Eliane de Grammont

Eliane Aparecida de Grammont (10 August 1955 – 30 March 1981) was a Brazilian singer and composer. She was murdered in 1981 by her ex-husband Lindomar Castilho, which became one of the most well-known cases of femicide in Brazil and which also became a flash point in the campaign to combat violence against women in the country.

Biography Grammont was born on 10 August 1955 in São Paulo, the daughter of composer Elena de Grammont. Most of her siblings began careers in journalism and in radio, such as her sister Helena, who became a journalist at Rede Globo. Their father died of cardiomyopathy, a disease that would also kill two of her siblings. she was shot at multiple times. Carlos Randall was also shot at and was hit in the abdomen. Castilho attempted to flee, but was detained and beaten by onlookers, who held him down until the police arrived. Grammont was mortally wounded; she was taken to the emergency room, but was declared dead upon her arrival. He was released in 1996, and died in 2025.

Cultural and historical context While still free, Castilho responded to the jury in 1984 while women protested in front of the court; on the second day of the judgment, many men were transported to there (according to reports, having been hired to do so) and went on to throw eggs at the protestors. They proceeded to shout at and harass them, shouting phrases such as "mulher que bota chifre tem que virar sanduíche". Even while sentenced, the singer was still released temporarily.

Violence against women was widely normalized in Brazil, with songs from artists such as Sidney Magal having lyrics that romanticized femicide. At the time, adultery was considered a crime under the Brazilian Penal Code, and Congress at the time was passing a proposed law that would remove the act from the penal code. Various institutions dedicated to women's rights came about as a result of the protests; one of these was "Grupo masculino de apoio à luta das mulheres", having as members various intellectuals and which launched a "manifesto against barbarity."

The humorist Henfil, who presented a program called "TV Homem" on the daily television program TV Mulher, published a section on the weekly newspaper ISTOÉ where he wrote letters to his mother and commented on the weekly news; on the edition published 8 April 1981, on commenting on the fact that the police had apprehended a man who assaulted a woman and made him walk on the streets in order to humiliate him, he wrote ironically "Why is it to make a man dress like a woman is to humiliate, to demoralize? Why is it that being a woman is the most humiliating and demoralizing thing that there is? Worse than being a dog, a duck, or a chicken? Anyhow. It’s because of this that one (two, three, a thousand) Lindomar Castilho has the legitimate right to kill Eliane de Grammont. Ah, he is just merciful. He wanted to free Eliane of the humiliation, the demoralization of being…a woman."

In November 1982, responding to his being freed from prison, Castilho was prevented by dozens of women from performing a show in Goiânia, with them distributing a pamphlet with a photo of Grammont and her daughter Liliane, along with the following: "Eliane Gramont(sic) will not sing today. She is dead."

In 2019, the crime was listed by the website Último Segundo (by IG) as one of the "famous crimes that shocked" Brazil.

Tributes In São Paulo, in the Barra Funda neighborhood, one of the roads in the neighborhood was renamed "Eliane Aparecida de Grammont" in December 1981.

"Eliane de Grammont" is also the name of a street in Londrina, in the state of Paraná.

In São Paulo, there is the Casa Eliane de Grammont, a state institution that is meant to give psychosocial and legal support to women affected by gender violence, maintained by the municipal government of São Paulo.