Police Officer Unravels Weird Cases
Eileen Zaffiro
Daytona Beach News-Journal
______________________
Daytona Beach, Florida (US):
Most police officers have a pretty interesting collection of stories by the time they retire. But Bob Engborg's special training in religions ranging from paganism to Satanism has led him to some particularly unusual cases in his three decades of police work.
About five years ago, Engborg helped in a case with two local women who worked as phlebotomists, drawing peoples' blood in doctors' offices and hospitals.
The young women also liked to drink blood, so they flirted with men at local bars and convinced some to let them draw their blood, he said.He also helped get to the bottom of a rotting, severed goat's head found on an oyster bed in the Halifax River in 1997.
The head was found wrapped in a towel along with a cloth doll, two calabash fruits jabbed with needles, two large black olives, $6 in U.S. coins and a picture of a Roman solider with Spanish writing on the back.Engborg linked the package to Palo Mayombe, which blends African shaman religion with elements of magic and Catholicism.
The package found in the river, he believes, was part of a spell conjured up by a very experienced practitioner of Palo Mayombe.Because the First Amendment protects animal sacrifices done for religious purposes, the only crime was creating a health hazard by disposing of the dead animal in the river, he said.
In 1998, he helped solve a case in Bradenton that began when a fisherman made a gruesome discovery: a severed hand.Fingerprints led police to a recently deceased man, so investigators exhumed the body. In the abdominal cavity of the man, they found 12 voodoo dolls with incisions near the mouths, a pin under the left arm of each and handwritten notes.
Nov 28, 2005
Eileen Zaffiro
Daytona Beach News-Journal
______________________
Daytona Beach, Florida (US):
Most police officers have a pretty interesting collection of stories by the time they retire. But Bob Engborg's special training in religions ranging from paganism to Satanism has led him to some particularly unusual cases in his three decades of police work.
About five years ago, Engborg helped in a case with two local women who worked as phlebotomists, drawing peoples' blood in doctors' offices and hospitals.
The young women also liked to drink blood, so they flirted with men at local bars and convinced some to let them draw their blood, he said.He also helped get to the bottom of a rotting, severed goat's head found on an oyster bed in the Halifax River in 1997.
The head was found wrapped in a towel along with a cloth doll, two calabash fruits jabbed with needles, two large black olives, $6 in U.S. coins and a picture of a Roman solider with Spanish writing on the back.Engborg linked the package to Palo Mayombe, which blends African shaman religion with elements of magic and Catholicism.
The package found in the river, he believes, was part of a spell conjured up by a very experienced practitioner of Palo Mayombe.Because the First Amendment protects animal sacrifices done for religious purposes, the only crime was creating a health hazard by disposing of the dead animal in the river, he said.
In 1998, he helped solve a case in Bradenton that began when a fisherman made a gruesome discovery: a severed hand.Fingerprints led police to a recently deceased man, so investigators exhumed the body. In the abdominal cavity of the man, they found 12 voodoo dolls with incisions near the mouths, a pin under the left arm of each and handwritten notes.
Nov 28, 2005
