“Adam” (Torso in the Thames)
On 21st September 2001, a man discovered the dismembered remains of a young boy floating in the River Thames. Investigators would begin the lengthy process of identifying the victim, who was missing his head and limbs, and was found wearing only a pair of bright orange shorts…
It was a mild day on Friday 21st September 2001, as Aiden Winter walked home from his IT consultancy job right in the heart of London. It was around 4pm, and the streets were filled with people likely eager to get home and start their weekend. The 32-year-old Aiden crossed over Tower Bridge when he saw something in the water of the River Thames. Curious, he leaned over the railing to investigate further. At first he thought it was a barrel, but when he looked closer, he realised it was a human torso floating in the water.
This is the story of Adam, the torso in the Thames.
The Metropolitan Police started their investigation immediately under the codename Operation Swalcliffe. The autopsy determined that the torso belonged to a black child that was approximately five to seven years old. He was wearing a pair of bright orange shorts and nothing else. The head, arms and legs had been precisely and expertly removed, and it was likely done after death. The boy’s throat had been cut, but there were no other injuries. Traces of cough medicine were found in his stomach and small intestine, alongside other unknown contents which were sent off for analysis.
According to the pathologist Mark Heath, the body was in the water within 24 hours after death and had been in the water up to 10 days. With the help of Oceanographers, the police concluded that the body was placed into the water somewhere between Chiswick in West London and the Thames Barrier in East London, an approximately 12 mile radius. Due to the large distance, the police were unable to find any CCTV that helped assist them with their investigation.
The officers started calling the child Adam so that he had a name until they could identify him. In a press conference, the Commander Andy Baker said, “His name is Adam, and until we can identify him and his family, we will act as his family.” They used the media to encourage witnesses or people with information to come forward. However, due to the recent attack in America on 9/11, there was limited coverage or interest in the story. Instead, the police looked at reports of missing children to see if one of them could be Adam, but none of the children that had been reported missing matched up, and DNA ruled them out completely.
The Thames was searched again, and they found seven half-burned candles that were wrapped in a white sheet. The name Adekoya Jo Fola Adeoye was written on the sheet and carved onto the candles. The investigators looked into whether or not this could be Adam’s real name. When asked about the candles, Detective Inspector Will O'Reilly said, “We know with some certainty that the candles and the sheet form part of a ritualistic ceremony. We can't say if they are connected, but at the moment we are linking them." However, they later found out that the sheets and candles were a part of a prayer done as a celebration by the parents of a man of that name, who was in New York during the 9/11 attacks and had survived. They were found to have nothing to do with the death of Adam, so the only piece of evidence they investigators to work with was the pair of orange shorts that the young victim was found wearing. Investigators found that the label was for a company called Kids & Company, which was made in China but sold in Woolworths in Germany and Austria. The shorts were traced back to a batch of 820 pairs in the size for ages 5 to 7, which had been sold in 320 stores around Germany.
Because of Adam’s connection to Germany, the Met police began to look outside of the UK. They teamed up with the police in The Netherlands, after an unidentified white girl was found dismembered on a beach in Nulde. They looked into whether there was any connection between Adam and the girl, but the girl was eventually identified as four-year-old Rowena Rikkers and her stepfather was charged with her murder. Rowena’s mother and stepfather had fled to Spain, but they were tracked down and jailed. No link to the murder of Adam was found.
By the end of 2001, police were looking at the possibility of Adam’s death being a result of some sort of ritual. They requested assistance from the Investigative Psychology Unit of the South African Police Service, who specialised in serious crimes such as serial murder, rape and cases that seemed unusual or bizarre. The Unit educated the British police on ‘Muti’, a South African term that is associated with healing and medicine.
The word muti derives from the Zulu word for tree, umu thi. The most common form of muti is potions that are made from herbs and plants to cure basic ailments, such as headaches or stomach complaints. For more complex issues, some people believe that animal parts are needed in the potions. Animals such as crocodiles, various birds and monkeys have been used in muti. However, the idea of muti has been distorted by a small number of individuals, who believe that human body parts are needed to help heal people or, in some cases, give people magical powers.
According to this small contingent of believers, people are born with a certain amount of luck, with young children having not used up all of their luck. According to an article by Anthony Minaar in 2001, muti is used to obtain extra luck or fortune by speaking to a healer, or sangoma, who then determines what is needed. This is where muti murders are used, and young children are seen by some as being particularly potent. Body parts can be used in the foundations of new buildings to bring good fortune or buried in the soil to ensure a successful harvest. Some sangomas believe that body parts taken from live victims are more powerful as a result of their screams.
However, after analysing the information about Adam’s case, the Investigative Psychology Unit determined it was likely not a muti murder because his limbs were removed but his genitals and organs were still intact, which is uncommon in muti. The removal of limbs may have been as a result of delaying identification, rather than as a result of muti. The team put the Met police in contact with a sangoma called Credo Mutwa to provide his insights, although some sources state that the police sought out Mutwa themselves. According to Mutwa, Adam’s death was as a result of a ritual sacrifice common in West Africa and that the use of the bright orange shorts was significant. The colour was so Adam’s soul could be resurrected. However, sangoma Credo Mutwa has been widely considered a conman and a fraudster, with David Chidester in 2005 pointing out that he was universally regarded as a fraud throughout South Africa.
With the information provided by Investigative Psychology Unit of the South African Police Service, and that of Mutwa, the Met police returned to London still considering it to be as a result of a muti murder, despite experts stating otherwise.
On the 29th January 2002, they had Dr Hendrik Scholtz travel from South Africa to do a second post-mortem examination. Dr Sholtz concluded that the death was consistent with a muti killing. In a press conference, he said, “It is my opinion that the nature of the discovery of the body, features of the external examination including the nature of the wounds, clothing and mechanism of death are consistent with those of a ritual homicide as practised in Africa.” He also concluded that Adam was likely beheaded whilst still alive, stating “screams of the victim are believed to strengthen the power of the muti”. This cemented in the eyes of the Met police that Adam’s death was a result of a muti murder and therefore focussed their efforts on South Africa. In the same press conference, a reward of £50,000 for information was offered to encourage people to come forward.
In February, the police asked for assistance from British criminologist Richard Hoskins, who was also an expert of African rituals. They provided him with a case file on Adam’s murder and asked for his opinion. However, according to Hoskins’ book, The Boy in the River, he told the police that he believed that it wasn’t a result of a muti murder because the cuts were too precise and limbs removed after death, rather than whilst Adam was still alive, and his genitals and organs were still intact. Quote, “the more I look into this, the more certain I am that it isn’t a South African muti murder. And if I’m right, it’s likely that Adam doesn’t come from there either.” He also told the police that Adam being circumcised was rare in most countries in Africa, and so it could help them narrow down where he was from. After further analysis, Hoskins concluded that Adam’s murder was a result of a human sacrifice. Muti involved the harvesting of parts, whereas a sacrifice focussed on the flowing of the blood. The killers would cut the victim’s throat in a precise manner, and then the flood was spilled onto the ground or an altar for a deity. In some cases, the blood was drunk out of a severed head. This suggested West Africa, where human sacrifices were illegal but more common. Hoskins narrowed it down to Nigeria, likely Yoruba because Yoruban men are commonly circumcised shortly after birth like Adam was. Many Yorubans believe in a God called Olorun, also called Olodumare. Deities known as Orishas help bridge the gap between earth and Olorun, with many Yorubans believing that there are hundreds of Orisha. All Orishas require sacrifice that focussed on the Orisha’s favourite colour, plant and food. Human offerings weren’t encouraged, but there were still a minority of people within the religion that allegedly dealt with human sacrifices.
According to Hoskins, the British police were uncomfortable with the term sacrifice, with some referring to it as ‘the s-word’, and instead carried on their enquiries into muti and South Africa. With no new evidence, and the appeals to the public not leading to anything concrete, a small group of Metropolitan police officers travelled to South Africa to request help from former South African President Nelson Mandela. Mandela appealed for information about Adam’s identity on television, which was broadcast all over Africa in various languages. Despite this wide spread appeal, the police left the country with no new leads.
It wasn’t until a few months later, in July, that police finally had more evidence to work with.
Professor Kenneth Pye, a forensic geologist at the Royal Holloway in London, had analysed three parts of Adam’s bones using isotope analysis. Strontium isotopes pass from rocks to the soil and water, which then gets absorbed by animals and plant life. This is then passed onto humans, and so unique isotopes are found in human bones based on the geology and environment of where they were living. Professor Pye had developed tests that could reveal where a person had lived over the last ten years of their life, and so it would help the police determine where Adam, being only five to seven years old, had grown up. The issue that Pye had was that there was ample data for the Western part of the world, but the data for everyone else wasn’t a complete picture. The results of the tests showed that Adam wasn’t born in the UK or anywhere in Europe. Pye originally tested for South Africa, but that wasn’t a match. They then looked at West Africa, which was confirmed as a match. This was narrowed down even further to three potential areas: Between Kano and Jos, the highlands towards Cameroon and Yoruba. According to Pye, the evidence pointed to Yoruba being the most likely area, but he requested soil, food and animal samples in Yoruba to help conclusively prove it. A small team of investigators went to Nigeria to gain the requested samples. They also tested the carbon levels in Adam’s bones, which showed that he could not have spent more than six months in the UK, with the estimated time being a lot shorter.
Nick Branch, a pollen archaeologist, also concluded that the pollen found in Adam’s small intestine could not have come from anywhere other than British or North Western European trees, specifically the Alder Tree. The fact that it was found in the small intestine shows that he must have been in the UK for at least three days prior to his death. This meant that the police now knew that Adam had been in the UK anywhere between three days and six months.
Tests for what else was found in the intestines hadn’t been analysed at this point. Hoskins wanted to find out what it was because Adam would have likely been fed a potion to do with the ritual, which would help narrow down who performed the sacrifice and what deity it was for, and so the analyses were ordered.
In the meantime, by a stroke of luck, the police learned of a potential lead. Social services in Glasgow had contacted the police after social workers reported finding suspicious items in a Nigerian woman’s home, such as a jar filled with chicken feathers. According to the social workers, when her two young children were removed from her home and placed into care, the woman claimed that she needed them back urgently so she could perform a ritual with them. Her name was Joyce Osagiede.
There is very little information known about Joyce. It is believed that she was born in Nigeria, although on her immigration documents she had stated that she was from Sierra Leone. The police believed that this was done due a common belief that people from Sierra Leone were more likely to be granted a visa into the UK. On a fake passport found with her picture on but under a false name, Joyce’s date of birth was listed as 14/6/71, but there is no proof that this was her actual birth date.
They’d questioned Joyce on two occasions in July at her home in Glasgow, and both times she gave permission for them to search the flat. An officer, Jo Veale, had noticed a letter bearing a London address on the second visit. She had memorised it and the police went to visit the address, which housed a Nigerian woman and her family. The woman denied knowing Joyce but did recognise her picture. According to the woman, Joyce had appeared at her door and asked to see a priest. When pressed for more details, the woman remembered Joyce saying that she’d recently been in Germany. The same country where Adam’s shorts were from. Because of this, they decided to raid Joyce’s home to see if she’d hidden anything of importance from them. As a result of the search, they found hidden clothing that had washing instructions in German with the tag saying Kids & Company, which matched the tag found on Adam’s shorts. Some news outlets reported that orange shorts were also found there that matched Adam’s, but this is false. When questioned about them, Joyce said that she’d bought them from Woolworths in Germany. Joyce was then arrested.
According to her interview, Joyce said that she’d lived with her estranged husband in Germany until mid 2001. She’d then fled to London with her daughters because she was concerned for their safety. When pressed, she said that her husband was the head of a cult named “The Black Coat Eyes of the Devil Guru Maharaj”, who she claimed were involved with human sacrifices. Joyce said that her husband was personally responsible for the deaths of 10 children, including their firstborn child back in 1995. The police tried to question her further about her husband, but she was unwilling to give them specific details. She originally said his name was Onojhighovie but wrote down the name Tony Onus when given a pen and asked to spell it. After that, she refused to say anymore. She denied saying the name Onojhighovie and changed her story to her coming straight to Britain from Lagos by ship. According to the police, Joyce seemed afraid. She also denied knowing Adam and said that she hadn’t taken care of any young boys whilst living in Germany. DNA proved that she wasn’t related to Adam, and she was released from custody. The police were eager to track her estranged husband, but they had little information to go on.
The one interesting piece of information that Joyce mentioned was the cult “The Black Coat Eyes of the Devil Guru Maharaj”. The cult was based on a movement in India called Divine Light Mission, which was founded by Guru Hans Ji Maharaj in the 1960s. The Divine Light Mission, or DLM, focussed on finding inner peace through meditation. The members meditated twice a day and attended meetings. It has been referred to as a mix between Hindu teachings and Western philosophy. At its core, DLM was underpinned by 5 commandments: Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today, constantly meditate and remember the Holy Name, leave no room for doubt in the mind, never delay attending satsang, and always have faith in God. The ‘Black Coat Eyes of the Devil Guru Maharaj’ was a group that initially called themselves DLM to legitimise their cause. The cult was started by a man called Muhammed Saib. Saib was born in Ghana in the 1950s but moved to Yorubaland when he was in his twenties. Saib travelled to London illegally in 1975, after enrolling on a course at the Institute of Marketing. It was whilst in London that he encountered the teachings of Maharaj Ji and the DLM. Saib then returned to Nigeria in 1980 where he declared himself the rightful Maharaj Ji. Most Nigerians ignored him, but a small number of followers (mostly Yoruban) believed him. The group was ostracised from DLM International, and so Saib set up his own group, with interchangeable names such as Divine Light Mission, Elan Vital and variations on the theme of Guru Maharaj, such as The Black Coat Eyes of the Devil Guru Maharaj. The most common name was One Love Family. Muhammed Saib was called Guru, Black Jesus and Perfect Living Master by his followers. Their sacred colour was bright orange, with Saib wearing orange robes. They had almost 30 cult compounds around Nigeria, and there had been complaints and rumours of torture and murders, including a Ghanaian man in 1991 after he went to one to find his sister who had been allegedly held captive for years. The sacred colour being orange, and the location being near Adam’s birthplace Yorubaland made for an interesting connection to the cult. However, the police still had nothing concrete, and they couldn’t get any other information out of Joyce Osagiede.
In September 2002, a year after Adam’s body was found, a memorial service took place at the Great London Authority offices near the Southwark Bridge. The police hoped that the service helped to remind the public about the brutal crime. A reminder was given of the £50,000 reward as well. Once the service was over, police officers cast a wreath into the Thames in memory of Adam.
In September of 2002, one year after the discovery of Adam's body, an analysis was performed on the contents of his intestines, and some intriguing discoveries were made.
There were clay pellets found, which likely came from a river in West Africa. There was also ground up bone, although it was impossible to determine it was animal or human in nature, as well as some unknown plant material. The traces of carbon and tin suggested that the mixture was burned down in a container first. According to Hoskins, mixtures before human sacrifices were ground up together before being burned down in a container on an open flame before being given to the victim, usually between 24 to 48 hours before death. Due to the lumpy texture of the potion, it was theorised that cough medicine had been used to help the potion go down easier rather than due to Adam being unwell.
In mid-October 2002, Joyce’s two London flats – one in South London and one in the East End – were searched for potential evidence. At the East End address, they found that the occupant whose name was on the lease was a man called Kingsley Ojo, but he was gone and nothing else was found at the address that was significant.
But at South London flat, a more significant discovery was found. The police found forged travel documents and tickets, as well as Nigerian and British passports. One was in the name of Omovbiye Joyce Airhiabere, with the date of birth being 14/6/71. The picture inside was of Joyce. The names on the other documents that were found were names not recognised by the police. They also found a video titled ‘Wedding of Joyce Airhiabere to Samuel Onojhighovie’ that was dated February 1997. In the wedding video, a live goat was sacrificed on an altar in an offering to the gods.
The police recognised the name Onojhighovie as the one Joyce had originally said in her interview, and so they wondered if this was her estranged husband. They found nothing in the British police records, and so they searched for the name Samuel Onojhighovie in The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation database, also known as Europol. They discovered that he was a wanted man in Germany, where he lived under the alias of Ibrahim Kadade. He was wanted for a number of offences, including forgery of documents and human trafficking. He had jumped bail and had been sentenced in his absence to seven years.
According to German detectives, Joyce had also lived under an alias in Hamburg whilst living there: Bintu Kadade. With this new information, the Met police began to look into Samuel Onojhighovie. He was a man who, according to his estranged wife, practiced human sacrifices on children, the cult he was a part of used the colour bright orange in their worship, and he’d lived in the country where Adam’s orange shorts had been purchased. Add this to his charges of human trafficking, and it seemed as though the police were finally getting closer to finding out what had happened to Adam. Research into both the names Samuel Onojhighovie and Ibrahim Kadade led nowhere. If Samuel was in the UK still, he was likely living under another alias.
The investigation was dealt another blow in December 2002 when the Home Office concluded that Joyce Osagiede had not followed the official asylum channels and so was to be deported whilst her two daughters remained in care. The Met police argued that she was an important part of their investigation and so needed to stay in the UK until their enquiries were finished, but the Home Office gave them two choices: either Joyce was to be charged with a crime or be deported. The police didn’t have any evidence that Joyce had committed a crime, and so they had to watch as their only witness was deported back to Nigeria.
The timing for Joyce’s deportation could not have been worse. Within days of her deportation, German social services revealed more information about Joyce, or Bintu Kadade. She’d arrived in Germany via Italy in 1992, a year after her partner Ibrahim Kadade, the alias of Samuel Onojhighovie. Their two daughters had been born in Germany in 1997 and 1999. Her first child, a son, was reported dead in 1995, which matched the year that Joyce had said her son was sacrificed by Samuel. The two daughters had briefly attended a nursery near Hamburg in September 2001. British Detectives went to Germany to interview nursery staff. They’d only been at the nursery for a few weeks, but a local German woman called Frau Dibbern had fostered both girls for a while. Frau Dibbern and her family all remembered one detail about the oldest daughter when they’d last seen her in September 2001: she’d been wearing bright orange shorts. This tangible link to Adam was vital to the police, but they had no way of questioning Joyce about it now that she was in Nigeria. All they could do was continue to look for her estranged husband and any other potential leads.
A few weeks later, towards the end of 2002, police were finally able to track down Kingsley Ojo, the man whose name had been on the lease at Joyce’s East End address. Apparently Ojo had fled the flat as soon as Joyce had been arrested. He had then stayed at Quested Court, Brett Road, in the East end under the name of Mousa Kamara. The officers arrived at the address with a search warrant, but the flat was empty. However, the stove was still warm and there were unwashed dishes in the sink, as well as the bedroom window wide open – Ojo had likely fled moments before. The flat was searched and a video labelled ‘Ritual’ was found. The video involved the beheading of a man as a sacrificial offering to a Yoruban deity to help speed up the recovery of an elder from a serious illness. The police couldn’t determine if the video was real or fake. Various forged documents and two small packets of an unknown sandy substance were also found, which were sent off for analysis.
After further enquiries, they were finally able to track Ojo down and he was arrested. Very little is known about Kingsley Ojo, other than he allegedly came to London from Nigeria in 1997 and was born sometime in 1969 or 1970. During his interview with the police, Ojo claimed that another person rented the bedroom out and that the items found weren’t his. He also claimed to have never heard of Joyce, despite her name and number being stored in his phone. They determined that Kingsley Ojo was from Benin City in Yoruba. Ojo was eventually released without charge but was secretly followed by the police to see if his movements lead to more information. They had microphones fitted in his car, phone and flat.
Also in December 2002, the results for the analysis on the samples that were collected in Yoruba came back, which concluded that Adam had spent most of his short life living in the suburbs of Benin City, Yoruba. The same city that Joyce Osagiede, Samuel Onojhighovie and Kingsley Ojo were from. The two small packages found in Ojo’s flat were found to be incredibly similar to the contents found in Adam’s intestine, with the quartz grains found being from the same river in Nigeria.
2003 started off with more useful information for the investigators.
Operation Maxim, a human trafficking surveillance unit, had been following Kingsley Ojo. They were both pleased and also amazed that Ojo immediately went back to his illegal activities, despite recently being arrested by the police. He would talk openly on the phone about what he was doing, and he was regularly visiting various other criminals at their addresses. It helped the unit pinpoint who was a part of the large scale human trafficking ring involving Nigeria, Germany and the UK.
The Met police also had another bit of luck. After showing a Nigerian man, who had been arrested on unrelated charges, a photo of Samuel Onojhighovie, he was able to give the police the information they desperately needed: the wanted man was living in Dublin under an alias. The investigators contacted the Irish Garda. They were able to match the details with a man who had come to Ireland in 2001. Samuel had come in to the country with a woman he claimed was his wife, who was heavily pregnant at the time. She gave birth to their child in Cork, Ireland in autumn 2001. Although the police now knew where Samuel lived, they decided to use surveillance on him first to see if they could find out anything incriminating.
Now that they’d tracked down both Kingsley Ojo and Samuel Onojhighovie, the investigators wanted to speak to Joyce Osagiede again. In February 2003, they requested that Joyce be returned to the UK for questioning. The Nigerian authorities were unable to track Joyce down, and so a small team of British police officers travelled to Benin City to assist. They then heard from the British High Commission in Lagos that a woman using the surname Osagiede wanted an appointment to request news of her children, who were still in Scotland. When Joyce arrived for the appointment, the Nigerian police arrested her and took her in for questioning.
According to her statement, she’d been a member of the Guru Maharaj cult from the years 1994 to 2002, and she left because there was ‘too much evil’. She said that the cult practiced juju, or black sorcery, but was too afraid to give any more details. There were devotees in Germany and London, and her husband was a messiah in the cult and she’d been an organiser. When she repeated her claim that he’d murdered children, police asked about Adam. Originally she said “I do not know anything about the murder of the child in London”, but then later stated “I know the child was murdered in Lewisham. I don’t know where the head and limbs are. I think the boy was sacrificed because his parents had been brainwashed by Maharaj Ji’s teachings.”
Joyce also confirmed that she’d bought the orange shorts from Germany. When asked where the shorts were now, she said she’d given them to her friend before saying she must have left them in her flat in Germany. Her former flat in Germany had been searched, and by luck it hadn’t been rented to anyone else and so was exactly as she’d left it. No shorts were found. When this was mentioned to her, she said she must have taken them with her to Glasgow then, but none were found there either. She couldn’t explain where they were and why Adam had shorts that matched. However, Joyce could not be charged because she had committed no crimes in Nigeria, and her only crime in the UK that could be proven had to do with immigration, which she’d already been deported for. After the interview, Joyce was released once again. The British police were disappointed but felt as though the pieces were starting to come together.
Despite this, nothing new happened in the case for another four months, until June of 2003. In a joint operation, the Met police and the Irish Garda raided the Dublin home of Samuel Onojhighovie and the woman claiming to be his wife. Their home was search extensively, although there are no reports of whether anything of importance was found. During the police interview, Samuel denied everything. He claimed to not know Kingsley Ojo, despite having the man’s details in his diary. Strangely, Samuel also denied knowing Joyce Osagiede, even though they were married. The German authorities began extradition proceedings.
Two weeks later, over 200 police officers took part in a series of raids on 9 addresses across London. 21 people were arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, immigration and passport offences – 10 men and 11 women. Two more were arrested the next day. 19 of them were found to have direct links to Benin City in Nigeria. The premises were all searched and hundreds of suspicious items were taken, including various herbs, animal bones with nails through them and dried organic matter. Most were eventually deported after questioning, with some being charged and sent to prison for varying time periods.
At the same time, Kingsley Ojo was picked up by a joint force of Italian and British police after he was followed to an underage brothel in Brescia, Italy. This brothel acted as a transit hub for youngsters he helped smuggle into Europe. Some young people got no further than the brothel and worked there as sex slaves. Ojo was flown back to London and taken to the Shooters Hill police station.
Two Nigerian girls, who’d been freed as a result of the raids, talked about their experience in Benin City. According to the girls, they’d been initiated into a cult in a chamber covered in bright orange cloth, where they’d been forced to drink potions and told that they’d die if they ever broke the vow of secrecy to which they had been sworn. They had to obey whatever they were told, which involved sexual slavery. The police learned that Ojo was high up in the human trafficking ring, and they hoped to prove that he was the man who had trafficked Adam into the UK almost three years prior.
The final piece of evidence for the case in 2003 was the analysis of the previously unidentified plant material found in Adam’s small intestine. They had originally concluded that it wasn’t possible to identify it, but the material was sent to another expert. They discovered that it was the Calabar bean, also known as the ordeal bean. Native to Africa, the Calabar bean is highly poisonous. The fact that it was found in Adam’s small intestine suggested that he’d ingested it and survived, and therefore must have been a small dosage. In small doses, the bean was found to completely paralyse the victim. It kept them conscious but unable to move. It showed that the perpetrators of this brutal crime wanted Adam to be completely helpless.
Despite making all of this progress, the case would end up stalling for the better part of a year.
On the 10th July 2004, Kingsley Ojo’s trial started. However, there was a major issue. Despite the case taking over a year to get to trial, the various departments and police force’s involvements led to communication issues, and some court documents hadn’t been served until a week before the trial was due to start. This meant that it was too late for certain things to be admitted into evidence. Both the police and the prosecution were concerned that the trial would end with an acquittal. Despite this, Ojo’s solicitors believed that the Crown had enough to prosecute and therefore offered a deal. Kingsley Ojo would plead guilty to some charges if others were dropped. The prosecution agreed. Trafficking and immigration charges were eventually read out in court, with Ojo pleading guilty. He was sentenced to four and a half years, with the judge recommending that he be deported back to Nigeria after his sentence. This was a victory, and a major player in a human trafficking ring was behind bars, and yet they were still no closer to solving Adam’s murder.
The case went cold. The police couldn’t bring Joyce Osagiede to the UK, and all they had on Samuel Onojhighovie was Joyce’s word that he was part of a cult that killed children. They had no concrete evidence that he had anything to do with Adam’s death.
In August 2005, the police buried Adam in an unmarked grave in Southwark cemetery, approximately one mile from where his body was found in the Thames almost four years prior. This service wasn’t announced to the media, and instead only prominent members of the investigation were invited.
In 2007, the police decided to secure an early release for Kingsley Ojo. They believed that he wasn’t involved in Adam’s death, but they suspected he’d been involved in the trafficking and so likely knew the killers. Ojo agreed to assist by being undercover, but he gave them false information for over a year before disappearing in Africa, never to be seen by the police again.
A year later, in the spring of 2008, Nigerian police agreed to track down Joyce Osagiede. Under caution, she admitted that she’d looked after the boy known as Adam and that she’d dressed him in orange shorts that had belonged to one of her daughters. According to author Richard Hoskins, the result of this interview led to a potential new witness in Germany, but this lead didn’t go anywhere. There is no public record of what this lead was.
Ronke Phillips, an ITV news reporter and journalist of Nigerian descent, said that at around this time, she was contacted by Joyce’s brother, Victor, who said that his sister was willing to be interviewed. According to an article written by her in April 2011, Phillips travelled to Lagos, Nigeria with British detectives to speak to Joyce. However, when they arrived they were told by the Nigerian police that Joyce was suffering from severe mental health problems and that they advised against any interviews. Both Phillips and the British police returned to the UK disappointed. According to Ronke Phillips, she believed that Joyce Osagiede was the key to solving Adam’s murder.
Later in 2011, Phillips was able to track down Joyce via her brother once again. Joyce was in poor physical and mental health, with her brother Victor looking after her. In the interview with Ronke Phillips, Joyce confessed to bringing Adam from Germany to the UK after the boy had stayed with her for a time. She said that his name was Ikpomwosa and that she’d given him to a man she called Bawa. When Joyce had travelled to London a few weeks later, she was told that the boy was dead. Joyce said, “They used him for a ritual in the water”. Joyce had a photograph of a black boy standing next to her two daughters. In the photo, the young boy had large brown eyes and was wearing a blue buttoned up jacket. When asked if the boy in the photo was Adam, Joyce said that it was.
This interview reignited the media’s interest in the case, and they began to claim that the mystery of Adam’s identity had been solved. The Met police were interested in the new information, but they were unwilling to believe Joyce and her confession because of her poor mental health and the fact that she was heavily medicated at the time of the interview.
It is unknown if the police looked into this lead or not, but over a year later, in 2013, the BBC interviewed Joyce again. Nick Chalmers, the Detective Chief Inspector that had worked on Adam’s case but had since retired, travelled with the BBC for the interview. Joyce now said that Adam’s real name was Patrick Erhabor and that he was not the boy in the photograph. According to Joyce, the name Ikponmwosa and saying the photograph was Adam had just been a "misunderstanding". The photograph was actually of a boy called Danny, who was the son of a former friend of Joyce’s. She also revealed that the man she’d called Bawa was actually Kingsley Ojo, the human trafficker that had been convicted back in 2004. Nick Chalmers, quote “I've always suspected his involvement and now, for the very first time, we have a witness who is saying categorically Kingsley was involved". Kingsley Ojo was later found in Nigeria but refused to speak to the BBC or British police.
After the interview, the BBC tracked down ‘Danny’ in Germany, who confirmed that the photograph was of him as a child. They also visited Joyce’s old flat near Hamburg, where an unnamed man said that he remembered seeing Adam there. "The boy was running around, he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and he was jumping all over this couch that they had and drawing on it," he said in an interview with the BBC.
And that was the most recent update on the murder of Adam. Since 2013, there has been no movement in the investigation. Joyce Osagiede hasn’t revealed any more information, and nothing has been said about Kingsley Ojo. There have been no updates on Sam Onojhighovie since Germany extradited him, although presumably he served his seven years in prison for human trafficking and other offences.
Most tragically of all, there have been no signs that Adam’s identity has been discovered. It is unknown if his name really was Patrick Erhabor or that that was another piece of false information given to the police by Joyce.
It is likely that the Met police are still continuing their enquiries, although there have been no official updates from them in over seven years. The police seem to know who it was, or at least some of the people involved, but the lack of evidence has hindered them. That and the major players living across the world has made their investigation a lot more difficult.
The investigation itself has led to a number of criticisms of the police. One of the biggest criticisms was their focus on South Africa, despite numerous experts saying that Adam and the culprits were likely from West Africa. This blinkered approach led to the use of tax payers’ money to fly the investigators to South Africa to speak to Nelson Mandela, which ultimately led to no new information. Furthermore, the officers had also ensured that Kingsley Ojo, a human trafficker that ran an underage brothel, was released early so that they could gain potential information. And yet, he didn’t provide them with any new evidence and they lost track of him in Africa, which critics considered to be an act of incompetence by the investigators.
The police had also caused controversy by stating that the African community weren’t helping the investigation and refusing to cooperate. Trust between the police and the African community in London had been shattered as a result of the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in Southeast London on the 22nd April 1994. Various issues from the case had caused a lack of faith in the police, and this was highlighted in the Macpherson Report in 1998. In the report, it said that the investigation into the death of Stephen Lawrence was “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership”. For the African community, this showed what they’d believed for a long time: that police could not be trusted. Because of this, communication between the two had broken down (and has, arguably, not been repaired to this day).
The one aspect of the case that has been applauded, however, is the forensics. The isotope analysis and analyses of the small intestine content has been discussed in numerous scientific journals, with the information provided going on to further the works of other forensic scientists.
However, it wasn’t just issues with the police that caused controversy. The media also played a significant role in that. The police had utilised the media throughout the earlier stages of the investigation, from requesting help from the public to using beloved figures such as Nelson Mandela. Yet, as the investigation went on, the media began to use the evidence from the Adam investigation to fear monger. Newspapers, such as The Guardian, ran an article in November 2002 after receiving word that police officers involved in the investigation behind Adam’s murder were seen at an environmental health raid of a London shop that was reportedly selling “bushmeat”, or exotic meat that is illegally brought into the country. There had been a tip off that human flesh was being sold there with links to human trafficking. No human remains were found, and yet the media used this story to further push the idea that human sacrifice was on the rise in the UK. Terms such as “African voodoo magic” and “African religious sacrifice” were used on a regular basis in articles about Adam, with no explanation of it being seen in only a minority of worshippers.
Another popular quote that the media liked to use was from Hendrick Scholtz, the South African expert who performed a second post-mortem on Adam and incorrectly concluded that it was a result of muti murder. According to Dr. Scholtz, “As these communities grow, elements of African culture will be inevitably transported to Britain.” This was used to spread the fear that human sacrifices were going to become a more common problem in a multicultural Britain. According to Richard Hoskins in his book, he’d received several threats, including threats against his life, as a result of the way Yorubans and other Africans were described in the media.
In a case unrelated to Adam, it was revealed in a leaked Metropolitan police report that 300 African children had disappeared from school registers around London. The police stated that it was mostly as a result of administrative issues or people moving, and yet the media had taken it as proof that the children were being sacrificed. Articles with headlines such as "Children Sacrificed in London Churches, Say Police", from The London Evening Standard in June 2005 were common, and Adam was mentioned in more than one article as “proof” that this was the fate of these missing African children.
Debbie Ariyo, the director of an organisation called Africans Unite Against Child Abuse (AFRUCA) said, in relation to the media’s focus on fear mongering and causing moral panic, that it was “about stigmatising, criminalising and demonising the African community” rather than protecting children. The police responded to the uproar over the leaked report by stating, quote, “African communities do not tolerate the abuse of children any more than any other community”, but this didn’t stop the media from speculating. An article in 2003 by Todd Sanders, titled Imagining the Dark Continent: The Met, The Media and the Thames Torso summarises it with “contrary to their stated aims and objectives, the police and media have reproduced a much older and more unsettling story of African Otherness.”
And yet, after 2013, the media lost all interest in Adam's story. It is only mentioned in articles with taglines such as “stories to keep you up at night”, including an article in MyLondon titled The unsolved case of the torso in the Thames that will keep you awake at night, as though it was nothing more than a scary ghost story to tell others at a campfire. The real story of Adam seems to have been forgotten. A young child was brutally murdered nearly 19 years ago, and yet the country seems to have moved on. It is a case that most people wouldn’t recognise, particularly those outside of London. Adam isn’t a household name like Madeline McCann and James Bulger, even though they all involved a child. Instead, he is just another unsolved crime in England’s capital city.
September 21st 2021 will be the twenty year anniversary since Adam’s torso was found floating in the Thames. There has been no news as to whether a memorial will take place yet, although it seems likely due to the unfortunate milestone. The Metropolitan police were able to utilise the evidence to track down everything from where he was brought up to what he last ate and approximately how long he’d been in the UK. And yet, his identity and those of his killers remains unknown. There is evidence, but not enough to convict anyone. Unless someone else comes forward, or a confession is made, the story of Adam, the torso in the Thames, will likely remain unresolved.
Episode Information
Episode Information
Written and researched by Gabriella Bromley
Hosted and produced by Micheal Whelan
Published on August 16th, 2020
Producers: Roberta Janson, Ben Krokum, Victoria Reid, Gabriella Bromley, Peggy Belarde, Quil Carter, Laura Hannan, Damion Moore, Amy Hampton, Steven Wilson, Scott Meesey, Marie Vanglund, Scott Patzold, Astrid Kneier, Lori Rodriguez, Aimee McGregor, Sydney Scotton, Sara Moscaritolo, Sue Kirk, Thomas Ahearn, Travis Scsepko, Seth Morgan, Marion Welsh, Patrick Laakso, Alyssa Lawton, Meadow Landry, Rebecca Miller, Jo Wong, Tatum Bautista, Erin Pyles, Teunia Elzinga, Jacinda B., Ryan Green, Stephanie Joyner, and Dawn Kellar
Music Credits
Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music
Other music created and composed by Ailsa Traves
Sources and other reading
Wikipedia - Adam (murder victim)
“The Boy in the River” by Richard Hoskins
“Imagining the Dark Continent: The Met, the Media and the Thames Torso” by Todd Sanders
“Witch-purging and muti murder in South Africa” by Anthony Minnaar
The Telegraph - “Mandela’s plea over torso boy”
The Guardian - “Thames torso boy was sacrificed”
BBC News - “Torso murder inquiry moves to Nigeria”
The Guardian - “Jail for torso case people smuggler”