Student Admits Eating Housemate’s Heart, Part of Brain

(Photo credit: Harford County Sheriff's Office/CNN)

By the CNN Wire Staff

Hours after his family members alerted police to a human head and two
hands they discovered stashed in metal tins, a Maryland man admitted
killing his housemate, cutting him up, then eating his heart and part of
his brain, authorities said.

Alexander Kinyua, 21, was being held without bail Thursday at the
Harford County Detention Center after being charged with first-degree
murder, first-degree assault and second-degree assault.

His roommate, Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, had left his Joppatowne home
six days earlier for an apparent early morning jog. Wearing a T-shirt
and shorts, he left his wallet, cell phone and identification at home.

On Tuesday, Antony Kinyua — Alexander Kinyua’s father — called a
Harford County detective assigned to the missing person’s case and told
him about his other son’s gruesome discovery.

According to the charging document, the other son explained to the
detective how he had come across two metal tins covered by a blanket in
the basement laundry room of Agyei-Kodie’s Joppatowne residence. He
opened the tins and found the head and hands.

The brother said he “confronted (Alexander Kinyua), who denied the
remains were human,” then went upstairs to get his father, the detective
said in the charging document. When the father and son returned to the
basement, “the items he observed were gone and … Alex Kinyua was
cleaning the container he observed them in.”

Two Harford County detectives later arrived on the scene and discovered the head and hands on the home’s main floor.

“He admitted to killing our missing person, Mr. Kodie, and cutting
him up with a knife,” Harford County Sheriff Jesse Bane told reporters
Thursday. “He further stated that he consumed Mr. Kodie’s internal
organs — specifically his heart and portions of his brain.”

The suspect told detectives to go to the parking lot of the nearby
Town Baptist Church, where they could — and did — find the rest of
Agyei-Kodie’s remains in a dumpster.

The missing person’s report filed Saturday described the 37-year-old
Agyei-Kodie as “very intelligent.” He had earned multiple master’s
degrees from schools in Ghana and was also a graduate student at Morgan
State University, even though he wasn’t taking classes there at the time
of his death.

Kinyua was affiliated with the same state university in Baltimore.
The engineering student was one of 175 people showcased in an August
2011 symposium run by the prestigious Los Alamos National Laboratory.
His study focused on the cost-effectiveness and productivity of “comfort
control” systems regulating heating, ventilation and air conditioning.