Kenyan killer wanted 100 victims
2010-06-10 17:15
Nairobi - A Kenyan security guard who has confessed to 19 murders intended to kill 100 people, fuelled by a belief in spirits and greed, local media reported on Thursday.
Philipp Onyancha, 32, had been arrested a few days earlier. The scale of the crimes he has confessed to shocked investigators, police official Richard Katola said.
"He has helped us a lot in resolving murder cases which were a mystery to us," he added.
Onyancha is a member of a cult, which reportedly convinced him that he would become one of the country's richest men if he killed dozens of people and drank their blood.
Onyancha had set a five-year deadline to reach his "target" of killing 100 people.
"Since I got into this thing, I have always had a passion to kill," he told the broadcaster Capital FM, in handcuffs and guarded by police officers, whom he had led to the crime scenes.
The heavily armed officers were there not only to prevent Onyancha from fleeing, but also to protect him from a lynching mob.
Onyancha found his victims primarily in Nairobi and central Kenya's Rift Valley - mostly women and children.
"I always went for the weak in the society," Onyancha told Capital FM without showing much emotion. "It was not my fault, it was the spirits in me."
One body was exhumed on Wednesday from a property next to the German embassy in Nairobi. Onyancha had been hired to protect a nearby diplomat's house from burglars.
The body of another woman had been hidden for two years in the ceiling of a shopping-centre maintenance room in the high-end suburb of Karen. The news left business owners and workers aghast.
Onyancha said he believes his confession has broken the power of the spirits. Until his arrest, he had felt invulnerable.
"I was very sure nobody could ever arrest me," he told Capital FM. "I feel relieved ... It was not my wish to do these evils, ... but you see I was not myself."
- SAPA