Motive Monday: Ahmad Suradji — The Ritual Killer of Medan
Over the course of eleven years, cattle breeder and self-styled shaman Ahmad Suradji murdered 42 women and girls in Indonesia. The youngest was 11. His victims came to him seeking charms for love, beauty, or good fortune. What they got instead was ritual execution, strangled while buried waist-deep in a sugarcane field.
Suradji claimed his father’s ghost visited him in a dream with a command: kill 70 women, drink their saliva, and grow stronger with each death. Each body was buried facing his house to “channel” power back to him. Some of the women were brought by friends or family, unknowingly delivering loved ones to their deaths.
His motive wasn’t rage. It wasn’t revenge. It was supernatural ambition — a twisted pursuit of status and strength.
Do you believe Suradji was a con man who believed his own con? Or just a predator using ritual as a cover?
Let’s talk belief, exploitation, and how far some people will go for power.
