See unprecedented revelations from the nephew of a socialite held captive

The plot about the life in captivity of Rio socialite Regina Lemos Gonçalves is about to have new chapters revealed. According to an investigation that continues under court secrecy, the 88-year-old woman was held in private prison for months by her ex-partner José Marcos Chaves Ribeiro in an apartment in the luxurious Chopin Building, in Rio de Janeiro. Exclusively, Coluna Claudia Meireles spoke with Álvaro O’hara, a nephew of the elderly woman.

At 41 years old, Álvaro O’hara is a fashion designer and, despite being born in Brasília, he currently lives in Rio de Janeiro. In an interview with the column, the Brasilia native details what his maternal aunt experienced while she was “manipulated” and “dominated” by José Marcos Chaves Ribeiro. Known for throwing pompous and memorable parties in the Marvelous City, Regina has fallen out of the spotlight in recent years and even disappeared from the common areas of the building where she lived to the point of causing distrust among her neighbors.

Regina became a widow in 1994. She was married to Nestor Gonçalves, farmer and owner of Copag decks. As the couple had no children, the inheritance was passed on to the socialite. At the time, the press reported that her assets reached US$500 million, the equivalent of R$2.5 billion at current prices.

“Grow your eye”

Years later, Regina’s life took a turn. According to Álvaro, José Marcos started working for the socialite at the end of 2011. “He was introduced by the wife of my aunt’s third cousin and was going to work as a driver because he needed a job”, he says. The designer remembers that in the year in question his maternal aunt threw one of “the last big parties”. Living in Brasília, the nephew did not participate, because his mother was in bad health.

According to Álvaro O’hara, Regina is an “extremely generous” woman and José Marcos took advantage of his boss’s kindness to “get inside”. “My aunt is a very kind woman, one of the few that still exists in the world, and she is ending it. A person almost from the Belle Époque. She let him go to the salons and he gained her trust,” he emphasizes.

The stylist recalls that José Marcos told Regina that he attended a training seminar for priests and had few romantic relationships in order to gain more and more of his wife’s trust. “He was an almost holy man and she left him. He became her driver and a kind of handyman,” he recalls. Before becoming an employee of the socialite, José Marcos had worked as a cleaner in Ireland.

“Manipulation plan”

In the opinion of the Brasilia native, José Marcos “grew his eyes” on Regina’s fortune, described by Álvaro as “a woman who always liked to live very well”. According to Álvaro’s report, the first step in the driver’s manipulation plan involved “undermining the socialite’s friendships”. During this period, Regina had a large group of friends around her.

“As time went by, this guy started taking her away from her. [Regina] great friends and people from society. And it was undermining, undermining”, shares Álvaro. At first, the relationship that was supposed to be that of employer and employee made headlines as a romance through a columnist, whom the stylist characterizes as a “brown press journalist”.

“I don’t know if it was a plan between the two of them, because some time later this journalist came to live in one of my aunt’s mansions”, he says. The Brasilia native mentions that the columnist spread news about José Marcos being the socialite’s cousin. Some time later, the same journalist created and published photomontages on the internet revealing that Regina and the driver were dating.

According to Álvaro, other publications by the columnist reported that Regina and José Marcos had gotten married in India. “That started to resonate,” he comments. The nephew was worried about his aunt and when he met the employee, he confirmed his intuition: “She introduced me and I didn’t like him, because he was taking up space in the house. One day I saw that he was paying the bill with her credit card.”

Álvaro questioned José Marcos about the use of the card with his aunt’s personal password and heard the following story: “He told me it was the household expenses card”. According to the stylist, José Marcos, when he began to dominate the socialite, he took away her personal cell phone: “It was the first thing he did”. According to her nephew’s accounts, the socialite spent 10 years without having a mobile phone.

“She now has a cell phone,” he continued. Álvaro highlights that talking to Regina was a real mess, imposed by José Marcos: “To talk to my aunt, you had to talk on his cell phone. To get information about her, it took him three or four days to respond. It was always him who gave, never her.”

When suspicions on the part of family and friends regarding the condition of Regina Lemos Gonçalves reached their peak, José Marcos put the socialite on the phone. However, some signs caught Álvaro’s attention: “My aunt spoke with a very choked, sleepy voice.”

Discoveries

In 2013, Álvaro went to live for four months with his maternal aunt in São Conrado, Rio de Janeiro, and witnessed worrying occasions: “There, I could see her situation. She was already completely taken by him.” The Brasilia native remembers that José Marcos “called himself a pharmacist” and started giving medicine to the socialite. “He started doping my aunt. I found several bottles of medicine”, he guarantees.

Alert about his aunt’s situation, the designer turned to a friend who studied chemistry at the University of Brasília (UnB): “I called a friend of mine and he said: ‘This is a compound that is the basis of Boa Noite Cinderela”. Álvaro emphasizes that Regina was “drugged all the time” and “sleeping”, while José Marcos Chaves Ribeiro felt like he was “lord of everything, with the socialite’s credit cards and checkbooks”.

“Falsified documentation”

At the time he lived in his family’s mansion in São Conrado, the designer discovered “falsified documentation”. In the records, José Marcos had named himself as Regina’s beneficiary. “He falsified and presented himself as if he were the only heir”, maintains the 41-year-old native of Brasilia. Distressed by the discoveries, Álvaro decided to confess what he had found with the late Rio socialite Bertha Mendes de Souza.

“I told her everything and Bertha told me: ‘Tear up all this documentation’. That’s what I did,” she mentions. What Álvaro didn’t imagine was that José Marcos would find out. In the interview, the Brasilia native confesses to having suffered death attempts three times after finding the documentation tampered with.

“He tried to kill me three times. The first simulated a robbery in São Conrado in the early hours of the morning. In the same week, the second attempted poisoning. I spent a week dying and she [Regina] drugged in the mansion until I ran away from there to avoid dying”, Álvaro confides to Coluna Claudia Meireles.

The Brasilia native says that the third situation happened in 2017. At the time, José Marcos called Álvaro and highlighted that his aunt was very ill and wanted to see his nephew. “When I arrived at the mansion, I was approached by a guy armed with a silencer on his revolver. The only reason I wasn’t killed was because one of the condominium security guards thought the movement was strange, passed by on a motorcycle, honked the horn, pressed the bell and the guy ran away scared,” he says.

In 2018, Regina looked for her nephew and gave him a note “asking for help”. On that occasion, Álvaro went to the Elderly Police Station, but José Marcos allegedly sent a henchman to accompany the socialite when she reported to the public institution. “My aunt lived coerced, oppressed and humiliated in private prison. She suffered all types of psychological and physical violence,” she argues.

Scams

The Brasilia native describes his aunt’s ex-partner as “a very dangerous person”. According to the socialite’s nephew, José Marcos stole Regina’s fortune over more than 10 years of relationship. “He took money from her from Banco Safra, from Banco do Brasil. We are talking about millions, millions”, he endorses. Works of art and designer jewelry — such as Cartier, Van Cleef and Bulgari — were also caught up in the scam, the designer highlighted.

“My aunt’s broken safes took more than R$20 million in jewelry. A total of seven safes”, says Álvaro O’hara. The designer added: “He went and disappeared, there’s nothing, nothing, nothing.” José Marcos also sold the socialite’s mansion, in São Conrado, for a value well below the market value.

Throughout the time he was with Regina Lemos Gonçalves, José Marcos would have used the socialite’s name to scam people when purchasing luxury pieces. “My aunt has always been someone who liked to buy good items. He then acted as her interlocutor for payments, copied everyone and she got the reputation of not paying anyone”, alleges Álvaro.

health condition

In the column, Álvaro O’hara maintains that his maternal aunt is in good health after having spent months in private prison and “suffering mistreatment in all forms” by José Marcos. “Thank God, she did all the tests and is fine. He left her starving”, assures the designer. According to the Brasilia native, Regina arrived at her relatives’ house with only the clothes on her back and weighing 42 kilos, which made her weak.

“During this whole time, she had broken hands and a sinking skull. She has eight pins in her head, but she is completely lucid, very conscious and the only thing we want is Justice. She knows everything that is happening”, reinforces Álvaro.

The designer exposed other moments experienced by his maternal aunt in captivity. One of them involved José Marcos putting scorpions in the apartment. His goal was for the arachnid to bite Regina Lemos Gonçalves. “He is a monster, a dangerous person, because if she dies in the current situation, he would be her only heir”, he explains.

To “save” Regina, a court order was necessary, as José Marcos prevented visits to the apartment and even set up an internal circuit to monitor all of the elderly woman’s properties. Neighbors were suspicious of the socialite’s absence in common areas of the Chopin Building. Before reporting, residents tried to contact the 88-year-old woman. She said “everything was fine”, however residents did not believe her version.

Future law

According to the Brasiliense, José Marcos “forged documentation with a stable union lawyer” with Regina. The stylist certifies that the aunt does not remember signing any record about the bond. “He put himself in the position of owner of everything with falsified documentation, placing himself as her husband and she doesn’t remember signing it,” he points out.

Álvaro and Regina’s declaration of stable union was registered in the 23rd Notary Office of the Capital of Rio in December 2021. The 41-year-old from Brasilia reveals that further developments of other crimes committed by José Marcos Chaves Ribeiro should come to light. “It’s a very complicated situation. There are several questions and it is still very complex. Some points are within the judicial sphere”, says the stylist.

At the end of the interview, Álvaro O’hara shares that the socialite’s family, friends and lawyers have been working to create a law named after Regina Lemos Gonçalves in order to judge cases of emotional fraud. “Unfortunately, this is very common these days. Elderly women and men are robbed”, he concludes. The socialite obtained a protective measure against her ex-partner.

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