| Banjarsari massacre | |
| Location: | Banjarsari, Indonesia |
| Date: | 15 April 1987 |
| Type: | Mass murder, mass stabbing, murder–suicide |
| Fatalities: | 21 (including the perpetrator) |
| Injuries: | 12 |
| Perp: | Wirjo |
| Weapons: | Sickle Parang |
The Banjarsari massacre occurred on 15 April 1987, when a 42-year-old farmer named Wirjo killed 20 people and wounded 12 others in the village of Banjarsari in Banyuwangi Regency, Indonesia.[1]
The massacre began at Wirjo's home, where he attacked his adoptive son Renny and his friend Arbaiyah, both 4-years-old, with a parang and a sickle. While Renny managed to escape, Arbaiyah was hit in the neck and died. Wirjo then entered the home of Maskur, a neighbour, where he first killed Mrs Maskur with the sickle, before turning on her 80-year-old husband, who tried to help her. Afterwards he made his way through the village, assaulting people at random. Then the people from the village tried to find Wirjo but failed, only to be met by many dead bodies spread across a field.
By the end of the day Wirjo had hacked a total of 32 people, most of them farmers on the way to their fields and students going to school. 18 of his victims died at the scene, while two others later succumbed to their wounds in hospital. As the culprit was nowhere to be found authorities temporarily suspended classes at local schools, while people locked themselves in their homes.
After an extensive manhunt, including police, dogs, and the army, Wirjo was found the next day just 30NaN0 west of his house, dangling from the roots of a tree growing over a riverbank. He had committed suicide by hanging himself with his belt.[2] [3] [4]
Among those killed were:
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Several tales around the murder had been circulating at the time of the murders. Some could be not be ascertained as factual.[5]
Wirjo, a 40-year-old farmer, was the fifth of nine children. According to his wife, Indarah, he loved to drink and gamble and also complained a lot about his inheritance. When reminded of his shortcomings, he would get angry and threaten his wife and his mother with sickles (he tried to stab his mother once but his mother managed to dodge and lived). His uncle, Sutedjo, also reported that Wirjo displayed a lot of unnatural behavior, such as eating an unnatural amount of rice (he had once eaten a whole worth of fried rice and 5 wraps worth of rice) and enjoying fried cow blood, also known as "dedeh". The day before the murder, Wirjo was reported to have beaten his wife with a whip during an argument.[2] [4] It was reported that prior to the massacre, Wirjo had fasted for a month and had dug up his mother's corpse from the graveyard to gnaw on her bones, though other reports indicated no such thing had happened, instead relating that she was still alive at that time.[2] Two days before the massacre began, Wirjo was seen polishing his own sickle for an unknown reason.[6]