Elize Matsunaga: Era uma Vez um Crime

What Is the Series About?

Elize Matsunaga: Era uma Vez um Crime is a Netflix documentary series about one of the most sensational criminal cases in modern Brazilian history: the 2012 murder and dismemberment of Marcos Kitano Matsunaga, a 42-year-old executive and heir to the Yoki food company, by his wife Elize Araújo Kitano Matsunaga in São Paulo. Directed by Eliza Capai and released on 8 July 2021, the four-episode series became an immediate talking point in Brazil and among international true crime audiences on Netflix, not least because it featured Elize Matsunaga speaking publicly and on camera for the very first time.

The title translates loosely as Once Upon a Crime, deliberately echoing the language of fairy tales — a framing device that cuts to the heart of the series' central question: how does a woman end up killing and dismembering her husband in the home they shared, and what does the story of her life tell us about how she arrived at that moment?

The Case

On the night of 19 May 2012, Elize Matsunaga shot Marcos Kitano Matsunaga in the head at the couple's apartment in Vila Leopoldina, in the west zone of São Paulo. What followed shocked Brazil: she dismembered his body and disposed of the remains in a wooded area on the outskirts of the city. Marcos was 42 years old at the time of his death and was a prominent figure as director and heir of Yoki, the well-known Brazilian food brand.

The case did not become public knowledge immediately. Several days passed before news of Marcos's disappearance and Elize's confession spread across the national media, by which point the details — a wealthy couple, a prominent family fortune, a wife with a markedly different background, a dismembered body — had turned the story into a national phenomenon.

Elize was ultimately convicted of qualified homicide as well as concealment and destruction of a corpse. Reporting on the sentence varies depending on the stage of proceedings cited: one summary puts the full consolidated sentence at 19 years, 11 months, and 1 day, while earlier reporting from the initial proceedings cited 18 years and 9 months for the homicide charge plus an additional 1 year, 2 months, and 1 day for the corpse-related charges. All sources agree she was convicted and imprisoned. A successful appeal in 2019 resulted in a reduction of her sentence.

Production

Director Eliza Capai approached the subject with a deliberate attempt to look beyond what she described as the barbaric crime and examine who Elize Matsunaga is as a person, and what circumstances shaped her. In an interview with Terra, Capai described her goal as trying to see beyond the crime itself, signalling from the outset that the series would resist the reductive tabloid framing that had dominated coverage of the case for nearly a decade.

The production secured something no other journalist or filmmaker had managed before it: Elize Matsunaga's first on-camera interview, recorded while she was still imprisoned at Tremembé. This interview is the spine of the series, allowing Elize to speak in her own words about her life, her marriage, the night of the killing, and its aftermath. Around this central testimony, Capai wove in interviews with lawyers connected to the case, people who knew the couple, and material from the court proceedings, including reconstruction scenes and trial-related footage.

The result is a four-episode series that moves chronologically through Elize's life, her relationship with Marcos, the crime itself, the investigation and trial, and its legal aftermath. The series does not position itself as a straightforward prosecutorial retelling, nor as a simple defense of Elize — it sits in the uncomfortable space between the two.

Reception

The series divided opinion sharply from the moment of its release. Brazilian media covered it extensively, and viewer and critical reaction split along a familiar fault line in true crime documentary: those who felt giving Elize a platform to tell her own story was a meaningful act of journalism, and those who felt it risked humanizing — or worse, excusing — a woman convicted of a brutal killing.

Critics who responded positively praised Capai's refusal to sensationalize, the structural care of the four-episode format, and the rare access it provided to a convicted killer willing to speak frankly on camera. Critics who were more skeptical questioned whether the series adequately centered the victim, Marcos Matsunaga, or gave sufficient weight to the perspective of his family.

The IMDb title page for the series is registered under ID tt14856998, though a precise aggregate rating score is not available from current sources. What is beyond dispute is that the series sustained and reignited public interest in the case.

The Case Today

As of 2023, Elize Matsunaga was reported to be on parole (liberdade condicional), having served a substantial portion of her reduced sentence. Her imprisonment at Tremembé had kept the case in the public eye throughout the years between the crime and the documentary's release, and subsequent Brazilian media coverage — including new productions referencing the case as recently as 2026 — confirms that the story of Elize Matsunaga remains one of the most culturally embedded true crime narratives in Brazilian public life.

For international audiences, Elize Matsunaga: Era uma Vez um Crime remains the most comprehensive treatment of the case available on a global streaming platform. Its four episodes constitute a rare documentary achievement: a work that obtained direct testimony from its subject while she was still incarcerated, structured around one of the most disturbing and widely discussed crimes in recent Brazilian history.