Gracious David-West
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gracious David-West | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1980 Buguma, Nigeria |
| Known for | Convicted serial killer |
| Criminal status | Arrested |
| Criminal charge | Murder |
| Penalty | Death |
| Details | |
| Victims | 15 |
Span of crimes | July – 20 September 2019 |
| Country | Nigeria |
| States | Rivers, Abia, Imo, Edo, Lagos |
| Location | Port Harcourt |
Date apprehended | 19 September 2019[1] |
Gracious David-West (born c. 1980) is a Nigerian convicted serial killer. From July until September 2019, David-West killed at least 15 women, mostly in the city of Port Harcourt. He was apprehended on 19 September 2019.[2] He later confessed to a total of 15 murders.[3]
David-West reportedly had a tough childhood. Several individuals who knew him claimed that he was an only child born into a polygamous household, but he and his mother lived separately from the rest of the family.[4] He claims that his mother was poisoned and that, as the only son of his father, much was expected of him, but he could not deliver.[5] He claimed that he attended the branch of the Lord's Chosen Church in Obigbo, where he said that he confessed to the pastor that he had been killing women. The pastor reportedly invited him to a crusade prayer service to heal him.[5]
David-West was reportedly a member of the Greenlanders (also known as Deebham or Dey Gbam), a mafia-styled street gang that sprung out of the armed militant groups that are notorious in Nigeria for engaging in criminal acts of violence and Voodoo.[3][4]
Murders
Although he reportedly belonged to a criminal group,[1] David-West told authorities that he had acted alone in the murders.[3]
Reason for murders
In a confession, David-West claimed that he had "an irresistible urge to kill," and every night from June to his capture in September, he scoured the streets in his vehicle looking for women.[3] He would proceed to take the victim to a local hotel, where he and the victim would eat, have sex, and then go to bed. In the middle of the night, David-West would wake up the victim and threaten her with a knife. Before killing the women, he robbed them of money, ATM cards, and other valuables. He would then turn the television or the radio on high volume, and using strips of cloth he had cut from the pillowcases, he would tie up the victim before manually strangling her.[3] Victims were often found naked, bound with a white strip of cloth on their ankles, arms, and neck.[4]
He was arrested when, in the early morning of 19 September 2019, a woman who had accompanied him to a hotel woke up to David-West tying her up and preparing to suffocate her. David-West and another individual from Kaduna State were arrested and charged with homicide.[6]