Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Mario Marcelo Santoro murdered his ex girlfriend Cecilia Haddad and fled to Brazil

On December 12, Disney Plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six-episode docu-series. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book. The End of an Era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, the era's tour, the final show, featuring for the first time the tortured poets department. Streaming December 12, only on Disney Plus. So this guy, his name's Mario. And Mario has a problem.

He's dating a woman who can do way better than him. Now the woman he's dating, her name's Cecilia. And one day, Cecilia reconnects with one of her old college flings, Mario. And she hasn't seen Mario in a while. And they're both originally from Brazil. But now they both live in Sydney, Australia. So they think, eh, why not try dating? So they start dating for a while, and I guess things are going okay.

because eventually Mario moves into her apartment with her. Here's the thing about Mario though. He's unemployed, and since he doesn't have a job, he's always hanging around doing nothing. And so Cecilia starts to feel suffocated by him, and over time, she starts to pull away from him. Now here's the other thing about Mario. He's a pretty controlling guy, and as she pulls away from him, of course, he tries harder to control her. Like he's always checking to see who she's talking to, like, who you talking to? Sometimes he even takes her phone or her computer to like snoop on her.

And Cecilia's friends, they start to notice that she's not happy around him. And they're like, girl, you need to ditch this guy. And eventually she's like, you know what? You're right. And so she goes and she breaks the news to Mario, that the relationship is just not working for her. And after about a year of dating, boom, she officially breaks up with him. And of course, Mario is. devastated. He feels like he can't lose her. I mean, he could never do better than her. So he just

refuses to accept her decision and he refuses to move out of her place. And he just keeps on living there. And then he kind of starts stalking her. And this is really scary for Cecilia. So she's like, fuck all this and she leaves her own apartment. And she starts staying over at her friend's houses or crashing in hotels just to be away from him. And finally, after a period of doing all this, She's had enough of his weird stalkery behavior, and she gives him an ultimatum. Get all your shit and get the hell out of my apartment or else. And Mario, he doesn't take this well. Like he's not happy, but he's like, ugh, fine.

And so he moves out and everything seems to be finally resolved. No, it's not. At one point, Cecilia flies from Sydney to where her friend lives all the way over in Perth. So she's visiting some friends, and when they see how, worked up and anxious she is over the whole Mario situation, they're like, why didn't you report this weirdo to the police? And of course, Cecilia didn't report him to the police. Now, she definitely wants Mario out of her life, but she's also a really nice person. She's not vindictive enough to want to get him in trouble or get him deported back to Brazil. So she never reported him. But then

she somehow learns that Mario just booked a flight back to Rio de Janeiro. So she thinks, sweet, He's finally moving away. He's going back to Rio. He'll be out of the country. And she finally, after a long while, feels safe enough to go back to her apartment. Here's the thing, though, Mario has no intention of getting out of her life.

In fact, he secretly went and had a spare key made to her place so that he can come back anytime he wants with or without her permission. Now, here's where the story gets dark. At some point, Mario hits up Cecilia out of the blue, and he tells her that he's leaving the country for good. He's going back to Brazil. And he asks her if she'll give him a ride to the airport. And Cecilia's thinking, psh, no. But then she thinks about it a little more. And she really, really wants to see him

walk away from her forever. And what better way to feel like he's actually out of her life for good than watching him get on a plane and fly away? So she reluctantly agrees to do it. She'll give him a ride to the airport. But then, the day before Mario's flight, suddenly, bam, he just shows up to the front door of her apartment. And he's like, I left my passport. Can you let me in? And Cecilia's like, nah, I'm not letting you in. And this really pisses him off. And he's like, come on. And she's like, nah. And so he just waits. He waits around her apartment complex for several hours. And I don't know if he's waiting on her to come out or if he's waiting on her to change her mind. But she doesn't change her mind. And eventually, he comes back to her front door and he uses that key he made to enter.

And as soon as he walks through the door, Cecilia panics and she starts yelling at him like, get the hell out. And he's like, well, I just want to talk to you, or whatever he says. But she just keeps yelling at him. And that is when Mario snaps. And pow, he grabs her by the neck with both hands, and he squeezes as hard as he can. And they struggle back and forth and he strangles her until she's no longer yelling or moving at all because she's unalived. And Mario's like, oh shit, I murdered her. Now what am I going to do? And so he grabs her phone and he uses her finger to unlock it. And from her phone, he texts her mom and her friends pretending to be her. And he says, I'm going on a trip to the blue mountains. Probably so that they'll think Cecilia went hiking and like got lost or something.

But anyway, then he loads her body into her car and she drives a red fiat. Here's actually a picture of it real life. And so he drives her fiat to a local river and he dumps her body there. The next morning, Mario orders an Uber to drive him to the airport. So he's in this Uber and as that Uber is going over a bridge, he rolls down the window, leans out and he throws the car keys to her fiat over the railing and down into the water, never to be seen again. And the Uber driver's like, what the fuck is this guy doing? But whatever, soon enough, Mario is on a flight and he flies from Sydney back to Brazil, home free from the murder he just committed. But then, back at the local river, a couple of kayakers just got into the water and they're kayaking and they see

something suspicious floating around like it could be a body. So they call police and police come and they check it out and they're like, yep, that's a body. And so the body is identified as Cecilia and police, they start investigating this whole thing. And pretty quickly, they identify Mario as the prime suspect, because the ex-boyfriend is always the prime suspect. And so they start collecting all this evidence, and they track his cell phone location from the time around the murder, and they're able to match it up with some CCTV footage. And they actually find footage of him driving Cecilia's red fiat the night after she was murdered. They also get footage from CCTV cameras at Mario's own house.

they find footage of him after the murder walking back in wet socks. Actually, if you slow the footage down and zoom in, you can see the little footprints he left. Now, obviously, his clothes were wet because he had just dumped a body in the river. In fact, the footage also shows him right when he gets home, like stripping off all his clothes and washing them immediately. Because clearly, bro is trying to clean up all the evidence. But anyway, then finally, police interview the Uber driver who drove him to the airport that day. And that Uber driver is like, yeah, we were driving over the bridge and dude rolled the window down and he threw a set of car keys into the water.

It was weird. And so police, they send some divers out and it takes about three weeks, but eventually they find the keys to Cecilia's red fiat. And so at this point, Australian police, they know Mario is definitely the killer. But remember, he's no longer in Australia. He left. He's in Brazil now. So police, they compile all the evidence and they deliver it. to prosecutors in Brazil. And three months after the murder, bam, Mario is finally arrested in Brazil.

Here's his mugshot. And he ultimately goes to trial and he confesses to everything, to unaliving Cecilia, to dumping the body, everything. And here's footage of him crying in court if you care to see him cry in court. And ultimately, he's sentenced to 27 years in prison. Good.