Elize Matsunaga Husband Marcos Matsunaga: Marriage, Crime Timeline, Sentence, and Aftermath
Elize Matsunaga’s husband was Marcos Kitano Matsunaga, a Brazilian executive associated with the food company Yoki. Their marriage became infamous after Marcos was killed in 2012 in São Paulo, in a case that later dominated Brazilian true-crime coverage. If you’re searching this topic, you’re usually looking for two things: who Marcos was in his own right, and what the confirmed timeline says about their relationship, the crime, and what happened to Elize afterward.
Who Is Elize Matsunaga?
Elize Matsunaga (also known as Elize Araújo Kitano Matsunaga) is a Brazilian woman whose name became nationally known due to the “Caso Yoki,” one of Brazil’s most widely reported criminal cases of the 2010s. Before the crime, she was largely outside the public spotlight. After the crime, her life became intertwined with media coverage, courtroom proceedings, and later documentary storytelling.
Public discussion about Elize tends to focus on the criminal case rather than a conventional biography, because that case is what placed her in the public record. Since then, reporting has repeatedly returned to the same themes: the couple’s lifestyle, the relationship conflict Elize described, the brutality of the crime, and the legal decisions that determined her sentence and eventual custody status.
Who Was Elize Matsunaga’s Husband?
Elize Matsunaga’s husband was Marcos Kitano Matsunaga, a businessman and executive who was widely described as a prominent figure at Yoki, a well-known Brazilian food brand. Marcos was 42 years old when he was killed. In reporting about the case, he is often presented as financially successful, socially visible, and living in a high-comfort lifestyle in São Paulo—details that became relevant because they shaped the public’s fascination with the story.
While many people first learn Marcos’s name through true-crime content, it’s important to separate the person from the sensational packaging. In the public record, Marcos is not just “the victim in a documentary.” He was a corporate executive and a father whose death triggered a multi-year investigation, a high-profile trial, and lasting legal consequences for the family left behind.
Elize and Marcos: Marriage and Family
Elize and Marcos were married and had a daughter together. The child became a central concern in later coverage because the crime immediately created a complicated custody situation: the father was dead, and the mother was arrested and later convicted. In widely reported summaries of the case, the child did not remain in Elize’s care while she was incarcerated.
Because the case became so public, many people assume the couple’s relationship was constantly visible to outsiders. In reality, most of what the public “knows” about their private dynamic comes from court arguments, investigative details, and the explanations Elize gave after the crime. That means you’ll see recurring claims and themes—but you should treat anything beyond the confirmed legal timeline with caution, because personal-life narratives can shift depending on who’s telling the story and why.
The 2012 Crime: What Happened?
According to the case’s widely reported timeline, Marcos Matsunaga was killed on May 19, 2012, in the couple’s apartment in São Paulo. Elize confessed to killing him with a gunshot, and the case became especially notorious because Marcos’s body was dismembered and later disposed of in an attempt to conceal the crime.
Elize’s stated motivation, as repeated in major case summaries, involved relationship conflict and her claim that she discovered an extramarital relationship. Prosecutors, defense arguments, and media accounts have differed in how they framed the killing—ranging from arguments about emotional escalation to accusations of premeditation—but what remained consistent is that the killing and concealment were treated as serious criminal acts with significant evidentiary weight.
Investigation and Public Shock
The case exploded nationally not only because of what happened, but because of who it happened to and where. This was not a distant, anonymous crime story. It involved a wealthy executive, an apartment in a major city, a family with a child, and details so graphic they immediately turned the case into a media obsession.
As the investigation unfolded, reporting focused on the practical elements that often drive high-profile cases: what was discovered, when it was discovered, and how investigators connected evidence to the suspect. In true-crime coverage, this is often dramatized, but underneath the dramatization is the reason the case moved forward—investigators and prosecutors believed they had enough evidence to take it to trial.
Trial and Conviction
Elize Matsunaga was tried and convicted in 2016. In widely circulated case summaries, she was convicted for the killing and for actions tied to destroying and concealing the body. The original sentence frequently reported for the 2016 decision was 19 years, 11 months, and 1 day in prison.
As with many major cases, later legal decisions and appeals affected how people discuss the sentence and the timeline of custody. This is why you may see different numbers or “release expectations” depending on the source and the date the source was written. The safest way to think about it is this: she was convicted and sentenced in 2016, and subsequent legal developments influenced how her punishment was ultimately carried out.
Where Is Elize Matsunaga Now?
Later reporting in Brazil has stated that Elize eventually moved into conditional release after serving part of her sentence. This is one of the most searched updates because many international viewers discover the story through documentaries years after the crime and want to know what her current legal status is.
Because these updates can change with court decisions and reporting timelines, the most accurate approach is to stick to what reputable, time-stamped sources say at the moment you’re reading them. In general, recent Brazilian coverage has described her as living outside prison under conditional terms rather than serving the entire sentence exclusively in closed custody.
What Happened to Their Daughter?
The couple’s daughter is frequently referenced in coverage for one reason: the crime created an immediate need for stable guardianship. Public case summaries have commonly stated that the child was cared for by family members rather than remaining with Elize during incarceration.
It’s also common for major cases like this to limit the child’s public exposure, especially as the child grows older. So while the existence of the daughter is widely reported, ongoing details about her life are generally not treated as public information in responsible coverage.
Why This Case Remains So Talked About
The Elize Matsunaga case continues to attract attention because it sits at the intersection of wealth, family, betrayal narratives, and extreme violence—elements that the media and audiences tend to fixate on. Documentary storytelling has kept it alive for new viewers, and each new wave of coverage brings the same core questions back to the surface: who Marcos was, how the relationship deteriorated, what exactly happened in 2012, and how the justice system handled the outcome.
But the clearest, most grounded way to understand the story is to focus on confirmed facts: Elize was married to Marcos Matsunaga, Marcos was killed in 2012, Elize confessed and was convicted in 2016, and later reporting has described changes to her custody status over time.
Featured Image Source: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-announces-new-documentary-series-about-one-of-brazils-most-notorious
