Who do voodoo?

A string of ritual murders is rocking a small town, and the people are starting to panic. The victims have no obvious connection. The police have enlisted the investigators for help in identifying some strange items found at the scene, and research reveals that they are items related to voodoo magic. This leads the investigators to believe that someone is practising voodoo rites somewhere in town. But what is puzzling is that voodoo isn’t a religion that condones multiple bloody murders like these - voodoo may be strange, but it is not murderous. Something is amiss.

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Possibilities

1 The victims were all attending a small fundraiser at a picnic ground on the same day an important voodoo ritual that was being performed in the nearby woods. The town’s mayor is involved in the voodoo group, and would be thrown out of office if people knew he cut the heads off chickens and drank their blood in strange, secret ceremonies. (Voters can be so picky!) Someone witnessed the ritual and is trying to blackmail the mayor. After obtaining a list of the donors at the fundraiser, he is now systematically killing off people who were at the picnic ground that day in an attempt to silence his would-be blackmailer. If the blackmailer is still alive, he is too afraid to go to the police, and rightly so; the police keep the mayor well informed on the progress of the case.

2 The murders are being performed by an insane preacher whose church’s attendance has waned considerably since his hellfire-and-brimstone sermons have gotten a bit too graphic and vitriolic. In an attempt to rekindle a god-fearing attitude in the town, he is murdering people at random and making it look like ritualistic voodoo murders, thinking it will scare people back into the pews. When it doesn’t work, he gets more frustrated and kills again. Checking up on him will reveal that he has a book on voodoo checked out of the library, which he is using as a reference to decorate the murder scenes. If there is any pattern to the slayings, it is that all the victims are either his rival clergy or his vocal critics.

3 The leader of a group of voodoo practitioners has stumbled upon a dread tome of magic written by a madman from the jungles of Brazil, and doesn’t realize that it describes rites that aren’t a part of voodoo (they’re actually Mythos rites). Since finding it, he has tried to incorporate what he has learned from the book into his teachings, and the result is a cultish cross between voodoo and the worship of a Great Old One. While on the surface, the murders and trappings of the cult are reminiscent of voodoo, a darker secret lies within: the Great Old One is demanding sacrifices, and the leader is providing them. Investigators are likely to be quietly helped by the voodoo practitioners who realize that something is wrong, but cannot show themselves for fear of being implicated in the murders.

© C C Chamberlin