Guilherme de Pádua, the former actor and pastor who killed Daniella Perez in 1992, would have died this Sunday evening (6) at the age of 53 after suffering a cardiac arrest, according to Pastor Márcio Valadão, leader of the Pond Baptist Church.
The congregation in Belo Horizonte, Padua’s hometown, took in the former actor after his release from prison and ordained him as a pastor in 2017. The death was confirmed by the Lagoinha Baptist Church press office, which released a statement.
“Guilherme, who had just turned 53 on November 2, had been part of the Lagoinha pastoral team since his ordination in 2017, directing the Recomeço ministry that works inside and outside the prisons of the capital of Minas Gerais and the metropolitan sheep and volunteered in a wide variety of areas, always dealing with the despised and marginalized,” the statement said.
“In his journey as a pastor, Guilherme lived far from the great pulpits. He was not seen preaching to crowds, but he worked daily in a variety of ministries with those whom society often chooses to put aside. Guilherme witnessed the possible transformation that is in Jesus. The new beginning reserved for all who believe in it.”
Previously, Valadão had also addressed a few words to those around him in a live broadcast on social networks. “He’s a young man who society doesn’t understand because he committed this crime of Daniella Perez. But he converted. He was a caterpillar that turned into a butterfly. He fell into the house and died. He fell and died,” he said.
Pádua rose to national prominence in the soap opera De Corpo e Alma, screened by Globo in the 1990s, in which he was a romantic partner to Daniella, daughter of author Gloria Perez. However, on December 28, 1992, the body of the girl from the feuilleton was found in a thicket in Barra da Tijuca, with 18 perforations, most concentrated in the heart region.
A testimony led the police to Padua and to his then wife Paula Thomaz. Each was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for aggravated murder after the people’s jury accepted the prosecutor’s thesis that the couple committed the crime intentionally Thomaz out of jealousy of her husband; Padua, in revenge on the novel’s author, since her role in the plot had been reduced.
The two have presented different versions of the crime in recent years. Thomas denies having attended. Pádua, who had taken the blame in statements to the police, later argued that his thenwife, jealous of the relationship between the two partners on the scene, would have been the one to deal with it, Daniella Perez in the forest.
The case came to light recently due to the 30th anniversary of the actress’ death and HBO Max’s docuseries Brutal Pact, which focused on the crime.
Pádua was born in Belo Horizonte in 1969 and came to Rio de Janeiro in the late 1980s ready to pursue a career in the art world. At the time, he was appearing on the soap opera De Corpo e Alma, where he played Bira, a bus driver in love with Yasmin, played by Daniella Perez.
With the telenovela, which premiered in August 1992, Gloria Perez recorded her first figure of eight solo flight plot. The main plot revolved around Paloma, played by Cristiana Oliveira, who received a heart transplant from another woman, Betina, Diogo’s great love, played by Tarcísio Meira. Yasmin, in turn, was Paloma’s sister, the protagonist of the story.
By the time he made his first steps on television, he had already added other roles in the theater. For example, in the play “Pasolini” he played the callboy responsible for the death of the famous Italian director. He would return to play a crook in the musical “Blue Jeans,” which made waves around the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.
Wolf Maya, the show’s director, tells in “Pacto Brutal” how he met the young man who came from Belo Horizonte on a motorcycle. Fábio Assunção, who was part of the cast, as well as Alexandre Frota and Maurício Mattar, recalls a scenic punch that Guilherme de Pádua really threw at the end.
Finally, the actor also returned to play a male companion in ‘Via Appia’, a German erotic film filmed in the universe of male prostitution saunas on Copacabana.
At that time, he also took part in the striptease show put on by transvestite Eloína dos Leopardos at Galeria Alaska, a wellknown gay bar in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, which ended with all the boys being completely naked.
Five years ago, the former actor became a pastor of the Lagoinha Baptist Church. Padua granted few interviews on the case, but his name keeps popping up, such as when he created a YouTube channel to talk about his religious conversion. In one of his last public appearances in 2020, he took to the streets for a proBolsonaro protest.
Guilherme de Pádua was a Baptist pastor in Belo Horizonte and had married makeup artist Juliana Lacerda in 2017.