STRANGER THAN FICTION: Murders in God’s name

06 Mar, 2016 - 00:03 0 Views
STRANGER THAN FICTION: Murders in God’s name

The Sunday Mail

Tendai Chara

“THEN I heard the Lord say to the other men, ‘Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy, have no pity! Kill them all; young and old, girls and women and little children.” (Leviticus 9: 5-7)

This biblical verse is one of the many verses that Sampson Kanderayi, Zimbabwe’s worst mass murderer who confessed to axing more than 50 people to death during the early 1980s, referred to in court as he desperately tried to justify his six-year killing orgy.

Infamous for brutally attacking and mutilating eight women in a Harare park in a single night, Kanderayi earned further notoriety when he claimed to be a born-again Christian.

In court, he occasionally quoted the Bible, arguing that his victims deserved the brutal slayings.

The killings, according to the deranged serial killer, were done to fulfil “God’s wish.”

Kanderayi subsequently made it to the long list of the so-called “Christian” serial killers, murderers who use the Bible to justify their crimes in direct contradiction to claims by Christians that their religion is one of love.

Kanderayi’s murderous spree began in the late 1970s as he axed to death victims in a spate of robberies.

When he was caught in 1979, he led police to numerous sites where he had buried many of his victims’ remains, half of whom police did not know about until the killer told them.

Several bodies had been eaten by wild animals by the time their remains were found.

Most of the killer’s victims were raped and had political slogans carved on their legs with a knife.

In a confession, the “Axe Killer” said he did so to mislead the police into believing that the slayings were politically motivated.

Initially sentenced to three years for an axe attack in a robbery attempt, he tried to kill another inmate with an axe and six more years were added to his sentence.

When he was freed in early 1980 through the general amnesty that marked Zimbabwe’s march towards independence, the bloodthirsty Kanderayi immediately returned to his murderous ways.

After fatally axing more than 50 people across the country, the long arm of the law finally caught up with the murderer in Glen Norah on February 6, 1982.

What then followed was a detailed confession which was punctuated by numerous biblical quotations.

According to The Herald, Kanderayi said he first killed to cover-up his robberies.

He then continued to kill in a bid to “appease the evil spirits.”

The mass murderer subsequently committed suicide while in police custody.

But did “God” instruct Kanderayi to butcher his victims?

As strange as it might sound, the feared “Axe Killer” maintained that stance until he breathed his last.

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