{"id":260164,"date":"2026-01-23T17:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T17:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/260164\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T17:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T17:48:10","slug":"man-sentenced-to-life-for-murder-of-ex-girlfriend-bruna-fonseca-in-cork-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/260164\/","title":{"rendered":"Man sentenced to life for murder of ex-girlfriend Bruna Fonseca in Cork \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The family of murdered Brazilian<\/a> woman Bruna Fonseca have said her name will always be remembered with \u201cdignity, truth and love\u201d as they watched her former boyfriend sentenced to life imprisonment for her killing.<\/p>\n

Ms Fonseca\u2019s sister, Izabel, delivered an eloquent victim impact statement on behalf of the Fonseca family amid emotional scenes at the Central Criminal Court<\/a> as Ms Fonseca\u2019s former boyfriend, Miller Pacheco (32) received the mandatory life sentence for her murder.<\/p>\n

Pacheco, an engineer who had been in a five-year relationship with Ms Fonseca (28) before they broke up in January 2022, had denied murdering her at his apartment at Liberty Street in Cork<\/a> on January 1st, 2023 but the jury took just an hour and two minutes to find him guilty.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Pacheco sat with his head in his hands as Izabel took the stand. With the assistance of a Portuguese interpreter, she outlined the impact that the murder of her sister, a librarian, has had on her parents Tadeu Jose and Marina, back in Brazil, and their entire family.<\/p>\n

\"BrunaBruna Foncesca <\/p>\n

She recalled how the family received a phone call at 4.45am on New Year\u2019s Day 2023 to tell them of the news that Bruna had been found dead in Pacheco\u2019s flat, a phone call she described as \u201cthe most difficult phone call of our lives\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we were celebrating the beginning of a new year, we were left floored, speechless and joyless. When we answered the phone, expecting wishes of a happy new year, we were told that our sister was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBruna is not a number. She had dreams, plans, laughter and a whole life ahead of her. She came to this country moved by the hope of building a better future,\u201d said Izabel.She said her sister had come to Ireland with the aim of working and supporting her family back in Brazil.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to explain who Bruna was for real. She was strong. Even living a relationship characterised by constant manipulation, she always tried to solve problems that were not her own, that fell on her shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MariaMaria Luiza and Marcela Fonseca at the Central Criminal Court in Cork on Friday. Photograph: Michael Mac Sweeney\/Cork Courts <\/p>\n

During the trial, the jury heard how Ms Fonseca had been concerned for Pacheco after they broke up. He had threatened to kill himself and she repeatedly urged him to get psychiatric treatment. On the day he killed her, she took a knife off him because she feared for him.<\/p>\n

Izabel said: \u201cShe believed in, embraced, insisted upon, and emotionally supported someone who refused to face their own responsibilities. This wasn\u2019t weakness, it was kindness … Bruna was mature where there wasn\u2019t any maturity … She was support, where there was instability.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said their family life had been \u201cabruptly paralysed by an act of violence that cannot be undone\u201d and time had not healed them but simply taught the family to \u201clive with the absence, the silence, the constant pain which manifests itself in different ways in our daily lives\u201d.<\/p>\n

Marcela Fonseca, Bruna Fonseca\u2019s cousin, said she paid the price of Pacheco not accepting their relationship was over. \u201cA man decides to take someone\u2019s life … a life was taken because a woman was not allowed to move on, to choose, to love, to live her own life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Justice Siobh\u00e1n Lankford picked up on that point in her sentencing of Pacheco noting that Ms Fonseca herself had made that very point in a conversation with Pacheco which she recorded on her phone less than a fortnight before he manually strangled her in his flat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no winner here. It is not fighting for a trophy. I am not a trophy. To say someone won or lost it. It is my life \u2013 no one is entitled to it other than me,\u201d said Ms Justice Lankford reading her words, before reiterating Ms Fonseca was not a trophy to be won or lost but a person with dreams and hopes.<\/p>\n

\"JulianaJuliana Souza with Marcela, Bel, Fernanda, Maria Luiza Fonseca all friends and family of the late Bruna Fonseca at the Central Criminal Court in Cork. Photograph: Michael Mac Sweeney\/Cork Courts <\/p>\n

Defence counsel Ray Boland SC said that while his client had contested the case fully, he accepted the verdict of the jury. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe accepts the jury\u2019s verdict that he murdered Bruna. He will not appeal. He wants to apologise for the devastation he caused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking afterwards outside court, Ms Fonseca\u2019s family said that Pacheco\u2019s apology was too late as nothing could bring their beloved sister, aunt and cousin back. <\/p>\n

Her older sister, Fernanda summed up her younger sister simply and poignantly as \u201cthe rainbow between the rains\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of murdered Brazilian woman Bruna Fonseca have said her name will always be remembered with \u201cdignity,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1347,42851,46,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-260164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-brazil","tag-central-criminal-court","tag-cork","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}