When police discovered a torso in the river Thames on 21 September 2001, little did they think this case would take them across multiple countries in two continents and researching black magic.
The body was initially discovered by a walker who noticed it due to a pair of bright orange shorts. The body belonged to a little boy, between four and seven years old. The police named him ‘Adam’.
The arms and legs of Adam had been removed with surgical precision with extremely sharp knives. It was soon believed that this was part of a suspected West African sacrifice ritual.
Adam was poisoned prior to the removal of his limbs, and his blood was drained from a throat-slitting. When tested, his intestines were found to be full of strange plant extracts.
The body showed no signs of sexual abuse, and other than the removal of the limbs and head, there were no broken bones or other trauma. The cause of death was listed as a trauma to the neck.
Forensic testing ensued and established that Adam had only been in the UK for a matter of days before his murder and that he probably originated from a region in southwestern Nigeria, known as the birthplace of voodoo.
This finding led police to believe that Adam was trafficked to Britain specifically for a muti killing, a ritual sacrifice performed by a witchdoctor, that uses the body parts of young children to create medicinal concoctions called muti.
Who is Adam, and how did his torso end up in the Thames?
Police set about finding out more information about Adam and investigated the bright orange shorts he was wearing for clues. The shorts label was written in German and showed that they were manufactured by a brand called ‘Kids Company’. The autopsy found that the shorts were put on the body after death, probably within 24 hours of the killing.
In the immediate timeframe following the body’s discovery, police wanted to take an early initiative and called a press conference, despite the shocking nature of the crime. The Superintendent told the packed press room: “We’ve not Identified the child and consequently, we’ve taken the unprecedented step of giving him the name Adam. Until his family is identified, we will act as his family and his community will be the community of London.”
“I have not come across anything like this before in my career. This is a highly unusual case. We know very little about who this boy is, but I would like to reassure members of the London community that we will not rest until the person responsible has been apprehended.”
But, leads and ideas on catching the killer quickly dried up, and police were running out of avenues to go down. The only scrap of hope they had was that of the link to muti, so they called in a South African pathologist to perform a second autopsy. The pathologist confirmed this hunch and suggested that police look at the similarities of this case against a case from 1994, where a child’s body was also dismembered, dumped near a body of water and curiously, wrapped in an orange sheet. These similarities were shocking.
Was the case going cold?
But nothing more popped up for a couple of weeks until in October, officers combing the riverbed near where the torso was discovered turned up a bundle of seven ritualistic candles that had been half burned. They were wrapped in a cloth that had the name Adekoyejo Fola Adeyo printed several times over. Police almost immediately called another press conference revealing the name and the fact that they were investigating the case as a ritualistic killing in the hopes that the media would cause a frenzy and help provide any further information on the killing. Their plan had the desired effect of causing a storm, but no information came.
Following on from the discovery of the candles and cloth, police set about searching databases and school records for an Adekoyejo Fola Adeyo. Several days after the press conference, the police had a hit. Unfortunately for the case, but fortunately for the boy, Adekoyejo was found. He was alive and well, living in New York. He did have a sister in London, and although the police did question her, she admitted that she used the candles for a healing ceremony she carried out on behalf of her brother. Police dropped this line of investigation, confident that there was no correlation to the case of Adam.
The case had gone cold. It wasn’t until June 2002, over six months on from the discovery of the torso that the case stepped forward. After looking into the shorts in further detail, police discovered that they were one of just 820 pairs sold, and they came out of a German chain store. This indicated that Adam had spent some time in Germany on his route to the UK. This was a significant discovery that led to the first arrest in the case.
From Nigeria to Germany, to… Scotland?
Investigating officers were contacted by someone working for social services in Scotland. This social worker had been on a case involving a Nigerian lady named Joyce Osagiede. Osagiede had been involved in a few minor breaches of the peace, and social services were called in to take two children, aged four and six, from the care of Osagiede. Although its tough to see a link between Osagiede and Adam, the Torso in the Thames, it was her unusual argument as to why she needed to take the children back into her care that sparked curiosity.
She claimed that she needed the children to take part in a ritualistic ceremony. As expected, police investigating Adam’s case immediately responded, and found another link – child’s clothing with the Kids Company label, the same brand as the orange shorts found on Adam. They felt that this gave them grounds to arrest Osagiede on suspicion of murder. They brought her in for further questioning.
Finally, a breakthrough?
After months of little hope, police were getting somewhere towards solving this case. During the interview process, Osagiede told police how she’d lived in Germany with her husband until November 2001, before she fled to London with her two daughters, fearing for their wellbeing. She said her husband was the leader of a cult called “The Black Coat Eyes of the Devil Guru Maharaj” and he’d been involved with sacrifices of human children in the past, including her firstborn son in 1995. She even shared that he had been responsible for 10 child sacrifices in 1995 alone. His name, she said, is ‘Onojhigovie’. When asked by police to repeat the name, she said it was ‘Tony Onus’, and denied even saying the first name.
She did, however, deny any connection to Adam, and when forensics took swabs of her DNA and found she wasn’t related to the boy found in the Thames, they had nothing solid to link her to the case. She was therefore released.
By December 2002, she was deported back to Africa. Although frustrating for investigating officers, at least they had something to go on, specifically Osagiede’s husband and The Black Eyes of the Devil Guru Maharaj.
But the rest of 2002 passed with nothing new on the case. September 2002 marked the first anniversary of the discovery and police held a memorial service by the Thames and appealed for further information, with a £50,000 reward given for any piece of information given that helped the case.
Going back to the interviews with Osagiede, police searched two addresses she had given. A search of a flat in Lewisham, South London was fruitful; police discovered bones buried in the back garden, along with a machete and a videotape of Osagiede’s wedding to a man named ‘Samuel Onojhigovie’.
Further discoveries
Following on from the raid at the Lewisham address, police made a further raid on a property in London that Osagiede had resided. Police tracked down the landlord, a man by the name of Kingsley Ojo, and as they busted through the door, Ojo made his escape out of a window. Although the police narrowly missed out on Ojo, it did give them an opportunity to search the residence. Amongst many strange possessions, they found a videotape labeled ‘Rituals’. The video graphically showed a man being decapitated and sacrificed to quicken up the recovery of an elder. Several pouches of an unconfirmed powder were also found in the house.
The police tracked Ojo and didn’t have much trouble finding him – he was going about his usual life as if the raid had never happened. Police arrested him, and during questioning, Ojo denied any knowledge of Adam and Osagiede, even though her contact information was found on his phone.
Forensic results
As police were chasing the leads from the previous breakthroughs, two vital pieces of information came out of the laboratory researching Adam’s case.
The first result related to the plant material found in Adam. It was thought that this matter was destroyed and unusable, but the analysis requested by an expert led to finding the material contained quartz, gold, clay, bone material, and Calabar beans. This was majorly significant; this discovery confirmed that Adam was the victim of a sacrificial ritual. The concoction of these elements would be burnt, and the charcoal fed to the victim days before the ritual. It also allowed police to cross-reference the material with material taken from samples gathered from across regions in southern Nigeria, allowing them to pinpoint the specific region the cult was operating from. Finally, the mixture of materials also compared to the substances found in Ojo’s property.
The second set of results that came through that Autumn involved the geographical profiling of Adam’s bones, giving police information on the places the body had spent time in approaching his death. This examination showed that Adam had been in the UK for around 4 weeks before he was killed, and showed evidence of time spent in Germany. It also pinpointed when Adam was born – The city of Benin, Nigeria. This was the city that Osagiede, Ojo, and Onojhigovie were from, and where Ojo’s powder originated.
The case was coming together.
The launch of Operation Maxim
In January 2003 police launched Operation Maxim. Ojo was followed and bugged. Onojhigovie was tracked to Ireland and promptly arrested, and 21 other arrests occurred across the city of London. Eventually, Ojo was also arrested in a child brothel in Italy. Osagiede was also tracked down in Nigeria and she too followed the same route. Ojo was charged with a string of crimes and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Although Operation Maxim broke up a ring of child trafficking, nothing was related back to Adam, and the case once again went quiet.
The burial
In August 2005, almost four years after his discovery, Adam’s body was buried by police in an unmarked grave, not a mile away from where he was discovered. It was a quiet ceremony with no media coverage, attended by a few of the officers working closely on the case.
Ojo’s release
In 2007 Ojo was granted early release on the basis that he would work undercover with the police. He led them to many dead ends, before slipping away, heading back to Africa.
And since then, the case has remained the same. It’s almost 20 years since the Torso in the Thames was discovered in his bright orange shorts, and other than confirming that his killing was for a ritualistic sacrifice, it seems as though no justice will come for Adam.