Photo shows man who killed wife over affair claims, not paternity results
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 28, 2023 at 14:56
- 3 min read
- By Fikayo OWOEYE, AFP Nigeria
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"Man cuts off wife's Head after DNA test proved none of Six kids are his (sic)," reads the Facebook post shared more than 5,000 times since it was published on July 21, 2023.
The account behind the post is called "The News Reporter Newspaper" and has 26,000 followers. It promotes content from and about Nigeria.
An image above the headline shows separate pictures of a man and a woman.
Many people commenting on the post called for the man to be freed from prison.
The claim also appeared elsewhere on Facebook and a 2021 news blog that described the man as "Jamaican". The blog article also named the woman as Karen Rainsford.
According to World Bank statistics (archived here), 30 percent – or 736 million – women globally have experienced intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.
The woman in the Facebook image was indeed killed by her husband, also pictured, but the circumstances described in the post are misleading.
Stabbed by husband
Using reverse image searches, AFP Fact Check found the original photos attached to news articles from 2013.
The various reports including here, here, here and here described how 38-year-old Minta Adiddo had repeatedly stabbed his wife Akua Agyeman – not Karen Rainsford, as claimed – a year earlier in a fit of jealousy (archived here, here, here and here).
The couple lived in the UK. Adiddo was found guilty of killing Agyeman who died from her injuries months later.
Adiddo was tried in the Old Bailey and given a prison sentence of 17 years to life by judge Brian Barker (archived here). A summary of the court records on a legal services website shows Agyeman was stabbed 29 times in the chest and abdomen and died in hospital of multiple organ failure on January 2, 2013.
Media reported the couple had two children, not six (archived here).
The claim appears to be a perennial hoax — it was also debunked in 2015 by US fact-checking organisation Lead Stories here (archive here).
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