IT started last year when a young man was walking to work across London's
Tower Bridge. Looking down into the swift-flowing Thames, he saw what he
thought was a beer keg in an orange oilskin.
What he saw on a closer look started an investigation that gets more bizarre as
more evidence is uncovered. It was the torso of a male black child wearing
orange swimming trunks. His head, arms and legs had been clinically removed.
Codenamed "Adam" by police, he has never been identified.
Commander Andy Baker, who leads the investigation, was yesterday in The Hague, Holland, for a conference of police from across Europe working on similar cases, after finding Adam's death was one of a chain of ritual child murders linked to African religious practices.
Some police have called them "black magic" murders involving voodoo, or a southern African cult.
Police say they are looking at similar cases in Germany, Sweden, France, Belgium, Greece, Italy and the US. Known deaths are somewhere between 10 and 20. The first known case was in 1987, Commander Baker said.
Police fear children are being sacrificed with the full knowledge of their parents and their disappearances not reported. An autopsy found Adam, aged five or six, had been well cared for.
Commander Baker said killings across Europe, including three in Italy, had striking similarities to the horrific mutilation of Adam.
Police have also reopened a 33-year-old case in which the torso of a baby girl was found in bushes in Essex.