THE MEGABO MURDERS

 

THE LAST WALK

 

THE LAST WALK

 

SHE remembers the bitter cold.

It was midnight when she and her siblings were awoken from their slumber.

No-one in the village stirred except for the grunt of a local pig. The usual shrill of the forest also lay in the embers of the withering fire.

A hurried meal of 'kaukau' roasted over hot coal was quickly dispatched with cold water. At this God forsaken hour, hunger was secondary. The cold of Wesan was the enemy for now.

Unknown to little Sindia, a wide eyed young kid of 12, it would be the cold that would protect her numbing pain from the shocking horror she would endure in the next 12 hours.

Sindia followed her mother Amesera and father Joe to the door of their kunai thatched humble home.

The family of six was departing their mother's village of Samiri in the Gahuku local level government area of Goroka, for their father's village of Katagu in neighbouring Unggai Bena.

The hike is long and they planned on leaving for good! But there were others who also had other plans.

To understand the journey, we have to comprehend the long walk. Katagu and Samiri are very remote places in Eastern Highlands province in Papua New Guinea's highlands.

The Wesan area is only accessible by light aircraft on clear days. As there are no roads, the only other option is bush trekking through beautiful countryside, crossing streams and ascending high mountains.

Here there is no telecommunication network, no law and order and lack of education and health services. 

And here in these remote locations, life is simple and very basic. The locals are farmers, hunters and gatherers. While there are churches in the area, the deep rooted conviction in natural superstition of life and death, good and bad, is still guided by 'sanguma' or sorcery.

Someone had died in Samiri. And someone had to be accountable. Someone had to pay the price with his or her life. The supernatural world was at work.

The lot of suspicion, spun on the wheels of gossip and accusations of sorcery fuelled by 'glass man' fortune tellers, fell on Joe Leky, his wife Amesera and their children, even though they were absolutely innocent.

So on a cold foggy May 15 night, the family packed whatever they could shoulder and slipped out of the home.

It wasn’t safe anymore for Joe, his wife and their four children to reside in Samiri because Joe's in-laws had accused his wife of sorcery.

The journey from Samiri to Katagu stretches along the isolated Megabo bush track.

The extreme cold was incapacitating for the children and so in the middle of somewhere on the track the family decided to rest.

The plan was to rest briefly, regain their strength, and shove off again. They planned to reach the bush material cane bridge that would send them on their way safely to the grasslands of Bena, a few distance away where a safe haven waited their tired bodies. 

While the family made a fire in the middle of the jungle to keep warm from the freezing cold of the Megabo track, a sudden attack occurred, as the men who accused the family of sorcery arrived on scene.

They were armed with sharp metre long bush knives, bows and arrows, and axes.

Joe Leky, wife Amesera Joe, 13-year-old Raymond Joe, eight-year-old Nani Joe and five-year-old sister Mamaropa Joe stood no chance of survival as the frenzied pair tore into them.

The sad thing is that this pair was no different to their victims. They were both brothers of Amesera and uncles to her innocent children. But that did not matter. The hought never crossed their murderous hearts.

Sindia identified the two as her maternal uncles Avovo and Pinat. She knew them because she played with their children in their village.

However, tonight they were not her ‘uncles'. They were frenzied demons, intent on murder. She watched helplessly, bravely shielding her young sisters from their two murderous uncles as Avovo and Pinat slaughtered their father.

"They shot father with an arrow, then chopped him up with bush knives.

“My brother Raymond tried to stop them, crying to them to stop but was killed in the act after he told them that we (children) were innocent. They cut him twice and I saw him bleed to death,” Sindia recalled.

The blood splattered men called the three young girls as they fearfully cowered in the kunai grass.  The cold of the misty night was replaced by the cold of their murderous uncles. Feverishly shivering, they emerged from their hiding places.

Sindia recalls that when the attack occurred, their mother was away looking for firewood to fuel their fire so the killers told Sindia and her younger sisters to lead them to their mother, the alleged main suspect in the alleged act of sorcery.

“The two men asked us where our mother was,” Sindia recalled in PNG Tok Pisin.

“They told Nani, Mamaropa and myself to take them to our mother so we walked down a hill, as we were walking, they told me to walk in the front and my younger sisters to follow behind me.

“While I was walking in front, all of a sudden when I turned around, I saw them cutting Mamaropa, and then I saw them cutting Nani, so I ran away and they missed me with a spear.

“When I ran away and hid from them, I heard them yelling my name, telling me to come out of the bushes but I hid and prayed to God.

“When the sun came up I went to the same spot where we had rested and all I could find was blood drops on the ground.

“I was all alone so I just followed the road to my father's village and that is when I saw a young girl the same age as me in the middle of the jungles along the bush trek.

“I followed her and then she turned and saw me and asked me where I was going, I told her that I was on my way to my father’s village.

“She could see that I was not okay so she asked me and I told her of what happened so she helped me by bringing me to a couple from the Seventh Day Adventist church.

“After leaving me with the couple, she left and never came back so the couple washed and dressed me and took care of me until my relatives came and got me.”

According to Sindia’s relatives, they got word that she was being looked after by the couple so they quickly went and brought her to Katagu and then brought her to the police in Goroka.

After Post-Courier first published Sindia’s terrifying ordeal on June 19, 2020, it was learned that Sindia also had elder siblings who were not part of that fateful journey. The other siblings are Dorothy Joe, Tiru Joe and Jordan Joe, who were living in Goroka.

According to relatives of the late father, the family left Katagu and had been living in the mother’s village for six years in the Wesan area because of the continuous tribal warfare in the Bena area. Then due to recent sorcery accusations, they were forced to return to Katagu to be safe.

On June 25, 2020 Goroka police met with leaders from both sides and warned that the killers be brought forward including the return of the remains of the bodies to late Joe’s relatives.

The relatives of the deceased also demanded that the remains of the bodies be returned for a proper burial to take place plus K50,000 and five pigs be given as compensation.

On Friday, July 17, policemen from the Homicide Unit in Goroka travelled down to the Usino-Bundi district in neighbouring Madang province where the suspects had run away to and were supposed to be handed over to police and the bodies of the deceased returned to the relatives.

According to a Wesan ward councillor, the suspects escaped from the community at a bridge while they were trying to bring them to police.

Only the remains of Joe Leky and son Raymond Joe were returned while the remains of the other family members (mother and two daughters) are still missing.

Handed over with the two bodies was an amount of K5000 in cash and food items as a Melanesian gesture to help with the burial.

On September 9, 2020, both sides met again but no good feedback was given by the councillor from Wesan, who was also accompanied by another ward councillor from the Gahuku LLG.

Councillors from Wesan are currently in the frontline in assisting the police to bring the suspects forward for formal arrests to be made but one major delay being logistic support, local leadership and financial support as frustrations have built up among the relatives of deceased for justice to be served.

It has been almost one year since the death of one half of her family and Sindia continues to live with her relatives and elder siblings hoping that the men involved in the killing of her family are brought to justice.

Sindia still lives with the nightmares which continues to haunt her to this day as she turns to God every day for guidance.  

She recalls that the murderers were her uncles, and she use to play with their children, (her cousins), thus what happened has left a huge scar she would live with for the rest of her life.

This is the painful reality of her innocence.

With VICKY BAUNKE & ISAAC LIRI, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

 

Picture: The remains of the deceased bodies Joe Leky and Raymond Joe returned on 17 July 2020 while other still unknown (Family consent was given for use of pictures)

Picture: Sindia (in pink shirt) and her family while visiting the Goroka Post-Courier office to give her story.

Picture 6: Relatives of Sindia during one of the meeting with the councillors from the Gahuku LLG in Goroka at the National Park.

PICTURES BY VICKY BAUNKE of the Post-Courier