After a two-week manhunt, surviving on creek water and instincts, Danelo Cavalcante was finally put into police custody on September 13, 2023.
Cavalcante is a Brazilian male, 34, and dated a woman named Deborah Brandão for about a year and a half. She had two daughters, 4 and 7, and Cavalcante often helped her with the kids, with whom he got along well with.
He had times where he would get jealous, eventually to the point of violence. “She kept saying that he was extremely jealous, that when he drank he became a different person, that he kept going through her cell phone,” Sarah said, Deborah’s sister. Cavalcante finally broke and stabbed his ex-girlfriend 38 times. This was not the first time he pulled a knife on her.
August of this year he was sent to Chester County Prison in Pennsylvania with a life sentence. He escaped later on the 31st, scaling the wall and a fence, cutting through wire and breaking out of the prison.
The escape sent police on a 13 day manhunt. In that time, he accomplished getting a whole area shut down, he stole a van, a rifle, he traumatized people by showing up to their house and sneaking into their homes, and evaded the police multiple times.
However, it was clear he got lazy when the police caught him while he slept. The only injury he sustained that morning was a dog bite used to refrain his use of the rifle. “He came out wet,” said Maryanne Yackel, a Phoenixville resident who witnessed the capture of Cavalcante.
Now that Danelo Cavalcante is in maximum security, the state of Pennsylvania can finally take a breath.