Ritual killing

DEFINITION: Murder of a human being as part of a religious, spiritual, or medicinal rite.

SIGNIFICANCE: Although ritual killings are rare in the developed nations of the modern world, some traditional medicinal practices in the developing world still call for such practices, and occasional cases related to new religious movements are seen in developed nations. Behavioral profiling is a vital tool to aid investigators in the identification and classification of ritual killing cases. Through the analysis of patterned behaviors and common characteristics found among victims and offenders, law-enforcement investigators can better understand the features of the ritual killing phenomenon.

Ritual killing has been practiced by members of diverse civilizations for thousands of years. Various cultures throughout history have called for human sacrifices as ways to appease deities or ancestral spirits, to attain the support of supernatural forces for worldly gains, or to achieve spiritual transcendence. Such homicides are symbolic acts, and they are carried out in particular ways prescribed by cultural traditions.

Mexico’s Aztec people are most infamous for engaging in ritual slaughter, but numerous other ancient cultures prescribed rites to attain material or spiritual ends. In precolonial Borneo, headhunting was believed to ensure fertility and bountiful harvests. In Scandinavia, enslaved women were occasionally killed so that they could become the wives of recently deceased Viking warriors in the afterlife of Valhalla. Although the Old Testament itself contains numerous references to ancient forms of human sacrifice, the Abrahamic religions’ condemnation of human sacrifice has been an important element in the widespread decline of the practice.

In modern times, nearly all religions and cultures have renounced human sacrifice. The few religious adherents who have remained faithful to or recently adopted human sacrifice are considered marginal and not representative of their larger communities.

African Medical Murder

Throughout much of southern and western Africa, a type of ritual killing occurs that adherents believe to be medicinal, although the practice is maintained and perpetuated by traditional religious beliefs. Muti killing, a term derived from the Zulu word for medicine, is ritual murder in which the vital organs of live victims are removed to be used in sacred medicines created by traditional healers.

Various traditional African medicines are made from animal organs or plants, but the most powerful medicine is considered to be that made from human remains, as the luck of others can be taken and transferred. Adherents believe that such medicine will bring wealth, success, power, or fertility and ward off drought, illness, and myriad other evils. It is desirable for the organs to be removed from conscious victims, as screams of pain are thought to strengthen the potency of the medicine. As they are necessary for the removal of organs from live individuals, knives are the exclusive weapon of choice. The most common body parts removed are the eyes, head, tongue, genitalia, hands, heart, and breasts. As the explicit purpose is merely to obtain the organs, murder is not a necessary part of the ritual, although the victims nearly always die as a result. Rarely is any effort made to conceal these homicides; the bodies of victims are typically left out in the open near sources of running water.

The most desirable victims are healthy and young, as this is thought to create the most potency. They are most frequently poor, young, indigenous males. Typically, at least three parties are involved in the ritual: the traditional healer, the client seeking assistance from the healer, and the assassin. The killing is set in motion when the client, usually a member of a traditional community, visits a healer for help in achieving some type of personal gain. The client is usually not involved in the murder and purchases the medicine afterward for a substantial fee. The healer prescribes a specific medicine and approaches a third party or parties to commit the crime; the murder is almost never carried out by the healer. Assassins are most likely to be males over thirty years old from lower socioeconomic backgrounds; they typically work together in small teams. The killers, motivated by profit, dedication to tradition, or both, often know their victims and may even be related to them.

In modern times, Nigeria has continued to experience ritual killings. Experts say these are often performed by or for individuals who believe ritual killings can help them attain financial gain. Many of those paying for ritual charms such as handkerchiefs soaked in the blood of murder victims in 2004 were politicians.

Ritual Killing in Developed Nations

Law-enforcement personnel in developed nations are often unfamiliar with the practices of ritual killing and thus do not know how to go about investigating crimes that appear to include elements of ritual. In some cases, the nature of bodily dismemberment may allow investigators to determine whether a ritual killing has taken place, and profiling and victimology (study of victims’ behavior) may be instrumental in their assessment of possible suspects.

Although ritual homicide and are rare in developed nations, some marginal religious movements have engaged in these practices to accomplish material or spiritual ends. In 1997, for example, thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate religious cult committed mass suicide because they believed that they would be transported to a “level beyond human” as a result. It may be argued that the 1978 deaths of more than nine hundred members of Jim Jones’s People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, constituted a form of ritual killing, as some of those who died committed suicide willingly by ingesting a poisoned fruit-flavored drink and others were forced to drink the liquid or were shot.

Ritual killings in the name of demoniac spirits have also occurred in the West. One such case involved murders committed by a drug-dealing so-called black magic cult in Matamoros, Mexico, in 1989. Charismatic leader Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo and his followers committed numerous ritual murders intended to enable them to become invincible and evade law-enforcement authorities. Body parts of the group’s victims were found floating in a ceremonial pot along with dead spiders and scorpions.

In the United States, the concept of ritual killing is perhaps most commonly associated with satanic cults, which have been alleged to have established organized networks that engage in ceremonies in which victims (often children) are brainwashed, abused, and killed. However, claims of such widespread ritual abuse remain unsubstantiated, and most authorities believe that descriptions of so-called satanic cults have been greatly exaggerated. Although an organization known as the Church of Satan exists, its theology rejects both animal and human sacrifice.

Bibliography

Adinkrah, Mensah. “Ritual Homicides in Contemporary Ghana.” International Journal of Comparative Criminology 5 (2005): 29-59.

Emeh, Ikechukwu Eke, Samual Ichaba Atabo, and Joy Iyeumbe Ogar. "Quest for Wealth and the Upsurge in Ritual Killings Among Nigerian Youths: A Policy and Morality Check." International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 10, no. 10, 2023, pp. 80-89, doi: 272-65-7741-11-10106. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Green, Miranda. Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age and Roman Europe. Charleston, S.C.: Tempus, 2002.

Labuschagne, Gerard. “Features and Investigative Implications of Muti Murder in South Africa.” Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling 1 (2004): 191-206.

Obadare, Ebenezer. "Ritual Killings in Nigeria Reflect Mounting Desperation for Wealth and Security Amid Creeping Collapse of Law and Order." Council on Foreign Relations Blog, 14 Feb. 2022, www.cfr.org/blog/ritual-killings-nigeria-reflect-mounting-desperation-wealth-and-security-amid-creeping. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Richardson, James T., Joel Best, and David G. Bromley, eds. The Satanism Scare. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991.