ADULTERY MESS
Pastor kills wife, says ‘She was sleeping around’
By BONIFACE NZAMA, Calabar
Sunday, June 10, 2007

•Godwin Usen Photo: Sun News Publishing

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A jealous husband, one Pastor Godwin Usen, recently sent shock waves down the spines of Calabar residents in Cross River State when he reportedly killed his wife with machete over alleged adulterous act.

Currently cooling his heels at the State Criminal Investigation Department, Police Headquarters, Diamond Hill in Calabar, Pastor Usen of a parish of the Redeemed Peoples Church is said to have already made a shocking confession, saying that his wife, popularly called by neighbours as Mama Marshal, had become “intolerably involved in extra-marital affairs.”

During a visit to their residence at 45 Jobs Street in Calabar South, Sunday Sun gathered that the ill-fated woman was killed on her matrimonial bed at about 1 A.M on that fateful day while fast asleep.

Mr. Tom Adama Okpene (ASP), the Police Public Relations Officer of the command who confirmed the gory incident, said the man was still under interrogation. “The only thing he has said is that the wife was sleeping with men,” Okpene disclosed.
Their two children who were with them in the house when the incident occurred, said the “man of God” had just concluded reading the Bible, chanting some gospel hymns and saying his night prayers to go to bed, only to end up unleashing deep machete cuts on the throat of their mother who was already in a deep sleep.
Speaking with Sunday Sun, Pastor Usen’s next door neighbour, one Mr. Edet Akan, said prior to the fateful day, the man was always quarrelling and fighting his wife and children, and was allegedly dreaded by every member of the compound.

Apart from quarrelling and fighting, he alleged that Usen often threatened that one day he was going to kill his wife, her two children and end up committing suicide.
Akan, fondly called Brother Eddy by neighbours, said his last encounter with the woman while she was still alive, was at about 9.40pm on that fateful evening when he came out from the adjourning two-room apartment and saw Mama Marshal preparing a meal for her husband and children.
Narrating how trouble started, he said: “At about 1A.M, I heard a voice calling on me as if it was in a dream, saying Brother Eddy, my husband is killing me.’ I heard it for three times and it stopped. After a while, I heard the voice again, this time saying ‘My husband has killed me.’
As the woman allegedly continued crying for help, Eddy said he was jolted out of sleep and rushed out of his room to the veranda, where he saw the two children of the couple, Master Marshal Usen (15) and Miss Nora (13) standing helplessly and trembling.

When he enquired why they were not in bed at such time of the night, he said the children told him that they were already asleep in the sitting room when their father suddenly came and ordered them out of the house, locked the burglary proof at the veranda and the door leading to the bedroom.
“When I tried to ask what was wrong, their father came out of the bedroom and said I should not worry, that I should go and sleep.

“Since the burglary proof was locked, I decided to take the children to my own apartment and as I was about to sleep, the daughter said, ‘Brother Eddy, daddy has killed mummy.’
“I did not pay much attention because I thought it was a joke since fighting and quarrelling was a usual thing to them. As I wanted to go and sleep, the son called me again, ‘Brother Eddy, my dad went and sharpened his machete in the afternoon and it is the knife that he has used in killing my mother’.
“Immediately the son repeated the statement, I was touched. So I went out again. This time, the man came out of his bedroom to the veranda, but the burglary proof outside was still locked. I now looked at him carefully and saw blood on his legs.”

Noticing blood stain on Usen’s legs, Eddy said “I asked him ‘Where is your wife?’ and he replied that I should not worry, that everything would be settled in the morning.
“I pleaded with him, telling him that if he knows that he had done any serious thing to his wife, let him open the burglary proof, so we could take her to the hospital, but he refused.
“As we were talking, the wife managed to shout again for the last time. The last time, he called brother Eddy twice, Jesus twice and Jehovah twice.

“After hearing that, I told the son to go to the back door to make sure the man did not escape. I insisted he should open the door but he refused, and at that moment, all the people around had started coming out, so we immediately sent for the police.”
Knowing he was facing trouble, Mr. Usen allegedly attempted to escape through the back door but was reportedly apprehended.

Eddy continued: “As he opened the back door of his apartment attempting to escape through the back fence, his son saw him and shouted for people to come. I now ran to the backyard and told him ‘Why are you doing this? If you escape, it means you hate all of us in this house.’
After much pressure from the crowd that rushed to the scene, Usen allegedly pretended he was going to take the wife to the hospital, only to get into his Nissan Stanza car marked Lagos AE 572 KTU, attempting to drive off, leaving the dead wife in a pool of her blood.

“I told him that he was not going to anywhere. Not long after that, five policemen arrived from Mbukpa Police Station,” Eddy added.
Asked by the police officers to produce his wife, Usen allegedly directed the officers to his bedroom but refused to go in with them.
Irked by his resistance, it was gathered that the police decided to force him into the room, where they eventually saw the woman laying stone dead in a pool of blood.
At the police station, the man was said to have confessed that while he was reading the Bible, he constantly applied essential balm ointment on his face to keep him awake till 1 A.M, when he decided to launch the attack on the woman.

Usen was quoted as saying that he first slashed his wife’s throat while she was fast asleep and as the woman jumped out of the bed attempting to open the door, he gave her a second cut on the head and she slumped, leaving pieces of her artificial hair (attachment) on the floor.
He attempted to strike her the third time but the woman raised her hand and her left palm was cut off. That was not all. Usen reportedly said he made the fourth attempt and the woman raised her hand again and her left arm was removed. She finally gave up, after her right hand was cut off.
At Mbukpa Police Station where he made his first statement, looking at the mutilated body of his wife, before he was transferred to the state headquarters, Usen allegedly claimed that the woman really deserved capital punishment, as he reportedly told the crowd that “You people are shouting, if I tell you what I have been passing through because of this woman, you will not believe.”

He reportedly further alleged that while he was in his sitting room, a group of men sneaked into his bedroom through the ceiling to have sex with his wife, and when he rushed to the room, they all escaped through the ceiling.
However, Eddy said, “When we went with some policemen, we were surprised to see that the ceiling and the burglary proof on the window were intact.”
Sources told Sunday Sun that the marriage had packed up more than six times only for them to make up later. Their last break-up was said to be in December 2006, when the man allegedly threw her belongings out of the house, and after some time, Usen claimed he was a born-again Christian, and he was made a pastor in the Redeemed Peoples Church.

“To everybody around, there was no reason why such a marriage should continue, because they were always fighting and quarrelling. It was the members of his church that went and brought that woman back, telling the woman that the man was born again.”
Apart from being a pastor, Usen was said to be the proprietor of one of the fastest growing private schools in Calabar, Juana Nursery and Primary School.
Angry about the gruesome murder of his mother, Marshal was said to have vowed before the police that he was going to kill his father if the man was released from detention.