‘I had chills’, ‘she was quiet, curled up’: Gal Costa’s son and widow tell us about the day of the singer’s death | Fantastic

‘I had a chill’, ‘she was quiet, curled up’: Gal Costa’s son and widow tell us about the day of the singer’s death

Gal Costa’s son, Gabriel Costa, and the singer’s widow, Wilma Petrillo, are fighting a battle in court over the artist’s inheritance, who died in November 2022. The two spoke exclusively to Fantástico about the last day of Gal’s life. (See video above)

The singer’s son claims that Gal and Wilma were not a couple and that, therefore, Wilma is not entitled to half of the estate. Wilma, who lived with Gal for more than 20 years, says that they never stopped being a couple.

Gal’s death certificate states cardiac arrest and cancer. According to Wilma, it was after the first radiotherapy session that Gal Costa started to feel sick: “She arrived here super sick”.

“I stayed with my mother in the living room watching TV with her for a while. She was fine, she was calm. But she asked us to go up. Then the three of us went up. Wilma, me and my mother”, recalled Gabriel.

Wilma talked about the moments with Gal in the room. According to her, the singer appeared to be “breathing and cold.”

“I went to my mother’s room to say goodnight to her. But Wilma said that she wasn’t well. She had chills, she had vomited. And that he had already given her medicine. I stayed there with her for a while and went to sleep”, added Gabriel.

Still according to Wilma, that day, Gal woke up, claimed to be better and said: “So it will be like this. You will stay with me until… I no longer know how to live without you.”

The widow said she thought Gal was going to vomit at that moment and called Gabriel to help turn the singer around.

“At about 4:30 am, 5 am, I was woken up by Wilma. She called me into my mother’s room to help her put my mother to bed”, he recalled.

When Gabriel arrived in the room, Gal did not respond to calls: “I saw that my mother was not responding, I started to get a little more desperate.”

Wilma placed her hand on Gal’s neck, but there was no pulse.

“She was starting to get cold. She was starting to look pale, her mouth was purple. I called Samu’s ambulance,” said Gabriel. The young man says that, instructed by Samu, he performed cardiac massage until the ambulance arrived.

According to him, when Samu arrived, health professionals noticed red spots on Gal’s body. “They themselves said: ‘When you have this spot, it’s because your heart has stopped working’”, Gabriel.

He said that a doctor at Samu confirmed the death: “They started talking there between doctors. (…) I started crying a lot in my room. When I heard that he died, I left, because I needed to breathe.”

The young man told Fantástico that the Gal’s body remained in the room until the day of the burial.

In a situation like this, of death at home, normally the body first goes through the IML or the death verification system, to identify the cause of death. But Wilma didn’t want the autopsy to be done.

“There was no autopsy. So there was no way for them to know if it was something deeper. Something more than cardiac arrest. (…) Because I wanted to be sure if that was really it”, explained Gabriel.

Gal’s death certificate states that the cause was acute myocardial infarction and malignant neoplasm, cancer, of the head and neck.

According to the São Paulo Municipal Health Department, “the death certificate was not provided by Samu”. And that “the team, in a situation of death, must necessarily verify it, not certify it”.

The secretariat also said that “the certificate can only be issued by a doctor, aware of the victim’s pathological history, and in a position to establish all the steps that led to death.”

The doctor who certified the death is called Francisca Giselle Rocha Moura. She is part of the team that treated Gal Costa’s cancer. Fantástico looked for Giselle, but she didn’t want to talk, citing ethical issues.

Gabriel Costa and Wilma Petrillo talk about the dispute they are fighting in court over Gal Costa’s inheritance