Credonia Mwerinde of Uganda, “The Programmer”: The World’s
Worst Female Serial Killer?
By Robert St. Estephe (2,647 words)
***
The raging inferno that snuffed out the lives of hundreds of
people locked into a church building that took place in Kunungu, in south-west
Uganda, on March 17, 2000, was first thought to be a mass suicide – of the type
seen some two decades earlier in the Jim Jones cult that took the lives of more
than 900 cult followers in 1978, in Guyana –
but soon it was learned that it was but the final in a series of mass murders.
By any reckoning the Ugandan cult leader Credonia Mwerinde
is one of the most heinous serial killers who ever lived and killed. Sister
Credonia stands apart from the rest of known habitual murderers for having for
having been both a one-at-a-time serial killer as well as a serial mass-murderer.
She is suspected of having committed four individual murders – of four family
members and one stranger – before organizing the slaughter of 1,182 followers
of her cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God,
located in the town of Kunungu, a
trading center at the south-western tip of the nation, close to the border with
Rwanda.
Credonia was beautiful and had the ability to exert her will
on others. One would not call her charismatic, however; her power would be
better characterized as domineering.
To those who know her well, her religiosity is but a
posture. According to Eric Mazima, Credonia’s sixth husband. “The only thing
that made Credonia really happy was making money.” The couple owned a bar
called the Kunungu Independent in the town of Kunungu selling lubisi (banana beer) and a local hard
liquor. It was there that a customer is suspected to have been murdered. She
seduced him and while he slept Credonia murdered him and took his money. The
next day Credonia was observed by customers entering the bar in the process of
scrubbing blood from the floor the very same day the victim disappeared. It was
only after the business went bankrupt that Credonia, who customarily visited
church but once a year, found religion.
Father Paul Ikazire, a Catholic priest who joined the cult
that bartender Credonia would go on to lead as its “Programmer,” yet left after
the Church declared the sect heretical echoed Mazima’s view: “I perceived her
as a trickster, obsessed with the desire to grab other people’s property, but
she never sold hers.”
The string of grisly horrors that came to light only after
on March 17, 2000 the “Ark” of the sect had been torched, fueled by gasoline,
incinerating the 738 inhabitants who had been locked in, windows nailed shut
into the death trap, has led to intense scrutiny of the beliefs and customs of
the Millenialist doomsday cult that led to the tragedy. It also instigated
searches of the grounds associated with the sect and its leaders. Within six
days the first of several mass graves in which bodies of strangled, mutilated
and poisoned followers were discovered. Four different sites produced remains
of victims counting 153, 155, 81 and 55.
The scale of these crimes is enormous; their discovery
shocked the world. Yet the woman who was the perverse sect’s decision maker was
not, in her position as “Programmer,” exhibiting any behaviors that were new to
her. At the time of her disappearance on the day of the conflagration (it is
suspected she fled across the border, stolen money in hand) Credonia was about
48 year old. Yet decades earlier her penchant for arson made itself known when
she sought revenge on a man who had spurned her love by setting fire to his
household belongings. Her parents had her committed for psychiatric treatment.
When recruiting members for the Movement she punished a relative for refusing
to join by gathering her followers and visiting the man’s banana plantation,
destroying it by setting it afire. Credonia’s violent crimes – the arson, the bar
murder, the suspected poison murders of her kin – did not become public
knowledge however until after her name became known to the world on that day of
horror in March of 2000.
Credonia, in her later role as a prophetess, claimed to be a
reformed prostitute, yet locals say though she had been quite promiscuous she
is not known to have ever charged money for her sexual favors. Yet she could
combine her greed, her sexual appetite and her predilection for cold-blooded
violence into an opportunistic recipe to get all that she wanted. As barmaid
she had seduced and afterwards murdered a passing motorist who had visited the
banana beer bar she operated with her husband and stole the cash he had been
carrying. She was observed by locals scrubbing the blood from the establishment's
floor. Credonia was a heartless predator who displayed sociopathic tendencies
long before she found a way to lure and exploit victims by the wholesale.
Police, after looking into the Programmer’s past following
the March 17 holocaust, learned that three of her older brothers, heirs to the
property which would later become the site of the sect’s compound, had died in
succession under suspicious circumstances. It is thought Credonia poisoned them
all in other to, once all who stood in the way of her ability to gain the
inheritance, gain the family property to gain a home for her growing cult.
Credonia Mwerinde was a flamboyant and exceptionally
commanding charlatan. Yet it would be presumptive to argue that Credonia did
not partake in some aspects of the superstitious imagination she so successfully
promoted to others. In the years before the Movement she was to inspire had
come into existence she was a leading member of a Catholic offshoot sect
centered on devotion to the Holy Virgin Mary before she found the opportunity
to set the stage for a large scale religious movement.
Her great opportunity came when she and two other leaders of
the Mary sect – a sister, Angela Mugisha and Ursula Komuhangi – visited the
Catholic worship given by Joseph Kibwetere,
“a Roman Catholic known among many Ugandans for his piety, prayer and good
works,” in Rwashamaire and after the service, Credonia told of her vision at
the celebrated Nyabugoto rock which on which the Virgin Mary Stone (“Eibaare
Rya Bikira Maria”) in which the Virgin
appeared to her and gave her commanded that the three women to announce to
Kibwetere that he had been anointed to take them in and assist them in
spreading the word of God. So goes one account of that fateful meeting. Another
has Kibwetere meeting Credonia in Nyamitamga where he and his wife “had gone to
testify about her visions of the Virgin Mary.”
Joseph Kibwetere did indeed take the women in and the
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was born and was cultivated
on the pious and generous man’s estate at Rwashamaire. Devotees of the sect
were to countermand the immorality that had overtaken the people by teaching
new doctrines that would bring about conformity with the Ten Commandments given
to Moses. For inhabitants of the failed state of Uganda, of the region most
affected by the recent civil war, still affected by the reign of terror and
economic ravishment of the mad dictator Idi Amin. The Movement promised, as its literature tells, to be a new
“Noah’s Ark, a ship of righteousness in a sea of depravity.”
The well-respected Kibwetere, former politician and
philanthropist was treated as leader yet he was little more than a token the
male figurehead, Credonia was the actual leader and everybody knew it. After
all, Sister Credonia had a direct line to the Virgin Mary, receiving
instructions and predictions directly from Heaven through a mystical telephone
system that communicated through plates and bowls and other household objects.
She called the messages she got “programs from the Virgin Mary.”
The Movement soon attracted a bona fide Catholic theologian
with a masters from an American university. He was to author a an impressive
looking tract outlining the sect’s doctrine as revealed to the prophetess. The
booklet which went through three editions from 1991 to 1996. Its End Times
prophecy foretold of “rivers running red” and of sound food turning deadly
poisonous. Only the chosen would be saved for a new life.
Yet Credonia sowed discord in the Kibwetere household,
turning the mild husband against his wife and flying into rages, often beating
her benefactor’s children. Theresa Kibwetere, Joseph’s wife says that “She was
always cruel. She was not happy at all. She never smiled, even.” She was
distracted and would be disengaged in interactions with others. The excuse was
given that her absent-mindedness resulted from her role as conduit for messages
from the Holy Mother.
Sister Credonia imposed strict rules forbidding intercourse
between spouses, limiting meals to one a day and imposing a restrictive dress
code. They slept on the floor, mattresses and beds were not permitted. Even
speech was forbidden to the believers, including Joseph Kibwetere himself; they
were required to communicate with hand signals or in writing only. She ordered
that children be removed from public school and be put under cult control.
Credonia coaxed Kibwetere to sell off his assets to pay for the expenses of a
growing congregation which came to numbered nearly two hundred souls. Newcomers
were forced to turn their belongings over to the cult. Every moment of time was
regimented. Meals were meagre. Three days – Monday, Wednesday and Friday –
were days of fasting. Medicine and all forms of medical attention were
banished. A number of followers died from malnutrition.
The Programmer’s controlling behavior reached great
extremes. Once, according to one of Joseph’s daughters, Edith, Sister Credonia
“claimed the Virgin Mary had told her all children under five should be killed,
and a sacrifice was needed immediately.” Yet the command, it would seem, was
afterwards reversed, since that massacre of the innocents never did take place.
Or perhaps it was just a tale tailored to frighten a small child.
But her cruelty to children was, if not fatal, atrocious in
degree. One of the Kibwetere boys, later reported that Credonia made sixty children
make their home in a small 15 by 40 foot backyard shed, with windows nailed
shut and only a dirt floor to sleep on. They frequently contracted scabies and
were indoctrinated by the Programmer in the code of abstinence. “When I offered
them sweets, they refused, making a sign that I was Satan,” recalled the
Juvenal Mugambwe, son of Kibwetere.
Joseph’s wife, Theresa, at first loyal to the three female
who brought their vision of the Virgin to her husband, along with other family
members began to resist. “We fought to get them out of our house, but these
women, Mwerinde and Ursula, claimed they had had a vision that we would poison
their food and that we should be beaten. My husband, who had never beaten any
of us, began hitting the children. He tried to hit me with a club.” And
Credonia herself became increasingly violent. Sometimes the riotous atmosphere
resulted in a call to the local police.
By 1992, the Rwashamaire village elders, unimpressed with
having a prophetess on intimate terms with the Mother of God in their midst,
had become fed up with the troublemakers and demanded that former pillar of the
community Joseph Kibwetere move from their area along with the sect he headed.
The elders got their way and the Movement was relocated to the Kanungu District, on an estate Credonia Mwerinde’s father
owned.
Credonia’s prophecies of the End Times became problematic.
Believers were told that on a given date the world of sin would come to an end
and that the anointed would stay in the Holy World while all others would die.
At first, it was prophesied that the world was going to end in 1992, but it
didn’t. Excuses were made, many followers left. The same was true for the year
1995. Reactions to the botched prediction were stronger this time around. Some
demanded their money be returned. Paul Ikazire, once a Catholic priest but
defrocked after joining the cult, left the fold along with 72 followers. It is
said that when in 1995 that the
end-of-the-world prophecy again failed to occur in 1995 the Movement’s leaders
“circulated a note explaining that Christ had deferred the date to Dec. 31,
1999.” That date too, was to prove to be a disappointment for all who were ready
to enter the post-apocalyptic world.
Yet the cult kept on, with followers in numbers fluctuating
from a thousand to several thousand. A third edition of the handbook came out
in 1996. The Movement was registered as an official NGO with the Ugandan
government on December 17, 1997. But this official status brought uncharacteristic
scrutiny. In 1998 the government caused one of the Movement’s schools to be
shut down for unsanitary conditions and other offenses. It was later allowed to
reopen.
It is presumed that the reason that toward the close of 1999
the Movement’s members sold off their remaining possessions – cattle, real
estate, even spare clothing – was in preparation for the predicted for an end
of the world on December 31, 1999. The group slaughtered cattle and enjoyed a
week-long feast preceding the big day – which, once again, turned out to be a
false alarm. A new end-of-the-world date was duly announced, exactly one year
later. But there was a new twist to the prophecy this time. Before the End, the
chosen people, the Movement’s members, were to be raptured well in advance of
the final day. They were to be raptured on March 17, 2000, when the Virgin
would visit her faithful and take them with her up to Heaven.
The Movement operated at several locations. The code of
silence, the strict submission to authority had not only separated the people
from the outside world by from other compartments of the cult itself as well.
Thus the long series of murders of cult followers at Buhunga, Rugazi, Rushojwa,
Buziga, taking 344 lives, that preceded the March 17 burning of the Ark, were
successfully conducted without attracting attention. Investigators believe that
members’ discontent with the failed prophecy prompted apostasy and demands for
return of possessions that had been turned over to the prophetically unreliable
cult, and that expressing their discontent became, under the rule of the
cold-blooded Programmer Sister Credonia, their death sentence.
Nobody knows the facts surrounding the mass murders that
began sometime in February, 2000. Some of the victims died from fast-acting
poison, other had been bludgeoned, their skulls crushed. Some had been doused
with sulphuric acid, speeding decomposition.
Just who executed the murders preceding the Ark inferno of
March 17, and who performed the work of digging the graves and stacking the
bodies is unknown, but all who have an intimate knowledge of the Movement agree
that the killings were executed under the command of Sister Credonia.
Those who were not killed, the still faithful, prepared for
the prophesied visitation and transport. On March 16 they celebrated, with 70
crates of Coca-Cola and a beef barbecue. That evening visited the police
station in Kanungu and gave them the deed to the cult’s land. His behavior was
odd. He spoke incoherently, employing the cult’s customary language sign
language yet managed to get the message across that “something was about to
happen.”
At 7:30 AM on March 17 a cult member was spotted near the
Ark carrying a hammer and nails. At 10:15 AM a farmer working his field near
the property that contained the Ark, heard a”whoosh” of raging fire; he saw
smoke and flames rising from the roof and screams for help.
All bodies were burnt to a crisp, the intense heat even
caused some of the skulls to explode. So it is no surprise that it was
impossible to determine whether either Joseph Kibwetere or Sister Credonia were
among the dead. Some witnesses claim they saw Credonia after the fire yet
doubts persist.
***
At least 1,186 by
Credonia Mwerinde murders known (so far):
Pre-cult murders:
3 older brothers – murdered at different times
Motorist murdered in Credonia’s bar
Pre April 17, 2000 cult murders, by locations of mass
graves:
Buhunga – 153 murdered
Rugazi – 155 murdered
Rushojwa – 81 murdered
Buziga near Kampala – 55 murdered
April 17, 2000 Kanungu massacre – 738 murdered
Excellent scholarly source:
[Jean-François Mayer, “’There Will Follow a New Generation and a New Earth’:
From Apolyptic Hopes to Destruction in the Movement for the Restoration of the
Ten Commandments of God,” Part II, essay 9; in James R. Lewis, ed., Violence and New Religious Movements, 2011,
Oxford UP]
***
~ CHRONOLOGY ~
***
~ CHRONOLOGY ~
1952 – birth of Credonia Mwerinde. Paulo Kashaku, father,
also a visionary.
1980 ca. – Vision of Mary
by Blandina Buzigye at Nyabugoto Rock (“Eibaare
Rya Bikira Maria,” the stone which looks like an image of the Virgin Mary)
1984 – Mr. Kibweteere
first announced the Virgin Mary had appeared before him in 1984.
Aug. 24, 1988 – Credonia Mwerinde also had a similar vision
in a cavern near Kibweteere’s house in Rwashamaire, Uganda.
1989 – “Despite her craving for money, Credonia went
bankrupt with her bar in 1989. At that time, she also broke off with Eric
Mazima. Soon after, Credonia converted to Catholicism, and claimed only a few
weeks after, that she had had a vision of the Virgin Mary in a cave in the
Nyakishenyi mountains.”
1989 – CM and two other members of a Marianist sect visit
Joseph Kibwetere at Rwashamaire and following a church service, tell of CM’s
vision. “Meeting Joseph Kibwetere for the first time, the three women told him
that he had been anointed to help them spread the word of God, that the Virgin
Mary had led them to him, a Roman Catholic known among many Ugandans for his
piety, prayer and good works.” “The three women – Credonia Mwerinde, Ursula
Komuhangi and Angela Mugisha – were already leaders of a Christian cult devoted
to the Virgin Mary, who, they said, had instructed him to take them in.”
1989 – formation of Movement at Rwashamaire. The message was
preached in Catholic churches.
1989 – soon-to-be excommunicated Rev. Dominic Kataribabo,
joined.
1990 - cult is registered as a religious movement with the
authorities in 1990; 200 followers, mostly women and children, were already
living at the Joseph Kibwetere property.
1991 – First edition of “A Timely
Message from Heaven. The End of the Present Time”
1992 – “After the Movement was evicted from Rwashamaire, it
moved to an estate Credonia Mwerinde’s father owned in Kanungu District.” “In 1992 the cult and its leader packed up
and left for Kanungu.” “After the police in 1992 had, once again, been called
in to settle yet another family feud, the elders of the village told Kibwetere
that he ought to move and take the cult with him.”
1992 – end of the world prophesied for 1992.
1993 – “In 1993, the cult could finally build its own
headquarter, along with a church.”
1994 – Paul Ikazire, defrocked Catholic priest, leaves the
cult along with 72 followers.
1995 – end of the world prophesied for 1995. “When the
apocalypse again missed its schedule, the cult circulated a note explaining
that Christ had deferred the date to Dec. 31, 1999 this year.”
1996 – “When Credonia Mwerinde’s father died in 1996, he was
buried next to the mother, and Mwerinde had the now sadly known church built
near the family grave site.”
1996 – publication of 3rd edition of Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the
Present Times. 3rd
ed. Karuhinda, Rukungiri and Rubiziri, Bushenyi (Uganda,) 1996.
Dec. 17, 1997 – Movement registered as NGO with Ugandan
government.
1998 – “Movement shut down for unsanitary conditions, use of
child labor, and possibly kidnapping children, but the sect was allowed to
reopen by the government.” “1998 when government closed down one of its schools
for unhygienic conditions”
Dec. 23, 1998 – Movement incorporation authorized by Ugandan
government.
Dec. 31, 1999 – Date of the end of the world prophesied.
Feb. (circa) 2000 – mass murders begin. “The poison was
given to them at the evening meal. “It was a fast acting poison.” said Barundi,
the pathologist.”
Mar. 15, 2000 – Dominic Kataribabo purchases 13 gallons of
sulphuric acid.
March 16, 2000 – “The day before the fire, a parcel from
Kanungu arrived at the home of Mr. Kibwetere’s family. It contained books and
documents from the cult, its certificate of registration, a copy of the 10
commandments of the cult and other items.”
Mar. 16, 2000 – cult members were treated to an
unprecedented celebration: 70 crates of Coca-Cola were ordered and a bull
slaughtered.
March 17, 2000 – Arson at Kanungu “Ark” of the Movement,
killing 738. “It is thought that cult members believed they were finally
entering Noah’s Ark to survive the three days of the apocalypse and that the
boards were to protect them and keep out the unredeemed.”
Mar. 24, 2000 – Buhunga compound exhumations, 153 corpses.
Mar. 27, 2000 – Rugazi; bodies in field behind Dominic
Kataribabo’s house.
Mar. 28, 2000 – Dominic Kataribabo’s field exhumations, 74
bodies exhumed.
Mar. 29, 2000 – D. Kataribabo’s house exhumations, 81
corpses.
Mar. 30, 2000 – Rushowa exhumations, 80 corpses.
Apr. 6, 2000 – police issued arrest warrants for Kataribabo,
Joseph Kibwetere, Credonia Mwerinde, and three other cult leaders.
***
[10,769-9/15/20]
***
