The girls were given the task of discovering who killed Chico Mendez, a rubber tapper from Brazil who was asassinated on 22nd December, the girls had to establish motive and sift through a variety of information to make their decision. To help them understand why Chico was in danger, Mrs Hames explained where Tropical Rainforests are located and what the climate is like. The girls discussed why the Amazon Rainforest is important and discovered many facts, including:
Rainforests contribute about 50% of the oxygen in the atmosphere
About 25% of the world's freshwater is stored in the Amazon rainforest.
Drugs used to treat leukaemia and other cancers come from rainforest plants, as do medicines for heart ailments and arthritis.
All the information learnt helped the girls to decide who had the most motive to kill Chico. Most of the girls discounted Ovido Roberto who was a dam builder, they felt that even though Chico publicised the negative affects the dam would have on the rainforest, this was not a strong enough reason to kill him. The other suspects were Darley Alves - a cattle rancher, Luis Franco - a construction worker, Aldebio da Silva - owner of a logging company, Jose Fernandez - Minister for Brazil's economy and Fernando Cavalera - the owner of a plantation.
3 groups picked Luis Franco as the murderer, the rationale being that Luis has just got a new job building roads through the rainforest, he was concerned that he could lose his job as Chico was arguing that the road destroyed too much forest. Luis had 6 children and could not afford to pay medical bills, so he definitely could not afford to lose his job.
1 group chose Jose Fernandez who wanted to exploit the rainforest, allowing industry into the forest which would make money for the Government, Chico was opposed to this.
The last group went with Aldebio who was concerned that Chico might find out about his illegal logging of mahogany wood.
All the groups had excellent ideas and could describe why they felt their suspect had the strongest motive.
We found out that the murderer was Darley Alves, who had been prevented from deforesting areas to graze his cattle on. He was very angry that Chico was behind this and so paid his son to kill him. Darley and his son were both caught and sentenced to 19 years in jail.
This was a brilliant session and the girls enjoyed working together to solve the mystery. Thank you to mrs Hames for a fun morning.
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