"Adam" - The Torso in the Thames

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"You definitely have a tie to a case, and there's this drive to find answers. The one thing that has lingered over 20 years is the frustration that we didn't find all the answers."

- Ret. Detective Nick Chalmers of the London Metropolitan Police 

There was nothing out of the ordinary about September 21st, 2001. The world was, of course,  still in shock after the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. Aidan Minter, a business man in the video games industry, was no exception. London, the city he called home, was on high alert. Everybody felt an underlying sense of unease. But life had to go on, and for Aidan, that meant going into the office.

However, his walk across Tower Bridge that day would turn out to be anything but ordinary. As he walked, he looked down into the river below. It was a part of his commute that he had become so accustomed to, he barely noticed it most days. But on that particular day, he spotted something he would not forget for the rest of his days. 

London’s Tower Bridge over the River Thames (source: User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons)

There is no denying that his discovery was gruesome, but more so, it was devastatingly sad. Aidan looked closer, trying to process what he was seeing. There, in the River Thames, was a human torso.

He called the police right away. The authorities arrived quickly, and set about pulling the body from the river, not far from the Globe Theatre. The torso, which belonged to a young boy, was naked, apart from a pair of orange shorts. 

The discovery would take London’s Metropolitan Police (The Met) on a roller-coaster of an investigation. While it did initially present them with some seemingly-promising leads, it ultimately resulted in a series of disappointing dead ends. As of 2022, more than 20 years later, the identity of the boy, and how he came to meet such a violent and terrible fate, remains unknown. 

“Adam”

In an attempt to humanize the boy, the police gave him the name Adam. This is how I’ll refer to him in this article. 

On being pulled from the river, a post-mortem examination determined that he had been in the water for about 10 days. It was ruled that he had bled to death from a knife wound to his throat. His limbs and head had been expertly removed, suggesting that whoever performed the amputations had experience in carrying out the horrible deed.

Just for clarity’s sake, his arms had been removed at the shoulders, and his legs just above the knees.

Right away, Adam, who was black and between the ages of five and seven, went through a series of genetic tests. It was quite extraordinary what these tests, which analyzed his DNA and mineral levels in his bones, revealed about him. 

By December 2001, just a few months after he was found, it was concluded that he was originally from West Africa. Thanks to analysis of bone samples, they were also able to determine that he was born and had likely spent his life in south-west Nigeria, around Benin City. Geneticists were able to narrow this area down to a strip of land about 100 miles long. 

Location of Benin City in Nigeria (source: Google Maps)

About a week after he was found, detectives from the Met made an appeal on the TV show Crimewatch on BBC. A reward of £50,000 was also offered to anyone with information that would lead to his killer. Unfortunately, neither effort resulted in any useful leads.

Experts and their Theories

Detectives consulted experts in West African religious practices, including ​​Richard Hoskins, a religious studies lecturer at Bath Spa University. Hoskins, whose studies include ritual killings across Africa, said: “This looks like a deviant variety of a West African religion. Someone would have done it to gain power.”

Hoskins did emphasize that the very vast majority of West Africans would be shocked and appalled by the crime, and would in no way attempt to justify it. 

Experts in African religious practices had different theories as to what happened to Adam. Ultimately, everyone who was consulted on the case agreed that it was a ritualistic murder of some sort. 

Some surmised that Adam was the victim of a “muti” killing. In muti killings, body parts are used as “medicine” by witch doctors, whose patients come to them seeking good luck. 

As more evidence accumulated, however, the theory that Adam was the victim of a muti killing fell out of favour. The reasons for this are as follows:

As I mentioned earlier, the genetic and DNA analysis determined that he was originally from West Africa, specifically around Benin City in Nigeria. The vast majority of muti killings take place mainly in southern Africa.

In muti killings, a victim’s genitals are removed, as these are viewed as a powerful medicine, specifically for aiding infertility. In a horrible twist, it’s apparently the screams of victims as their genitals are removed that releases the “magic” from the organs used in muti potions. The genitals of children are seen as particularly valuable. Adam’s genitals, however, were still intact.

Adam was also circumcised, which occurs in West Africa shortly after a baby boy is born. Specifically, neonatal circumcision is performed on more than 85% of boys in Nigeria, according to a 2017 paper on the subject of circumcision in different parts of Africa.

On the other hand, in southern Africa, circumcision is performed as a rite of a passage into adulthood. 

In West African ritualistic killings, the blood of a victim is the most valuable, which lined up with the fact that Adam’s blood had been drained from his body. 

The other theory was that Adam had been sacrificed to one of the 400 ‘Orisha’ (ancestor gods) of the Yoruba people, Nigeria’s second-largest ethnic group. Specifically, the river goddess Oshun was suggested as a goddess Adam had been sacrificed to.

The facts strongly pointed to the awful possibility that Adam had been bought as a child slave in West Africa, and was subsequently smuggled to the UK for the sole purpose of being killed.

Further Clues

The contents of Adam’s stomach was bizarre to say the least, leading to far more questions than answers. 

In his stomach was a mixture described as African river clay - it included vegetation, ground bone, and traces of gold and quartz. Also present was ash, indicating that the mixture had been burned before he ingested it.

Cough syrup was also detected, but it was impossible to confirm the reason for its presence. Was the person he was with before he was killed actually concerned enough about his health to give him the medicine? If this was the reason, it was likely because they wanted him to be as healthy as possible before he was killed. Was he given it to mask the bad taste of the clay mixture also found in his stomach? Or was it purely to induce drowsiness before the killing?

The Orange Shorts 

Another important clue for detectives were the shorts on Adam’s body when he was found. While I’m not sure exactly how this timeline was put together, but the shorts would supposedly have been put on about 24 hours after he died, and 24 hours before he was put in the Thames.

The orange shorts were one piece of evidence that detectives thought may bring them closer to Adam’s killer. It was discovered that they were manufactured in China and sold in Germany, and had the label Kids & Co, a brand sold at German Woolworth’s stores. They were traced to a batch of 820 pairs in size 116cm (for boys age 5-7) and had been sold in 320 stores across Germany. Don’t ask me how they found this out, but they discovered that this particular pair was bought in Hamburg. 

The pair of orange shorts on Adam’s torso when he was pulled from the Thames (source: Sky News)

Whether or not this is a coincidence I don’t know, but I think it’s worth mentioning. The color of the shorts was also significant, as orange is the color associated with Oshun, the Yoruba river goddess.

An Appeal to Nelson Mandela

In April 2002, about seven months after Adam was found, police from the Met traveled to South Africa, where they met with former president Nelson Mandela. No one had come forward with any information about the boy. They hoped that perhaps an announcement from a figure as influential as Mandela might get somebody’s attention. 

"Scotland Yard informs me that early indications of their investigations are that the boy comes from somewhere in Africa, so if anywhere, even in the remotest village of our continent, there is a family missing a son of that age who might have disappeared around that time... please contact the police."

- Nelson Mandela

Unfortunately, Mandela’s plea produced no results.

A Promising Lead?

In July 2002, detectives got their first break. Hundreds of miles away in Pollokshaws, Glasgow, a woman named Joyce Osagiede was causing concern for social workers. Joyce, who was in her 30's and originally from Benin City in Nigeria, was seeking asylum in the UK. 

At the time, she was living in a flat with her two young daughters. Social workers became worried after a visit to the flat in which they found a number of what they described as "bizarre, ritualistic objects". Joyce was known to suffer with mental health problems, and according to the social workers, may have been involved in sex work.

Joyce Osagiede (source: ITV News via YouTube)

After assessing the situation, it was decided by social services that Joyce's children, who were showing signs of neglect, were not safe in her custody.

To decide if her children would go into care, Joyce needed to attend a court hearing. At the hearing, she made a scene as she yelled about cults and ritual sacrifices. The judge ruled that her daughters be put into foster care.

At the hearing, Joyce caught the attention of PC Jim MyGlynn, who had been following the case of Adam down in London. He got in touch with the Met's homicide unit, telling them about Joyce, the strange items found in her home and her alarming behavior in court. 

DS Nick Chalmers, who had been working Adam’s case from the beginning, was intrigued by what McGlynn had to say. He traveled from London to Glasgow, where he got a warrant to search Joyce's flat. In the flat, he found items of clothing with the German "Kids & Company" label. The clothes were the same size as Adam's orange shorts.

The talk of ritual killings, Joyce's connection to Benin City and now the specific label of children's clothing in her flat made Chalmers feel as though he was onto something important. Joyce was brought in for questioning.

When she was interviewed, however, she just seemed confused. She claimed she didn't know who the boy in the river was and she couldn't explain why she had the particular brand and size of clothing in her flat. 

After the disappointing interview, Chalmers had no choice but to let Joyce go. They had nothing to charge her on. Despite this, he was convinced that Joyce knew more than she was letting on. 

Joyce is Deported

Four months later, Joyce’s asylum application was rejected.

 DS Chalmers and DI Will O'Reilly, who was leading the investigation, were notified that she would be deported back to Nigeria. It would be much more difficult to track her down in Nigeria if they needed to question her, so they chartered a private jet to fly back to Nigeria with her. They hoped she would share some information with them about Adam during the flight. But they had no luck; Joyce offered up nothing. When the plane landed in Lagos, only Joyce got off. Chalmers and O'Reilly flew straight back to the UK.

After that, Joyce went off the radar.

Meanwhile, detectives in London had been enquiring with German police about Joyce. Shortly after she was deported, the German authorities reached out to the detectives in London. Joyce had been living in Hamburg until late 2001, they said. The same city where the orange shorts were purchased.

Kingsley Ojo

When detectives arrested Joyce, she had allowed them to look through her phone. They found that she only had two saved contacts - the one that stuck out to them was a man named Mousa Kamara, who they were able to track down to a home in London. They soon found out that Mousa Kamara was not his real name; it was actually Kingsley Ojo.

 On searching the residence, a number of items caught their attention. These included an animal skull pierced with a nail, liquid potions and small packets containing what appeared to be sand or earth. They also found a videotape labeled "rituals"; the tape showed an adult human being beheaded. Experts brought on by the detectives surmised that the items were used in Nigerian rituals known as "Juju".

Ojo was taken into custody to be interviewed. But the interview produced no information linking him to Adam's murder, so they had to release him. After interviewing him, however, they were convinced that he was part of a human trafficking operation, so they had him put under surveillance.

Their suspicions were confirmed when they spotted him talking to a group of known criminals involved in a developing human trafficking operation just hours after he was released from custody. The group had been planning a smuggling operation of Nigerians into the UK.

In July 2003, after more than six months of surveilling Ojo and his fellow people smugglers, police carried out raids on nine different addresses across London. A total of 21 individuals, including Ojo, were arrested on suspicion of planning human trafficking operations.

“The Doomsday Plant”

All the while, analyses of Adam’s gut contents were ongoing. 

As well as the African river clay mixture I mentioned earlier, they also discovered pollen samples which indicated Adam had been in the south-east of England for as little as several days or up to a week before he was killed. 

They sent samples of two other plants they found in his stomach to London’s Kew Gardens for analysis. It turned out that one of these plants was Calabar bean, which is sometimes referred to as the Doomsday plant and is traditionally used in witchcraft ceremonies in West Africa. It would have paralysed him, but wouldn’t have relieved any pain. The other sample was identified as ground up seeds from the Datura plant, sometimes referred to as devil’s trumpet, which is known to cause hallucinations and delirium. 

Tragically, their analyses led them to believe that Adam was made to swallow the mixture before his throat was slit. Therefore, it’s likely that he would have been paralyzed, but still awake and aware of what was going on. 

Ojo is Taken Down (For a Little While)

In July 2004, a year after he was arrested, Kinglsey Ojo was charged on four counts related to people smuggling and attempting to fraudulently obtain a passport and driving license. He pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to four years in prison. At his sentencing, it was recommended that he be deported on completion of his sentence. 

I was surprised he was handed such a short sentence, given claims by investigators that he was instrumental in operations that had trafficked hundreds of people to the UK as sex slaves and domestic slaves, and for the purposes of committing benefit fraud.

A Wild Goose Chase 

From prison, Ojo reached out to the detectives on Adam's case, claiming he had information he now wanted to share. Interesting timing, no?

Probably because he promised to help with the investigation, Ojo was released from prison in late 2005, having only served about 17 months of his four year sentence. On his release, he moved into a flat in east London. I had to read this several times to make sure I got it correct. I thought human trafficking was a pretty serious offense that warranted a bit longer than 17 months in prison.

But the detectives kept hitting dead ends as they searched for answers in Adam’s case, and they likely felt Ojo was their only chance of making any kind of progress. He was supposed to be deported once he had served his time, but he somehow managed to convince the detectives of his usefulness in their investigation. His deportation was therefore put on hold.

For more than two years, he plied the police with a steady stream of falsehoods, likely to prolong his time in the UK for as long as possible. Given how long he ended up staying, it seems as though his “helpful citizen” act actually worked pretty well. 

Adam is Finally Laid to Rest

In December 2006, more than five years after his body was discovered, Adam was at last buried in a London Cemetery. The service was attended by a small number of detectives and other law enforcement officials who had been involved in the investigation from beginning, including DS Chalmers and DI O’Reilly. His grave was unmarked, which I found quite sad and strange; the name Adam had at least gave him some sort of identity. 

Ojo is Deported

In 2008, after leading the police along for more than two years, Kingsley Ojo was deported back to Nigeria. I was surprised it took them so long to figure out that he was playing them. In fact, there were even reports that he was using a fake identity to commit benefit fraud during this time.

He still claimed at his deportation that he had “done his best” to help in the investigation. 

Joyce Reappears

I'm not entirely sure how this came about, but after having no contact with authorities since she was originally deported from the UK in 2002, Joyce Osagiede reemerged and agreed to be interviewed by the police again. It's not clear whether this was voluntary on her part, but I'm also not sure if detectives had been looking particularly hard for her.

In this interview, she actually admitted to a significant connection with Adam - she had been caring for the boy in 2001 while she was living in Hamburg. She also said that she had bought the orange shorts which were on his body when he was pulled from the river.

After this interview, Joyce disappeared once again.

After much searching for anyone who may have been in contact with Joyce over the years, BBC journalists did find a woman named Ria Matthes, a social worker from Hamburg who had had dealings with Joyce while she resided in the city. Joyce, who lived in a flat with her two daughters and another boy who was likely Adam, had met with Ria regularly to assess her eligibility for benefits.

Ria told the BBC that she thinks about the case often. She described the boy who was likely Adam as being very shy, introverted and withdrawn. He would stand in one place and not move when she came by the flat, she said.

A Photo of Adam?

By 2011, the investigation had just about come complete stop. It had been three years since detectives last interviewed Joyce. Since then, there had been no new leads. 

However, even though Joyce had left Germany about a decade earlier, she had left some things behind with a friend. So detectives headed to Hamburg to have a look through these items. They did find something of interest - a photo of a boy, who was black and about five-years-old, that had been taken in 2001. Given his age and race, he could have been the same boy found in the Thames ten years earlier.

The photo of the boy, which is still largely associated with this case to this day, appeared on newspaper covers all across the UK. If anyone knew the boy, the headlines read, they should get in touch with the Metropolitan Police. 

An ITV News crew headed to Nigeria to find Joyce. When they did get a hold of her, they showed her the photo and asked if it was Adam, who she said she had been looking after in Hamburg in 2001. She replied that yes, it was Adam, and that his real name was Ikpomwosa. She handed him over to a man named Bawa, she added. 

Yet Another Disappointment

A year after Joyce identified the boy in the photo as Adam, her brother Victor, who also lived in Nigeria, reached out to the BBC about what his sister had said. The boy in the photo was not, in fact, Adam/the boy Joyce had been looking after while she lived in Hamburg, who she called Ikpomwosa. Joyce had made a mistake, Victor told them. 

The photo found with Joyce’s things in Germany. She originally identified the boy as Adam, but was mistaken. This photo is of a boy named Danny who is still alive and well and lives in Hamburg. His mother, Tina, was friends with Joyce (source: MyLondon)

BBC journalists, along with Nick Chalmers, who had since retired from the Met, traveled to Nigeria once again to talk with Joyce. By this point, Joyce had been struggling with her mental health for some time, and often got confused. The boy in the photo was actually Danny, the son of her friend Tina, who still lived in Hamburg. 

Adam, she said, was actually called Patrick Erhabor. 

It was confirmed that the boy in the photo was named Danny and was the son of Joyce’s friend Tina. BBC journalists traveled to Hamburg and met the boy, who was now a teenager. He told the journalists that he had no idea his photo had been all over the papers in the UK; it was a complete surprise to him. 

You can watch the video of BBC journalist Angus Crawford in Germany meeting the boy in the photo here. 

However, there was never any confirmation as to whether Adam was actually called Patrick Erhabor. 

Joyce was shown another photo, this one of Kingsley Ojo. Right away, she recognized him as Bawa, the man she had given Adam/Patrick to in Hamburg, who had ultimately taken the boy to Germany. This was the first time she had ever implicated Ojo in being involved with Adam. 

While Kingsley Ojo was a criming extraordinaire with many aliases, Joyce had never been a particularly reliable source of information, so Chalmers and the journalists were hesitant to take her at her word. 

The BBC were able to get in touch with Ojo by phone. He strongly denied playing any part in Adam’s murder. So it was really just Joyce’s word against his own. 

However, Ojo hardly has the best track record either when it comes to telling the truth. I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that he was involved in trafficking Adam to the UK from Germany, given his phone number was found on Joyce’s phone. Perhaps he genuinely doesn’t remember Adam, as he was said to have been involved in the smuggling of hundreds of people to the UK over the years. Not that having trafficked so many people in your time that you can’t remember one individual makes it any better. 

Nick Chalmers is convinced that Ojo has always known more than he let on. But at this rate, the chances of him ever coming forward with information that would solve this case are, in my opinion, pretty much non-existent. 

Cold Case

As of 2021, Adam’s case is still cold. There have been no significant leads since 2013. A spokesperson for the Met did say that any tips would continue to be “thoroughly investigated”

Per the BBC, Joyce Osagiede has since died, according to her brother Victor. Despite Joyce’s record of not being the most reliable, her death is still a blow to the prospects of Adam’s case ever being solved.  

Ret. Detective Nick Chalmers spoke to the BBC for this 20 year anniversary piece on the case:

"This was an innocent young child. There are people responsible for his death who haven't been brought to justice. Twenty years on, I wish we knew the identity of Adam - and his parents. In reality, he is a missing child from a family, who probably don't know he's buried here in London.”