RedHanded - DAY 5: Papua New Guinea’s Black Magic Murders (ShortHand’s 13 Days of Halloween)

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--Black magic, or ‘Sanguma’, is often used to explain everything from minor illnesses to sudden deaths in Papua New Guinea. Horrifyingly, it’s also behind the recent rise of brutal witch hunts sweeping the nation. An epidemic of violence in which, predominantly, women and girls are being publicly tortured and murdered.Why? Find out on this week’s ShortHand.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Scams are everywhere. On your phone, in your inbox, even on your television screen. Looking at you, Tinder Swindler. What is it about scams that has pop culture so obsessed? Maybe it's because it could happen to anyone. Or maybe it's because we're all so deeply fascinated by the psyche of someone who can lie with ease, cheat with no guilt, and convince the world that they are who they say they are, even when they're not. Scamfluencers is a weekly podcast that takes you into the world of deception, sharing the stories of today's most notorious scams.

Like the recent episode of Natalie Cochran, the pharmacist Fem Fetal. It seemed like she had it all. A good job, loving husband, and two kids. But behind the scenes, Natalie was scamming friends and family using fake contracts, fake government emails, and she even faked cancer. But when the wall start closing in, she'll do anything to keep the lie alive until someone ends up dead. Listen to scam influencers now, wherever you get your podcasts. Scams are everywhere, on your phone, in your inbox, even on your television screen. So what is it about scams that has pop culture so obsessed?

Maybe it's because it can happen to anyone. Or maybe it's because we're all deeply fascinated by the psyche of someone who can lie with ease and cheat with no guilt. Listen to scam influencers now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello there, spooky listener. It's October, our favorite time of the year. And so to celebrate and give you all a well-deserved treat, we're bringing you the 13 days of Halloween. Short-hand edition. Usually, every single week over on Amazon Music, we release brand-new episodes of our bite-sized sister show,

shorthand. It's like red-handed's little friend. Where we delve into all sorts of fascinating topics. From hell in different religions, Haitian voodoo, the death of Edgar Allan Poe, Qatar's syndrome, Japan's suicide forest, and so much more. And this Halloween, from the 19th of October to the 31st of October, we are going to be pulling out 13 of our most terrifying episodes of Shorthand to drop straight into your red-handed feed every single day.

But beware. Each episode will only be available for 24 hours. So get listening or abandon or hope. Enjoy. Hello. Hello. And welcome to another short. And you're welcome. Today is the supplementary episode to go with your two parts on Bain, on the Bain family murders.

So basically, like we said, if you've listened to Part 1, when we were doing the research for the Bain family murders, which is an absolute fucking beast of a case, I'm still traumatized by recording five hours worth of content in one day for that. But when we were doing it, it was really, really hard to escape the feeling that the 14 years that the Bain family spent in Papua New Guinea had no impact whatsoever on those murders. And other podcasts that have covered it, I understand why they sort of skirt away from the issue

because it is a whole other thing to get into. But here at Red Handed, getting into things that are whole other things to get into is exactly what we love to do. It's kind of our thing. It is our thing. And luckily for you, luckily for us, luckily for everybody, we created shorthand.

So let's get into it. In the village of Tukasanda, Papua New Guinea, in November 2017, a seven-year-old girl named Lily, and Lily's not her real name, I changed her name so that we don't say it, was abducted from her home by an angry mob. They carried Lily to a nearby hut where they tied her up and tortured the young girl for hours. They beat her, they flayed her skin with hot machetes

and screamed accusations at seven-year-old Lily that she had stolen her cousin's heart and devoured it. All the while Lily's cousin lay in the hut, groaning in pain. Whenever Lily was being hurt by the mob, the cousin would fall quiet. But when Lily was left alone, her cousin would start shrieking as though she was being attacked. This all but confirmed it. Lily was a witch and a practitioner of Sanghama, black magic. It was decided that Lily must have used her dark powers to steal the other girl's heart,

making her gravely ill. because after all, as the saying goes in Papua New Guinea, no one dies a natural death. And it's because of this belief and the ideas of black magic that go with it that horrifically, Lily's story, is not a unique one. In fact, what's officially termed sorcery-related violence, so quite literally witch hunts,

have been on the rise since 2013 in Papua New Guinea, and they're now at epidemic levels. How's that happened? You're going to find out because here is the shorthand. So Papua New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific is truly, and this is no exaggeration, a jaw-droppingly beautiful country, of immense cultural and biological diversity.

If you listen to last week's red-handed episode on the Bain Family Murders Part 1, you'll know that it is truly unique, anthropologically speaking, with genetic testing showing that its inhabitants have involved separately from the rest of the world's population for at least 50,000. thousand years, making its traditions, cultures and languages totally distinct. But Papua New Guinea is also one of the poorest countries on earth. Corruption and inequality are through the roof,

alongside shocking levels of violence, particularly against women and children. In many cases, this violence is thanks to accusations of witchcraft. And while to many of us literal witch hunts may sound like a thing of the past, a grisly historic relic of times gone by. Sadly, that's just not the case in Papua New Guinea. And over the past 20 years, on average, 72 incidents of torture and 30 deaths have been reported every year. And it's not a huge population.

And I also don't think that's the real number. Yes, we suspect that the real number is much higher. And we suspect that because when you consider that NGOs in Papua New Guinea state that they rescue and evacuate on average 10 people a week who are at risk of torture and murder because they have been accused of being witches and certain districts have said that some months up to 30 women are attacked.

It does seem that that number is probably quite a lot higher. Yes, I just think it's very, very hidden. It's very hidden. So yes, the real numbers are completely impossible to know. who would risk reporting a witch-related or sorcery-related murder for fear that they would be next on the mob's hit list? And even if someone wanted to make a report like this, who would they report it to?

Because 85% of PNG's population live rurally. And honestly, when I was writing this, I was like, Rurali feels like a massive fucking understatement. Because the topography of the country, which is what makes it so beautiful, also makes it incredibly hard to traverse. So many of the communities live in what's better described as isolation. With over half of the population of PNG living in these sort of like

very, very isolated, very like jungle surroundings, they have no access to electricity, no running water, basic healthcare or education. And this is particularly true in the country's vast highlands. There's also no official police presence. So you have here what you have in so many other countries that are similar to this, you have village elders who have total power. So they make the laws, they run the tribal courts, and they are the ones to dish out judgments and punishments.

And often these accusations of wrongdoing lead to exponential bloodshed. For example, when a person is accused and killed, their firstborn will become the next target, the fear being that the child has inherited the evil. And that is exactly what happened to live. Lily. Her nightmare didn't start with her abduction into Cassander. It started back on the 6th of February 2013, with the incident that kick-started the rise in witch hunts across Papua New Guinea. At this time, Lily lived with her mother in the second biggest city in the

nation, Mount Hagen. That day, there was a knock at the door. It was a group of men, and they were there for Lily's 20-year-old mother, Kapari Leniatta. They were accusing her of being a Sangama woman, who had caused the death of a local six-year-old boy, who had died after weeks of some sort of like diarrheal condition. And if any of this story, Mount Hagen, Capari, any of this is sounding familiar, probably because you listened to last week's episode on the Bain case. And if you did, that means you'll know what's about to happen next. Because despite Kipari's crying and pleading that she was innocent and she knew nothing about the boy's death, they took her, loaded her into their trial.

truck and drove her to a rubbish heap in the city. There they tortured Kapari with a hot iron rod, in front of a crowd of hundreds of onlookers. Then they dumped her body onto the rubbish pile and set her alight. It took her 30 minutes to die. Many people there that day filmed her ordeal on their phones, but no one tried to help. So yeah, that is the story that we obviously told you guys in part one of Bain, but I think what's just so, so, so harrowing is as if that. story isn't bad enough, is that the same thing happens. Well, luckily Lily doesn't die,

but the same thing tries to happen to her own seven-year-old daughter years later. And the reason that Capari's case often comes up as like the story that everybody talks about, it is in by no means unique. This kind of thing is happening all the time. It's that that was the story. That was the case in 2013 that actually kick-started the rise that we see. Like that's the thing that's so mind-blowing about it is these witch hunts, these Sangma-related violence killings that are happening in Papua New Guinea,

haven't been dwindling. Since 2013, they have been steadily on the increase. It is unbelievable. So after her mother's murder, Lily was moved to live with her uncle about 100 miles away from Mount Hagen. But the stories of her mother's evil, like we said, often the firstborn is tarred with the same brush, followed Little Lily.

And when her cousin got ill, the family suddenly turned on her, with her own uncle letting the mob take Lily saying, If you kill her, so be it. She was seven years old. Thankfully, like I gave away, Lily didn't die. She was rescued by the Papua New Guinea Tribal Foundation, an NGO based in Port Moresby. and she's since been adopted by the organisation's director of operations,

a woman named Ruth Kissam, who is my hero. I read the entire article that Ruth wrote about this, and Ruth's rescued a lot of people. She's worked with this NGO for a very long time. She studied law in the US, and then she ended up having to drop out to take care of her mother who wasn't very well, and after that she was kind of like, I don't want to go back to law school.

I want to go do something practical that I can help people. So she moves to Papua New Guinea and joins this NGO. She's saved loads of people, but she said when I saw Lily, there was something that made me feel like I have to take care of this child. And she adopted her. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests,

but instead, in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus.

in the Wondry app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. All right, should we talk about the Signal Awards? Sure. Sure. That is the level of enthusiasm. We would love you guys to have for us, too. Because if you remember, we made the podcast series Flesh and Code with Wondry. We were super excited like the minute they brought that story to us.

Because if you haven't listened to Flesh and Code, it's essentially about following people who essentially fall in love with. with their like AI companions. It's about Russian interference and all sorts of crazy things and about how these AI companions are to be trusted, whether this is a good thing, how it was impacting on a larger scale, and the ramifications when a replica that was the company at the heart of it took away the erotic role play function and didn't go well. Spoilers. So we loved making it. We spent what 18 months making that show and we worked so, so hard on it. And so we are going ask a very small favor of you guys, shockingly to us. Flesh and Code has been put up for the

listener's choice category of the Signal Awards 2025. So we would love you guys to please help us out and basically try get some more eyes and ears on Flesh and Code because it was a real labour of love for us. What you guys need to do is go to the Signal Awards website and vote for Flesh and Code. Again, it's in the listener's choice category and you can find us under documentaries, that's the category you're looking for, and then under limited series and specials. Voting is open until the 9th of October, so you really don't have much time, like literally go do this now. And we would just be so incredibly grateful because if we did win the listeners' choice for Flesh and Code at the Signals Award, then it would just mean

the world to us. Thank you. And what happened to Lily happened in 2017, despite the fact that After her mother Kipari's brutal murder, the government of Papua New Guinea actually repealed the country's controversial 1971 Sorcery Act. And I love and hate the fact that Papua New Guinea had a 1971 sorcery act enshrined in law. It was only repealed in 2017.

Which allowed murderers to use the allegation of witchcraft as a legitimate defense. So basically, people could claim that their belief in Sanguemer was a mitigating factor in any murders or tortures that they could. committed in the name of their belief. And it was only repealed in 2013. Yeah, that is mind-blowing. So basically what was happening before is, like you said, people would kill people, torture people,

and then they wouldn't get any convictions or any time in prison because they'd say, well, I have a belief that that person is a witch and that's why I killed them. And the law was just like, okay, what? But this is the thing. So even after they repealed this law, Lily was still attacked four years later. And that's because this reform was pretty toothless and hard to enforce.

And to this day, in P&G, prosecutions and conviction of such crimes are incredibly rare. And while it used to be that this sort of violence was predominantly based in the kind of isolated highlands of P&G, not that, you know, that wouldn't have been bad enough since 85% of the population seems to live in those kind of communities, but that's just now no longer the case. Sorcery-related violence is spreading everywhere in P&G, from the bigger cities like Port Moresby and Mount Hagan and all around the coasts. And like we said in the introduction,

the occurrence rate of these killings is also going up. And it has been since 2013. And I think it's probably because after Karpari's murder, women's groups demanded the action be taken. And I think that really set off a lot of people into kicking back against these women demanding that other women stop being murdered. But let's talk more about why,

specifically this rise is happening. Despite the fact that the government say that they're taking this issue seriously and they say that they have repealed the Sorcery Act and set aside four million for a Sangama Task Force and Public Awareness Campaign, activists say that this money has been squandered away through corruption. Surprise, surprise. But the main reason for the rise in Sangama-related violence in Papua New Guinea as far as we can see is unequal development, inequality and inequality,

the progress of women, three things that can be directly mapped onto the country's spike in witch lynchings. Let's look at why. PNG is seeing a lot of development from foreign investment, particularly China. But this sort of sudden influx of money into a developing nation leads to heavily uneven development across that country. So increasingly you have a situation where more and more people are leaving their villages in order to look for work in cities. These people tend to have grown up in these sort of far-flung villages with a more intense belief in things like Sangama. Now, they are relocated to a city

with no village elders to sort of keep them more prone to violence or more psychopathic among them in check. So these individuals left to their own devices and thanks to the inherent issues with extreme poverty, as is rife in PNG, it doesn't seem to take much for them to whip up a mob from the growing pools of economic migrants that they'll find in the cities that they live in

ready to hunt for witches in their midst. It is horrifying. And if you look at the majority of incidents of such killings, they do tend to involve a sudden death. Most people who live in Papua New Guinea lack access to a proper education and adequate healthcare, so when a sudden death or illness strikes, angry mobs often go looking for a scapegoat.

And typically, it's a woman. Because there's no doubt that the demands by women in Papua New Guinea for more freedom and equality is leading to a cultural kickback. But let's stick with the sudden deaths and how they act as a catalyst for violence. Like we said at the beginning, there is a saying in Papua New Guinea,

no one dies a natural death. And sadly, it's this dangerous idea that underpins a lot of these killings. People, especially children, die of sudden and treatable illnesses when you have poor access to health care. And in Papua New Guinea, like it would anywhere, when you don't understand what's actually happened, it sparks fear and confusion. And now, with the growing issue of imported junk food

and drugs that you're seeing infiltrate the country, it's giving rise to more and more previously unknown conditions, things like diabetes. It's also important to say that not all of these witch hunts are grassroots in nature, just like springing up organically. Because there are astroturfers out there too. According to the NGOs in Papua New Guinea, there are people who will go to different communities and say things like if you pay me a thousand kina, which is the equivalent of about $300,

I'll tell you who the sorcerer is and who's causing the sudden deaths in this community, which is of course a recipe for disaster and brutality. So what can be done? Rescue and evacuation, like the NGOs and charities in the area have been doing, isn't really a solution to the problem. Yeah, it doesn't sort of fix the problem at the source.

No, it's treating the symptom, it's not the course. Precisely. And it's also like they're just the people that find some way to get in touch with an NGO. It's completely not a solution. And to be honest, the government do seem to be a bit stumped. A senior public health official in Papua New Guinea has proposed an interesting idea, though. Public autopsies. Dr Betty Koka is the head of Enger's provincial health department.

and she reasons that the issue of Sangoma-related violence is a huge public health risk, but posters and ad campaigns just aren't going to fix it. She says that most of the attacks are down to someone getting sick or dying unexpectedly. So, what if we gave people proof that the death had nothing to do with sorcery? Dr. Koka says the following. If they say this person's heart has been ripped out and that's why they died, okay, let's open up the person, let's open up the body and see if the heart is. heart is missing? Or is it intact? And it might seem like a really, really out there idea for the

rest of us. But I get it. I get it because the things that are being believed like Sangama, like people stealing hearts and devouring them out of living people, is also out there. So you need to tackle it with something that's just as extreme. You can't sort of reason with people who are, A, scared because they don't know what's going on and B, have these deep rooted beliefs with just sort of like telling them that there's no problem. And Dr. Coker genuinely believes that by educating people and dispelling the myths around sorcery, it could really genuinely prevent further sorcery accusations and result in fewer attacks.

Now, I don't know if the PNG Sangam a Task Force will go for it. They seem very much more focused on posters. But I do think she might be onto something. I think so. I think so too. And yeah, so basically, really, what you need to take away from this is the reason for the rise is unequal development and the unequal development. and the unequal development is coming from sudden influxes of money from China.

And the problem is with money coming in from China as foreign investment is that typically when other countries invest in developing countries with money, they will make certain other social progress criteria a demand of that money coming in. So, for example, they'll say, we will invest £10 million in this nation to help with X, Y, Z, but we demand that you improve treatment of women and girls. We demand that you improve rights for LGBT people. So it will come with certain demands like that.

China doesn't do that because they don't care about the human rights of another country. They will say that they don't believe that you should impose your beliefs on another country, that other countries can do whatever they want. Some people may agree with that, but they often tend to invest with no strings attached policy. So that means that if Papua New Guinea has a decision to make between China money or somebody else's money, they'll go with China money and that leads to an increase in unequal development across the country which drives issues like more and more economic migrants moving within the country still feeling very disenfranchised and poverty will lead to more and more of this and at the same time

there is no clear reason or benefit for the government to attack this in any more of an aggressive way than they've been doing right because the money's not going to go away because they're not dealing with it so yeah bad stuff all round and also absolutely after Kapari's death, a lot of women's groups in PNG really mobilised and tried to get this issue sorted. And the counterculture kickback was, of course, we're going to hunt you harder because there was nothing else sort of supporting these women from a governmental level. So bad times, really bad times. But that is the shorthand on Sangha. There you go. Whether you like it or not.

Yeah, exactly. And I don't. But that is it, guys. And we will see you next time for some other things. Hooray. Goodbye. All it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our time. And crimes like that, they don't just happen. We call things accidents. There is no accident. This was 100% preventable.

They're the result of choices by people. Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet. Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us, and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well researched. Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group. With a touch of humor. Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapist out there's been like eight of them. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. That motherfripper is not real. And if you're a weirdo like us and love you. love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal. Or you love to hop in the way back machine

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