Slamet Tohari, known in his village as Mbah Slamet, presented himself as a dukun who could multiply money. People came to his home in Balun, a village in the Wanayasa district of Banjarnegara Regency in Central Java, from as far away as Lampung, Palembang and Sukabumi. They paid him fees and waited for the large sums he promised. The money never came. In early April 2023 police recovered the remains of twelve people in Balun, and the Banjarnegara District Court later found that he had poisoned twelve people. They were, he told the court, clients who kept pressing him to deliver or to return their money.
The case came to light because of one man's precaution. Before a final meeting with the dukun in March 2023, Paryanto, a 53-year-old from Sukabumi in West Java, told his son to go to the police if he could not be reached. The son did, and within days the inquiry had reached Balun. At his trial the man who had promised to make money multiply admitted that he could not multiply money at all. The Banjarnegara District Court convicted him of the premeditated murder of 12 people and sentenced him to death; JawaPos reported the verdict on February 4, 2024.
Slamet Tohari was 45 when he was arrested in 2023, according to detikJateng; Republika gave his age as 46. The name in the verdict was longer: Tuhari alias Tohari alias Mbah Slamet, as JawaPos reported it.
His house stood out in Balun. Reporters from detikJateng who visited in April 2023 described a two-story building with four pillars at the front, where he had lived with his wife and their youngest child, and a smaller green building beside it where he received guests. In the compound was a separate room he used for rituals, a cramped and windowless space that he barred everyone from entering, his wife included. She told reporters that the room had been built long before and that she knew little about what happened in it.
After his arrest his wife told detikJateng that she felt relieved, and that in the year before it he had often been away from home. At his trial a younger woman who had married him in an unregistered religious ceremony, a nikah siri, testified that she had known him since early 2022 and became his wife about six months after they met.
Long before the killings came to light, Tohari had a police record. In January 2019 police in Pekalongan, Central Java, stopped the circulation of 1,491 counterfeit 100,000-rupiah notes and arrested three men in Wiradesa. One of them was listed as Tuhari, 41, of Wanayasa, Banjarnegara. In April 2023 the head of the Pekalongan police criminal investigation unit, AKP Isnovim, confirmed to detikJateng that Tuhari and Mbah Slamet were the same man and that he had already been a repeat offender at the time of the 2019 arrest.
The 2019 scheme, as the Pekalongan police chief of the time, AKBP Wawan Kurniawan, described it, placed real notes at the front and back of stacks of fake ones and wrapped them in bank paper bands to fool buyers. The three men had earlier passed counterfeit money in Batang and had served time for similar offenses, and they faced charges under the currency law that carry up to 15 years. What sentence the 2019 case brought has not been reported.
After his 2023 arrest, Banjarnegara police said their records showed him to be a repeat counterfeiting offender who had been arrested twice before the 2019 case. Officers seized fake 100,000-rupiah notes from him, mostly red and printed with the words "uang mainan," toy money. The counterfeit notes became part of the case against him: the prosecution's indictment included a charge under the 2011 currency law, and the judge who read the death sentence listed possession of counterfeit money among his offenses.
Penggandaan uang, money multiplication, is the promise that a dukun can make a sum of money grow by spiritual means, in return for a fee, the mahar. Tohari told the court in November 2023 that his clients had paid mahar of about 20 million to 40 million rupiah each, that he had spent the money on his own needs and daily expenses, and that he could not in fact multiply anything.
He found clients through others. Budi Santoso, whom police described as his right-hand man and who was known by the nickname Bodrex, advertised him on Facebook as a man who could multiply money, according to the Banjarnegara police chief, AKBP Hendri Yulianto. Word also spread in person. Republika reported that in 2021 a man from Central Lampung invited two couples from Pesawaran Regency, in Lampung on Sumatra, to the dukun, saying that he could multiply money quickly; the husbands went first, and in August 2021 they returned with their wives.
Strangers came to Balun looking for him. The village head, Mahbudiono, told reporters in April 2023 that a man from Pekalongan had once asked him the way to Mbah Slamet's house because he had heard the dukun could multiply money. On another occasion a visitor from Palembang came looking for a relative who had gone to Balun and not come back; the village head told him to go to the police.
At the trial his wife first said she did not know her husband's guests. Pressed by the presiding judge, she said more than 20 guests, men and women, had come to the house. She also confirmed that she had once urged him to give up his work as a money-multiplying dukun.
Paryanto came from Cibadak in Sukabumi, West Java. He had been drawn in by a social media post from Budi Santoso, according to CNN Indonesia, and then dealt with Tohari directly. Police said the dukun had promised to turn his money into 5 billion rupiah, and that Paryanto had paid him 70 million rupiah. Tohari told police he had once given Paryanto 11 million rupiah and then paid nothing more. When the promised sum did not appear, Paryanto kept asking for results.
On March 23, 2023, Paryanto spoke with his son and said he was at Mbah Slamet's place. He told the son to report to the police if he went missing. From March 24 he could not be reached, and on March 27 the son filed a report with the Banjarnegara police. Reporting on the prosecution's demand for sentence in December 2023, detikJateng wrote that a victim had sent a voice message to a child asking that the police be told, and that the family used the location the victim had shared to search.
Paryanto was among the dead found in Balun in early April. His younger wife later testified that she had gone with Tohari to Wonosobo when he pawned the car Paryanto had been using. She denied going to Cirebon, where the court suggested evidence had been destroyed, though Tohari told the court she had been there.
In early April 2023 police recovered the remains of twelve people in Balun. On April 3 the count stood at ten, and AKP Bintoro Thio Pratama, head of the Banjarnegara police criminal investigation unit, said the full number was not yet known. By the next day it had reached twelve.
At a press conference on April 4, the Banjarnegara police chief said Tohari had admitted killing ten people since 2020, which matched the count at that point. He could not remember the victims' names, the chief said, but he remembered where they came from: two from Tasikmalaya, and others from Palembang, Yogyakarta and Jakarta.
The Central Java police chief, Inspector General Ahmad Luthfi, asked families with missing relatives to come forward. In its verdict the court found that all twelve had died of poisoning.
The case drew comment far beyond Banjarnegara. Yahya Cholil Staquf, general chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, told reporters in Yogyakarta on April 4 that the dukun should be punished under the law, and that many people still believed in money-multiplying dukun and needed education so that they would not be deceived.
Police and families worked through April and May 2023 to put names to the dead. The Central Java police disaster victim identification team, led by dr. Sumihastry, identified nine of the twelve.
Paryanto, 53, from Cibadak, Sukabumi, was identified first. Police believed he was the last of the clients to die.
Irsad, 43, and his wife Wahyu Triningsih, 40, came from Tanjung Rejo village in the Negeri Katon district of Pesawaran, Lampung. Irsad's craft was tapis embroidery, the traditional cloth work of Lampung, and he told his family he had been offered paid work teaching it in Java. His older brother told detikSumut that the family had not been suspicious, because Irsad often traveled for work and always came back, although they had lost contact the year before. The couple left two daughters, a vocational high school student and a girl of about three, who were living with an uncle.
Suheri and Riani were a second married couple from Pesawaran. Their daughter told detikJateng that both couples had left home in September 2021, and that her parents said only that they were going to work. Relatives of both couples traveled to Banjarnegara with two officers from the Gedong Tataan police to help identify them, and Lampung police said all four were among the dead.
Mulyadi Pratama, 46, came from Siring Agung, in the Ilir Barat I district of Palembang, South Sumatra. He was identified by police in early April.
Theresia and Okta Ali Abrianto came from the city of Magelang in Central Java, according to Republika; CNN Indonesia described them as a mother and her child. Theresia's brother spoke for the family after the verdict.
Kuwat Santosa, from Yogyakarta, was the last to be named. A relative had reported him missing, and the identification team named him in May 2023. Republika had earlier spelled his name Kuat Santoso and CNN Indonesia Kuwat Santoso.
Three of the twelve were still unidentified in October 2023, when the trial was under way. Whether they were named later has not been reported.
The count of twelve did not settle every question. Families of missing people came forward in numbers: 22 reports had reached the police missing-persons post by mid-April 2023, and 28 people had been reported missing by late May.
On April 18, 2023, the Banjarnegara police chief said that under intensive questioning Tohari had described 16 more victims, killed in 2011 and 2012. Police, the regional disaster agency and volunteers searched the places he named over two days and found nothing. "The total number of Mbah Slamet's victims as of today is still 12," said Kombes M. Iqbal Alqudusy, spokesman for the Central Java police, adding that the new statements had not been verified. In late May police still described the 16 as unfound.
No charge was brought over the claimed killings of 2011 and 2012, and the court's verdict covered twelve deaths.
Budi Santoso was arrested in the same inquiry. He was tried separately in the Banjarnegara District Court for fraud and embezzlement under Articles 378 and 372 of the Criminal Code. The prosecutor, Nasruddin, said the evidence showed his part was limited to the money-multiplication fraud: he had been paid in advance for bringing a client to the dukun's house.
On August 31, 2023, a panel presided over by Judge Benedictus Rinanta sentenced him to three years and six months in prison, more than the three years and four months the prosecution had sought. The judges counted against him the loss he caused the victim, his share in the proceeds and the unrest the case caused; in his favor they counted his regret, his clean record and his promise not to offend again. He accepted the sentence.
The case against Tohari reached the Banjarnegara District Court in September 2023, when the prosecution presented an indictment that combined several counts: premeditated murder under Article 340 of the Criminal Code, with Article 65(1), a charge that can carry the death penalty, and an offense under Law No. 7 of 2011 on Currency over the counterfeit money. Judge Niken Rochayati presided, and Judge Arief Wibowo sat on the panel.
Witnesses included both of the women he had married. His younger wife, testifying on October 5, gave answers that the presiding judge criticized as evasive and urged her to testify honestly. On October 26 his wife told the court about the guests who had come to the house. The presiding judge reminded her of the evidence of a victim's son, who had said that residents told him guests at Mbah Slamet's house mostly never came back.
On November 23, 2023, Tohari testified himself. He told the court that he had killed twelve people, and that the ones he killed were clients who repeatedly asked for their money back and threatened to report him to the police. Judge Arief Wibowo told him that more poison had been found, and that the killings could have continued if the case had not come to light in March 2023.
On December 21, 2023, the prosecutor, Nasruddin, asked for the death penalty. He told the court that the defendant had killed twelve people in a cruel and deliberate manner, that the victims' families would suffer for a long time and that the case had disturbed the public; he found nothing in the defendant's favor. The defense lawyer, Ahmad Raharjo, asked for two weeks to prepare a plea and argued that the premeditation required by Article 340 had not been proved.
The panel found Tohari guilty beyond reasonable doubt of premeditated murder of more than one person, committed repeatedly, and sentenced him to death. Reading the verdict, Judge Niken Rochayati listed with the twelve killings by poison his possession of counterfeit money and his fraud against more than one victim. Against him, she said, he had shown no pity, and had left some of their children orphaned. After the killings, the court found, he had gone to a karaoke venue and paid for it with the proceeds of his crimes, conduct the judge called very vile.
Theresia's brother said the family was satisfied and relieved, while accepting that the panel had ruled as it did.
Whether Tohari or the prosecution appealed has not been reported. In February 2024 he stood convicted by the district court and under sentence of death.
Several points in the case were never settled in court or were reported in conflicting ways.
The number of victims. Tohari first told police of ten killings since 2020; the count of the dead in Balun reached twelve; in April 2023 he spoke of 16 more killings in 2011 and 2012, which searches did not confirm. The court's verdict concerned twelve deaths.
The ages and identities of some of the dead. Reports gave Wahyu Triningsih's age as 40 (detikJateng) and 41 (CNN Indonesia), and spelled Irsad's name in several ways, including Irsyad. Reports from Lampung placed the dukun's retreat in Tulungagung, while the same detikSumut report elsewhere said Banjarnegara. The daughter of Suheri and Riani dated the couples' departure to September 2021; Republika's account had the husbands returning with their wives in August 2021. Three of the twelve dead were not identified while the trial was under way.
His age. detikJateng and CNN Indonesia reported him as 45 in April 2023; Republika gave both 45 and 46.
January 2019: Pekalongan police arrest three men, among them Tuhari, 41, of Wanayasa, Banjarnegara, over 1,491 counterfeit 100,000-rupiah notes.
2020: Tohari later tells police that the killings began this year.
2021: two couples from Pesawaran, Lampung, are introduced to him; the husbands visit first, and in August 2021 they return with their wives.
Early 2022: he meets the woman who becomes his younger wife.
March 23, 2023: Paryanto, 53, of Sukabumi, tells his son he is at Mbah Slamet's place.
March 24, 2023: Paryanto can no longer be reached.
March 27, 2023: his son reports him missing to the Banjarnegara police.
April 3, 2023: police in Balun put the count of the dead at ten.
April 4, 2023: the count reaches twelve; police say he has admitted ten killings since 2020.
April 5, 2023: police say he is a repeat counterfeiting offender and take him to Pekalongan as part of the inquiry.
April 6 to 7, 2023: relatives from Lampung travel to Banjarnegara; four victims are named.
April 18, 2023: police say he has described 16 more killings in 2011 and 2012; searches find none.
April 26, 2023: eight of the twelve have been identified.
May 2023: Kuwat Santosa is identified by police; three of the twelve remain unidentified.
August 31, 2023: Budi Santoso is sentenced to three years and six months for fraud and embezzlement.
September 2023: the murder and counterfeiting indictment is presented in the Banjarnegara District Court.
October 5 and 26, 2023: his two wives testify.
November 23, 2023: Tohari tells the court he killed twelve clients who pressed him for their money.
December 21, 2023: the prosecutor asks for the death penalty.
February 4, 2024: JawaPos reports that the court has convicted him of premeditated murder of twelve people and sentenced him to death.