Blood Rites
Jimmy Lee Shreeve

Blood Rites is a shocking expose of how ritual human sacrifice is practised today and terrifyingly close to home Lima, Peru, 2004. A decapitated baby boy is found on a hilltop. Investigators believe the killing was a ritual sacrifice meant to appease a pre-Columbian earth god, because the body was found on the hilltop surrounded by flowers, liquor bottle, and containers of blood.

New Jersey, 2002. A raid on a basement temple of the "Palo Mayombe" voodoo sect uncovers human body parts and the remains of several animals that may have been sacrificed by worshippers.

London, 2001. The headless and dismembered body of a five-year-old boy is found in the Thames. Two years later 21 people from West Africa are arrested on suspicion of being involved in the "Ju Ju" ritual sacrifice of the boy.

In Blood Rites, Jimmy Lee Shreeve reveals that ritual sacrifice is not an archaic practice. It still goes on today. And is uncomfortably close to home - both in the US and UK. One voodoo priest in London, to cite one example, admitted recently that gangsters, murderers, and rapists have asked him to perform ritual murder on their behalf, but he has insisted he has never done so.

In other parts of the world, such as South America and Mexico, ritual killing is almost commonplace. Drug traffickers and gangsters hire shamen to perform gruesome ritual killings to stack the odds in their favour against getting caught by the law.

Blood Rites investigates the current spate of human sacrifices, puts the practice in cultural perspective, and talks to police (such as Florida's "occult cop"), psychologists, shamanistic practitioners and victims' families on the subject.