Iorwuese Kpila: Face of Benue serial killer

Iorwuese KPILA

The serial killer Iorwuese Kpila, left, with the head of Operation Zenda, SP Justin Gbernoyer

The serial killer Iorwuese Kpila, left, with the head of Operation Zenda, SP Justin Gbernoyer

A suspected serial killer in Benue State arrested for killing 16 persons, mostly commercial motorcyclists and burying them in shallow graves in a cassava farm, has started singing in custody.

Iorwuese Kpila has confessed that he was not just stealing motorcycles from victims, but also doing so to acquire ‘power to appear and disappear’.

Kpila, the 30 year-old suspect and son of a late native doctor, said a spirit known as ‘Queen’ told him to kill 18 persons to acquire supernatural powers.

‘’My father was a native doctor, I have four wives but they left me with their children”, he said.

Iorwuese Kpila, left and some other members of the killing gang
Stunned residents of Gbatse at the grave site where Kpila buried victims

The mass killer, along with five members of his gang, was arrested by operatives of Police Operation Zenda. Five other members of the gang are still at large and the police have vowed to track them down.

Kpila on 26 September took the police to a cassava farm in Gbatse within the Ushongo local government area of Benue State, where shallow graves of some of the gang’s victims were hidden.

On Friday, Benue state police commissioner, Mukaddas Garba, paraded the killer and five members of the gang to journalists in Makurdi.

Kpila said he planted cassava on the mass graves as a decoy. The suspects said they lured their victims who are mostly commercial motorcycle operators popularly called Okada and killed them.

“We would tell okada riders to drop us at a certain location and immediately we reached there, me and my gang members would grab the victim and strangulate(strangle) him with a rope. We would dig a grave, bury him and plant cassava on top of the grave, thereafter sell the motorcycle.’’

He claimed that he had operated for three months only, although some of the bodies exhumed at the cassava farm appeared to have been buried for much longer.

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