By Edwin Chukwudi
For three months between July and September 2019, Port Harcourt lived in fear as women were found strangled to death in cheap hotels across the city and later in Lagos, Abia, Imo and Edo States. The man behind the killings was Gracious David-West, a man who by his own admission, tried to seek help but was failed by the system that should have stopped him.
Gracious David-West was born around 1980 in Buguma, Rivers State, the only son in a polygamous household. He and his mother lived apart from the rest of the family. He would later tell police that his mother died after being poisoned by a rival wife, and that as the only son, everything was expected of him. He said he could not deliver.
His life took a downward turn. He became a homeless man who slept in hotels. He had once been an armed robber, arrested and rehabilitated through a church program that even helped him secure a job at a university in Owerri. For a while, he seemed to have turned his life around.
He hadn’t. He joined the Greenlanders, a mafia-styled street gang linked to militant violence.
Then, sometime around June 2019, he said an “irresistible urge” took hold of him. From July to September that year, he hunted women across Port Harcourt, and later in other states.
His method was calculated and similar in all the cases. He would meet a woman, take her to a hotel, and after spending time together, he would overpower and strangle her, before stealing her money, ATM cards and phones to empty their accounts. Police said he had buyers already lined up for the stolen phones.
At least 15 women died this way.
What makes the case even more chilling is that by his own account, he tried to stop himself. He said he approached the Lord’s Chosen Church in Oyingbo, told a pastor everything, and asked for help.
“The pastor invited him to a prayer crusade instead of calling the police,” a police source familiar with his confession disclosed.
He never got to meet the church’s General Overseer. He also claimed he sought help from Christ Chosen Church and Salvation Ministries, but couldn’t follow through because he had nowhere to stay.
Each time, he walked out and returned to a hotel room. And killed again.
He was finally caught in September 2019, after hotel CCTV recorded him following the murder of a woman in Rukpokwu area of Port Harcourt. Police tracked him down on the East-West Road as he fled toward Uyo. Upon arrest, he confessed to all 15 killings on video.
His trial was dramatic from the start. He appeared in court in prison uniform and handcuffs. Before the trial commenced, he was taken to mortuaries to formally identify the bodies of seven of his victims. Hotel managers and receptionists were also arrested, accused of enabling the killings by allowing them to happen on their premises.
In January 2020, a Rivers State High Court convicted him, relying on his own confession and the CCTV footage as evidence. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
But justice came with a disturbing footnote. Almost no one showed up to watch it served.
“Only one father came, the father of a single victim. He attended only the first day,” a court official who witnessed the trial said.
“Fifteen women. One father in the courtroom. Were the lives of these women simply not taken seriously? Or did none of them have family left to fight for them?”
The case of Gracious David-West remains one of the most horrifying serial murder cases in Rivers State history, raising questions not just about hotel security and policing, but about how a confession of murder to a cleric ended in an invitation to a crusade instead of an immediate alert to law enforcement.
If that call had been made, could some of the 15 women have been saved?
