Voodoo and a Human Sacrifice
At the time this act of violence was described by the local authorities as unprecedented. For the longest time the case remained unsolved and the victim’s identity was unknown. But due to later genetic testing as well as other factors (which we’ll get in to) the victim was identified and a dark story began to develop.
Discovery
It was September 21, 2001, when England native Aidan Minter was crossing Tower bridge in central London. For those of us who haven’t been to England the Tower Bridge is a defining landmark (according to Wikipedia) that has high-level walkways and crosses over the Thames River. If you don’t know about the Thames it’s a major river that runs through London and there has been countless stories, poems, and movies that feature the river.
Aidan noticed something in the river which at first he thought was a beer keg/barrel. As Aidan got closer to the item he realized that is was the torso of a young boy and he immediately notified the police. Once authorities arrived on scene they were able to pull the torso from the river and began to make their assessment. The torso was that of a young African boy between the ages of 4–7. His arms, legs and head where missing and a pair of orange shorts were wrapped around the waist.
Will O’Reilly was one of the leading investigators for the case, he said: “when I first saw the young child’s body, it was quite apparent this was no accident but a horrific murder”.
The Investigation
The post-mortem on the boy’s remains revealed horrifying details of the last hours of this child’s life. His throat had been slit and his blood drained before his head and limbs had been removed from his torso using skill and precision. Forensic analysis of his intestines and stomach contents gave rise however to more questions than answers. Small ground-down plant matter particles were found along with grains resembling sand and clay pellets. Strangely, there were also tiny particles of gold. Corners also uncovered that the boy’s atlas bone, the vertebra that supports the skull, had also been removed.
Authorities turned to the Britain and Europe missing children database in hopes of being able to identify the young boy but unfortunately there were no hits. So investigators turned to the public for help. Earlier authorities were able to identify the shorts found on the boy. They were traced back to a German company called “kids’ company” and were in fact female. This clue lead them to creating a flyer that was dispersed to the public and media with hopes that someone would recognize the shorts. Here’s what it said,
“Police appeal for assistance. Murder. 50,000 pound reward. At 4pm on Friday 21st September 2001 the torso of a young male child was found in the River Thames near London Bridge. The boy was black aged approximately 5–6 years old and was wearing a pair of orange shorts (see pictures) His body had been in the river for between 1–10 days. Do you recognize these shorts? Do you know of any child fitting this description who is missing? Did you see anyone acting suspiciously near the waterfront of the Thames from Teddington to the estuary?”
Unfortunately, the story initially only received moderate publicity due to its proximity to the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States. At the time the public was reeling in the aftermath of tragedy and was being flooded with reports of terrorism and threats around the globe. However, in the weeks to follow, British police were keen to ensure the investigation into who this little boy was and what happened to him remained in the public eye so they chose to give him a name. A murdered child with a name would resonate more with the public than a nameless victim.
At a press conference, Commander Andy Baker told reporters: “His name is Adam and until we can identify him and his family, we will act as his family.”
Dark Discoveries
So while all this was going on, experts were called in to try and identify the material that was found in Adam’s stomach. I just want to take a moment and let you guys know that while this seems like everything's happening so quickly it’s not. The discovery of Adam’s torso sparked an investigation that spanned over more than 10 years in efforts to identify him. So please keep that in mind as we move forward.
Dr. Hazel Wilkinson of the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew Gardens in Surrey was able to shed light on why plant matter, sand, clay pellets, and gold would be in Adam’s stomach. The plant material was in fact Datura seeds and particles of the Calabar bean.
Thanks to Google, Datura is a sedative which can also cause hallucinations, while the Calabar bean is a toxic climbing vine native to West Africa and causes paralysis across the body. According to Dr. Wilkinson it is a paralysis which would prevent any ability to move, however, it is not a painkiller nor would a child be unconscious after taking it. This means Adam was most likely awake, conscious, and able to feel the pain as a knife cut through his small body.
Police also requested analysis on the trace minerals within his bones and his DNA in order to try and identify where he was from. The results suggested Adam was not British nor had he been raised in the UK. He was most likely West African, specifically Nigerian arriving in the UK only months before he was killed. The discovery of the Calabar bean in his stomach also provided a link to West Africa, narrowing the area down further to where this plant grows and leading police to Benin City in Nigeria.
This was a huge victory for police as now they know the origins of Adam and the precise manner in which his body had been dismembered. But more questions arose and a darker story emerged.
You may have recognized the name of Benin City as it’s widely considered to be the home of Voodoo which is recognized as an official religion. For the people of Benin it’s a way of life and animal sacrifices and the use of herbs and plants for healing are widely practiced within the region with sacrifices largely being given to gain a connection with the spirit world or seek protection from a threat of some kind that is causing concern.
For police they questioned if Adam had been trafficked to the UK for the sole purpose of being killed in a sacrificial ritual murder.
According to Africa Center for Strategic Studies human trafficking involves taking control of people, through duplicity or force, for exploitation or economic gain. At any given time 3.5 million Africans are being trafficked. 99% of victims detected in West Africa are trafficked within their own country or region. More than 50% of trafficking victims in sub-Saharan Africa are children (mostly in West Africa). Among detected victims in Africa, there are more males trafficked until the age of 18, at which point the ratio is reversed. While these statistics are staggering the true number is unknown as many American countries haven’t adopted mandatory reporting laws.
According to protectionporject.org West Africa has trafficking rates as high as 200,000 children a year with 40,000 of those either coming from or passing through Benin and sold for slave labour or into sex work.
If someone in the UK believed in the power of such sacrifices and had the means and the contacts, this is an act which could have easily been arranged.
Once the public heard that ritual child killings were taking place in the UK fear paralyzed the country. Speculations and assumptions were made accelerating the horror of the case and creating images of brutal child sacrifice. There was even a report of a bag of white candles and cloth washing up on the shores of the Thames adding to the public’s perception that there had been a ritual homicide carried out in the nation’s capital.
A local news paper was quoted as saying, “Human sacrifices is believed to be the most “empowering” form of sacrifice — and offering up a child is the most extreme form of all. Thankfully, in Africa, it is very rare.”
Voodoo
There are different types of ritual homicide that have been seen in West African regions but, the one authorities believed Adam fell prey to is called multi-killing.
Multi-killing is acts of murder and mutilation carried out to sacrifice a human to obtain their body parts. These parts are then used in medicines and potions within witchcraft and a child sacrifice could symbolize more power than an adult one. I’m not an expert in this at all I’m just going off of what Google tells me.
Religion and human cultural sacrifice experts were brought in to try and gain more information about what may have happened to Adam. According to Sward and Scale the second largest ethnic group in Nigeria are the Yoruba people who worship almost 400 ancestor gods they call ‘Orisha’. The Yoruba river goddess ‘Oshun’ is associated with the color orange and police thought this may be why bright orange shorts were placed on the body before he was dumped in the Thames.
The plant content found in Adam’s stomach also has been present in known rituals of West Africa. This lead to Dr. Wilkinson to conclude that Adam may have been sacrificed the way he was to provide someone with power and money. Police also believed a skilled person in these sacrifices, such as a priest or a witch doctor was brought in to dismember the body of Adam due to the precision used.
Eventually the multi-killing theory was discarded after police learned that this practice was common across South Africa rather than West Africa where forensic evidence from Adam was pointing. An African religion expert named Dr. Richard Hoskins give his own thoughts as to what may have happened to Adam. “Adam’s body would have been drained of blood, as an offering to whatever god his murderer believed in,” he said. “The gold flecks in his intestine were used to make the sacrifice more appealing to that god.”
The new theory police were working with was human sacrifice.
In 2002 London police flew to Johannesburg in South Africa and with the help of Nelson Mandela they made a public appeal for any information which may identify Adam. They also travelled to Nigeria to follow up on any reports of missing children in the hope of finding out who Adam was, but they were unsuccessful.
Later that same year the first possible clue to Adam’s identity came to light, however, it would be a further nine years before any real identification could be made.
The clue came from Joyce Osiagede. She was arrested in Glasgow while trying to claim asylum for herself and her two daughters. She appeared confused and was ranting, talking of ceremonies, sacrifices, and religion.
The Metropolitan Police picked up on her case and after a search of the flat she had been living in, they found clothing that was similar to the shorts Adam was wearing. She was arrested but no evidence could be found to link her to the murder and she had a long history of mental health problems. She was deported back to Nigeria.
The case stalled and for 10 years there were no further developments towards finding the true identity of Adam and what really happened to him.
A Lead
But in March of 2011 a television crew found Joyce Osiagede in Nigeria and she told them in an interview that she knew who the boy was. She used to care for a 6-year-old boy called Ikpomwosa while she lived in Germany she said, after his parents had been deported from Germany back to Nigeria. She told them that after a year of looking after him she had given the young boy to a man called ‘Bawa’ who she believed had taken him to London. She also identified a young boy in a photograph as Ikpomwosa, however it was confirmed some time later this was the child of a friend of hers who was very much alive. It appeared her identification of Adam was false.
But we’re not done with Joyce. In 2013 she again contacted the TV crew saying she now wanted to tell them everything that she knew. She told them the boy’s real name was Patrick Erhabor and the man she had handed him over to was in fact Kingsley Ojo, a convicted people smuggler who had been arrested in England in 2002 and deported back to Nigeria. Ojo was also a man looked at closely by police in relation to this case before he was deported with a belief he may have been involved in trafficking Adam into the country. Joyce was not a reliable witness and had purposely misled the investigation before, however, adding all the information together police believed they had finally found the real identity of Adam.
During the 2002 investigation into Kingsley police found in his flat a plastic bag, a mixture of bone, sand and flecks of gold very similar to a concoction found in Adam’s stomach. There was also a video marked “rituals” which showed a B-movie in which an actor cuts off the head of a man. Kingsley said the video and mixture belonged to other people in the house and detectives could not establish a link between him and the case.
In 2004, he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for people smuggling. While in prison he contacted officers and offered to help with the inquiry. But investigators concluded he was wasting police time and he was deported to Nigeria.
Retired detective Nick Chalmers, who worked on the inquiry for seven years, said Kingsley was “someone I’ve been interested in for a long while — I’ve always suspected his involvement and now, for the very first time, we have a witness who is saying categorically Kingsley was involved”
In 2005 Adam was buried in an unmarked grave and only people involved in the investigation were present at the burial. He was buried in Southwark cemetery.
Temi Olusanya, the Nigerian vice-chair of the African Caribbean Development Association said Adam’s murder had deeply shocked the West African community. ‘This is a crime that cannot be tolerated in African religions. Murder is murder and we should work together to find the people who did this,’ he said.
Still Unsolved
It’s been 19 years after this young boy’s torso was found floating in the River Thames. His murder remains unsolved and while his identity is now believed to be Patrick Erhabor, police are no closer to finding out who was behind his gruesome death. They are confident this child was brought into Britain to be a human sacrifice and was murdered and dismembered as part of that sacrificial ritual. It seems, however, that his killer or killers may never be found.
Could Kingsley be the guy who did it? He has experience in trafficking people and knows how to cover his tracks. There is also a witness saying that Kingsley was involved. To what extent we may never know but nonetheless they point to him being there. You also can’t ignore the items found in his flat. They were very similar to what was found in the child’s stomach.
Unfortunately, this case also highlights the horrors of human trafficking. And while you may be thinking, “oh this case takes place overseas so it doesn’t effect me” or “I don’t see human trafficking so it doesn’t happen” you’ll be surprised how close to home human trafficking may be.
Here in the U.S. there are over 11,000 reported human trafficking cases and over 6,000 potential traffickers. In Virginia there have been 533 identified victims and 119 trafficking businesses. In New York 1079 victims have been identified and there are 153 trafficking businesses.
All this information comes from the Polaris Project that was founded in 2002. Their mission is to build a dataset that illuminates how human trafficking really works in real time, helping victims, and turning knowledge into targeted systems-level strategies to disrupt and prevent human trafficking. You can look up your own state to see how many cases have been reported at polarisproject.org
While it’s been 19 years since Adam now known as Patrick was a victim of human trafficking and possibly human sacrifice London officials haven’t given up. Patrick’s case remains open and police are actively trying to find answers as to what happened to him. Anyone with information can contact Crime-stoppers anonymously on 0800–555–111 or in England 101 or you can report online at cityoflondon.police.uk
Hopefully someone out there with information will read this and do the right thing and report to authorities.
Be sure to check out my podcast Leave The Lights On for episodes like this and more!
