Pastor beheads teenage prostitute for money ritual

Pastor in charge of Cannan Temple of Cherubim and Seraphim Church, Olusegun Otaru, yesterday told journalists that he beheaded a commercial sex worker to make money ritual.

Otaru and his accomplices allegedly murdered the prostitute, Miss Mercy Moses, last week in Adavi Local Government Area of Kogi State. The suspect and other suspected criminals were paraded at the state Police Command Headquarters in Lokoja. Otaru and three others were said to have lured the 19-year old Mercy to his church premises where she was repeatedly raped before she was strangled to death by one of the accomplices, now at large.

The pastor said the level of poverty in his life and all efforts to reverse the trend, which had proved abortive, informed his decision to confide in his accomplices. Otaru said he had planned to raise N2.5 million before he was arrested last Wednesday.

The pastor, who said he was pastoring about 20 people presently in his church, said Mercy’s killing was his third attempt to make money ritual. In the earlier attempts, the 45-year-old pastor, who doubles as a prophet, said he got his raw materials from burial ground by exhuming bodies. But, according to him, all the attempts failed.

He said: “When I could no longer contend with the suffering associated with the poverty, I approached my friends, Samuel Oluwasegun and Abdumumuni Yakubu, who told me that only money ritual could reverse the trend.” Otaru said two of them went to an hotel and pretended they wanted to engage the services of a prostitute. According to him, with the consent of the hotel manager, they got Mercy to follow them to the church premises where she was raped before being murdered.

The pastor also said that one of them had sex with the dead body, with the belief that no weapon would have any effect on him, before she was dismembered while her parts were buried on the church altar.

He also disclosed that the victim’s fingers were roasted, made into pepper soup concoction which they were eating every day before they were arrested.

The state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Williams Aya, said that three other suspected ritual killers were apprehended after a tip off. The PPRO added that the command had recovered the victim’s head, legs, body and hands from the suspects.

He said the three suspects connected with the crime arrested had confessed to the crime. According to him, the police are on the trail of the fourth suspect, who was on the run.