9-year-old Rhuan was brutally murder by his mother and her partner. (Brazilian Federal Police)

A lesbian mother and her partner in Brazil have confessed to police that they castrated and beheaded their nine-year-old child because they “wanted to be a girl” and reminded them of the biological father.

The mother Rosana Cândido, 27, and her partner Kacyla Pessoa, 28, were arrested on May 31 for the murder and torture of Cândido’s child Rhuan in Samambaia, Brazil, according to Brazilian newspaper O Tempo.

A year before the murder, after Rhuan told the women that they wanted to be a girl, they allegedly ripped off the child’s penis in a horrific makeshift surgery.

Cândido is accused of stabbing Rhuan multiple times and beheading them while they were still alive. Rhuan was reportedly conceived when Cândido was raped, and the child reminded her of her ex-partner.

Afterwards, the couple desecrated the nine-year-old’s body to make it more difficult to identify. They removed the skin from the child’s face, attempted to gouge out their eyes and then dismembered the body and tried to burn it on a barbecue. When this was unsuccessful they put the body into a suitcase and backpacks and tried to dispose of it.

Reportedly, the pair were seen attempted to put the suitcase into a sewer and were reported to police. The backpacks containing Rhuan’s remains were found in their home.

The crime committed by the lesbian couple is thought to have been premeditated

According to O Tempo: “The suspicion is that the crime was premeditated, since they bought a knife and coal before the murder.”

“She killed her son, quartered, decapitated, plucked the skin and tried to get rid of the body. It was a very terrible case,” police chief Guilherme Melo told the Brazilian newspaper.

Pessoa also has a nine-year-old daughter who was living with the couple at the time of the murder, and she has reportedly been taken into protective custody.