Is This Boy The Thames Torso Victim?

Police are believed to have finally identified the body. The Boy was poisoned with extract of carabar bean and had his throat slit

This is the five year old boy identified as Adam... whose headless and limbless body was found floating in the Thames ten years ago, it was claimed last night.

The five-year-old's identity has remained a mystery after he was smuggled into Britain and murdered in a voodoo-style ritual killing.

He was drugged with a black-magic potion and sacrificed before being thrown into the Thames, where his torso washed up next to the Globe Theatre in September 2001.

Daily Mail, 29th March 2011

These are REALLY serious statements, but how wrong could they be? Well, almost entirely wrong and if they are not wrong, they are inaccurate, as we shall show:

• "Police are believed to have finally identified the body"
  The police have not claimed to have identified the body - The journalist Ronke Phillips claimed to have had a witness previously classed as 'unreliable' by the police, identify the body. There is no proof other than her say-so that this picture is of the boy found in the Thames.
• "The Boy was poisoned with extract of carabar bean and had his throat slit"
  Because so much of the corpse was missing it was not possible for the police to categorically state what killed the boy (e.g. he may have died from bludgeoning) and there is no firm evidence to suggest that his throat had been slit. The throat slitting misdirection is of course a subconscious pandering to the claims of 'ritual killing'.

  Calabar Bean: The substance found in the remains of the boy's stomach was CaLabar Bean, not Carabar bean. Calabar has been used since time immemorial in West Africa, (where it grows wild), as a medicine for constipation, eye complaints, epilepsy and to quieten children. It is also used tribally, in megadoses, as an ordeal drug (to test guilty criminals). It is not possible to say whether or not the amount of Calabar found in the torso was sufficient for a fatal dose for a child but it is unlikely and it cannot categorically be listed as the cause of death. Its presence may have simply indicated an attempt to drug the boy (i.e. quieten him), not kill him.

  The possibility of accidental death has not been discussed properly in this case because of the early adoption of the Satanic Ritual Child Abuse motive but this could quite easily be a case where the accidental death of the child was followed by a criminal attempt to cover it up (dismembering bodies to hide their identity is a VERY common occurrence. Far more frequent than people might believe. As is dumping the bits in rivers in the forlorn hope they will never be found, as we show here).

  "Extracts of carabar bean would have left the child paralysed but conscious when his throat was cut..."
  Complete fabrication posited as proven fact to con readers into accepting the ritual motive. We have stated in detail elsewhere in this webpage our opinion that Scotland Yard were pushed into accepting the idea of a ritual killing motive because there was hardly any evidence to go on in the early days of the case and swift input from unreliable satan-hunters pushed them in the wrong direction. Now it is impossible for the Met to extricate itself from these connotations and these wild claims have become common currency in the media even though they are spurious. It is all a form of veiled racism. [More background on Calabar here:]

• "The five-year-old's identity has remained a mystery after he was smuggled into Britain and murdered in a voodoo-style ritual killing."
  There is no evidence that the boy had been smuggled into Britain.
  There is no incontrovertible evidence that he was murdered.
  There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of his death occurring as part of a Voodoo ritual. Voodooists do not murder people as part of their beliefs.
  
• "He was drugged with a black-magic potion and sacrificed before being thrown into the Thames..."
  Complete and utter speculation. Calabar bean is not a 'black-magic potion'. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the death of the victim was in any way sacrificial.

Revisiting Satan

But why has the Thames Torso case suddenly had the spotlight turned on it again a decade after the investigation went cold?

Because Ronke Phillips, the journalist from ITV's London Tonight programme who created the sensational documentary which revivified the ritual aspects of the Thames Torso, specialises in articles concerning the violent suffering of children and women. On 25th August 2009 Phillips was awarded the Frank Ochberg Fellowship by the Dart Center to throw more light on that idea.

Frank Ochberg is one of the main originators of the idea of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His work is often referred to and used to justify the existence of satanic ritual abuse by satan-hunters (example) and he does not exclude SRA from his definitions of PST (see here)

The Dart Center is an American organisation with HQs in Europe which cultivates journalists who specialise in reporting on violent crime. Their purpose is to enhance 'victimhood' and re-educate people via a spin on articles about violence which promotes their own psychotherapeutic view of its cause and effect which may involve acceptance of the idea of Multiple Personality Disorder and recovered memories; untested and unproven hypotheses which have been at the root of many false allegations of satanic ritual child abuse.

We are not suggesting that Ronke Phillips is a believer in SRA, what we are saying is that she may be predisposed to believe it. She is certainly predisposed to dramatise it as her exclusive two page special article for the Daily Mail [Saturday 9th April 2011] clearly showed.

Right from the start I'd always felt a close emotional connection to the case, but within weeks came a development that suddenly made that connection personal....Adam came from Nigeria....Well my parents came from Nigeria....and I had contacts in the Nigerian Police force. ...the knife used to dismember was meticulously sharpened between each incision and this shows that the dismemberment of the body was all part of the ritual...... Post mortem results reveal that he was still alive when his throat was cut; The poison in his intenstine is a paralysing agent not an anaesthetic. There's a real chance that Adam would have seen what was coming. Unable to move and unable to scream, Adam's last sight on earth would have been of a man approaching him and then the flash of a razor-sharp knife. Britain's first ritual kiling had just claimed its victim.

Of course we trust journalists to strive for objectivity and avoid imposing their own personal beliefs on their reporting. The French historian Muchembled wrote of the risk of analysing ideas without taking into account the analyser's own expectancies; this is the risk that 'the investigator will describe his own mental processes rather than the subject of his research' You can read more about the Dart Center here:

If the documentary had been professional in its approach then it might have contributed something to the Thames Torso debate but was it?

The documentary piece was broadcast at 6.59PM on Tuesday 29th March 2011 and the thrust of the story was that Ronke Phillips had tracked down a witness, Joyce Osiagede, in Nigeria. This witness had been shown a photograph which she identified as the boy victim in the Thames Torso case, named him as Ikpomwosa and confirmed that a group of people had 'used him for a ritual in the water.'

Sounds shockingly clear-cut - but it was nothing of the kind.

Joyce Osiagede was first discovered by the Metropolitan Police in 2002 when she was living in Glasgow. She applied for asylum using as a reason her husband's involvement in a murderous cult. Whether this was simply an excuse to gain entry or not is unclear though the police did locate, arrest and question her husband at length but did not bring any charges. Osiagede herself was later deported. However her claim, coming as it did in the middle of the high-profile Thames Torso case immediately got her into hot water.

"Social workers in Glasgow reported that they had found sinister voodoo objects (‘feathers’) in the home of an asylum seeker from West Africa. The woman was immediately arrested and rushed to London for questioning, but no link could be established to the murder, or indeed to any crime."
[Blood Rites - Jimmy Lee Shreeve,Random House 2006]

Osiagede appeared to give Scotland Yard the run-around for they later told reporters that 'She has not been a reliable witness.' She was later deported back to Nigeria.

The Crucial point is that Osiagede had given the name Ikpomwosa to detectives years before she gave it to Ronke Phillips; she had also told the police about his home village near Benin City, and the Met had asked local police to investigate. They did so but they could not find any family or person who knew him.

So, despite today's media shock-horror headlines about a sensational 'breakthrough' in the case the identifying evidence which Osiagede gave to Ronke Phillips was not new and neither was the photograph, It had actually been seized from Osiagede's Hamburg home by Scotland Yard officers years previously!

I think we are entitled to ask whether Phillips knew all this information when she pitched her sensational documentary and created this latest furore?

The programe contributed nothing crucially important but reworked old and unsubstantiated evidence.

In her Daily Mail article we discover that the original photograph showed Osiagede and her two daughters as well as the boy but they were cropped out of the picture used by the media. Surely this demands further elucidation?

According to Phillips, Osiagede was apparently looking after the boy but didn't say for whom. Osiagede left 'Adam' behind with some unspecified person called 'Bawa' when she applied with her two daughters for asylum in Britain. She brought her daughers with her but left Adam behind. When she later spoke to 'Bawa' he told her that Adam was dead. This is the sum total of her evidence, if it can be called that, none of which has been corroborated.

Because of War-zones and disease (AIDs etc) it is common practice in Africa for orphaned children to be fostered out to relatives or close friends some of whom live in Britain.

Orphans can also be used by asylum seekers in a dodge to gain a better chance of entry because Britain is naturally under a responsibility to take extra care of children and the family is usually given a place to stay rather than being detained in a hostel. The possibility of 'Adam' being used as in this way as a pawn by people traffickers (plain criminals not voodoo killers) appears to be completely overlooked by Ronke Phillips even though Osiagede's husband was convicted of people trafficking!

It apparently makes much more sense to imagine that the people traffickers were also voodoo killers who sacrifice children because of some unstated religious motive.

The bulk of the 'ritual evidence' provided in Phillips' Daily Mail piece came from an 'expert' on African Religion whose comments and conclusions the SAFF has had occasion to criticise before here yet Phillips treats his opinions as though they are holy writ. As she explains it, the 'key' evidence which points to a 'ritual killing' all seem to come from Hoskins and he is heavily quoted in her article:

He [Hoskins] said that the calabar bean was commonly used by African Witch Doctors for Voodoo... its presence in Adam's gut convinced Hoskins that this was something utterly horrific; a human sacrifice. 'Adam's body would have been drained of blood as an offering to whatever god his murderer believed in' said Hoskins ' The Gold flecks in his intenstine were used to make the sacrifice more appealing to that god'....Hoskins who has been instrumental in helping police with the case, said the precision of the cuts - the knife used was meticulously sharpened between each incision, shows that the dismemberment of the body was all part of the ritual.

Chilli-Pepper Killers?

In order to convince Mail readers that Voodoo Ritual Killings by Africans was not only possible but quite probably endemic in London Ronke Phillips then uses what became known as the Chilli-Pepper case as an illustration - Phillips writes;

' In 2005 three people originally from Angola were found guilty at the Old Baily of torturing an eight year old girl they thought was a witch. The cruelty started when a boy told his mother that the girl had been practising witchcraft. The girl was starved, cut with a knife and hit with a belt and shoes to 'beat the Devil out of her' She had chilli-peppers rubbed in her eyes and at one stage was put into a laundry bag to be thrown into the river. She was saved from drowning only when one of the perpetrators warned that they would be sent to prison if caught and they decided against it. This child, an orphan, was the victim of trafficking, like Adam - she was brought into the UK from Angola by her aunt who had passed her off as her daughter..... After the case, representatives from the Government got together with the police social services, African community leaders and church representatives to discuss ways of protecting young African children who endure horrendous treatment at the hands of bogus practitioners performing what they claim are exorcisms and other rituals. '

Phillips uses the term 'bogus practitioners' to try to keep the reader on-side but the people perpetrating the abuse were evangelical Christians not voodooists or muti practitioners. Many of the exorcisms occured in church.

The girl herself when giving evidence said she forgave her abusers because 'that is what I am taught to do at church'.

The 8 year old girl in question was not trafficked but adopted by her Aunt (one of the abusers) after her parents were killed in the Angolan Civil War.

The 'rituals' used on the girl were actually Christian Exorcisms. Because the girl was unwanted and troublesome this lead to physical abuse, beatings and mild torture at home over an 18 month period. Social Services became involved and actually returned the child back to her Aunt - but then took her into care a month later.

The most crucial un-fact here, which insinuates that throwing bodies into rivers is par for the course, is that the abused child was 'put into a laundry bag to be thrown into the river' and was saved from drowning only when 'one of the perpetrators warned that they would be sent to prison if caught'.

Transcripts of the trial show that this is another highly dramatised reworking of what really happened to suit the conclusions Phillips wants to put into readers' minds. The truth is given in a video recording of the 8 year old giving evidence in which she said:

"They told me to go in the bag. I put my legs in and my aunt said 'Go, Go'. I sat down.... My aunt lives on the third floor. They opened the door then my uncle came in then he said to my mum 'Let's just slap her' .. My mum said 'Let's throw her away' My uncle said 'We can't if we throw her away we're going to go to prison.'"

" ..It had been alleged that Kisanga and the aunt had planned to kill the child by drowning her - but the pair were cleared of conspiracy to murder. [June 4th 2005]"

Additionally the government's 'ritual abuse task force' which Phillips mentions was not a response to Voodoo rituals but was instead about the increasing and very dangerous phenomena of Christian Evangelists abusing and in some instances killing children who are accused of being witches. It resulted in the Stobart Report which we roundly criticised for missing the mark here but it had nothing to do with Muti or Voodoo sacrifices or increasing instances of child sacrifice by Black people.

If Ronke Phillips wants to do something for the Black community she should start another campaign to root out and prosecute child-abusing Christian Exorcists. We've made it easy for her as we've been tracking them for years here!

Expert Witness Contradicts Himself?

However on 5th June 2005 he wrote a special article for the Sunday Times about the Chilli-Pepper case and the mania for child exorcism. In this he makes clear that his approach to Witch Children and to the Thames Torso was quite different to the sentiments accorded him in Ronke Phillips' Daily Mail article. Unlike her he makes it clear that most Black parents from West Africa who believe in the old ways rarely smack their kids and dote on them.

I was an expert witness at the [chilli-pepper] trial. With many years’ experience in the Congo rainforest, I was first called in to help by the police investigating the murder of Adam, the torso of an African boy found near Tower bridge in 2001.

Soon after the [chilli-pepper] girl, then aged eight, was found in Hackney in 2003, the Metropolitan police child protection unit also sought my advice. The beliefs they were encountering were so strongly held, and so unlike anything they were used to, that they needed guidance.

The three defendants believed absolutely that the girl “had witchcraft” and tortured her...This appears to be part of a rising tide of abuse involving children, witchcraft and exorcism. I am working now on five more cases involving exorcism on African children suspected of witchcraft. Everywhere I go, the communities tell me there are hundreds of similar cases unknown to the authorities.

I appear to be witnessing the birth of a new and frightening religious phenomenon: child abuse masquerading as exorcism. Before last week’s case the Victoria Climbié atrocity in north London was the most high-profile of these tragedies. The bitter irony is that this is not traditional African belief at all. Most African people inhabit a universe in which the spirit world is much more immediate than in western culture. They take it for granted that the spirits of dead family intercede with the living. Sometimes these spirits are welcome and sometimes not.

Traditionally, if a child is affected, the parents consult a local healer, in the Congo known as a “nganga”, who makes charms to ward off the unwanted spirit. The nganga would not perform a violent exorcism. Africans are indulgent of their children and rarely even smack them.

Exorcism in Britain is a product of the fundamentalist Christian movements sweeping Africa and African communities worldwide. Sometimes these scenes are enacted in church, or what passes for church, by professional exorcists, often itinerants who wander from Christian splinter group to charismatic church, casting out demons from helpless and terrified children.

The point is this Ronke Phillips, did it not occur to you that with 'hundreds' of Witch-Child cases in London one of them might have been accidentally killed during an exorcism and Adam's death was in fact a result of Christian extremism and had nothing to do with Voodoism or Muti or any other tribal belief?

Apparently not, yet in her Daily Mail article Phillips mentions in passing that Osiagede's brother is a fundamentalist Christian Pastor who has acted as a go-between to arrange interviews for Phillips with Osiagede.

Keen observers of the SRA myth will have already begun to smell a rat for it was the uncorroborated shock-horror testimonies of Victim Imposters who claimed to have been satanically abused (see here)which helped fuel the 1988 Satanic Ritual Child Abuse Myth.

Almost every one of those victim imposters were born-again Christians whose horrific stories about satanic sacrifices rehabilitated them in their Christian community. Same old same old.

The storm of publicity surrounding Phillips' programme created another no-win situation for the Met who responded so:

" Detectives are to make a last-ditch attempt to interview a key witness before deciding whether to shelve their investigation into the River Thames torso murder."

A police source said: "It may be significant if it really is him because there may be others who knew him and can explain what happened to him, but Joyce has been spoken to several times and has not been a reliable witness."

[source]

The veracity of the statements of Osigiade, a deported asylum seeker whose husband was convicted of people-trafficking, is never questioned by Phillips even though there could be many criminal reasons why she might seek to confuse the authorities.

Instead the British public are shown the face of an angelic child whose uncomprehending eyes stare out at the reader, appealing for justice and tugging at the heart-strings of decent folk.

A child like that did die. Maybe not this child but one like him. We should do something to catch the perpetrator or perpetrators, but as we have pointed out for the last decade, ploughing the well-worn furrow of a voodoo ritual is likely to take us further from catching the people who are responsible, not closer. After ten years and millions of pounds spent, that, unfortunately, is exactly what has happened.

Meanwhile, the SRA motifs are etched once more into the minds of the impressionable British public.

Voodoo! - Rituals! - Human Sacrifice! - Black-magic! - Murdered Children! - Poisoned Potions! - Throat-slitting! Dismembering!

Even though there is not one shred of evidence to prove any of it. We clamour to realise our worst fears by giving cynical journalists who could do better the opportunity to twist our minds for us.

"One begins to wonder whether, if the police had invested as much time and resources on hunting down the criminals rather than chasing the phantom Voodoo Killers conjured up by the press, whether we would actually have Adam's murderers in prison by now."
Tony Rhodes, Director SAFF

BBC2's Black Britain ostracises Tribal Africans with 'racist' slur.

Thames Torso Case
Heralds Satan Myth TWO

Police and Media swallow their second dose of fundamentalist poison

You saw the BBC claim that African witch-doctors were chopping up children for use in satanic rituals  right here in London but it wasn't true. You saw the Metropolitan Police hold up a stained sheet on National news as evidence that Britain's first 'ritual killing'  had occurred , but it hadn't. You read in your tabloid newspapers that experts had pronounced that Britain was at the mercy of Black Muti ritual child-killers; but it was nothing of the kind....

and below we give the astonishing information which disproves it. This news behind the news contains the hard facts which you will not see anywhere else.

Thirteen years ago the same misdirections, created by fundamentalist Christians and picked up by the media and the police created the first Satanic Panic which destroyed the lives of 84 children and wasted 20 million pounds worth of taxpayers money on a five year long wild goose chase of epidemic proportions.

It was all much ado about nothing. A complete fabrication by an alliance of  non-mainstream therapists, social workers and fundamentalist trouble-makers who sought to evangelise our society through fear.  At that time the police went along with the flow but soon saw that the social workers who had instigated the mass-lifts were running a witch-hunt, not an investigation.

 The police were, at that time, the attenuating factor  in the hysteria and the SAFF consistently applauded their workmanlike approach to the Satanic Abuse accusations.  Today the situation is dangerously different. The Met. has fallen headlong into the trap set for them by the satan hunters and are actively pursuing phantom ritual killers.

Why will this lie not go away?  

Because the Blood Libel is a mediaeval creation which has wormed its way into the very fabric of our culture over centuries.  Today is no different to the Witch hunts of  ancient times.  Our Satan Hunters are from the very same stable.  Bigots who have no common-sense and little sense of proportion.  Coupled with these doom-laden Puritans , are the new intellectual priesthoods of the transpersonal psychology movement; therapists on-the-make who seek to invent new problems for which only they have the antidote. Their ambition is to gain eminence, government funding and backing from the child-scare industry which, despite it's constant bleating about lack of funds is so awash with money  it  can throw away millions of pounds of supposedly precious resources on advertising every year.  Click here for the SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE SPOT THE DIFFERENCE COMPETITIONan astounding blow-by-blow comparison of how the child scare industry promoted the myth in 1990. Marvel at how the very same people who started the 1990 Satan Scare are using the Thames Torso case today as a fulcrum to sucker-in the very authorities who cast them out as troublemakers earlier!

THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT.

The S.A.F.F. warned the police and the government of this country in 1989 that if they did not stamp out this dangerous and anti-social myth it would percolate through all levels of society and end up harming other sections of our community.  But they let the culprits in the child scare industry get away, they've reformed and are back with a vengeance.

BRITISH IMPERIALIST BROADCASTING CORPORATION?

The BBC set up the Black Britain series to promote and reflect the interests of the Black Community in the U.K. but it has apparently been taken over by pseudo-imperialists who have now slandered black tribal culture.  As if Black Britain was completely unaware of the stresses within the African versus Afro-Caribbean communities  they toed the 'imperialist' line and painted Black Africans who still hold their tribal beliefs, as potential ritualistic killers!  (Nobody's Child BBC2, April 2, 2002).  Many observers have noticed an inter-racial prejudice growing between Black Africans ( who are often portrayed as inferiors by unthinking people in the Afro-Carribean community)  yet Black Britain heaps even more condemnation upon Black African culture with an attack on  their native herbalists and healers (Muti).

So why did Black Britain decide to promote the Thames Torso case as a Black African Ritual Killing?  

Because there is a battle going on for the Soul of  South Africa.  It is an unequal war waged between rustic Black Africans who want to maintain and pursue the original tribal culture which has existed there for thousands of years, and an elite of westernised Black Africans who have not only swallowed the economic rules of the west, but have also converted to the Christian world view.   The Christian work ethic is intimately bound up with industrial societies and the development of the structure of western economics.  

 For hundreds of years White Christian missionaries have forced themselves upon Africa in an attempt to convert the 'heathens' there.  History testifies to the portrayal of Black Africans as 'ignorant heathen savages'   by some of  these missionaries.

 Today several generations of westernised Black Christians , indoctrinated with a desire to escape 'social disgrace' have  by and large ostracised  their own heritage,  (the way of  ackavoudoun, the muti, and other tribal cultures) as  somehow 'sinful', 'evil' or 'outdated'.  In their rush to be seen as 'intellectuals' they have conformed to the White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture. These 'new imperialists'  forget that it was the spiritual and herbal healers which have underpinned African societies for thousands of years and without which Africa would be much, much poorer.

Since democratisation the elite want's a 'new' South Africa and people who hold the old beliefs are considered  by many modernists to be anachronisms who are getting in the way.  It will come as no surprise to learn that most of the 'intellectuals' in power are Christians.  Even the great Nelson Mandela himself became a born-again Christian at the hands of that world-girdling missionary Billy Graham.   Now British Police are visiting South Africa hoping to rope the great man into this pantomime.  Just about anyone who is anyone in African society is now a Christian and the ones that aren't are Marxists who care even less for the old ways.  The point is, as we have shown  many times in the U.K.,  regular Christians have a blind spot about the activities of fanatical sectarian troublemakers who are often allowed to do their worst within the institutions of the state and create conflicts between minorities.  

What better way for these extremist absolutists to dispense with the 'old' Africa than to outcast original African spiritual beliefs using the same disinformatory techniques which Christian missionaries have employed in every other nation they have interfered with over the centuries?  This may be unpalatable for nominal Christians to admit but it is the truth. It is the purpose of fundamentalist missionaries to convert or suppress alternative beliefs. Most may do it subconsciously, some may do it paternally but others are fully conscious of  it and put the fight against 'heathenism' above everything else.  The Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth grew out of the activities of the last group.

Meanwhile the growing religious lunacy within the British Imperialist Broadcasting Corporation is forging ahead with a vicious, sectarian slant on the Thames Torso case by Radio 4's Sunday programme (17 March 2002) .  

'It's almost too horrific to contemplate - a young child is abducted and, quite possibly whilst he is still alive, has parts of his body systematically removed until he eventually dies, and his mutiIated body is thrown into the Thames....... Muti is a spiritualised form of folk-medicine prevalent in Southern Africa and it is rare, but not unheard of, for it to involve murder. '

Was this appalling script written by a wicked, irresponsible, evil sectarian whose main purpose is  to mislead the audience into incitement to religious hatred against non-Christian beliefs?  Quite possibly, because there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything of the kind occurred in the Thames Torso case - it is pure speculation.   The Police 'believe' it was a ritual killing only because they have nothing else to go on and they have been hi-jacked by  seasoned Satan Hunters.  There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the victim was 'abducted' . Nobody has reported this body missing.  The statement that the body was 'systematically' dismembered whilst the boy was alive is a criminal mis-statement based on nothing but the prejudices of the presenter contorting the story to pander to  the expectancies of his Christian audience.   The seemingly factual statement that ritual murder is a concomitant part of Muti is a lie. Even the suggestion that SOME Muti practitioners commit murder is completely unproven.  Yet it is now accepted as 'fact' by millions of listeners to this discredited programme.  

INTRODUCING SOUTH AFRICAN RITUAL ABUSE 'EXPERT' AND CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST COL. KOBUS JONKER :

Kobus Jonker is billed as an 'expert' in African ritual killing and cult crime and according to  the BBC's programme Black Britain his contribution to the Thames Torso case helped convince the Metropolitan police that it was a case of  Ritual Murder .   Virtually every policeman, psychologist and media person involved in this case has accepted Jonker's insistence that ritual sacrifice is a regular occurrence in South Africa and based on this 'fact'  they have deduced (completely in error) that the Thames Torso Killing is evidence of it being imported into the U.K. In fact in 8 years on the trail of ritual killers Jonker has not been able to find any ritual murders in South Africa to conclusively  prove his claims. We take his 'cases' apart below but before that we look at the rest of his police work in this area.

WHERE DID JONKERS' GET HIS 'EXPERTISE'?

Jonker started the Occult Related Crimes Squad in Pretoria in 1992 , just about the time the first wave of Satanic Ritual Abuse allegations propagated its way from America through Europe. Yes dear reader,  Jonker is nothing other than a South African equivalent of the Cult Cops who drove the SRA Myth in the U.S.A. and later here.  

Our contention is that rather than being at the leading edge of the investigation of  genuine ritual murders the South African experience of 'ritual murder' is the very same Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth which the British police threw out in 1994 returned to haunt us!  

Black Britain billed Jonker as the 'expert' who identified the Thames Torso case as a 'Muti' ritual killing when the Met. had exhausted rational enquiries and were at a  loss.   Jonker says :

'I was down at Cambridge on holiday and I read about it in the newspaper. I bought the Sun and read about this body found without arms and legs and without a head and it didn't sound strange to me because it was ordinary for us here in South Africa'.  

This is just a little bit misleading we feel seeing as how Boss Satan Hunter Valerie Sinason claims to have been working with Jonkers for 'years'. Anyhow, by this account Jonker confirmed to the British Police that the case fitted the African 'Muti' scenario. He was not alone in making claims of a ritual killing, our old friend  and obsessive Satanic Ritual Abuse exponent Valerie Sinason (see her long history of pursuing the Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth)  also had input according to claims she made to the Catholic Herald.  In fact some German news reports seemed to be saying that the British police had allowed her to examine the torso and she had concluded it 'displayed the 'characteristics of a ritual murder', although how she would know this never having met one before beats me.  Other seasoned Satan Hunters also had input.

On the other hand Jonker claims 8 years of practical experience in policing similar crimes in South Africa .  His expertise must have mightily convinced the Metropolitan Police for earlier this week they sent two detectives to South Africa to follow up the claims.  

Black Britain ended their scare mongering on the Thames Torso case with Jonker saying in no uncertain terms:

There's a muti guy operating in London - he's going to need body parts again. What I mean by that is that you won't find body parts in the river Thames. They will probably burn it or hide it away somewhere else'

The abiding impression from comments in the programme by Black community leaders as well as by Jonker, was that a form of absolute evil had been imported into the British Black community by uncivilised, criminal witch-doctor/s who are waiting to prey on the next victim.

The cards were stacked against innocent believers in the original tribal culture right from the start.  In our first cautionary piece on the Thames Torso we pointed out that most of the black community leaders asked to comment were Christians and like Black Britain, they were too religiously biased to see this myth as a subconscious, institutionalised racist attack on Black culture.   The ultimate idea being got across was that you can only trust a Black man if he is a Christian and that original tribal beliefs were essentially, if not wholly, counterfeit, evil and criminal.  

WHEN VOODOO ISN'T?

Just as in the first myth (1990) the terminology itself reveals the ignorance of the assertions. The British Police have declared in press conferences that they believe the Thames Torso case to have been a 'Voodoo' killing, yet there is no Voodoo in South Africa.   Voodoo is practised solely by the Yoruba tribe of Dahomey and neighbouring areas,  a thousand miles to the North West and out of the jurisdiction of Jonker and his kind.   Whatever cases the South African Police are investigating they are not Voodoo.  This shows that the British police are being lead by the nose.    

The 'cases' of  'ritual murder' in South Africa, claims Jonkers, are a result of Muti practices.  So Police press-releases, interviews and statements mixed Voodoo with Muti.  Until that is, black people who knew the truth (that Muti is the natural system of herbal healing used for hundreds of years by many hundreds of thousands of black South Africans  and has no sinister connotations) complained and the Police switched focus again back to Voodoo!   Have they ANY clue as to what this is all about?

THE OCCULT RELATED CRIME SQUAD

Kobus Jonker is not an objective secular expert, he is a Christian fundamentalist . His deputy, Policewoman Rietta Everton,  who makes up the rest of the grand-sounding Pretoria Occult Related Crime Squad is also a Christian fundamentalist.  Christians reading this may be irking by now so we will explain how different Jonker and Everton's  Christianity is from mainstream belief.

To set the scene we point out that over the door of the Pretoria Occult Crimes Squad  office is nailed a carved wooden plaque proclaiming  in Afrikaans

It roughly translates as 'for the blood of Jesus'.

Jonker is on record as saying:

'I believe the devil exists because I have seen things happen. I have seen a woman being attacked right in my presence by a demonic being, cuts just appearing on her arms and three sixes manifesting'

(Ed: For  the those not in the know, 666 is the number of 
 The Devil in The Book of  Revelation) 

'We hasten to ask.  If Jonker sees demonic beings and tattoos of 666 manifesting in front of his eyes, how much should the British Police rely on his opinions about Muti rituals?

Jonker's side-kick Rietta Everton is similarly absorbed. When asked whether she was frightened of the risks she might run in dealing with Satanists she replied.

'My protection is the blood of Jesus Christ. I am not afraid because the god I serve, Jesus Christ, is much more powerful than the devil will ever be so I do not need a  gun, no knife, no bullet proof jacket, no nothing, His power can protect you against these evil demons they send out to you. '

I hope you are getting the gist here, The Metropolitan Police seem to have based their conclusions about one of the most horrific cases of murder in modern times on the work  of  two bible-thumping sectarians who are primarily obsessed with fighting 'The Devil'.

It get's worse:

In October 2000 (cynically timed for maximum effect at Halloween) Channel 4s WITNESS series broadcast a pathetic programme entitled SATANIC CRIME . It focussed entirely upon the work of the Occult Related Crime Squad and starred Jonker and Everton.

In ride-alongs with the Desperate Duo the viewer heard about star cases of SATANIC crime which The Occult Related Crimes Squad had looked into since its inception.  Yes, folks, get that shift of emphasis.  Right up to October 2000  Jonkers was actively hunting down SATANISTS,  first and foremost. This was a no-qualms re-run of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth and had pip all to do with Muti.

The vast majority of the ORCS cases turned out to be  the usual stock unproven claims of cat /animal mutilation (see Satanic Animal Mutilation Scare [www.saff.UKHQ.co.uk/animalsa.htm])    for our expose of this strategy.

Back in his office Jonker showed the camera crew around his 'Black Museum' of supposedly satanic artifacts.  This was a manic mix of  tribal masks, pangas, clay pots, fly-whisks and unprepossessing brassware.  

Revealingly one wall was covered in  posters of heavy metal bands including Iron Maiden and Metal Head.  There was even a newspaper cutting of an advert for a Halloween Disco!  Is this the standard of evidence we are supposed to accept as proof of the existence of a tide of Satanic crimes sweeping south Africa?  

Viewers with more than half a brain-cell suddenly had a sense of deja-vu as it became obvious that Jonker and Everton were the South African equivalents of the fanatical Christian 'experts' who caused the Satan Scare in the U.K. in the early 1990s.  The fools at Black Britain and Witness had simply re-imported the age-old lies back into Britain and it had fooled the British Police into taking it for real.  

Jonker then described several very weak  and unconvincing incidents of claims of Satanic activity relating to New Agers and Goths which were a complete waste of time and which had nothing at all to do with Voodoo or Muti. To avoid complaints, Witness actually admitted in a voice over that none of these investigations resulted in any charges being brought against the 'suspects' Jonker questioned in this part of the film.  

So,when it all boiled down, there were only two clear criminal cases.  

CASE ONE:  Maurice Smith:  

Maurice Smith,  is a white  South African  who was billed as a Satanist and who is serving 30 years for killing a vagrant and then cutting his head off.  In relation to Jonker's claims about the Thames Torso case this was obviously very relevant, but as soon as we got into the fine detail things started to go pear shaped.

We were treated to a scene in Smith's prison cell, where Jonker was shown reading from a bible whilst Smith knelt and prayed before him.  Jonker then admitted proudly that he had converted Smith to Christianity in prison .  It was around this time that the gory details of Smith's 'ritual killing' had come forth.  The stories Smith told were added to the details which Jonker later put forward as being symptomatic of ritual killings generally.   Jonker says:

Normally they (satanists) use it (the decapitated skull) for the Altar.  Whether it is for drinking blood , whether it is for the initiation process, most of the time it is used for the initiation of young girls where they use the head on the Altar. It is very, very important to have a head because they believe that a person's soul has gone through it; and it's a big bonus if the victim was a Christian, it would have been a BIG bonus.'

Unfortunately for Jonker there is no known satanic rite or liturgy, modern or historical, which approximates this description. The whole idea is entirely novel.  

Later Jonker would expand on this 'indicator' in the Black Britain programme, confirming, in the Thames Torso case, that the Atlas Bone (the first vertebra of the neck which supports the skull) was the most important thing for Satanists to have because they believed the soul passed through it. 

In fact there is no mention in any satanic literature of the use of the Atlas bone. We must presume that it had a significance in relation to the Thames Torso killing which those not involved in the case are unaware of.  The victim's head has not yet been found.  We guess that the decapitation took the Atlas bone with it and investigators are trying to find some significance in that  as though it would confirm a 'ritual' killing.  We thoroughly disagree with Jonker about the significance of the Atlas bone. If we are correct and Jonker cannot bring any proof other than his opinion, it would mean that the victim's head was not 'carefully and surgically removed for a ritual purpose' as 'experts' have concluded, but simply hacked off  for the practical purpose of  rendering the body unidentifiable in a 'regular' murder.

SO HOW DO THE SIMILARITIES IN THE SMITH CASE AND THE THAMES TORSO CASE MEASURE UP?

Not much it would appear.  The facts of the Smith case do not bear out any of Jonker's pronouncements.

Although Smith claimed to be the head of a group of Satanists this was never corroborated.

Smith committed the murder with two friends, 18 and 17 year old brothers.  

After being sentenced to life Smith said that he felt guilty about killing the man but he was 'messed up' at the time and could not have committed the murder without his two accomplices.  

The murder events, corroborated by Smith and by his accomplices, occurred when the trio pounced on a vagrant and tried to slit his throat but could not do so.

The 18 year old then hit the victim on the head with a hammer but that also failed to kill him.

Only after the 17 year old had slashed at the side of the victim's neck with an axe did the vagrant finally die.  

The three murderers then left the body to wash the weapons in a nearby river and returned later to chop the corpses head off .

The crime came to light when Smith bragged about it to a 17 year old girl, who reported it to the police.  Strangely, the authorities gave immunity to the two accomplices after they gave evidence to incriminate Smith.   This was a terrible crime but it  had little if anything in common with the Thames Torso case.  It breaches all the 'indicators' Jonkers himself sets down.

1. They didn't drink any of the victim's blood.

2. They didn't use the skull on an altar for initiation rituals.

3. The Atlas Bone was unimportant/irrelevant.

4. As can be seen from their botched execution, they had never done it before.

5. They didn't dismember the rest of the body.

6. It was an isolated act.

7. The killers were white.

8. It did not involve Muti , it did not involve Voodoo and it did not have any tribal overtones.

9. It did not involve sacred religious implements or special paraphernalia, instead the killers used common weapons of violence.

10. There was no ritual at all involved!

Jonker sees this case as proving the existence of 'ritual killings' but, as you can see, the full facts actually disprove his novel decapitation theory.

CASE TWO:  The Baby Stealer:

 At first glance this case also appears to have many similarities or connections with the Thames Torso case.  In the Witness documentary Jonker is called to give his expertise on a case in Michells Plain. As we drive with him he explains that a woman satanist has attacked a 16 year old pregnant girl and cut the baby out of her, then tried to make off with the baby wrapped in a sheet and stuffed into a rucksack.  The inference is that the baby was wanted for sacrifice. Jonker says :

'We have a picture of this woman all dressed in black standing in front of a massive hexagram.'  

 When we get to the local police station Jonker is shown the rucksack and a white sheet which is covered in blood and which looks exactly like the sheet held up by Met.Detectives in the Thames Torso Case. One can imagine these pictures being shown to the met police and them making the connection.

Unfortunately it is also a red-herring.

1. The photograph of the woman Satanist dressed 'all in black' turns out to be a family snap taken in her garden in happier days. She was wearing a pretty black twin-set worn over a white blouse.  

2. There is no evidence that she was a Satanist, nor a voodooist, nor a Muti practitioner.

3. The 'massive hexagram' she is supposedly stood in front of turns out to be one which has been drawn onto the photograph with a marker pen. (note: A hexagram is not a Satanic symbol - it is a Judaic symbol  reflecting the powers of Jehova. Genuine Satanists often employ an inverted Pentagram but never a hexagram.  A hexagram is never used in Muti or Voodoo)

4. This is not a case of murder. The 16 year old is alive and well! She shows her scars which look more like a botched caesarian section than an attempt at murder.

5. The woman attacked the 16 year old with a large pair of ordinary scissors, not with a ritual implement.

6. The baby was not harmed or 'sacrificed' to muti, voodoo, satanism or anything else and is living happily back with her mother.

7. The 'woman satanist' turns out to be mentally ill and has been admitted to hospital.

So, superficial similarities with the Thames Torso case again turn out to be nonsense.  No Muti, no, killings, no sacrifice, no accomplices, no decapitation, no dismemberment, no satanic involvement, no ritual paraphernalia; just a lunatic woman making a violent attack.

To explain these inconsistencies Jonker says to camera that all occult crimes are caused by possession by the devil.  The inference is that  even if the woman is not a satanist, and mentally ill, she is possessed by the devil, which Jonker believes is the same thing anyway.

If you are starting to get a sense of deja-vu with the misinterpretation of these so-called satanic ritual crimes, that's because the British fundamentalist satan hunters used exactly the same strategy and worked up a similar pack of misdirections here in 1989 to try to convince the authorities that Satanic Ritual Abuse existed.  (See Truths and Tales [www.saff.UKHQ.co.uk/truthtal.htm])  Read it and weep that the British Police can be so moribund that they would actually choose to rely on 'evidence' of this calibre  in such a heinous case.

CELEBRATED CASES FALL SHORT

In Jonker and Everton's world of devils and demons these are the top celebrated cases. Things weren't always as sensational.  Mostly in their 9 years of satan hunting they run after any small allegation of wrong-doing.  In 1994 their stock in trade was 'satanic fraud' (whatever that is), mutilated cats, dogs and 'break-ins at '18 churches.'  When paranoid Christian parents find their kids listening to Heavy Metal music it becomes evidence of 'satanic activity' and Jonker steps in

' The children are currently being given pastoral counselling - their parents are very upset and shocked.'

We are beginning to realise that  in South Africa  Sweeny Todd isn't just rhyming slang for Flying Squad, it means God Squad too!

INHERENT RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE WITHIN THE MEDIA AND THE MET. ?

So why was Jonker accepted as an 'expert' in ritual killing by the Metropolitan police and the BBC?    The people who produced and directed Nobody's Child aught to do a little more research on their subject.   It is well known that Satanic Fever is coursing through South Africa.  It is an EXACT re-run in every detail, to the 'frighteners' which fundamentalists in the U.S.A exported to the U.K.  in 1990 and which the S.A.F.F. stopped dead in its tracks here despite the irresponsible activities of the British Media generally.  

The wave of anti-Satan hysteria which Christian fundamentalists worked-up prior to the Millennium was immense. Because of SAFF action to get at the truth its full force bypassed the U.K., but the Tsunami of Satanic Ritual Abuse engulfed Europe, particularly Scandinavia, Holland , Belgium and Denmark where, it will come as no surprise, the satan hunters scoured the casebooks of unsolved crimes until they found 'proof' of their prejudices by re-interpreting them in the light of their bigotry. Some of the leading Satan Hunters in those countries attended the Ritual Abuse Information Network Satan Seminar held last year in Reading .

The Ritual Abuse Information Network (RAIN) is a virtual 'secret society' of therapists and social workers who believe in Satanic Ritual Abuse, who organised the infamous Satan Seminars  of 1990/1991 but who, after being ostracised for their earlier mistakes, now forbid entry to anyone who does not believe in the SRA myth .

For the past decade RAIN have been building up friends in high places and have taken in key solicitors, barristers, police officers, civil servants, doctors, therapists, social workers, feminist lobbyists and others to form a phalanx of  'experts'  who are willing to pursue the myth and make it sound real to wet behind the ears newcomers. They have been awaiting just such a case as this and are making the most of it!

  Note well that in its 13 year history of pursuing the myth of Satanic Ritual Abuse RAIN has never before used the terminology or dialogue of  African Muti  or Voodoo; until the Thames Torso turned up.  Hence when RAIN speak of Muti, Voodoo or Black ritual Abuse they are in fact talking about SATANIC abuse, and their 'expertise' is based squarely on the Satanic Ritual Child Abuse Myth which caused this country so much trouble in the early 1990s.

RAIN is still very active and we understand that the British Police asked for their 'expertise' over the Thames Torso case, requesting a list of  'experts' who attended their 2001 Reading Satan Seminar!  This could end up being the biggest Satan Hoax ever.

Note well that the original Satan Scare overshot Catholic countries (because, as the Catholic Herald recently pointed out ,  this anti-social Satan Myth is an invention of  the Protestants!) but ended up in Africa where, courtesy of the hellfire and damnation preachers,  it has been doing its worst ever since.

From apocryphal stories about Proctor and Gamble's logo being supposedly Satanic (which first did the rounds in the U.S.A. during 1988) , to Cult Cops like Jonker,  South Africa is in a state of spiritual turmoil.  Anyone with any sense there knows it, which is why Ines Watson, writing for the Dispatch, criticised sensational programmes like Witness for scaremongering.  

' Following the piece on Satanism, and last weeks' rather ludicrous introduction to South Africa's own Nostradamus tonight we are being told about Witchcraft.'  In South Africa, this whole subject is certainly no laughing matter, with  MANY old women who have been accused of witchcraft still being murdered (by mobs) EVERY YEAR.... it is much easier to be sensationalist than to look for the explanations behind people's behaviour. '

Yes, this is the rational perspective from South Africa, but it is oh so easy for 'civilised' people in the West to fear the worst about 'savages' whose cultures we do not understand. It is absolutely ironic that the programme which promoted this subconsciously racist slur would be the BBC's Black Britain.  Had they done even a little bit of research they would have found out that Jonker's opinions were religiously prejudiced and ill-informed.  

S.A. POLICE BANNED JONKER FROM SATAN SEMINARS

How on earth did Black Britain miss the fact that in March 1999 senior police officers at National Police Headquarters in South Africa had had enough of  the Occult Related Crimes Unit.  SAPS bosses ruled that the South African constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, does not allow police officers to warn the public about the dangers of Satanism. Which is why they BANNED Jonker from continuing to give seminars on Satanism to Churches. What a turn up! The South African police seek to curtail the Occult Related Crimes Unit long before the British Police sucker into it.  

THE REAL HORROR OF THE CASE

However that is not the nub of this tale, the real horror is that there is a murderer on the loose in London who may be black or may be white and may indeed strike again and who only has to add something bizarre to his/her modus operandi to muddy the waters and have the Met running in circles (forgive the pun) looking for  Satanists and voodooists .  After all, the mere fact the Met has actually gone public with this sensational story about  voodoo killings  can be seen as a virtual admission that they have nothing else to go on and the murderer appears to have got away with killing this poor boy.

This situation has such extensive ramifications that in a proper democratic society questions should be asked in parliament. Unfortunately that's packed with evangelical Christians too (www.saff.UKHQ.co.uk/sinalt.htm)  so the British Public who do not read this SAFF article may never know the truth.

NEW FACTS UNDERMINE THE VOODOO IDEA

The infamous dirty sheet held up by the police at their press conferences and which was thought to have been used to wrap 'ritual candles' in was originally said by them to have been linked to the Thames Torso and be prima facie evidence of a ritual link but has been proven not to have anything to do with the killing - hence with the removal of this key piece of evidence there is no hard proof whatsoever  to suggest that this murder has anything at all to do with allegations of voodoo, muti, satanism or any other spirito-religious system save for the opinions of  'experts' like Jonker.

Early in their investigations, police thought seven half-burnt candles wrapped in a sheet found in the Thames near Battersea Power Station could hold the key to the murder. The name 'Adekoyejo Fola Adoye' was written on the sheet and carved in the candles. However, detectives found that Adoye is alive and well and living in New York. His London-based parents had performed a ceremony to celebrate the fact he was not killed in the 11 September terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. [source]

STOP PRESS: Jonker now found acting as 'expert in cult crime' in the South African Harmes School Killer case. See here:

Criminals  unfortunately occur in all walks of life.  SAFF research over the past 20 years has shown that paedophile Christian priests will abuse at least three children per week, year in year out.  This fact does not disqualify Christianity nor does it bring the body of Christian teachings into disrepute. Why then should a handful of  unconnected horrible murders by perpetrators in South Africa devalue the entire native African religious system or bring them under suspicion in Britain?  

Why?

PREJUDICE! 

That's why.

The people who produce Black Britain and gave a second push to this evil myth of  Ritual Murder by Black People should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves and will forever  carry this mark against their characters.   

THERE ARE REAL DANGERS TO SOCIETY:

However the danger in the Thames Torso  case is not just that it provides racists with the opportunity and justification to pursue their hateful prejudices, but that it heralds a completely new and very invidious departure in police investigating techniques.  

If the police can establish the novel idea that gruesome crimes for which they cannot fathom a motive are likely to be the result of  supernatural methods which are impossible to detect, it could become a  very convenient excuse in all 'mysterious' cases which they cannot immediately solve. 

Because of the inherent prejudice within the minds of  nominal Christians, it is the easiest thing in the world for barristers to manipulate sensational 'occult evidence' in court to activate latent prejudices within any jury and win a trial - hence any innocent Satanist or Muti practitioner who is brought to trial stands a less than even chance of being acquitted unless the defence are at liberty to select jurors by culture/religious belief (which they aren't).   The police will see a higher success rate with such prosecutions and may favour them to gain the best clear-up rates.    In short the fundamentalist agitators will have succeeded in replacing secular Justice for all sections of our society with what to all intents and purposes is an Ecclesiastical Court based on holy writ.

Ends:

John Freedom, Mortlake,  April 2002

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