“It’s been horrible, worse than the first time he tried to kill me.” This is how Eliza describes what she’s going through again, eight years after being the target of an attempted murder by her then-husband, Portuguese millionaire Carlos Pinto, at a hotel in Vigo, Spain.
Almost a decade after being violently attacked with a paver’s hammer, the Romanian ex-model, who has lived in Portugal for several years, has once again received threats from her now ex-husband, who has since been released from prison and is on parole.
“I haven’t slept or eaten for a week. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore and had to go to the emergency room. I’m having constant panic attacks,” she reveals, adding that she’s “in a deep depression,” despite knowing she has to be “strong” for her “young daughter” she’s had since then.
Friend requests and threatening messages
Since the end of July, Eliza has felt she’s “in danger all the time,” after several friends received Facebook ‘friend requests’ allegedly from Carlos Pinto, as well as various messages, including at least one with a threatening tone: “It’s sad when you don’t see your children grow up, especially if they’re only 2 years old, but there are people who are too much in this life.”
Although he’s prohibited from approaching or contacting Eliza for 18 years, she also received a ‘friend request’ on Instagram, supposedly from the businessman from Vila Nova de Gaia, on August 4. If there were messages after this request, the businesswoman doesn’t know, as she immediately blocked the account and contacted her lawyer in Spain to find out what was happening.
“She informed the court that he was bothering me, and that’s when we found out he had been released,” she tells us, shocked that she wasn’t notified of her ex-husband’s release, who tried to kill her in April 2016.
He served only 8 of the 11 years in prison to which he was sentenced
Carlos Pinto, who was convicted in May 2019 for attempted murder, was reportedly transferred from a prison in Pontevedra to Salamanca, where they ended up granting him the right to parole on July 7 this year, after serving only eight of the 11 years and four months in prison to which he had been sentenced.
Meanwhile, Eliza also hired a lawyer in Salamanca, filed a complaint with the Spanish authorities and at a Public Security Police (PSP) station in Braga.
Given the evidence she provided to the authorities that her ex-husband had tried to contact her, as well as sent messages to friends and even clients, the businesswoman assures that an arrest warrant was issued that will soon enter the system “here in Portugal.”
While that doesn’t happen, Eliza is living a nightmare.
“On the day I went to file the complaint [at the PSP in Braga], I spent about five hours at the police station to explain my case. For now, they told me to be very careful, to never walk alone. The police pass by my house several times a day. And if I see him, I have to call them immediately. I’m waiting for them to approve the panic button,” she said, adding that she leaves the house “every night because I’m afraid he might know my address.”
Although she knows that the arrest warrant may be imminent, Eliza fears that Carlos Pinto might be “closer than they imagine,” as she discovered where he works. Therefore, she asks for police protection “before it’s too late.”
Threatening letters sent from prison
And the threats aren’t new. As soon as he was imprisoned, Carlos Pinto sent several letters addressed (and not only) to Eliza.
“In the first letters he sent, he offered money for me to drop the case. I think at the time, the letters said 150,000 euros. Then the threatening letters began. He would send the letters to a friend and her husband. Besides sending them to their home, he also sent them to his workplace,” the ex-model, who was born into a wealthy family, told us, adding that the millionaire always told her that if anyone hurt him, “he could spend 20 years in jail, but he would always take revenge on people, he would never forget and would always come after them.”
Eliza is “grateful” to all the people who have been trying to help her, including activist Francisca de Magalhães Barros,