Deise Moura dos Anjos released a statement via her lawyers stating there was a “causal link between the poison and Deise” but questioning how arsenic ended up at her home in Brazil
A woman accused of killing three relatives with a Christmas cake laced with “extremely high” levels of a deadly poison has broken her silence.
Deise Moura dos Anjos was arrested on January 5 on suspicion of triple murder and triple attempted murder after a cake baked by her mother-in-law, 61-year-old Zeli Terezinha Silva, at her home in Torres, Brazil, killed three people. Zeli’s two sisters, Tatiana Denize Silva dos Anjos, 43, Maida Berenice Flores da Silva, 58, and her niece Neuza Denize Silva dos Anjos, 65, died after eating the festive cake at a family get together on December 23.
Members of the group complained the cake tasted “bitter and peppery”, Brazilian officials have said, and were found dead hours after feasting on the sweet treat. Ms Silva, the baker, continues to fight for her life in hospital. Now, weeks after the story hit international headlines and days following her arrest, Ms dos Anjos has broken her silence via lawyers in a statement.
Ms dos Anjos issued a statement on Tuesday which was read on her behalf by her lawyer Cassyus Pontes. The statement read: “Everything’s all very preliminary. There are still questions to be answered. What is the causal link between the poison and Deise? There is no explanation of how the flour ended up in Zeli’s house, or where or how it was acquired.
“These are minimal questions to indicate the authorship of the facts. Instead, all we have are the accounts of some family members and a supposed extraction of data from a mobile phone.” Officials this week confirmed the source of the poisoning had been “arsenic-laced flour” in the cake that was eaten.
They said the toxic chemical was present in “extremely high concentrations” which were far too high to be naturally occurring and were enough to be fatal. Marguet Mittman, director of the General Institute of Expertise (IGP), said: “Very high concentrations of arsenic were identified in the three victims.
“So high that they are toxic and lethal. To give you an idea, 35 micrograms are enough to cause death. In one of the victims, there was a concentration 350 times higher.” Brazilian judicial officials have confirmed that an initial analysis of Moura’s phone showed “internet searches, including on Google shopping, for the word arsenic and other similar ones”.
She is said to have carried out the searches in November as well as in the days before the victims died or fell ill. Police have confirmed that they plan to exhume the body of Zeli’s husband Paulo, who died last September from food poisoning, to establish whether there were traces of arsenic in his body.