A doctor who hurled his bodybuilder girlfriend out of a 31st-floor tower block window has been jailed for 31 years by judges in Brazil.

Accused Dr Raphael Suss Marques had claimed that victim Renata Muggiati, 32, had leapt to her death.

But he was found guilty of her murder after it emerged that he had bribed the coroner with BRL 300,000 (GBP 48,000) to find she had killed herself.

A second autopsy of her body revealed she had actually been strangled before she fell.

Now the court in Curitiba has sentenced Marques to 31 years in jail at a hearing on 10th February.

He had been found guilty of aggravated homicide, procedural fraud, and bodily injury.

The crime was first discovered when Renata’s body was found on the pavement beneath the apartment block where Marques lived in September 2015.

Friends told police that Marques was violent and abusive during the couple’s 11-month-long relationship.

Renata’s friends told the court how the medic’s attacks and threats had caused her to lose weight, give up bodybuilding and competitions, and become a social recluse.

It transpired that a week before her death, paramedics had been called to Marques’s flat, where she alleged that he had drugged her.

The medic was arrested in the wake of Renata’s death but was later released.

He was arrested again in 2016 on suspicion of assaulting an ex-girlfriend but was released with an electronic ankle tag in 2017.

When he missed a court hearing to attend a poker tournament in 2019, he was arrested a third time and was remanded in custody.

He has remained in prison ever since.

Following the sentencing, Renata’s sister, Tina Gabriel, said: “May this penalty serve as an example for all victims of domestic violence.”