PREVIOUS

ROBERT GRIMMINCK NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Voudon—or as it’s more commonly known, “voodoo”—has its origins in Haiti among

slaves. A related religion also called “voodoo” is still very popular in West Africa. For the

Haitians, voodoo is a mix of their African beliefs and Roman Catholicism that was forced on

them. To ensure that the slaves converted to Christianity, the Christians demonized

voodoo by associating the religion with black magic and barbaric sacrifices.

In reality, voodoo is a mostly peaceful religion, although it can involve animal sacrifices.

However, just like any other religion, there are people who do bad things in the name of

voodoo.

10L’Affaire de Bizoton

CRIME

10 Strange Tales Of Voodoo Murder

In December 1863, Congo Pele of Bizoton, Haiti, asked his sister Jeanne Pele, a voodoo

priestess, for help in using voodoo to gain wealth and power. Jeanne agreed to help him.

The siblings consulted two other voodoo priests on the best way to achieve their goal, and

the priests suggested that they would need to sacrifice a “goat without horns,” otherwise

known as a human.

On December 27, Jeanne invited her sister to go to nearby Port-au-Prince for the

afternoon. Congo and two other voodoo priests kidnapped Jeanne and Congo’s 12-year-old

niece, Claircine, hiding her under an altar until New Year’s Eve. Then they performed an

elaborate voodoo ceremony that culminated in Claircine being strangled, flayed,

dismembered, and decapitated. With her blood stored in jars, she was also cooked and

cannibalized.

A short time later, four women and four men, including Congo and Jeanne, were arrested

and charged with the murder. After confessing in open court, they were publicly executed

in front of a large crowd on February 13, 1864.

However, it’s unclear if the crime known as l’affaire de Bizoton even happened. There was

little physical evidence, and it appeared that all the defendants had been beaten before

confessing. Also, at the time, the president of Haiti was Fabre Geffrard, who was born a

slave but was strongly pro-Catholic. He wanted the country to move away from aspects of

African culture like voodoo, and the trial was an ideal way to showcase the religion’s so-

called evils.

Nevertheless, this story made headlines across the world and forever changed the

perception of voodoo.

Photo via Wikimedia

9Jummai Hassan

In July 2001, 13-year-old Jummai Hassan of Maiduguri, Nigeria, was arrested in connection

with the disappearance of a two-year-old boy identified only as “Ibro.” Hassan had been in

trouble with the law previously for burning down a neighbor’s home and attempting to

murder a girl.

This time, Hassan said that she had murdered the boy and sold his body parts to a witch

doctor for use in voodoo rituals. After the confession, the body was exhumed, and

Hassan was charged with the boy’s murder.

But Hassan wasn’t finished confessing. She claimed that since being inducted into a cult

seven years earlier, she had been involved with 48 murders, including the killing of her own

father. She offered to take the police to more bodies, but when she did, no other bodies

were found.

Hassan also accused a civil servant named Michael Ashade Akinona of being involved in

Photo credit: jbdodane

the cult. When they searched his house, they found powder, black pots, and other items

linked to voodoo, but there was no physical evidence connecting him with any murders.

8The Cholera Lynch Mobs

Roughly half of Haiti’s 9.6 million citizens practice voodoo. Needless to say, the religion

holds a large and influential position in the country. However, the belief in voodoo and a

lack of information about cholera became a problem when there was a serious cholera

outbreak after a devastating earthquake rocked the impoverished island on January 12,

2010. Between October and December 2010, 2,500 people died from the waterborne

disease, another 121,000 were showing symptoms, and 63,500 people had been admitted

to a hospital.

Many Haitians did not know what cholera was or how it could affect them, which led to

mass panic in some areas of the country. They began blaming voodoo priests for spreading

the disease. Mobs killed 45 voodoo priests over the span of a few weeks in December 2010.

Many were lynched, stoned, or hacked to death with machetes and then set on fire in the

streets.

Most of those mob murders happened in the coastal town of Jeremie, although there

Haiti urged to stop cholera anti-voodoo lynchings

were also a few in Cap Haitien and the Central Plateau. After the attacks, the minister of

communications for Haiti called for calm and asked for help from the United Nations to

spread knowledge about the disease.

During the 2010 outbreak, 200,000 Haitians died of cholera. As of autumn 2015, it is still

a major problem.

7Gregory Friesner

In July 1997, the body of 45-year-old tech CEO Mark Foster was found on the roadside in

northeastern Wisconsin. Dressed in white clothes, he had been shot.

Mark had been involved in voodoo and even had a small cult where he was the high priest.

As summer 1997 drew near, Foster was in financial trouble, and his once prosperous

business was in ruins. That was when he decided it was time for his soul to pass on to

Gregory Friesner, one of his devotees.

As Foster explained to Friesner, Foster had been involved in a voodoo ritual in New

Orleans where he had murdered his predecessor to become high priest. By killing him,

Foster claimed his predecessor’s soul and the souls of all the people that his predecessor

Nothing Personal - Season 2 Episode 6 ''Voodoo Sex Cult''

had killed (as in the movie Highlander). To pass on the soul lineage, it was up to Friesner to

shoot Foster. Friesner agreed.

On July 18, Foster’s nephew drove Friesner and Foster to the Wisconsin state line. There,

Friesner wore coveralls with a gas mask and aimed the gun at Foster’s heart. Friesner

pulled the trigger once, but the rifle didn’t fire. Foster took the gun, put a bullet into the

chamber, and handed it back to Friesner. The second time Friesner pulled the trigger, a

bullet flew out of the chamber and into Foster’s chest, killing him.

Foster’s nephew was given four years for his involvement in the murder, and Friesner

was given 10 years. There is no record of Foster ever killing anyone in New Orleans.

6James Paul Harris

In April 2011, the lawyer who handled the social security checks for 49-year-old James

Gerety of Topeka, Kansas, reported him missing. The top of Gerety’s skull wouldn’t be

found until a year later on the property of a man named Jeff Harris. His girlfriend found it

while looking for mushrooms. After she unearthed it, she brought it into the house, and

the couple called the police.

Photo credit: Doron

Kansas man accused of guitar string decapitation: James Paul ...

Two years later, it was revealed that the property owner’s son, James Paul Harris, was

involved in the murder. Harris and Gerety had been planning to move in together as

roommates. According to Harris’s ex-girlfriend, Harris shot Gerety in the stomach and then

tortured him for two days. Finally, Harris decapitated Gerety with a guitar string. Harris

kept the head and used it in voodoo rituals.

As only part of the skull was found, it was a difficult case to prosecute. In April 2014, Harris

pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter and was given a sentence

of four years and two months in prison.

5Willie Maxwell

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a voodoo priest who held services in a chapel in Alexander

City, Alabama. Maxwell had supposedly traveled to Mississippi to be trained in voodoo by

a group called the “Seven Sisters.” As a result, some members of the African-American

community lived in fear of him.

This fear may have helped him get away with a few murders because people were afraid to

speak out against him. The first murder was that of his first wife in 1969. She was found

strangled and beaten in her car. Maxwell was charged with her murder and went to trial

but was ultimately acquitted.

The primary reason for his acquittal was that he had married the main witness for the

prosecution and she had changed her story by the time he went to trial. Maxwell

ultimately collected $90,000 on his first wife’s insurance policy.

A short time later, Maxwell’s brother was found dead from exposure and excessive alcohol

consumption. In 1973, his second wife, the one who was supposed to testify at the murder

trial of his first wife, was also found dead. The cause of death was acute asthmatic

bronchitis, which allowed Maxwell to collect $40,000 on her life insurance policy.

Jump ahead to 1976, and Maxwell’s nephew is found dead after he drove his car off the

highway. According to the autopsy, he died of natural causes. The last death happened in

July 1976 when Maxwell’s 16-year-old stepdaughter, Shirley Ann Ellington, was found dead

under a car. It looked like she had been crushed while she was trying to change a tire, but

the police were sure it was murder.

At her funeral, Maxwell was speaking to the attendees when Ellington’s sister screamed,

“You killed my sister and now you’re going to pay for it!” Then Ellington’s uncle, Robert

Burns, drew a Beretta and shot the voodoo priest three times point-blank in the face in

front of 300 witnesses. Burns was arrested and went to a psychiatric hospital for 10

weeks. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

At one time, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, had planned on writing about the

tragic series of events surrounding the voodoo priest, but the book never came to fruition.

4Josephine Gray

DEADLY WOMEN | Love To Death | S5E9

On March 3, 1974, Josephine Gray’s husband, Norman Stribbling, was found shot to death

in his car near Gaithersburg, Maryland. Shortly before he was killed, Stribbling had learned

that his wife was having an affair with Robert Gray. Both Josephine and Robert were

arrested two weeks after the murder, but the charges were dropped because witnesses

refused to cooperate.

After Josephine and Robert married in 1975, Robert’s family noticed that he was acting

strangely. He became distant and depressed. Many family members felt like Josephine

had Robert under some type of spell or trance. This behavior lasted until 1990 when

Josephine got sexually involved with her teenage cousin, Clarence Goode, who was living

with Robert and Josephine.

In mid-1990, Robert got into an argument with Josephine. As she pulled a gun on him, he

escaped out of a second-story window. Robert chose to leave Josephine, but he wasn’t safe

from her. One day while driving, Josephine and Goode pulled up beside Robert. Goode

aimed a gun at him, but Robert escaped once again. Robert went to the police for help, but

it didn’t save him. On November 9, 1990, Robert was shot twice as he walked into his

apartment.

Josephine and Goode were charged with murder and released on bail. Some witnesses

provided alibis for Josephine, and other witnesses changed their stories. At the time, her

lawyers described as “absurd” the claims that Josephine was using voodoo to influence

witnesses. And without witnesses, Josephine was able to escape prosecution again.

On June 21, 1996, Goode’s body was found stuffed in the trunk of his car. He had been shot

to death. Among his personal items, his mother found a black voodoo doll made with real

hair.

Then in August 2002, Josephine was charged with insurance fraud. The police could prove

she was involved with the deaths of her two husbands and received life insurance payouts

both times. At her fraud trial, it was revealed that Josephine had a secret life that was

heavily involved with voodoo. When police searched her home, they found voodoo dolls

stuck with various pins. Finally, during a sting involving fake insurance agents, the police

recorded Josephine whispering voodoo curses.

Josephine was found guilty of fraud. In December 2002, she was sentenced to 40 years in

prison.

3John Preston Rooks

On the day after Thanksgiving 1974 in the small town of Milton, Delaware, 55-year-old

Frank Snyder was found dead in his bathtub with a butcher knife stuck in his chest. He

had been stabbed 18–24 times. The knife and his head were both wrapped in a towel.

Over the next 16 months, police investigated the murder, but witnesses wouldn’t

cooperate because the chief suspect was a man named John Preston Rooks. Notorious in

the area, Rooks was known as both “Black Jesus” and “Blue Jesus.” He was also known to

use voodoo.

Besides the Snyder murder, there were three other brutal deaths linked to Rooks. The first

was in 1971 when Nathan Rogers won a few hundred dollars from Rooks while playing

craps. A short time later, Rogers’s body was found dumped in the river after he had been

hacked to death with an ax.

It is believed that Rooks, Ricky Tolson, and Charlie Barrows had murdered Rogers. Both

Tolson and Barrows bragged about the killing. But before any arrests were made, Tolson

and Barrows met untimely deaths. First, Tolson was run over by a car. Then Barrows was

sitting in a car drinking beer with friends when he suddenly vomited blood and choked to

death. No cause of death was ever found.

Ultimately, Rooks, George Reynolds, and Thomas Young were arrested for the 1974 murder

of Snyder. They were tried separately in 1977. At first, Reynolds—who was the getaway

driver—didn’t implicate Rooks in the murder, but he did later.

At his trial, Reynolds said that Young and Rooks killed Snyder as part of a ritual. When

Reynolds was asked why he changed his story, he said that Rooks was involved with

voodoo and could possibly harm him. After all, there were other strange deaths connected

to Rooks.

In the end, Reynolds and Young were convicted. Afterward, Reynolds’s lawyer thought the

guilty verdict was caused by a voodoo hex. As for Rooks, the charges against him were

dropped. The authorities lost track of him after the trial, and his whereabouts are

unknown.

2Frantz Bordes

Photo credit: Calvin Hennick

At 11:30 PM on August 29, 2006, Francoise Mercier returned to her Staten Island home

after her shift as a nurse’s aide. She had left her two-year-old daughter and four-year-old

son at home with her 39-year-old fiance, Frantz Bordes. When she returned home, the

apartment was quiet, and no one was in their bed.

Mercier called a relative, thinking that her family might be there. Instead, she learned that

Bordes had committed suicide by jumping in front of a subway train, and the whereabouts

of her children were still a mystery. That’s when Mercier thought to check her bathroom.

Bordes had drowned her two children in the bathtub.

When police searched the apartment, they found seven notes written in Creole and

English. In the notes, Bordes, who was a Haitian immigrant, wrote that his fiancee’s

relatives had been using voodoo on him and the curse had worked. Another note said

that “they” were trying to destroy him and that they were using voodoo against him.

Mercier denied that her family was involved in voodoo and said that they were Christians.

However, Bordes’s brother said that it is quite possible that his brother strongly believed

in voodoo and would have taken it seriously.

In October 1910, a police inspector in Haiti turned over a report about a 24-year-old voodoo

high priestess named Esteis Liberis. In the report, he said that during the ceremonies,

Liberis and other members of the cult would give tributes to a snake god (possibly

Damballa). If misfortune had befallen the group, then an animal sacrifice would be made.

At some point, Liberis suggested that they sacrifice a child. So cult member Conzo Pelle

kidnapped his young niece after her mother had been lured away. When the mother

returned and discovered that her daughter had been beckoned by the high priestess, she

was apparently honored.

A ceremony was arranged, and the girl was brought to the altar, where she was strangled

by her Uncle Conzo. After her head was cut off, her blood was poured into a bowl and

passed around so that everyone could drink it. Then her body was cut apart and cooked by

two young girls. However, she wasn’t eaten. Instead, her cooked body was preserved.

But that wasn’t the end of the killings. The two girls who cooked the body apparently had

offended the god, so they were sacrificed as well. Then a few days later, two more children

1Esteis Liberis

were sacrificed. The inspector said that when he searched Liberis’s house, he found the

remains of a 12-year-old child pickling in a barrel.

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook, follow

him on Twitter or on Pinterest, and visit his website.

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• Reply •

Hillyard • 3 hours ago

A 13 year old girl that burned down a neighbor's home and tried to murder another girl. And

for some reason she wasn't locked up in a rubber room so she was able to murder a young

boy.

Killers using their reputations as 'voodoo priests' or whatever to intimidate superstitious

witnesses. And those moronic believers can't figure out that they're safer with the psycho

killers behind bars.

#10 (if it is true) and#1 are just sickening. The kind of shitbags that would do something like

that just need to be dropped through a hole in the floor with a rope around their necks.

Disturbing list.

2△ ▽

• Reply •

I✔AN • 6 hours ago

Everyone here in Uganda believes in witch craft, whether Christian or Muslim they believe

its real and exists...I love to see the slight look of embarrassment when they tell the story of

incident that convinced them it was real, because they know how ridiculous they sound...No

lie i actually saw an ad in a national newspaper for herbal remedies for erectile dysfunction,

losing weight,quit smoking and the one that raised my eyebrows a herb to "get back the

wife the left you"...that's got be some sort of witch craft.

2△ ▽

• Reply •

Nick Mulgrave • 6 hours ago> I✔AN

Unfortunately there is no herb that can cure stupid.

Until now.

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△ ▽

• Reply •

gillybean • 6 hours ago

Holy-crap-in-a-box! It's absolutely terrifying that people could even think about doing things

like #1. What kind of gods are these, that people think they want violence and death?!

People are just awful sometimes. Using any excuse and preying on other peoples gullibility

to get what they want. Sickening.

2△ ▽

• Reply •

Hillyard • 4 hours ago> gillybean

What really got me about that one is that the mother of the first girl that was

murdered 'felt honored' that her daughter had been chosen. Sick fucking animals.

2△ ▽

gillybean • 4 hours ago> Hillyard

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• Reply •

I just assumed that that part was a lie. They may have told her that she

should be but I doubt that's what she actually felt. I just don't understand how

people can hurt each other like this. I've had fights when tense situations

have been left bubbling away for too long but I have never specifically gone

out of my way to cause such devastation to another person as any of these

people. And I honestly cannot imagine a situation that would make me want

to.

2△ ▽

• Reply •

Lead Faun • an hour ago

Yeah, 1 is a bit strange.

And pretty disturbing, too.

1△ ▽

• Reply •

Kdizzle • 2 hours ago

Good List. I can't get over #7 though...dude CHAMBERED THE ROUND AND HANDED

THE GUN BACK?? darwin award right there.

1△ ▽

• Reply •

Lead Faun • an hour ago> Kdizzle

He wanted to die, it was part of the ritual.

△ ▽

• Reply •

oouchan • 3 hours agoMod

Just goes to show you that crazies are in every sector of human involvement.

Bastards...the lot of them. Glad justice was served for number 5. The story in number 2

was so sad. Why can't the nuts just off themselves...why take others with them? Number 1

was the kicker. So disturbing.

Education goes a long way to combat such ignorance. Especially with the cholera

incidents.

Sick list.

1△ ▽

• Reply •

trelliss • 7 hours ago

too Haitian

1△ ▽

• Reply •

Andy West • 8 hours ago

#8 'After the attacks, the minister of communications for Haiti called for calm and asked for

help from the United Nations to spread knowledge about the disease.' Wouldn't it have been

better before? Anyway I am assured after watching Live And Let Die several hundred times

that voodoo priests can't be killed. 'Voodoo priest will return....'

1△ ▽

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• Reply • 1△ ▽

• Reply •

Skeeter • 2 hours ago

Wow. I live in Milton, Delaware. Not in the town limits, but I have a Milton zip code. I was

wondering if my little neck of the woods would ever make it to sites like this.

△ ▽

• Reply •

Nick Mulgrave • 8 hours ago

After reading this list about Voundon I have to admit that Robert Grimminck does indeed

give the impression that this is a peaceful religion.

- Elaborate voodoo ceremonies that culminate in people being strangled, flayed,

dismembered, and decapitated.

- Blood stored in jars with people being cooked and cannibalised.

- Murdered children sold as body parts to witch doctors for use in voodoo rituals.

So whats next?

10 reasons why ISIS should be nominated for the Nobel peace prize.

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• Reply •

Myself • 8 hours ago> Nick Mulgrave

Robert has a Voodoo doll, just for you...

△ ▽

• Reply •

Brandon Roberts • 8 hours ago

this was bizzare

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