ALTHOUGH the bizarre act continues to be associated with the effects of the abuse of a synthetic drug popularly known as “bath salt”, this story reads like a scene from your most recent horror movie flick: a man kills a fellow housemate, uses a kitchen knife to carve out his heart and brain matter before ingesting them.
Unfortunately, it is no horror movie story. It is the story of a man-eating undergraduate student and a Ghanian post-graduate student victim. And it didn’t happen in some remote jungle out there but it happened in a suburb of the city of Baltimore, in the US State of Maryland.
Bath salts is a new designer drug linked to a Miami man who chewed the flesh of another man’s face while high on the concoction. The U.S. Senate designated bath salts as an illegal substance Thursday
Authorities say Alex Kinyua, 21, admitted using a knife to kill and carve up Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, 37, before eating his heart and parts of his brain. The older man had been staying with the Kinyua family for about six weeks at their townhouse in the Baltimore suburb of Joppatowne.
The remains have been positively identified as Agyei-Kodie’s and a relative in the United States has been notified, according to sheriff’s office spokeswoman Monica
Worrell. No other charges have been filed against anyone else, she said.
Both the victim and his alleged killer had attended nearby Morgan State University, a historically black university in Baltimore. Kinyua had just finished his junior year, and Agyei-Kodie was a graduate student who last attended classes in 2008. Both men were also originally from Africa; Kinyua, a U.S. citizen, moved from Kenya as a child and Agyei-Kodie was from Ghana.
Investigators haven’t given a possible motive in the slaying. In a separate case on May 19, police said Kinyua beat a man with a baseball bat on Morgan State’s campus, fracturing his skull and making him lose sight in one eye. Kinyua was free on $220,000 bail in that case. He is now being held without bond on a murder charge.
Kinyua, an electrical engineering student, had a very good grade point average and had enough credits to be a senior in the fall, according to university spokesman Clinton Coleman. He could not comment on the May incident, but noted the university has a zero-tolerance policy toward violence and a student in such a situation would likely be suspended or expelled.
No students or faculty had approached the school with concerns about Kinyua, Coleman said.
In February, Kinyua posted a question on Facebook, asking fellow students at historically black colleges and universities if they were “strong enough to endure ritual HBCU mass human sacrifices around the country and still be able to function as human beings?”
He referred to the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech and “other past university killings around the country” and warned “ethnic cleansing is the policy, strategy and tactics that will affect you, directly or indirectly in the coming months.”
Kinyua wrote on his page that he attended Morgan State and was a member of an ROTC-affiliated military honor society at the university, the National Society of Pershing Rifles. ROTC is a college-based U.S. military program that allows students to be commissioned as officers when they graduate.
The page was linked to an Internet radio show called Warrior Syndicate Radio, which displayed a photo of Kinyua in green-and-white face paint. A Twitter account linked to him also had nonsensical and repetitive Tweets that ended in February.
Lt. Col. James Lewis, a professor of military science at Morgan State and the head of the ROTC program, said Friday that Kinyua participated in ROTC for 2½ years but was “disenrolled” in January. He could not say why.
James Holt, a friend of the victim for about 10 years, told The Associated Press that Agyei-Kodie had met Antony Kinyua, the father of his alleged killer, while pursuing a doctoral degree. Antony Kinyua is a physics lecturer at Morgan State.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Agyei-Kodie came to the United States on a student visa but was not in compliance with the visa’s terms. He was ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge in 2010 and was under ICE’s supervision pending removal to Ghana.
The agency had been waiting for documents from Ghana before returning him to the country.
Holt said the Kinyua family took in Agyei-Kodie when he hadn’t worked for three years and was trying to re-establish his life.
“Dr. Kinyua was extremely kind in taking Kujoe into his house while Kujoe got his feet back under him.” Holt said. “And I think Kujoe was on his way to re-establishing his educational status and completing his Ph.D. when this happened.”
Authorities went to the Kinyua home Tuesday after Kinyua’s brother found what he thought were human remains in two metal tins in the family’s basement.
Investigators found what they believe are Agyei-Kodie’s head and hands. More remains were found outside a church about a mile away.
A woman who answered the door at the family’s townhouse Friday morning said the family would not be commenting.
Daniel Ziolkowski, who lives two doors down from the Kinyuas, was mowing his lawn Saturday morning when he noticed Alex Kinyua trimming the bushes with a machete. He didn’t look angry, but Ziolkowski said he had never seen that before.
Later, Ziolkowski’s wife, Kathy, said police dug up the bushes during an extensive investigation at the home by police.
She said Alex Kinyua’s high school-aged brother told her that he went downstairs to do laundry and noticed something was off. That’s when he discovered the head and body parts, she said.
“He looked at me and said ‘He brought shame to the family. You’re going to be hearing about this for the next 10 years,'” she said.
The Ziolkowkis said the Kinyua family has always been friendly, but mostly kept to themselves.
“They’re a very nice family. This is just such a shock. Very shocking and gruesome,” she said.
Harford County Sheriff Jesse Bane, who has been with the office for 40 years, described the area as a quiet and semi-rural community. He said the county has had some gruesome investigations in the past but never an incident of cannibalism.