Last month, a massive five-alarm fire broke out in a six-floor East Flatbush apartment, killing one and leaving dozens injured and homeless. The fire turned out to be the unintended result of a voodoo sex ritual gone wrong, after one resident paid 66-year-old Nelson (Pepe) Pierre $300 to perform such a ceremony. And police and residents say that so-called voodoo priests such as Pierre are just two-bit con men preying on desperate immigrants.
The woman allegedly hired Pierre because she needed luck—she was supposed to file immigration papers three days after the fire. Pierre lit candles around the bed, poured run on the floor near the door, and told her that "in order for it to work, they had to have sex." The woman, who law enforcement sources describe to the News as "naive and borderline developmentally disabled," is now too embarrassed and scared to leave her apartment—Pierre told her that evil spirits would get her if she talked to the police about what happened. Neighbors described Pierre as a charming handyman with a limp and a love for women: "Pepe is a lowlife. Women were always going in and out of his place," said neighbor Ama Boafo.
Father Jean-Miguel Auguste, who heads the St. Jerome Catholic Church about a block from the where the fire happened, says that these fake priests are a plague on the community who target the desperate. "When you are desperate, you will believe anything...They tell the women that they have to penetrate them in order to pass off the spirit. They don't use condoms. Women are getting sick," said Auguste, who added that he has counseled hundreds of women who were taken advantage of by these men.
