Black Jesus Killed

An infamous cult leader known as “Black
Jesus”, who was suspected of
cannibalism, has been chopped to death
in a remote Papua New Guinea village,
reports said Friday.
According to AFP, Steven Tari, a
convicted rápist, had been on the run
since escaping from a prison in Madang
in the Pacific nation’s east during a mass
break-out with 48 others in March.
Madang police chief Sylvester Kalaut said
that Tari and one of his followers were
killed at a village about 20 kilometres (12
miles) outside Madang on Thursday as
they were attacking a young woman.
“He is now dead and this could be the
fate of the others who are also on the run
from authorities and I am warning and
strongly urging those escapees to
surrender themselves to authorities,”
Kalaut told the PNG Post-Courier.
Tari, a failed Lutheran pastor who was
widely known as Black Jesus, was found
guilty in 2010 of ráping girls who
belonged to his Christian-based sect and
sentenced to up to 10 years.
At the time, he had thousands of village
followers, including a core of armed
warriors to protect him, in what is
commonly referred to in PNG as a “cargo
cult”.
As part of his “culture ministry”, he
preached that young girls were to be
“married” to him as it was God’s
prophecy.
Kalaut said the woman Tari was in the
process of attacking was “a flower girl
tricked into joining the cult”, adding that
angry villagers had surrounded him and
his companion and killed them.
His death follows that of a young high-
school girl about a week ago — a murder
alleged to have been carried out by Tari.
When he was captured in 2007, there
were widespread allegations that his cult
also practiced cannibalism and sacrificial
blood rituals, but police only charged him
with rápe.
PNG is a sprawling nation where black
magic, sorcery and cannibalism
sometimes occur.
Last year, police arrested dozens of
people linked to an alleged cannibal cult
accused of killing at least seven people,
eating their brains raw and making soup
from their penises.