Arrests in 'Adam' Torso Case

Police are 'tantalizingly close' to breakthrough in Thames torso murder

August 24, 2003 -- Detectives investigating the voodoo killing of "Adam", the boy whose decapitated and limbless torso was found floating in the Thames two years ago, believe that they are "tantalizingly close" to charging someone in connection with his murder. The victim, called 'Adam' by officers after he was found floating in the river near Tower Bridge in September 2001, was between age four and six. Thirteen days later, a bundle of seven candles wrapped in a sheet with someone's name written on it is retrieved from the Thames.

This lead goes nowhere for Commander Baker and Detective Inspector O'Reilly (the case's two leading officers) but it does result in them heading to Africa to further investigate ritual murder. Police suspect that he was a victim of ritual killing after being brought over from Nigeria. Detectives think Adam was aged between four and six, and was alive when he arrived in London.

Officers with the Metropolitan Police serious crime group say that recent developments have left them hopeful they can bring a charge of conspiracy to murder against one of the people they say helped bring the boy into Britain. "We have almost got our fingers on this person," a senior detective said last week. "There is a lot of circumstantial evidence against this individual and we are almost in a position to issue charges."

The development comes as The Telegraph today publishes the first pictures of Joyce Osagiede, the Nigerian woman police believe could hold the key to the murder of the boy. In a potential blow to British detectives, however, Ms Osagiede has now disappeared from her family's one-story tin-roofed home in Benin City, where she had been living since her deportation as a bogus asylum seeker from Britain last November.

Officers traveled to the African country after forensic tests showed he was from the area around Benin City. All of the people arrested in July were from the same part of Nigeria and police compared their DNA with Adam's to see if any are related to him. Painstaking forensic tests of Adam's bones, skin, and gut contents revealed he grew up somewhere in West Africa and his recent diet had included a 'ritual potion.' The 'potion' consisted of animal bone, quartz, and clay with traces of gold, The dead boy, whose throat had been slit, had lived most of his life in or near Benin City in Nigeria and was brought to London shortly before his horrific death. Detectives believe he was killed in some sort of gruesome "black magic" ceremony -- called Muti -- and his torso dumped in the Thames.

Police officers from Operation Maxim, the multi-agency unit tasked with targeting organized criminals who are in the UK illegally, arrested 21 people in raids across London in July. Nine addresses in east and southeast London were searched by nearly 200 Metropolitan Police officers, and ten men and eleven women were held by police. Most of those arrested were for immigration offences, identity fraud and passport forgery. A baby belonging to one of the women was also taken into care while the woman was being questioned.

Detective Inspector Will O'Reilly, leading the Adam inquiry, said: "We've uncovered what we believe is a criminal network concentrating on people trafficking. Police also said there was evidence of other children having been at the raided addresses. "We are convinced that we are on to a group, or individuals, that were involved in trafficking Adam into the country," O'Reilly said.

They are also trying to trace the witch doctor who brewed a potion containing bone fragments which the boy swallowed before he died. The fragments have been submitted to New York's medical examiner who will use techniques developed to identify September 11 victims.

"Interesting substances" found in the raids will also be compared with the potion found in Adam's intestines. Police think some of the items confiscated could be linked to rituals. Metropolitan Police Commander Andy Baker said: "Some of the items would raise a few eyebrows -- they look like some element of ritualism is involved." Among the items found was the skull of an animal which had a nail driven through it.

Police are also looking at their connection with a Nigerian man arrested in Dublin earlier this month in connection with the investigation. Sam Onogigovie, 37, was held under an extradition warrant issued by police in Germany, where he has been convicted of crimes linked to human trafficking. Detectives from Scotland Yard also questioned him about the murder of Adam.

Before being sent back to Nigeria, Joyce Osagiede was interviewed by detectives and admitted buying an identical pair of orange shorts to the ones found on Adam's torso. They are only available from Woolworth's in Germany, where she lived for 10 years before making her way to Britain, just a few weeks after the torso was found.

She claimed asylum, telling immigration officers she was fleeing her estranged husband, Sam Onojhighovie, who she claimed had been responsible for 10 ritual killings over a one-year period and was linked to a sinister Nigerian cult accused in the past of a voodoo slaying. Onojhighovie is currently in prison in Dublin awaiting extradition to Germany where he was convicted in his absence of people-trafficking and fraud and sentenced to seven years in jail.

Osagiede made the claims to immigration officials before her deportation from London to Nigeria last year that she and her husband had been setting up branches linked to a Nigerian cult known as 'One Love Family,' and that her husband was responsible for a series of black magic killings of the children of devotees. She also said that she and other female disciples were forced to undergo ritual circumcision. Her brother has since said that she told him that she made these claims only as a ruse to win asylum in Britain.

The Metropolitan Police had asked their Nigerian counterparts to keep track of Osagiede as she remains a key figure in their inquiries. The Telegraph established last week, however, that the Nigerian police no longer knew her whereabouts. Her brother, Victor Imade Agho, revealed that Ms Osagiede disappeared 18 days ago, after receiving a threatening visit from a woman from her estranged husband's home region, and believed to be a member of the same cult.

The cult's "living perfect master," a 55-year-old Nigerian who adopted the trappings of an Indian holy man and the title Satguru Maharajji after a visit to London in 1980, claims that he was aware of the allegations from media reports but dismissed them as "negative propaganda" and an attempt to "misrepresent the father of all creation". He was not sure whether Ms Osagiede or Onijhighovie were among his followers. "In any case," he added, "if someone reads The Sunday Telegraph and then commits armed robbery, is The Sunday Telegraph responsible for his crime?"

It is not the first time that the cult leader has faced claims that are at odds with his public calls for world peace. In 2000 he was acquitted of murdering a Ghanaian who had alleged that his sister was being held by the One Love Family against her will.

Then a Nigerian magazine published the account last year of a former devotee who claimed that the cult undertook a "blood initiation rite" in which five participants died. "In most cases, when somebody dies, they cut open his chest, remove the heart, the liver and the kidney," the man was quoted as saying. "They use it to prepare a concoction and people drink it during the initiations."

The Maharajji, who dismissed such claims as smears, told me that he and his followers were vegetarians so allegations that they devoured human organs were baseless. "It is natural that I should face some opposition when I bring the truth," he said. He claimed that Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, Adam, Abraham, and John the Baptist were among earlier "divine masters" but that he was the first "living perfect master." He also claims that Nigeria is the "New Holy Land of the Universe" and his ashram at Ibadan, 80 miles north of Lagos, its highest spiritual center.

Agho said his sister had been driven to the point of a mental breakdown after reports about the case appeared in Nigerian newspapers three weeks ago, featuring the allegations she had made about her husband. "She kept repeating that she never said those things," said Agho. "She said that she had not seen Sam since he left her, but she was sure he would never have killed anyone."

Agho proudly displayed the family photo albums containing photographs of his sister, who is now 32, proudly posing next to a white Mercedes and a white Audi while standing outside a well-maintained apartment block, an indication that the couple enjoyed a comfortable life in Germany.

Agho said his sister disappeared after a visit from a woman called Mercy who said that people had telephoned her from London angered by her reported remarks. There were no witnesses to the exchange, but her relatives said Ms Osagiede spent the following night "weeping and hollering" and she disappeared the next day, apparently without taking a change of clothes with her. When her brother tried to report her missing to the local Nigerian police, they told him that she would probably come home soon.

Det. Insp. Will O'Reilly, in charge of the inquiry into Adam's death, thanked The Telegraph for informing him of her disappearance. He said: "We will investigate her whereabouts and we will contact the Nigerian authorities."

-- Edited and excerpted from the articles by Philip Sherwell in Benin City and Daniel Foggo for Telegraph UK, by Henry Everingham in SMH August 28, 2003, Telegraph UK August 31, 2003, and BBC NEWS:July 29, 2003

See "" for Ritualism Details

Previous related article in Criminal Minds Archive:

Ritual killings 'pushing double figures'

Investigation into Deaths of Four Children in One Family Over Five Years

August 29, 2003 Victoria, Australia -- At least three authorities were aware almost three years ago that multiple children had died in one family, but the Department of Human Services failed to respond. Documents show the coroner's office told the department about each death, asking if any of the children was known to protective services.

"We have checked the coroner's records and found that the form for some reason is not filled in," a department spokeswoman said. "It must have been some administrative error." They claim that they weren't told that all the children were from the same family until the fourth child had died.

The State Coroner found that the first two deaths were caused by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS); the third by a rare medical condition; and the fourth, which is still being investigated. Coroners Court records show that after a second child from the family died in 2000, a doctor from Geelong Hospital, a pathologist, and police each noted it was the family's second loss from sudden infant death syndrome.

After the second child's death at nine weeks in November 2000, a police report to the coroner said: "Both mother and father present and visibly upset. Second SIDS death to these parents. Baby taken by ambulance to Geelong Hospital and SIDS care workers notified."

The pathologist's report said the second SIDS death "raised the spectre of non-accidental" death, but said both could be the result of a cardiac abnormality. "This cannot be diagnosed at post-mortem but examination of the other siblings in this family, together with parents, would be justified to exclude the possibility."

It is not known whether the examinations were carried out.

After the third death in July last year, a police report to the coroner said: "(The family) has previously had two children who have died from SIDS-related illness." A pathologist's report also noted the family had suffered two SIDS deaths.

After the third death in the family last year -- a three-month-old boy who died from Klebsiella septicaemia -- documents from police and the pathologist again show that authorities were aware of multiple deaths in the family. The third child died during a supermarket shopping trip. Police told the coroner that the mother had been shopping with her three children when the infant started to cry. As she returned to the car, the baby stopped breathing, and despite the mother using CPR, he died.

The homicide squad is investigating links between the deaths. The coroner's office told the department about each death, asking if any of the children were known to protective services. But the department said it was not notified the children were from the same family until last April.

That was when the fourth child was found dead in her bedroom. The ambulance was called to the house the night before after being told she had fallen off the table, but an autopsy was reportedly unable to establish the cause of her death.

The department acted recently to remove the surviving eldest child, a seven-year-old boy, from the family home. A Childrens Court magistrate yesterday granted an interim accommodation order for the child to be extended to September 18.

The family yesterday released a statement, saying its overriding concern was that their son be left alone during the investigations.

Former Family Court judge John Fogarty yesterday said the Bracks Government had been repeatedly warned by welfare leaders and recent departmental reports that the system was failing to protect children.

Premier Steve Bracks yesterday asked police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon, the coroner, and the Department of Human Services to inquire into the adequacy of the system for reporting child deaths and make recommendations on improving the child protection system, including reporting of deaths between agencies, by September 25. The inquiry will also examine the department's failure to respond to the coroner's queries about whether one child was known to child protective services. -- Edited and excerpted from full articles by Padraic Murphy, Ewin Hannan, and Caroline Milburn at The Age, The Herald Sun, The Bendigo Advertiser, The Age, and the Herald Sun

What Happens When a Child Dies

When a child dies unexpectedly, the first person of authority contacted by the family is usually a police officer or a doctor, who is obliged to report the death to the coroner. If the pathologist conducting the autopsy finds that the child has died of natural causes, a death certificate is completed and the matter ends.

But if the pathologist cannot find the cause of death or is suspicious about the circumstances of it, the coroner holds an inquiry.

The coroner usually investigates cases of suspected sudden infant death syndrome. If the coroner finds no individual has caused the death, the matter may end, but if the findings imply culpability, the findings are sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP then decides if criminal charges should be laid.

If a child dies while involved with the state's child protection service, the Department of Human Services is obliged to investigate the service's handling of the case. The Victorian Child Death Review Committee in its annual report to Parliament then independently assesses each report. The committee recommends how to improve the child protection system.

The Age revealed this week that the system's front line - the investigation of child abuse - was struggling to deal with a record 37,926 notifications of suspected abuse last year. Some of the 32 children who died last year after being referred to child protection, had their cases closed when they were first reported to authorities, without further inquiry. -- The Age