Mum desperately tried to escape killer ex before he butchered her on school run

Daily Mirror

20-05-2025

A new series of Killer Britain with Dermot Murnaghan delves into the shocking stabbing of a young mother on the school run and reveals heartbreaking details about her final moments
A mum who was stabbed to death on the school run by her ex-husband in front of their three-year-old daughter knew he was capable of killing her and tried to raise the alarm in the days and hours before her brutal murder.
Ricardo Godinho repeatedly stabbed ex-wife Aliny Godinho in broad daylight, and in front of other terrified mothers, as she walked with her little girl to collect her two sons from school in Epsom, Surrey.
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A court later heard the heartbreaking words of the the distraught girl after seeing her father kill her mother in 2019: "Mummy's not coming back".
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The couple, who had separated months before the attack on February 8, 2019, had moved together from Brazil to live in the UK, but Aliny soon found herself in an abusive and controlling relationship.
But after she had found the courage to leave him, obsessive Godinho continued to follow her movements by using the Find My iPhone function to track where she was, despite being told by police not to make contact with Aliny or their children following accusations of abusive behaviour and coercive control.
He had also found a way to read her messages and emails, and was a member of a WhatsApp group that Aliny's friends used to support her without them knowing. Portuguese journalist Duarte Mendonça told Killer Britain with Dermot Murnaghan: "He had access to an old SIM card that used to belong to Aliny, and no one in that group ever noticed it. So, for the longest time, Ricardo was able to keep track of every single conversation of every single move, and it was only up until the day that Ricardo decided to leave the group.
'And they saw the stamp mark saying, 'Aliny has left the group. ' The group realised that he was there the whole time.' But despite breaking his bail conditions many times, no further action was taken by police. It was later found that Godinho had been using Google to search for how a Brazilian man had murdered his wife.
Aliny discovered that he had been reading her emails, WhatsApp messages and following her location on the day of her death, and once again reported him to the police. But while her friends begged her to go in person to the police station and stay there to keep herself safe, she continued on her daily routine, picking up her other children from school.
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Her friend, Lucienne Monteiro, revealed that the mother was already convinced that Godinho wanted to kill her, but believed that he would never attempt to attack her if she was with their daughter.
She said: 'She believed that she was safe because of the children. So, from that week, she took her little child, the girl with her to school every day, because she felt protected. The little one was his favourite one. So, she thought like he won't hurt her.'
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In the afternoon, she started the school run at 2:38 p.m. CCTV captured Aliny catching the bus from where she was staying in Streatham to Epsom, along with her daughter, getting off the bus at 2:55 pm.
Godinho was waiting for them in his pick-up truck when they got off. He mounted the grass verge alongside where they were walking, jumped out of the vehicle and started stabbing her repeatedly, before dropping the murder weapon and driving off.
Surrey Coroner's Court later heard the attack happened in just 17 seconds as Mrs Godinho held their young daughter's hand. Prosecutors said the crime was premeditated and motivated by 'his anger and resentment that his wife was seeking a new life for her and her children."
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Lucienne remembers finding out her worst fears had come true: 'We were watching TV or something when my phone rang. And then when I picked up the phone, a friend of ours, he said, Aliny has just being killed, stabbed by Ricardo. I threw my telephone away and I started screaming. I never felt so bad in my life like that day.
'She didn't have the time to defend herself. She didn't have any marks on the arm or anything, it was really fast. They said that he stabbed her and then, as she was falling down, he kept stabbing her, without saying anything. And then when he'd done that, he just looked at his little one, and then he walked away.'
He began to drive to a police station to surrender, but his vehicle was stopped, and he was arrested around an hour and a half after the attack .He began to drive to a police station to surrender, but his vehicle was stopped, and he was arrested around an hour and a half after the attack.
He was found guilty of murder and possessing an offensive weapon by Guildford Crown Court and sentenced to life with a minimum of 27 years in July 2019. However, when he was transferred to a prison in Brazil in 2022, it meant his sentence was changed to 30 years in jail.