Fourteen years is long enough to turn a news story that once seemed impossible to forget into something part of the audience is only now discovering. In 2012, it was difficult to live in Brazil without knowing who Elize and Marcos Matsunaga were. In 2026, for a younger generation, they may first be Lorena Comparato and Henrique Kimura in Elize: Shadows of a Woman, a film that has become one of Netflix’s most-watched movies worldwide. And that changes the conversation a little.

Those who followed the case as it unfolded already know the image that played on television for weeks: Elize entering the elevator of the building where she lived, carrying suitcases that we would later learn contained parts of Marcos’s body. Those coming to the story through the film are introduced to something else first: a marriage, infidelity, arguments, threats, and, finally, a confrontation that seems to explain how everything ended.

But what actually happened?

Marcos Kitano Matsunaga was 42, an executive and one of the heirs to the family that founded Brazilian food company Yoki. When he met Elize in late 2004, he was married. She had moved from the countryside of Paraná to São Paulo, was working as an escort, and would later study law. Their relationship initially began as an affair; Marcos later separated from his first wife and married Elize. Their daughter was born in April 2011.

There is a cruel irony in that beginning because, years later, Elize would find herself in the position of the betrayed wife. And that part was not invented for the film.

Did Marcos really have a mistress?

Yes.

Elize suspected that her husband was cheating again and hired a private investigator. Days before the crime, the investigator photographed Marcos with another woman as they left a restaurant. The extramarital relationship, therefore, does not rest solely on Elize’s word. People close to Marcos also knew he was having an affair.

What is far more difficult to establish is exactly what happened when Elize confronted him.

According to the testimony she gave at trial, on the night of May 19, 2012, the couple was eating the pizza Marcos had gone downstairs to collect when she revealed that she had hired an investigator and knew about the affair. Elize said he insulted her, threatened to send her back to Paraná, told her he would keep their daughter, and slapped her. She then allegedly went to get a gun; according to her version, Marcos followed her, and she fired because she felt threatened.

Every one of those details requires one essential qualification: according to Elize.

There was no other adult inside the apartment to witness that conversation. Security cameras show Marcos going to pick up the pizza, and later show Elize leaving with the suitcases. Between those two images, the only surviving person able to describe the dialogue is the person who killed Marcos.

Did Marcos really say he wanted to separate?

This is where the difference between fact and dramatization becomes even more interesting.

Nothing in the available trial records confirms that Marcos came home that night, announcing that he wanted to leave Elize. What is documented is almost the opposite: Elize had already sought legal advice about a possible separation months before the crime.

She told the jury that she had consulted a family lawyer in February 2012 because she suspected Marcos was cheating and wanted to know how to proceed. She said she had been advised to gather evidence.

In Elize’s account of their final argument, Marcos allegedly threatened to keep their daughter and send her back to Paraná. That helps explain why separation became such a central part of later versions of the story, but it is not the same as being able to state as fact that Marcos had decided to end the marriage that night.

We know the marriage was deeply deteriorated. Prosecutors themselves argued that the couple were already sleeping in separate bedrooms and described the relationship as effectively over. But turning that into one specific scene, with specific words and a decision made by Marcos, means filling in a gap that the investigation was never able to eliminate.

Was Marcos trying to defend himself when Elize shot him?

This is another detail that deserves more caution than it often receives in reconstructions of the case.

What forensic experts argued at trial was that some elements were incompatible with Elize’s reconstruction. According to her account, both were standing, and there was a considerable distance between them. Experts, however, said the shot had been fired at close range and that the trajectory went downward, even though Marcos was taller than Elize.

One of the possibilities considered was that he was in a lowered position, perhaps even attempting to protect himself. Prosecutors used those findings to argue that Marcos may have been caught by surprise.

The prosecution considered the possibility that he had been taken off guard. What the forensic evidence cast doubt on was the image of Marcos simply standing and advancing toward Elize before being shot in the way she described.

That matters because it changes the emotional interpretation of the crime.

In the film, we see a dramatic and understandable progression: argument, provocation, fear, gun, shot. In reality, we know there was a gunshot. We know who fired it. We know Marcos died. But the exact choreography of those few seconds remains a matter of conflicting versions.

What happened after the shooting is far less uncertain

Elize confessed to killing Marcos and dismembering his body. The remains were placed in bags, transported in suitcases, and later abandoned in the Cotia area, outside São Paulo. Security-camera footage showing Elize leaving the building with three suitcases would become one of the most recognizable images associated with the case.

She initially tried to maintain that Marcos had disappeared. The investigation moved forward after parts of his body began to be found, and the family started examining the building’s security footage. Elize eventually confessed.

She was convicted by a jury in 2016. Years later, Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice recognized her confession as a mitigating factor and reduced the sentence related to the aggravated homicide conviction. The court itself made an important distinction: recognizing that a confession helped establish authorship does not mean accepting every justification offered by the person who confessed.

Perhaps that is the key to revisiting the case today. Elize killed Marcos. That is not in dispute. What remains disputed is why, exactly how, and under what circumstances she fired the shot.

Where is Elize Matsunaga today?

Elize left the Tremembé Women’s Penitentiary in May 2022 after spending approximately ten years in prison and began serving the remainder of her sentence on conditional release. She settled in the interior of São Paulo state and, for a period, worked as a ride-share driver in Franca. Reports published in 2026 continue to describe her as serving the remainder of her sentence outside prison.

That distinction is sometimes lost when people simply say that “Elize is free.” She was not acquitted, nor was her conviction erased. She was granted a benefit provided under the terms of her sentence after serving the required period in prison.

And what happened to Elize and Marcos’s daughter?

Perhaps this is the most painful consequence of the entire story and, curiously, one of the least discussed when the crime becomes entertainment.

The couple’s daughter was just over a year old when her father was murdered, and her mother was arrested. In 2012, a court granted custody to Marcos’s family, and she was raised by her paternal grandparents.

Elize did not resume a relationship with her daughter after leaving Tremembé. According to information made public by the family and by people who followed the case, the grandparents’ position has been that any eventual reunion should be the young woman’s own decision when she is old enough to make it.

And that brings us to the most insensitive aspect of continuing to tell this story: their daughter was a baby when, in different ways and on the same night, she lost both of her parents. Today, she is a teenager who never chose to have her family history turned into documentaries, series, films, or a recurring subject on social media. Perhaps that is also why we do not need to know much more about her life today.

The film tells a story. The crime left gaps

Elize: Shadows of a Woman has to do something a criminal case does not: turn fragments of information into a continuous narrative. Characters have to say things. Arguments need beginnings and endings. The moment of the shooting has to be staged. The problem begins only when we forget that watching a scene does not mean watching what actually happened.

Marcos’s affair was real. The private investigator was real. Elize knew about the other woman. Marcos went downstairs to pick up a pizza that night. Elize shot him, dismembered his body, and attempted to conceal it. Those are points we can reconstruct through evidence, confession, and documented records.

How the confrontation began, and the exact position Marcos was in when he was shot, belong to a different category of questions. They are precisely the blank spaces cinema has to fill.

And fourteen years later, for anyone discovering Elize Matsunaga for the first time through Netflix, that may be the most important difference between knowing a film and knowing a crime.