On February 22, 2013, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot Brazilian journalist Mafaldo Bezerra Goes as he walked from his house to the radio station where he worked, according to news reports. Goes, who hosted a radio show on FM Rio Jaguaribe in the city of Jaguaribe, in the northern state of Ceará, was shot at least five times in the head and abdomen, the reports said.
Goes had often denounced local criminal groups and drug traffickers on his program, according to news reports. Family members told the local media that Goes had received death threats, according to news reports. The police said the reporter had not filed a formal complaint.
Authorities said they believed the murder could be related to Goes’ reporting on crime. “He died because of his profession. He made a lot of people angry,” said Police Chief Vera Lúcia Passos Granja in local reports.
Police said they had identified the gunmen and that they suspected the murder had been ordered by a drug dealer imprisoned in the city of Fortaleza but who operated in Jaguaribe, according to the news website Diário do Nordeste.
Five months after the killing, police arrested two suspected shooters, identified as Gleidson José da Silva Lima, alias “Limoeiro,” and Matheus Pereira de Aquino, who was a minor at the time and was known as “Pequeno.”
Lima’s trial was initially scheduled for October 27, 2021. At the time, a petition was filed for a change in the location of the trial, from Jaguaribe to Ceará's capital, Fortaleza, due to conflict of jurisdiction. In 2022, a judge granted the request, according to details of the case listed on the website of Ceará State Judiciary, which CPJ reviewed. In January 2024, his trial has been rescheduled for April 8, according to the state judiciary website.
Dyoness Nunes Soares, head of a criminal group that Goes denounced in his radio program, was identified by the police as the mastermind of the killing. On November 9, 2022, Soares was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years and three months in prison, according to a court document, which CPJ reviewed.