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On the day before 2021's Christmas Eve, a woman who introduces herself as Mari is trying to prevent São Paulo city hall employees from cutting a tree. As she tries to mobilize neighbors in the Higienópolis neighborhood, people whisper that she is the witch who lives in the abandoned house. After losing the war against tree cutting, the woman approaches reporter Chico Felitti. It is then that the possibility of her having a past of crimes comes to light.

The neighborhood shares the stories it collects about Mari, whose real name is Margarida Bonetti. She is an heiress who grew up in the same mansion where she lives in 2022 and who moved to the United States in the late 1970s. She returned 20 years later, fleeing US federal police and the accusation of having committed crimes on American soil.

The quiet American city of Gaithersburg was the stage of the crimes of which Margarida Bonetti was accused. For two decades, a maid lived in the four-bedroom house of Margarida and her husband, Renê Bonetti. She received no salary and was constantly assaulted, an FBI investigation found. Chico Felitti travels to Gaithersburg, but there is a blanket of silence covering the neighborhood. Until a resident of the same street decides to speak: the neighbor who helped the exploited Brazilian escape from Margarida's house and seek help.

Margarida managed to escape american Justice by isolating herself in a destroyed mansion in Brazil. But her husband, Renê, stayed in the United States, where he was tried, convicted and served time. Fifteen years after he got out of jail, we will go on a search for this man, and also find out more about the person who was exploited by Margarida Bonetti, and who today lives under the protection of the American government.

The exploitation case involving Margarida Bonetti may be shocking, but it is far from being the only one. The podcast team tells similar stories that happened in the recent past in Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Santos. Researchers who study contemporary slavery explain why Brazil is a country that exploits black women, and how these crimes survived until 2022.

After five months of podcast's investigation, Margarida Bonetti disappears. The reporting team spends weeks trying to get in touch with her, but the mansion in tatters seems to be even more inaccessible. Neighbors are willing to help find the woman of the abandoned house, while a renowned criminal lawyer examines whether she can still answer for the crimes she was accused of 20 years ago.

For the first time in two decades, Margarida Bonetti gives an interview. She defends herself from the accusations of the US court and says the FBI, congressmen and lawyers plotted to pass a law that increased protection for domestic workers of foreign families in the United States.

Folha's podcast "A Mulher da Casa Abandonada" had its seventh and final episode published on Wednesday (20). The result of an investigation by journalist Chico Felitti, the series has as its protagonist Margarida Bonetti, a Brazilian who was investigated on the charge of keeping a housekeeper in conditions analogous to slavery for 20 years in the USA. "A Mulher da Casa Abandonada" has had four and a half million unique listeners so far. With the impact of the podcast, there was also an increase in complaints of slave labor and new information about Margarida's case. In this Tuesday's episode (26), "Café da Manhã" talks with Chico Felitti about these developments and discusses the repercussion of the series.