Woman lured friend to baby shower to steal her baby

Last Thursday, August 27, Flávia Godinho Mafra, 24, was invited to a baby shower being hosted by a longtime friend.  What she had no way of knowing though, was that her friend intended to steal her baby.

She was 36-weeks pregnant at the time.

The 26-year-old friend whose name has not been released stated that she had become pregnant in October 2019 but suffered a miscarriage in January 2020.  Rather than tell family what had happened, she continued to lie saying she was still pregnant and sought a target from which she could steal a child.

The day of the supposed baby shower, two other friends that knew of the event were told that it had been canceled.

Instead of a baby shower, Mafra was brutally beaten with a brick when her back was turned and then her friend proceeded to cut her unborn child from her womb with a box cutter.

Mafra's family became increasingly concerned when she didn't return home after the event, and was told by the organizer that she had "left with someone else."  That night, a search was launched for the woman.

The following morning, at about 9 am, her body was found with the baby missing.

Meanwhile, at the Joana de Gusmão Children’s Hospital in Florianópolis, the woman and her husband entered alleging that she had given birth and wished to have her daughter checked out.  When doctors discovered that the baby had cuts on her back and the woman showed no signs of giving birth recently, they were both detained at the scene.

When confronted by police, the woman is said to have confessed to the crime.

“In years of work, I have never seen anything like it. She is extremely cold. She neither cared about the child's health nor asked. She told the crime in detail. There was no feeling, she spoke normally,” Paulo Alexandre Freyesleben e Silva,  was quoted as saying by Dario Costa Esmeralda.

The baby, Cecillia, is reported to be "doing well" at the Children's Hospital.