Killing of Janet Moses, Wainuiomata
On 12 October 2007, 22-year-old Janet Moses drowned during a mākutu (curse) lifting held by relatives at a flat in Wainuiomata, Wellington; a teenage relative was injured.
2007 CE · -41.26, 174.95 · status: official
The account
The family believed she had been possessed after a stolen statue was taken from a hotel. Water was poured into her eyes and throat for hours. In 2009 five relatives were convicted of manslaughter and given community sentences.
The sceptical view
The court treated it as a tragedy of belief and panic; Māori leaders stressed that the ritual departed from traditional practice.
The researched reading
A death caused by a curse-lifting ritual, not by a curse. Shared belief, panic and possibly unrecognised illness explain what the family saw.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 40% | Hours of chanting, sleeplessness and fear inside a closed family group, after a relative’s distress was read as possession, fit collective panic and shared belief; Janet’s own behaviour may have reflected acute distress or illness that was never assessed medically. |
| A cultural story | 40% | The belief in mākutu, a curse brought on by the theft of a hotel statue, framed every symptom as possession; Māori leaders noted the ritual departed from traditional practice, showing how a cultural idea can be distorted under panic. |
| Undetermined | 7% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 6% | Physical illness, drug effects or exhaustion can produce the agitation that onlookers read as possession; the death itself was drowning from the water poured into her. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 3% | The court record contains nothing that requires a spirit. |
| Something in the surroundings | 2% | Nothing in the evidence points to a physical cause in the flat. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 2% | No one invented the possession for gain; the family sincerely believed it. |
Official position: In 2009 five relatives were convicted of manslaughter; the court treated the death as a tragedy of belief and panic.