BREAKING: Court sentences Rivers notorious serial killer to death

From July until September 2019 David-West is suspected of killing at least 11women, mostly in the city of Port Harcourt. He was apprehended on 19 September 2019. He later confessed to a total of 11 murders.

Presiding Judge, Justice Adolphus Enebele, while delivering his judgement on Friday said the suspect was convicted of the murder of eleven young women and attempted murder of a prospective victim identified as Benita Etim in a hotel in 2019.

Justice Enebele stated that the prosecution team was able to convince the court that David-West actually killed all eleven women at various hotel rooms in Port Harcourt and other parts of the state.

The court however discharged and acquitted the second defendant in the case, Nimi ThankGod, who is facing one count of misconduct with the corpse of one of David-West's victims.

David-West was reportedly a member of the Deebham, a fraternity group that is notorious in Nigeria for engaging in acts of violence and Voodoo.

Although David-West reportedly belonged to a criminal group, David-West told authorities that he had acted alone.

He was arrested when in the early morning of 19 September 2019, a woman who had accompanied to a hotel woke up to David-West tying her up and preparing to suffocate her. David-West and another individual from Kaduna State were arrested and charged with homicide.

He was due for arraignment on 22 October 2019 but the absence of his lawyer frustrated his arraignment

However, when the case was called up the following day, David-West pleaded guilty to nine murder charges against him but pleaded not guilty to the charge of attempted murder of victim who survived his attack. Trial Judge, Justice Adolphus Enebeli adjourned till 18, 21, 27 and 29 November and 4 December 2019 for hearing and ordered that the suspect be remanded in prison custody.

On 23 March 2020 he shocked people in Court when he denied he was the person in any of the images on front page of a newspaper and on a short CCTV video clip of him in a hotel with his alleged last victim, adding that he did not know what the prosecuting state counsel was talking about, since he had not committed any offence.

The Judge allowed the video images to be admitted as exhibit, did not accept the copy of the newspaper and adjourned the matter to 27 March 2020 for continuation . On 11 June 2020, the Judge gave 21 days to counsels involved in the murder trial to file in their written addresses and adjourned the suit to 29 July 2020 for adoption of written addresses.

In August 2020, the presiding judge of the Rivers State High Court sitting in Port Harcourt, Justice Adolphus Enebeli fixed 9th of October 2020 for the delivery of judgment on the murder charges leveled against David-West.

On Friday, October 9, the Rivers State High Court sitting in Port Harcourt sentenced the notorious serial killer, Gracious David-West, to death by hanging.