A fugitive murderer tried to contact former coworkers Saturday night, miles from the search area where police have been trying to locate him, and apparently abandoned a van he stole from a West Chester dairy farm after it ran out of gas.
Danelo Cavalcante was seen on a doorbell camera in the Phoenixville area Saturday night, as CrimeOnline reported, and has apparently shaved off his beard and mustache to change his appearance. The area is about 20 miles from Longwood Gardens botanical garden, where much of the search for the last 11 days had centered.
Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col George Bivens said investigators believe he drove to northern Chester County in a van stolen from Baily’s Dairy, a farm less than a mile from Longwood Gardens. The keys had been left in the van, he said.
“Our delivery van was stolen last night between 7-10PM while we were still here working,” the dairy wrote on its Facebook page Sunday morning.
Investigators determined Cavalcante was traveling in a white van after receiving the tips that he’d reached out to former coworkers, Bivens said, and had determined where the van came from by about 5 a.m.
Shortly before 10 p.m., Cavalcante rang the doorbell of a former coworker from years earlier in East Pikeland Township, Bivens said. That person was out to dinner with his family and did not respond but provided police with images from his doorbell camera when he returned home at about 12:30 a.m.
Some 15 minutes after he was at that house, he was at the home of another former coworker, who was also not present. Police were called about that sighting by the friend of a woman who lived a the house.
Bivens said that Cavalcante was spotted elsewhere in the Phoenixville area on Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Police found the dairy van in a field behind a East Nantmeal Township barn just after 10:30 a.m. Sunday,
“No perimeter is 100 percent secure … I wish he had not been able to slip through that,” he said. “That does happen sometimes. … It’s not for a lack of trying that this occurred.”
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State police said late Sunday morning in a Faceook post that “investigative leads have emerged that indicate Cavalcante is no longer in [the Phoenixville] area,” although they did not say how he was traveling or in which direction he might be going.
“I do believe he remains in Pennsylvania,” Bivens told reporters. “The victim’s family remains under police protection.”
Bivens said Sunday that Cavalcante’s sister, Eleni Cavalcante, had been arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now faces deportation, the Inquirer said. He said she had “some immigration issues” but did not say if police believe she had been helping her brother.
He did say that anyone found to be assisting the fugitive will be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.
Cavalcante, 34, crabwalked up a wall in the exercise yard of Chester County Prison on August 31 and escaped. He was awaiting transfer to a state prison after being sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Deborah Brandao, in 2021. Investigators say he killed her because he feared she would tell authorities that he was wanted for a 2017 murder in his native Brazil.
He is five feet tall, weighs 120 pounds, and speaks Portuguese, Spanish and some English.
Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or the police tip line at 717-562-2987. There is a $20,000 reward for any information that leads to Cavalcante’s capture.
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[Featured image: Danelo Cavalcante/Pennsylvania State Police]
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