Cecilia Haddad was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Police caught him trying to cover it up.

Content warning: This story includes deals with domestic violence and may be distressing to some readers. 

A week before her death, Cecilia Haddad flew to Perth to visit her best friends.

Haddad, Carol Camara and Rita Maciel had been close ever since Haddad first moved to Australia from Brazil in 2007, and they knew that at this time, she was being stalked and harassed by her ex-boyfriend, another Brazilian national named Marcelo Santoro.

During her visit, her friends requested she stay with them to avoid him – but the 38-year-old mining executive said she needed to get back to Sydney for work. 

When she arrived back at her apartment, she realised Santoro had secretly cut himself a key to her apartment and let himself in.

Camara and Maciel say it was Haddad's compassion that stopped her from reporting him to police, despite their encouragement.

"She didn't want him to have a record. She wanted him gone, but she didn't wish him bad," Camara said.

For the next week, she stayed with friends and at hotels to avoid her ex.

As NSW Police explained to 60 Minutes, CCTV captured Santoro making five separate trips to Haddad's apartment on the day before her murder.

On April 29, 2018, the day of her death, Haddad returned to her apartment for the first time in a week. She had just learned that Santoro had booked a flight back to Brazil and was feeling relief.

"One of the last things she said to me was 'I will drive him to the airport' and I said 'are you insane? Are you crazy? You're going to drive this man to the airport?'" Camara recalled on 60 Minutes.

"And then she said 'you don't understand, Carol. I need to see his back when he walks through that gate. I need to see him gone because I will be free.'"

Image: Nine.

Just after 10am that morning, after hours of hanging around her building, Santoro used his cut key to gain access to Haddad's apartment.

By 10.07am, police believe he had killed her.

Haddad's body was discovered in the Lane Cove River in Sydney, a few kilometres from her apartment. 

Santoro immediately became the top suspect in her death, but he had fled to Brazil the morning after she died. This posed a logistical issue for police, as Brazil's constitution mostly forbids extradition of citizens. However, Brazilian authorities said they would prosecute him there if Australian detectives shared their information.

Police used technology such as cell phone tower 'pings' and CCTV footage from hundreds of local cameras to accurately track Santoro's exact movements after Haddad's death – which included driving Haddad's red Fiat to the location where her body was dumped and washing his clothes at his own apartment block.

He texted her friends off her phone telling them she was going on a trip to the Blue Mountains, and left her car at a train station to make it more believable. This too was captured on CCTV discovered by police.

The next morning, as he got an Uber to the airport, Santoro threw Haddad's car key out the window and into the Parramatta River below. It took police divers three weeks to find it, attached to Haddad's unmistakable Christ the Redeemer keyring from her home city.

Three months after he fled, Santoro was arrested and charged with Haddad's murder.

Camara and Maciel know that Santoro is the only one at fault for their friend's death, but they cannot escape their own guilt over not reporting him to police themselves, before things escalated.

"I blame myself for what happened to Ceca," Camara told 60 Minutes. "I would have done so much better for my friend if I knew she was in danger."

In June this year, Santaro's trial took place across just two days in Brazil. Despite claiming her death was accidental, a jury found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

For Camara, Maciel and others who loved Haddad, it is not justice.

"He took away many lives," Camara said.

"He took away a daughter, an aunty, a sister, a friend that we're never going to have back," Maciel added.

They hope that by coming forward, they help other women – and their loved ones.

"I never saw Cecilia as the face of domestic violence. She was just this powerful woman," Camara said.

"Speak up. And alk to the police," Maciel continued. "We are not superwoman and we can't protect everybody. But there are people that can."

If this has raised any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. 

Feature image: 60 Minutes/Nine.