African Healer Beats Hippy Wife to Death

Daily Telegraph (no link):

An African healer yesterday admitted killing his British wife weeks after she took him to live with her in Devon.

Hibiekoun Hien, 53, from Burkina Faso, west Africa, admitted killing Linda MacDonald, also 53, at her terrace home in the Dartmoor town of Buckfastleigh, where the couple had set up an African healing centre.

The couple met two years ago in Burkino Faso, a former French colony, when Miss MacDonald was travelling in west Africa. Hien was an elder in the village of Dano and people visited his compound for divinations and healing.

Miss MacDonald had worked with healers and teachers from around the world and ran a healing practice. She had gone to Africa for what she described as "part of her own healing journey."

Miss MacDonald had written an account of her relationship with Hien in an alternative magazine, saying: "I sometimes find it hard to comprehend the huge changes that have happened in my life as a result of the deep initiation processes I have experienced while in Africa. The training I am receiving in the village is with an enormously respected elder, diviner and healer shaman in the Dagara tradition. He is Hibiekoun Hien, whose gifts were recognised by diviners when he was a child.

"He had been waiting for me. It was foretold that a woman would come from the West who had been born with the same gifts, abilities and spirit helpers as him.

"Through divination it was revealed that I was this person and he is now teaching me most of what he knows so that we are able to work together in partnership. It is not surprising that we also deeply love each other."

Miss MacDonald fought for months to have Hien join her in England and married him in Africa to make it possible, but they had been in Devon for only a few weeks when she died of head and face injuries after an argument on Oct 20 last year, after Hien had become convinced she planned to sell him to buy a car.

Hien, who cannot speak English, and who could communicate with his wife only through sign language and a few words, denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.