For 30 days, an entire family searched desperately for a 10-month-old baby girl.
Her name was Sofia. Her mother, 27-year-old Simary Rayane da Silva, claimed the child was staying with a relative. She even created a fake WhatsApp account pretending to be that family member, using it to reassure neighbors that the baby was safe. Despite repeated attempts, no one in the family was able to see Sofia.
On May 12, 2024, Mother’s Day in Brazil, Simary went to a restaurant without her daughter. That was when the family’s concerns became impossible to ignore. Sofia’s great-grandmother revealed that she had not seen the little girl for more than a month.
On the night of May 21, the family contacted the Military Police. Simary was threatening to take her own life and refused to reveal where her daughter was.
The following day, her own mother returned to the police battalion with information that changed the investigation. Her daughter had confessed.
In Jaboatão dos Guararapes, Pernambuco, Simary reportedly admitted that she had poisoned Sofia using chumbinho, an illegally sold rat poison. However, the exact cause of death still needed to be established through forensic testing. Investigators discovered that the baby’s body had been kept inside a freezer at the family home for approximately 30 days.
According to Brazilian media reports, which attributed the account to her confession to police, Simary expressed remorse. She reportedly said that every night she would thaw the baby’s body so she could cry.
On May 23, a judge ordered that her detention be converted into pretrial detention. She faces charges of aggravated murder and concealment of a corpse.
Throughout those terrible weeks, Sofia’s grandmother and great-grandmother continued searching for her, refusing to accept that the little girl had simply disappeared.
Their determination eventually brought the truth to light.
Sofia was gone, but her family never stopped looking for her. Their search finally gave them the answers they had been desperately seeking.
