Police are investigating whether a 13-year-old boy believed to have gunned down four of his family before killing himself was in fact framed.
Yesterday, we reported how Marcelo Pesseghini was named as the only suspect in a massacre which left his police officer parents, his grandmother and great-aunt dead.
The boy was said to have spent the whole day at school after his killing spree before returning home to shoot himself with dad Luiz's gun.
But police in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, have now revealed the target of the bloodbath could have been Marcelo's mother – a campaigning policeman who rooted out corrupt officers.
The commander of mum Andreia Bovo's military police regiment cast doubt on the official version of events – suggesting Marcelo may have instead been the fifth victim.
Colonel Wagner Dimas Pereira revealed Andreia, 34, helped uncover a criminal gang within the force which robbed cash machines and carried out other criminal acts.
He told a Brazilian radio station: "She never exactly said, that one, that one and that one. But, in the context of our investigations, she confirmed a number of details."
Col Pereira called on investigators into the family's murder not to 'rule out' the theory that Marcelo might have been framed by criminal police who wanted his mother dead.
He said: "Let's not throw it out, let's look at things carefully, lets see if there is reasoning in what we already have, if the pieces of the puzzle really do fit together."
Police sergeant Luiz Marcelo Pesseghini, 40, and his wife Corporal Andreia Regina Bovo Pesseghini, 36, were both killed at point-blank range with a shot to the head in their bedroom.
Benedita Oliveira de Silva, 65, and the boy's great-aunt Bernardete Oliveira de Silva, 55, were discovered dead in their beds.