Man accuses partner of murdering toddler daughter in demonic ritual

A man in the UK has denied murdering his young daughter and ex-partner in a horrific hammer, screwdriver and machete attack, blaming the mother for killing the child while in the grip of a demonic ritual.

Roland McKoy is accused of slitting the throat of 22-month-old Real Jahzara before inflicting numerous injuries on 45-year-old Valerie Forde on the day she had set for him to leave the family home in Hackney, north London.

But the 54-year-old handyman told jurors at the Old Bailey today that he hit Mrs Forde with a hammer in self-defence.

On March 31, she had asked him to leave their three-bedroom terraced home and gone into the bathroom to run a bath and get ready for work at a community project.

McKoy said he felt like he was “floating” and like his “world was closing” when he discovered his daughter dead on the landing.

He said: “She was just lying still on the floor and I just ran to her and picked her up and I just realised she was floppy. I could see the blood come on her neck. I think my personal world was closing.”

He went into the bathroom and found Mrs Forde mumbling like she was “talking with the spirits”.

“I said ’Mummy’. She was like whispering and talking, making sounds. I went to touch her and by the time I did she put one leg up to against the wall and she started punching me.

“I reached out for the hammer and used it to defend myself to get away.”

He told the court that he blacked out after hitting her between three and five times with the hammer but he accepted there was no-one else in the house who could have inflicted the other wounds.

McKoy, who emigrated from Jamaica in the 1980s, said: “I just don’t know how I felt at the time.

“Maybe I just felt like I was floating. I could not get away even though I wanted to get away. I just couldn’t control myself. When I saw the baby dead, I just did not know.”

Defending, Bernard Richmond QC said: “The prosecution are saying you did that to Real?”

McKoy replied: “No I didn’t. Once I saw Real on the floor I picked her up. When she didn’t respond I can remember going to her to investigate, to find out how come this has happened.”

Asked what Mrs Forde was doing, the defendant said: “When she said that ritual ...The chants she made, she takes hours..she would be talking with the spirits.”

He denied trying to kill himself by drinking disinfectant afterwards, saying: “I was very hot and thirsty and sleepy ... I was just so thirsty so I just started to drink things from the bathroom to quench my thirst.”

He added: “I think I was disturbed. I did not know right from wrong, good from bad. My world was closing, maybe that’s the best way I can explain.”

Earlier, McKoy told the court Mrs Forde had suffered from post-natal depression as their relationship went downhill.

He said she had turned to “demonic” rituals with oils and candles to speak to dead relatives and asked him to write down anything she said when she was in “a trance”.

He said: “She was into these demonic things ... Sometimes she would ask us to sit when no-one was around.

“She would go into some trance but before she got into that she would give me a pen and paper. She would call upon her relatives that dies, she would ask them questions.”

McKoy also told jurors that he loved Real Jahzara the most which caused some “jealousy” within the family.

At this point in his evidence, an observer in the public gallery stormed out.