WARREN — When Claudia Hoerig fled the United States the day of her husband’s murder in 2007, she went back to Brazil where she opened an accounting firm, remarried and lived a normal life in a middle-class neighborhood, according to a CBS News correspondent who catapulted the case into the national spotlight.

Erin Moriarty examined the case in “A Brother’s Mission” a nearly hourlong episode of “48 Hours” that aired in November. Less than two months later, Hoerig is sitting in the Trumbull County Jail after Moriarty and Paul Hoerig, the brother of slain Air Force pilot Maj. Karl Hoerig, traveled to Brazil where they stayed for a week and sought answers about Hoerig’s extradition process.

Prior to her imprisonment and the extradition process, Hoerig opened her own accounting business and married a taxi driver named Daniel Barbosa, Moriarty said, and the two lived comfortably in a middle-class neighborhood.

“Although she was a fugitive from justice in Ohio, she certainly wasn’t living like one in Brazil,” Moriarty said. “She lived in a very nice neighborhood close to where she was working.”

Another aspect of the case that Moriarty, a lawyer, found fascinating is that it represents the first time a Brazilian national was extradited from Brazil to answer to crimes committed in another country. In 2013, the Brazilian government agreed that Hoerig had renounced her allegiance to Brazil when she became a citizen of the United States in 1999 and the Ministry of Justice revoked her Brazilian citizenship in 2013.

For three years, Hoerig fought the decision in Brazilian courts and continued to live a life of freedom, Moriarty said, but in April 2016, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled against Hoerig and she was imprisoned.

Moriarty and Paul Hoerig visited the prison, where they learned Claudia Hoerig had been removed from the general population because a rumor had spread that she might kill another inmate in an attempt to avoid being sent back to the United States.

“She was being held in a room that normally holds eight inmates,” Moriarty said. “A prison supervisor told us she was isolated because the other inmates were concerned she would hurt or kill one of them rather than be extradited.”

After serving six years, even convicted murderers in Brazil can leave prison, enter work-release programs and sometimes live at home, Moriarty said.

“I think she felt that if she was going to serve prison time, Brazil would be better,” Moriarty said.

Moriarty said she talked to U.S. marshals, who said Hoerig was polite, untired by the trip to the United States and not surprised she was extradited. Moriarty said she doesn’t think her reporting or the “48 Hours” episode caused the extra push to get Hoerig back to Ohio.

Instead, she gives credit for the extradition to Paul Hoerig and the local prosecutor’s office for never giving up for more than a decade.

jwysochanski@tribtoday.com