[News] Brazilian actor who disappeared in January is found dead buried six and a half feet below ground in Rio de Janeiro (Photos)

A Brazilian soap opera actor who disappeared in January has been found dead in a trunk in Rio de Janeiro.

Jefferson Machado’s body was tied up and stuffed inside a wooden trunk that was buried six feet beneath the concrete floor of an outhouse in the western Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Campo Grande on Monday, police said.

Authorities were able to confirm the 44-year-old’s body through fingerprints Wednesday.

The property belongs to a woman who told police she had rented the outhouse to a man who police have identified as a suspect but not named, Brazilian news outlet G1 reported.

Machado, who lived in Rio de Janeiro, is believed to have known the person who rented out the property where his body was found and was seen entering it a month ago, according to R7 news.

It took nine individuals, including seven Civil Police agents, to remove the trunk from the hole.

A family lawyer told local news outlets that the trunk belonged to Machado and had been previously taken out of his home.

‘Jefferson was coldly and brutally murdered by envious, evil and, of course, unscrupulous people,’ Cintia Hilsendeger, a friend of the family, wrote on the actor’s Instagram account.Machado’s last acting job was in the Record TV soap opera ‘Reis,’ in 2022.  He had not been seen since January 27 and was officially declared missing on February 9.
Machado’s family learned he had disappeared after a non-governmental agency reached out to them to tell them that his eight dogs had been left abandoned at his home in Rio de Janeiro.Each of the dogs had their own tracking device – two of them died and six are being treated at a veterinarian center.
His 73-year-old mother, Maria das Dores told Brazilian outlet Notícias do Dia that she last spoke to Machado on January 29 and said he had traveled to São Paulo to interview for a job and staying at a friend’s home.She became worried when she stopped getting calls from him and only received text messages that were misspelled.

‘He also said that he dropped his cellphone in the toilet, therefore, he was unable to make a video call,’ das Dores said.

The family became increasingly worried when his cloud’s password was changed, and his location was deactivated in February.

As recently as last week, das Dores was still holding on to hope that Machado was still alive and said his disappearance had taken a toll on the family, including another son and a grandson.