RIO DE JANEIRO — A rancher fighting accusations that he ordered the murder of a U.S. nun has been charged with trying to fraudulently obtain the plot of Amazon rain forest she died trying to defend, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
The new charge, filed in federal court in Altamira, could undermine one of Regivaldo Galvao’s key alibis in the separate murder case. He has testified he had no interest in the piece of land that 73-year-old Dorothy Stang was trying to defend when she was shot to death in 2005.
Stang, a native of Dayton, Ohio, spent three decades trying to preserve the rain forest and defending the rights of poor settlers who confronted powerful ranchers seeking their lands in the Amazon’s wild frontier. Her brother, David, lives in Palmer Lake.
Prosecutors contend Galvao and another rancher hired gunmen to kill Stang.
