Muti Murders

London, 21 September 2001. In the murky waters of the Thames, a passer-by discovers the lifeless body of a 5-year old African child. Its arms, legs and head have been removed. For Scotland Yard, this discovery sparked the most intensive and most unusual murder investigation ever conducted. Information from a unique police unit, specialising in occult crimes, lead investigators to deduce that the boy had been sacrificed in a ritual murder of a type which, up to this, had been practised predominantly in southern Africa. These mysterious “muti” murders are an extreme form of occult belief: the body parts or blood of a killed person are ingested as a “muti medicine”, in order to grant another person health, power, wealth or strength. We follow Scotland Yard’s investigation and investigate the links between the historical, religious and criminological backgrounds to ritual murder.