Probe of Woman's Disappearance Renewed
Husband Scrutinized Again After Girlfriend Accuses Him of Assault, Police Say

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 23, 2006

Cynthia R. Braga disappeared during the summer of 2003.

Months later, her husband, Roberto F. Braga, was charged with having assaulted her in the spring. He said at the time that she had returned home to Brazil. She has not been heard from since.

Montgomery police said yesterday that their interest in Roberto Braga's possible role in Cynthia's disappearance was renewed after they charged him this month with assaulting his new girlfriend.

The girlfriend, Marites Delapaz Santos, told detectives that she and Braga, who is a painter, were working together at a Gaithersburg house Nov. 26 when he became angry with her and threatened her with a knife and a box cutter, according to police.

"He demanded that she admit that she had been sleeping with her boss," Sgt. Christopher Homrock wrote in a charging document. She told him she wasn't. "Braga then took the knife from her throat and said that if she was cheating on him, that no one would ever find her body," Homrock wrote.

Roberto Braga also told her that if she reported the threat, she would have to leave the country, police said. Delapaz Santos reported the incident to police Dec. 7 and told them that he had assaulted her several times before, authorities said.

Roberto Braga, 51, could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Jeffrey B. Henry, who also represented him in 2003 when he was charged with assaulting his wife, said his client told him that Cynthia Braga, then 32, returned to Brazil in 2003.

Henry said the new case boils down to a dogged detective's efforts to implicate his client in the disappearance despite lacking the evidence. "He doesn't give up," Henry said about Homrock. "He's trying to do whatever he can to put pressure on Roberto to admit to the crime."

Henry said Homrock approached his client within the past couple of weeks, seeking primarily to talk to him about the missing woman.

According to police and court documents, Roberto Braga has a lengthy criminal history, including charges of threatening a former wife, from jail, in August 2003, about three years after they had divorced.

Cynthia Braga called police April 1, 2003. Speaking through a friend who translated from Portuguese, she told detectives that her husband had pushed her around the bedroom, shoving her against a dresser and bruising her foot, according to a charging document. She said that she tried to call police but that her husband wouldn't let her near the phone.

That day, Cynthia Braga applied for a restraining order against her husband. In the application, she checked off boxes for kicking, punching, slapping, rape or other sexual offense, shoving and threats of violence. Two days later, she went to court with her husband and told a judge that she wanted to withdraw the petition, according to the judge's notes on the disposition sheet on file.

In August 2003, Roberto Braga was arrested and charged with second-degree assault in the April 1 incident, police said.

While in jail, Braga allegedly left threatening phone messages for Maria Feitoza, his ex-wife, according to an application for a restraining order she filed on Aug. 13, 2003.

Police charged Braga with harassment and using the phone to make a threat. But those charges, and the assault charges involving Cynthia Braga, were dropped.

Braga was arrested in last fall's alleged assault March 10. He was released on his own recognizance.