her seven-year-old nephew. The boy had caught her in the act, so she threw him into a lake and stoned him until he drowned.
Celtan told The Sun that she thinks these cases show that women’s lives are treated as disposable.
She said: “These women believe that the victims are not really women, not really people. They see these women as objects they can use to get what they want and think nothing will happen.
“It can be a reflection of this idea of women being worth less than men, the idea that these victims’ lives don’t matter.”
Foetal abduction disproportionately affects poor women, Celtan added.
She said desperate, heavily pregnant women often turn to strangers for help.
And they are lured to their deaths with offers of free baby supplies.
Celtan said: “All of the recent cases involve social media, Facebook groups and WhatsApp groups. These are really poor and vulnerable women, we don’t have rich women on the list of cases.
“They are always vulnerable people who need baby clothes, baby shoes, often really small things”
“I believe it’s not about creating panic among women, but we need to clarify to them that there is no safe way to accept any help from people they don’t know.”
