Ritual convict hanged to death 20 years after crime!

 Otokoto ritual convict, Chief Vincent Duru, one of the men convicted in the case of the ritual murder of Ikechukwu Okoronkwo, 11, on September 19, 1996, in Owerri, Imo State, was reportedly hanged,

on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, 13 years after his 2003 conviction.

The victim, Okoronkwo, a groundnut seller, was lured into a highbrow hotel called Otokoko in Owerri owned by Duru and was thereafter beheaded.

The crime was discovered by an okada rider,  when Innocent Ekeanyanwu, 32, who beheaded the boy left the hotel to deliver the head in a polythene bag to a client, an influential figure, Chief Leonard Unaogu. The okada rider, who gave him a ride discovered the fresh human head and alerted the police later. When the news of the murder broke, for many days, angry residents of Owerri trooped to the streets in what became known as the Otokoto Riots.

Houses, hotels, supermarkets, and vehicles suspected to belong to the suspects and those suspected to belong to fraudsters or people of shady characters were burnt.

Just 3 days after his arrest, Ekeanyanwu was found dead in police custody. He was suspected to have been poisoned. Three police officers were sentenced to death by hanging by an Owerri High Court in 2002 for their roles in the death of Ekeanyanwu, who was supposed to be the principal witness in the case.

Before his death, Ekeanyanwu had confessed that Unaogu was the brains behind the ritual killing syndicate he worked for. Policemen who later searched the premises of Otokoto Hotel reportedly exhumed some dead bodies.

Unaogu and Duru and 5 others were arrested in connection with the case. In her judgment delivered in February 2003, Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme sentenced them to death.

Unaogu later died at the Port Harcourt Prisons. One of the convict, Ebenezer Egwueke, later appeal his conviction and found innocent. He was freed after 16 years in prison, aged 62