A Brazilian immigrant pleaded guilty yesterday to strangling and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old Connecticut schoolgirl he met on the Internet – crimes that could send him to prison for 30 years.
A shaking and glum Saul Dos Reis, 25, entered his plea to manslaughter and sex-assault charges watched by relatives of Christina Long, the Danbury girl who died during a sexual tryst in his car last May 17.
The surprise hearing followed plea-bargain negotiations between his lawyers, prosecutors and Judge Patrick Carroll.
Under the agreement, Carroll can sentence Dos Reis to up to 30 years in prison, but the Greenwich man’s lawyers can and will argue for less time at the May 6 sentencing.
“We have a compelling case” for a lesser sentence, said Dos Reis’ lawyer, Peter Tilem, who maintains Christina’s death “was an accident.”
“This is someone who never did anything wrong in his life, and now his life is essentially over,” Tilem said.
During the hearing in Danbury state court, prosecutors said the Catholic-school student and cheerleader had met Dos Reis on the Internet last year and exchanged 14 e-mails with the illegal Brazilian immigrant.
On May 10, Christina met Dos Reis in person, and they went to a Danbury motel where they had sexual contact, prosecutors said. On May 17, after she was dropped off at the Danbury Fair Mall by an aunt who was her guardian, Christina met Dos Reis for sex in his car in a parking lot, prosecutors said.
She died during that encounter, which Dos Reis later told cops involved rough sex. He dumped her body miles away in a remote area of Greenwich.
Dos Reis still faces a federal trial next month on charges related to having sex with Christina, but Tilem said he will talk to federal prosecutors about possibly resolving that case with a prison sentence to be served concurrently with the state sentence.
Tilem told The Post that yesterday’s guilty plea came because “Saul felt that his likelihood of success was slim” at trial, and because the defense believed he would get the maximum sentence of 60 years in prison if convicted at trial.
Tilem said Dos Reis also agreed to the deal because he was allowed to enter a type of plea in which he contested some of the prosecutors’ claims, but acknowledged he was likely to be convicted at trial.