Norwich, Norfolk (PRWEB) September 14, 2006
As the 5-year anniversary of the "Adam" case approaches, compelling new evidence has come to light suggesting that the young black boy, whose torso was pulled out of the River Thames in London, England, on 21 Sept, 2001, may not have been an African witchcraft or "Juju" sacrifice, as is popularly believed.
According to British crime author Jimmy Lee Shreeve, whose latest book "Blood Rites" (Random House 2006) investigates recent cases of alleged ritual killing, the chief advisers to Scotland Yard on the Adam case were fundamentalist Christians, who had a very definite agenda of discrediting traditional African spirituality.
"Not only did these supposedly impartial advisers have a literal belief in the existence of Satan," alleges Shreeve. "But they were involved in promoting the now totally discredited Satanic panics of the late 1980s and 90s."
Shreeve believes that when the Adam case hit the headlines, they saw it as the perfect opportunity to regain credibility and defame traditional African religion, which is pagan and seen as "Satanic" by extremist Christians.
One of the key advisers, Colonel Kobus Jonker, the retired head of the South African Police Service's Occult Unit (now disbanded), claimed he was on holiday in the UK when the Adam story broke, and simply offered his services as a ritual killing expert to Scotland Yard.
"According to my sources, the reality is that Jonker was not on holiday over here," says Shreeve. "He was attending a fundamentalist Christian event, hosted by those involved in spreading the Satanic panics of the 1980s and 90s, which led to a whole host of scandalous and now totally discredited abuse claims that wreaked innocent people's lives."
Shreeve reckons Jonker and his fundamentalist colleagues saw a chance to revive the Satanic panics, but with a Juju, black African witchcraft twist - thus regaining credibility for their claims.
Jonker was not the only adviser who may have led police down the garden path. British detectives went to South Africa to research ritual killings reportedly still performed today by rogue Juju practitioners. One "sangoma" or medicine man they spoke to told them that the ritual sacrifice of Adam was likely to a water deity called Oshun and would have been carried out by a gang of people strengthening themselves magically to do some "very ugly crimes". The medicine man added that the orange shorts found on Adam's torso would have been put on after his death and that the colour orange was sacred to Oshun.
According to Adam Kuper, a professor of anthropology at Brunel University in the West of England, who grew up in South Africa, this is not the case. "The police claimed, quite wrongly, that a Yoruba river god, Oshun, is associated with the colour orange, and that human sacrifices are made to him," he says. "...no sacrifices of this kind have been documented for more than a century."
So what went on with the Adam case? Why is there so much misinformation?
"I think the murder of this poor kid was hijacked by a lot of people with hidden agendas," says Shreeve. "These agendas either revolved around the need to discredit paganism by fundamentalist Christians. Or it revolved around furthering careers by becoming official advisers to the cops."
According to Shreeve, one prominent adviser wrote a book about being in on classified meetings with Scotland Yard, and may even have revealed the names of those most likely to have murdered Adam. "That guy wrote a book to further his career as a ritual killing adviser, but the book's been blocked from publication for over a year by the cops," Shreeve reveals. "The fact is, it's a messy business with a lot of people trying to capitalise on the wasting of this African kid."
Shreeve concedes that Adam may have been sacrificed. "But even if nefarious sorcerers did waste him, you still can't have people with dubious vested interests advising the cops."
The full story of Shreeve's investigation into the Adam case is related in the first chapter of Jimmy Lee Shreeve's "Blood Rites: The Shocking Expose of the Ritual of Human Sacrifice - Practised Today, and Terrifyingly Close to Home" (Random House, 2006). Jimmy Lee Shreeve's website can be found at: http://www.jimmyleeshreeve.com
###
