Police Dig Up 12 Bodies on the Land of a Banjarnegara 'Money-Multiplying' Shaman
A Sukabumi man went to see Mbah Slamet about doubling his money and never came home. His son's missing-person report led police to a garden plot in Balun village.
Published
On March 24, 2023, a 53-year-old man from Sukabumi, in West Java, sent a WhatsApp message to one of his children saying he was at the home of Mbah Slamet, a man in Banjarnegara, Central Java, who claimed he could multiply money. If he was not back by Sunday, March 26, the father wrote, his children should come to the house with the police. He did not come back. On March 27 his son reported him missing to the Banjarnegara police.
Officers searching the area found the man buried on Saturday, April 1, beside a footpath leading into the forest of Balun village, in Wanayasa district, on land belonging to the suspect, identified by police only as TH, alias Mbah Slamet, 45. ANTARA later gave his name as Slamet Tohari. Police identified the victim by his initials, PO. He had handed over Rp 70 million on the shaman's promise that it would become Rp 5 billion, police said, and he was killed with a drink laced with potassium cyanide because the suspect was annoyed at being pressed again and again for the money.
On Monday, April 3, police and volunteers went back to dig around the place where the first body had been found. "We cannot yet confirm the number," AKP Bintoro Thio Pratama, head of the Banjarnegara police criminal investigation unit, told reporters that afternoon. Volunteers counted 10 bodies recovered that day, ANTARA reported, several of them buried together in a single hole. They were taken to a local hospital for identification.
Twelve bodies
The next day, after autopsies, nine of the bodies, still unidentified, were buried in three graves in the Balun village cemetery: three women and six men, according to the police unit that handed them over. The family of PO had taken his body home on Monday night. The Banjarnegara police chief, AKBP Hendri Yulianto, said the suspect had admitted killing 10 people since 2020 but could not remember their names. That afternoon the search team found two more bodies, a man and a woman in one hole, bringing the total to 12.
At a press conference at the burial site on Tuesday, Hendri had the suspect brought out and asked him to say who was buried in each hole. He could remember only one, Hendri said: the two bodies found that day, which the suspect said were a man from Lampung and his wife. Hendri cautioned that the suspect's statements under interrogation sometimes changed. According to the police chief, the suspect carried out every killing himself, giving his victims a drink mixed with a sedative and potassium cyanide during a ritual, always at about 7:30 in the evening, and digging the grave only after he was sure they were dead. A second suspect, identified as BS, had advertised the shaman's money-doubling powers on Facebook and introduced the victims to him, police said; the shaman said BS knew nothing of the killings.
Police in the first days identified only one victim, by initials, and the count changed as the dig went on: 10 bodies recovered on April 3, matching the 10 killings the suspect admitted, and 12 by the afternoon of April 4. The date of the suspect's arrest was not given in the police statements reported that week. In February 2024 a Banjarnegara court sentenced Slamet Tohari to death for the killings.
Sources
- Polisi evakuasi sejumlah mayat korban dukun di Banjarnegara, ANTARA (Sumarwoto)
- Sembilan jenazah korban pembunuhan dukun dimakamkan di Banjarnegara, ANTARA
- Kapolres Banjarnegara: 12 jenazah korban dukun telah ditemukan, ANTARA (Sumarwoto), via ANTARA Sultra
Related News
- February 1, 2024: Indonesian Court Sentences 'Money-Multiplying' Shaman Slamet Tohari to Death for Poisoning 12