This horrific case began with a 911 call on Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 11:50 pm: “There’s a burglar in this building! Someone threw a kid from up there, oh my God! From the sixth floor.”
Isabella Nardoni was born on April 18, 2002 in Sao Paulo, Brazilto parents Ana Carolina Oliveira (Carolina) & Alexandre Nardoni. Carolina & Alexadre met when they were in school & dated for three years. Carolina was only seventeen when she unexpectedly got pregnant with Isabella; she was still attending school & Alexandre was about to begin his law school classes. When Carolina was pregnant, they considered moving in together, but by this time, their relationship was beginning to deteriorate. Carolina instead chose to stay with her parents when she gave birth to Isabella. The couple eventually broke up when Isabella was eleven months old because Carolina was convinced that Alexandre was cheating on her. Despite the separation, they still communicated because they wanted Isabella to have a stable life. Isabella was described as a spirited, strong-willed little girl who fought for what she wanted.
When she was very young, Isabella spent much of her time with her mother, but the parents eventually worked out a routine where Alexandre would have Isabella Friday through Sunday twice a month. Eventually, Alexandre began dating a woman named Ana Carolina Jatoba (Jatoba) & the couple had two sons together, Pietro & Caua. At this point, Isabella would spend her weekends with her father, step mother & two half-brothers. Carolina felt that her communication with Alexandre changed after he met Jatoba; they began speaking less & when arrangements were made in regards to Isabella’s care, Carolina now spoke with Jatoba. It was later discovered that Alexandre had met Jatoba in law school & began seeing her while Carolina was pregnant with Isabella; he secretly carried on both relationships for a year until Carolina’s suspicions became too strong & she ended the relationship. Carolina unselfishly knew that Isabella loved her siblings & her time spent with them & she wanted them to be a part of her daughter’s life & she was comforted by the fact that Isabella was happy there.
On Friday, March 28, 2008, 29-year-old Alexandre picked Isabella up from Carolina’s house as was typical & brought her back to his home which was an apartment in a brand new building, the Edificio London. The next day, Saturday, March 29, Carolina had a typical day, she spent the day with her friends at a BBQ. That’s where she was when she received the devastating phone call that Isabella had been gravely injured in an accident after she’d fallen from the window of her room.
On that Saturday night, March 29, police in the northern part of Sao Paulo received a phone call from a man who said there had been a horrible accident at his apartment building. He told police there was a burglar inside the building who had broken into an apartment on the sixth floor & had thrown a little girl from the window. The call came through after residents of the Edificio London heard a disturbance & found Isabella on the ground in the front garden of the building.
Soon after, Alexandre came running out, claiming there had been an intruder who was wearing black & had cut the safety netting in the window of his daughter’s bedroom & thrown her through the hole.
According to Alexandre, he & his family had been out that day & at 11:36 pm that Saturday night, they arrived home. Since Isabella fell asleep in the car, he carried her up to her room while their two sons, a 3-year-old & an 11 month old baby stayed in the car with their mother, 24-year-old Jatoba. Alexandre placed Isabella in bed, locked the door & went back downstairs for the rest of his family. According to Alexandre, he & Jatoba brought the two boys into the apartment & when they got inside, he noticed the light in Isabella’s room was on. He said he had only been out of the apartment for five to ten minutes at that point. Isabella wasn’t in bed & he noticed a hole in the window’s safety net. When he looked down, he saw Isabella’s body sprawled in the front yard. He called out to Jatoba to call his father. Carolina indicated that when Jatoba called her, she was hysterical & screaming that Isabella had fallen.
The building doorman remembers hearing a noise at 11:49 pm that sounded like a car crash. He called the building manager who then called the police at 11:50 pm & it was at this point that Alexandre came rushing outside to Isabella’s body. While this was happening, Jatoba was in the apartment making phone calls. She first called her father & the call lasted only seconds. Next she quickly called her father-in-law. All of this happened while the building manager was on the phone with police. The timeline was so tight that police felt that had there been an intruder, he would have still been in the apartment at this point.
Meanwhile, neighbors indicated that Saturday night had been very quiet until they began to hear a ruckus from the apartment next door; they went to bed & at the time, they heard a couple fighting for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Then they heard someone yelling from the ground floor, “They tossed Isabella, help!” The neighbors went down to see if they could help & saw Isabella lying in the grass. As they checked her for a pulse, Alexandre came out, yelling that someone had been in their apartment & threw Isabella from the window. He said this person was wearing a black shirt.
When Carolina arrived with her parents, they had no idea what to expect & they quickly realized in horror how badly injured Isabella was. They found Isabella on the ground, her breathing was very shallow & Carolina refrained from touching her daughter out of fear of worsening her condition. At that moment, she couldn’t even think about how this had happened & only wanted her daughter to receive help as soon as possible. She stayed by her side & instructed Isabella to be calm, that everything was going to be okay & that she loved her. During this time, Alexandre & Jatoba continued to claim that there was a burglar in the apartment who had done this to Isabella. Carolina’s father recalls hearing Alexandre say the person was wearing black & had broken the door down; he said he saw it. When Carolina’s father asked why he hadn’t tried to fight the burglar, he quickly changed the subject.
When paramedics arrived at the scene, they tried to resuscitate Isabella for 34 minutes due to the fact that she was showing signs of cardiac arrest. When she was transferred to the hospital Carolina wasn’t allowed to ride in the back of the ambulance with her daughter & instead, she rode along up front. As they arrived at the hospital, it was still the family’s belief that this had been a terrible accident. Soon after, the doctor told them the devastating news that Isabella had not survived. Carolina slid to the ground, overcome with grief. She whispered into her daughter’s ear, “you can go, go in peace. I’ll take care of everything on this end.” Those were the last words she spoke to her daughter.
On March 30, 2008, Isabella was laid to rest & two hundred people were in attendance.
At this point, an official investigation began. Even at first glance, police found the incident extremely odd since each floor had safety nets over the windows. The net outside Isabella’s room appeared to have been neatly cut open with a pair of scissors & police questioned if a burglar would have time to do this. When police entered the kitchen, they found a pair of scissors & upon further inspection, a small fragment of safety net was found caught inside the blades. The scissors which were immediately determined to be the tool that had been used to cut the safety net.
Despite canvassing the area in & around the apartment building, there was no sign of a burglar. On first glance, they could see that the apartment was messy, but not in an unordinary way. There was also no sign of forced entry, nothing was out of place or broken, nothing had been stolen from the apartment & there were absolutely no signs that an intruder had come into the home.
Drops of human blood & blood spatter were found throughout the apartment & it was clear that someone had tried to clean this up since use of Luminol found additional spots. The blood led from the front door of the apartment to Isabella’s window sill & suggested that a bleeding person had been carried in through the door & to Isabella’s room. The height from which the blood spatters had likely fallen came from someone of Alexandre’s height & placement of the spots suggested the stride of an adult.. These findings suggested that Isabella had been injured outside the apartment, carried inside & thrown out her window, all the while, bleeding. Blood was also found in the family’s car but it could not be definitively confirmed as Isabella’s because it was mixed with the genetic profile of another family member, specifically a male’s. Based on the location of the blood on the baby’s car seat, it was assumed it came from the baby. Isabella’s bed was made & a drawing she had done was sitting on the bed; it was clear she had never been placed there as her father had claimed.
The laundry room was chaotic with a lot of dirty laundry around the room. Investigators noted a bucket with a cloth inside that looked to be a cloth diaper that was soaking in water. It was odd that amongst all the clothes, that was the one item that had been tended to & blood was found on the diaper. Isabella’s vomit was found on Alexandre’s t-shirt as well as traces of fibers from the safety screen & footprints from Alexandre’s flip flops were on a bed near the window through which she was thrown.
The autopsy found that both of Isabella’s wrists were broken & there was a small deep cut on her forehead which was likely caused by a sharp instrument. There were marks on her neck & her face & nails had turned blue which indicated that she had been strangled. These injuries were unrelated to the fall. Her cause of death was multiple traumas, along with mechanical asphyxiation from being choked.
Police found it odd that instead of trying to find their daughter’s murderer, Alexandre & Jatoba immediately began hiring lawyers before they headed to the police station the first time. Alexandre’s father was a defense attorney & it was mainly his money that Alexandre had lived on; all of his houses & cars he used belonged to his father. Investigators learned that Jatoba suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her second child. Many felt that the chaotic state of their apartment as well as her lack of friends or social circle indicated that she was very clearly depressed & overwhelmed by life. They learned that she followed whatever Alexandre & his family decided. There had been reports that Alexandre had been abusive to his partners, including Carolina who had filed a complaint with police years earlier when Isabella was sixteen months old; he threatened to hurt both Carolina & her mother for enrolling Isabella in school against his will.
The couple was arrested on April 2, 2008 but released one week later. Later that month, on April 18, which incidentally would have been Isabella’s sixth birthday, Alexandre & Jatoba were indicted because of the evidence from Isabella’s autopsy that indicated she had been injured before the fall. The couple maintained their innocence.
During the investigation & trial, Carolina claimed that Jatoba was very jealous of the past that she shared with Alexandre. When Jatoba became involved with Alexandre, she became the point of contact in regards to discussing Isabella’s care. She also said that Alexandre’s family tried to avoid Jatoba being left alone with Isabella & if they knew Alexandre wasn’t going to be there, his sister would stay with the family. A neighbor also spoke with police & indicated that Isabella’s paternal grandmother told her that Jatoba was crazy & capable of someday hurting Isabella. A friend of Carolina’s anonymously told the press that Isabella would often come back in tears after staying with her father & often wanted to come back to her mother earlier than planned.
The case received an immense amount of media attention & the public was very angry towards Alexandre & Jatoba & were demanding justice for Isabella. One program was able to secure an interview with the couple, but rather than helping their cause, it only hindered it. They were perceived as lying & making up answers during their interview.
Claims were made that authorities didn’t properly investigate; for instance, there was a construction site next to the apartment building & the complex could have been very easily accessed through the construction site. A reporter searched the site after Isabella was killed & found that when workers arrived Sunday morning, they found that it had been broken into. Nothing had been taken but he indicated that someone had gone through their things. The job forman demonstrated to reporters how easily a person could have accessed the apartment building from that construction site. Police then brought this construction worker in for questioning & he later changed his story & said that there had been no break-in. It was perceived that the police were forcing him to change his story.
A video presentation was made based on the clues found during the investigation & presented the theory that Isabella had been injured while inside the car, likely because Alexandre & Jatoba were trying to discipline her & accidentally hit her too hard. They then strangled the little girl & threw her from the window with the attempt of a cover-up that an intruder had thrown her down. The claim was not entirely based on proof found at the crime scene but was based on a hypothesis.
The investigation continued for two more years & a jury of seven members were selected. Finding an impartial jury was impossible since the case was so saturated in the media in Brazil. The trial began on March 22, 2010 nearly two years to the day of Isabella’s murder. Crowds of bystanders & the press lined the sidewalks in front of the courthouse. On the first day, Carolina testified & said that Jatoba was very jealous of her. She also said that during her relationship with Alexandre, he once threatened to kill both her & her mother & then vanished with Isabella after she confronted him about late child support payments. She also said that when Jatoba called her on the night of Isabella’s death, she had screamed that it was all her daughter’s fault.
On March 25, 2010, Alexandra & Jatoba testified that they had nothing to do with Isabella’s death. Alexandre said that the police who handled the case proposed that he admit guilt, saying that he could rule the case as an accidental homicide with no intent to kill. He felt that police were not interested in figuring out what happened in the building that day. He said that on the day that Isabella died, he lost the most precious thing in his life.
He said that he didn’t recall mentioning that there was a burglar in their apartment on the day that Isabella was murdered. The defense attorney mentioned that someone had broken into the apartment & thrown Isabella from the window, but Alexandre denied ever seeing someone that was dressed in all black with a gun. When the defense attorney asked why he hadn’t helped Isabella he said that he was in shock & then a neighbor told him not to touch Isabella. When they asked why he hadn’t spoken to Carolina during the funeral or wake, he said because it was an embarrassing situation. As both Alexandre & Jatoba made their testimonies, they frequently contradicted each other. When Alexandre spoke of their relationship as a couple, he claimed they had “normal” fights vs. Jatoba who said they fought constantly & nastily.
The trial lasted five days & Alexandre was sentenced to 31 years, one month & ten days for the murder of his daughter as well as an additional concurrent sentence of 8 months for allegedly tampering with evidence. Jatoba was sentenced to 26 years & eight months as well as eight concurrent months for the tampering of evidence. Since 2022, the couple has been granted special furloughs including Mother’s Day & Father’s Day.
The case was made into a Netflix documentary this year (2023) called A Life Too Short: The Isabella Nardoni Case.
After the trial, Carolina met her current husband & she was able to pick up the pieces, rebuild her life & heal. The couple had a son together & Carolina admits that the pregnancy brought up a lot of emotions from her loss of Isabella. They also welcomed a daughter into their lives.
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