Bio

Alexander Kimanthi Kinyua was born on October 23, 1990, in Nairobi, Kenya. He moved to the United States as a child and later became a United States citizen. By 2012, he was living in Maryland and studying electrical engineering at Morgan State University in Baltimore. His father, Antony Kinyua, was a physics professor at the same university.

Before the murder of Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, Kinyua’s behavior had become increasingly unstable. Public reports described bizarre online posts, unusual statements about “human sacrifices,” and disciplinary problems at Morgan State University. He had participated in ROTC for about two and a half years but was removed from the program in January 2012 after a disciplinary incident.

Kinyua was suffering from serious mental illness. During a December 2012 hearing in a separate assault case, a judge stated that Kinyua had paranoid schizophrenia and believed reptilian aliens were coming to destroy Earth. The judge also said he had developed delusional beliefs, stopped attending school and church, claimed to be a prophet or shaman, and displayed increasingly strange behavior.

On May 19, 2012, several days before Agyei-Kodie was killed, Kinyua attacked Morgan State student Joshua Ceasar with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. Ceasar suffered serious injuries, including traumatic optic damage that left him legally blind in one eye. Kinyua was arrested in that case but released on bail on May 23, 2012. Two days later, Agyei-Kodie was reported missing.

Murder Story

Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie was a 37-year-old Ghanaian national who had previously studied at Morgan State University. He had met Kinyua’s father while pursuing graduate studies and had been staying with the Kinyua family in Joppatowne, Maryland, while facing immigration problems and preparing to return to Ghana.

On May 25, 2012, Agyei-Kodie was reported missing by Kinyua’s father. The family initially said he had gone jogging and had not returned. Several days later, Kinyua’s brother discovered what appeared to be human remains in metal tins in the basement laundry area of the family home. He reported the discovery to his father, and police were contacted.

When investigators searched the home, they found Agyei-Kodie’s head and hands. Additional remains were later found in a trash container outside Towne Baptist Church, about a mile from the residence. Authorities said Kinyua admitted that he killed Agyei-Kodie, dismembered him, and ate his heart and part of his brain.

Kinyua was charged with first-degree murder and a weapons offense. The case drew national and international attention because of the alleged cannibalism and because it happened shortly after Kinyua had been released on bail in the violent Morgan State assault case.

Mental-health proceedings became central to the case. In August 2012, Kinyua was found incompetent to stand trial and was sent for treatment at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital, Maryland’s maximum-security psychiatric hospital. Prosecutors later reviewed psychiatric findings and acknowledged that they did not have enough evidence to prove that Kinyua was criminally responsible for the killing.

On August 19, 2013, Kinyua pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible to the murder of Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie. A Harford County judge accepted the finding that his mental illness prevented criminal responsibility. As a result, he did not receive a standard prison sentence and was indefinitely committed to a Maryland psychiatric institution.