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A 22-year-old handyman convicted last week of slaying a former Utah couple in Brazil three years ago was not the killer - or at least was not acting alone, members of the victims' family said Monday.
It doesn't make sense that Jossiel Conceicao dos Santos killed Shell Oil executive Staheli, 39, and his wife, Michelle, 36, said Todd Staheli's father, Zera Staheli.
He said he believes the killer - or killers - to still be out there.
"The police had to close that case, and I think they found a way to do that," Zera Staheli said. Dos Santos' conviction "didn't put a closure on it for us at all," he said.
In a ruling Friday, dos Santos was found guilty of killing the couple, said Luis Carlos Puglialli, a spokesman with Rio de Janeiro's justice department. The man was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Defense attorneys plan to appeal the conviction, Puglialli said. Judge Maria Tereza Donatti ruled dos Santos will have to remain in prison if an appeal trial takes place.
On Nov. 30, 2003, Todd and Michelle Staheli's 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter found them bludgeoned in their bed in a Rio de Janeiro condominium. Todd Staheli died at the scene, and his wife died four days later in a hospital.
Todd Staheli was vice president for joint ventures in the Southern Cone gas and power unit of Shell and a native of Spanish Fork. His wife was from Logan.
Nothing was taken, and there were no signs of forced entry.
In April 2004, dos Santos was arrested after allegedly trying to break into another home in the complex where the Stahelis lived.
Dos Santos confessed to the killings, saying he killed Todd Staheli first, hitting him in the head with a crowbar. He then hit Michelle Staheli with the crowbar when he realized she was awake.
He later recanted - several times, Zera Staheli said - and at one point had been released by a judge, who cited a lack of physical evidence.
Initial DNA tests failed to link dos Santos to the crime, but further tests on clothing turned up traces of blood belonging to both victims.
"They have been trying for a year and a half, about, to find some DNA place to substantiate what DNA they want," Zera Staheli said.
Michelle Staheli's brother, Michael Davis, called the investigation a "blunder of errors."
"Why would somebody do this to them?" he said. "It just doesn't make sense."
Davis said dos Santos might have had some involvement in the slaying, but he doesn't think he pulled it off by himself. He said he has always believed there was more to the story than what they were being told.
"I don't think he could have done it alone," Davis said. "It just doesn't make sense. . . . They just want to get rid of it and move on."
Davis said the big brother in him wants to pursue the case to find out what really happened, but the uncle in him doesn't want to, out of sensitivity to his nieces and nephews.
"Our No. 1 concern still is our nieces, nephews and grandkids," he said.
Donatti said during sentencing that she took in consideration the fact that the children - ages 3 to 13 at the time of the crime - were left without parents because of the slaying, the Agencia Estado news service reported.
Davis wondered why dos Santos was sentenced to only 25 years.
"That seems pretty light to me for a double homicide," he said.
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The Associated Press contributed to this story.