STRANGE DEATHS

UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, a Canadian from Courtenay on the east coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, travelled to Peru on a number of occasions to experiment with the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca. He intended to become an addiction counsellor using hallucinogenic medicine. Ayahuasca, also known as yage, is a blend of the ayahuasca vine ( Banisteriopsis caapi) and a shrub called chacruna ( Psychotria viridis), which contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT). He had recently gone to the Ucayali rainforest region hoping to do an apprenticeship with Olivia Arévalo Lomas, 81, a female shaman from the Shipibo-Conibo indigenous group. The Shipibo have been using ayahuasca for centuries as part of their healing ceremonies. Ms Arévalo had been working with traditional plant medicine since she was 15, and came from a long line of healers, according to the Temple of the Way of Light centre where she worked.

Police launched a search for Woodroffe after a camera phone recording emerged on social media showing him lying in a puddle groaning while another man puts a rope around his neck and drags him along. A group of locals stands by and watches while Woodroffe appears to go limp. On 21 April, his body was found buried in a shallow unmarked grave. He had been strangled and there were several blows across his body. Half a mile away, Ms Arévalo had been found shot dead outside her home on 19 April. It wasn’t clear why the locals’ anger focused on the Canadian, as other indigenous activists had in the past been murdered by landowners because of their efforts to keep illegal loggers and oil palm growers off their native land. However, locals claimed that witnesses had seen Woodroffe shoot the medicine woman after she sang an ikaro, or curing song. “A foreigner can come and kill us, day after day, like dogs or cats, and nothing happens, the state does nothing,” one local woman told a Peruvian official on television. In fact, there was an unconfirmed report that Ms Arévalo’s killer was a gang member looking to collect a debt from her son. BBC News, Guardian online, 23 April; D.Telegraph, 24 April 2018. This was not the first time a lynching in the Peruvian Amazon basin was filmed on a mobile phone. On 20 September 2016, Rosa Villar Jarionaca, aged 65 or 73, was accused of using witchcraft to make members of the Yánesha tribe sick, and was burnt alive in Palcazú district. In the video, a man can be heard stating: “We are teaching her a lesson. It is an example to the other peoples. We do justice for the people, burn the witches.” Besides the video, there were tribal documents recording a democratic vote in which 40 people chose to execute her. She reportedly burned for three days. “When we went to examine the corpse, we couldn’t find anything,” said an official. “Everything was ash.” Breitbart, 30 Sept 2016.

A 53-year-old Kansas man missing for eight months was found dead inside his truck at Kansas City International Airport on 12 September. Relatives of Randy Potter believe the former T-Mobile manager died shortly after leaving his home in Lenexa on 17 January, the last day he was seen alive. Police in Kansas City found his body after a foul smell coming from his white 2014 Dodge Ram pickup truck was reported at the busy airport. It was parked on the street level in front of the airport’s Terminal B, which travellers can use for both short- and long-term parking. Potter’s body, which was found in the driver’s seat, was so badly decomposed that investigators couldn’t initially determine the gender or race, but he was later identified and apparently died by suicide. nypost.com, 18 Sept 2017. For cases of dead drivers getting parking tickets, see FT48:23,59:13, 71:14, 176:28, 275:10. A man was out celebrating beating cancer last July when he drunkenly fell down a cliff. Adam Fenton, 31, a roofer from Newquay in Cornwall, got the all-clear from B-cell lymphoma after nine months of gruelling chemotherapy. Three weeks later, his body was found at the foot of a 50ft (15m) rockface on Towan Beach. He coroner thought it likely he had been trying to find a quiet spot to sleep off the alcohol. Sun, Metro, 24 Nov 2017. Christopher Nagle, 51, wanting fish for his pond, bought an illegal stunner online – a control box wired to two metal poles. Two days after his girlfriend reported him missing, his body was discovered half submerged in a stream on Dartmoor near Peter Tavy, 25 miles (40km) from his home in Moretonhampstead in Devon. As wires were seen coming out of his backpack, a bomb disposal team was called before his body was removed. Burns were found on his hand, indicating electrocution. Sun, 15 Mar 2018.