María Xavier Brandt Angulo (Caracas, Venezuela, April 28, 1961-Baruta, Venezuela October 2, 1982), better known as Maye Brandt, she was a model and queen of Venezuelan beauty who won the Miss Venezuela 1980. She was married to actor Jean Carlo Simancas; She later committed suicide, causing a scandal in Venezuela in the early 1980s.

Maye Brandt came from a family with a long tradition in Venezuelan public life, having among his ancestors the painters Federico Brandt, Alberto Brandt, Julia Brandt and Johann Friedrich Brandt, initiator of the statistical works in Venezuela.

Despite being Caracas, Brandt represented the Lara state in the Miss Venezuela^[2] that was held on May 8, 1980 at the Macuto Sheraton Hotel in Caraballeda, Vargas state, which among other particularities, was encouraged by Gilberto Correa, Carmen Victoria Pérez and Hilda Elvira Carrero de Abreu, was the first produced by Joaquin Riviera and the first color televised in Venezuela. The favorite was the actress Hilda Abrahamz today, but she had to settle as first finalist with Brandt's victory over the other 13 crown contenders.

Two months later, Brandt traveled to the Far East to participate in the Miss Universe 1980, which was held on July 7 at the Sejong Cultural Center in Seoul, South Korea. The event meant a huge challenge because last year Maritza Sayalero had won the beauty contest in Perth, Australia, and the organizers expected at least one figuration among the finalists. Unfortunately, Brandt was not among them and on his return to Venezuela a conflict developed with the press of the show that would last until his death.

Despite this, Brandt was popular with the public, so she also received the hospitality common to every beauty queen, including one that would later turn into tragedy.

Shortly after her arrival, the Metropolitan Police appointed her as an honorary member of the institution, assigning her the agent number 004, a uniform and a regulation weapon to keep at home.

In 1981, Brandt gave the crown to Irene Sáez, with whom he made a brief friendship, and also began a brief career as a model, and at the end of that same year he married the soap opera actor Jean Carlo Simancas. The marriage took place in family intimacy and took the Venezuelan press by surprise, but given the high profile of both and the friction that Brandt had had with some journalists, the magazines of the heart soon published speculation about the stability of the relationship. The rumors went from one extreme to the other of the journalistic spectrum, with some commenting infidelities on the part of the popular and quoted television gallant and others an alleged dominant character that forced Brandt to withdraw from modeling and even forbade makeup.

Simancas or his family have revealed little by this time, but it is known that Brandt gradually developed a depressive condition due to the pressures of public life and problems with Simancas.

In 2002, Pilín León, Miss Mundo 1981, said in an interview for the True Stories program: The weight of a crown that Maye Brandt's rebellious personality led her to face directly with the press, sharpening the conflict with it. Also that Brandt had been affected since childhood by the divorce of his parents and that she was in constant search of affection. To this, agent Josefina Torres added that Brandt saw in the contest an emotional support that he had not found elsewhere. If this was the case, Brandt found the opposite, giving rise to hypotheses in which the press is considered the main cause of his suicide. ^[3]

In this same video, Osmel Sousa shared an anecdote that reveals Brandt's conflicting personality. According to Sousa, after the Miss Universe, friends and family organized a cocktail at the Caracas Country Club to celebrate her return. There were only drinks at the meeting, so Brandt soon served a few hors d'oeuvres for the guests. After a while, Sousa saw her laughing in a corner, and after asking him what was so funny, Brandt confessed that what he had served was dog biscuits (perrarina) with condensed milk.