Brewed from the leaves of the psychotria viridis shrub, ayahuasca is a powerful South American hallucinogenic tea created by ancient Amazonian tribes for spiritual ceremonies.
So potent is the psychedelic concoction, users are advised to ingest it only when supervised by an experienced shaman.
Drinking the tea – which Prince Harry said helped him overcome PTSD from the death of his mother – is often followed by aggressive vomiting before a euphoria so intense users claim they have been on a mystic journey that has changed them forever.
Like all psychedelics, however, it can induce powerful feelings of fear, paranoia and detachment from reality.
One person very familiar with ayahuasca’s mindbending effects is Brazilian handyman Marcus Monzo, who was yesterday convicted of decapitating a schoolboy with a sword while in a state of drug-induced psychosis.
Along with a £100-a-day cannabis habit, Monzo regularly devoured a heady cocktail of psychedelics including ayahuasca, LSD, ‘magic mushrooms,’ and salvia – known as ‘Mexican Magic Mint.’
In an obsessive pursuit of spiritual fulfilment ignited by a fascination with an Indian guru, Monzo would ingest the psychoactive substances daily in the belief it helped him connect with the mystical world.
This substance abuse would lead him not to enlightenment, however, but to strangle and skin his pet cat before a blood-soaked 20-minute rampage that left 14-year-old Daniel Anjorin dead.
Marcus Monzo, pictured at Medicine Festival, regularly took hallucinogens which friends say altered his personality
Monzo became fascinated with an Indian guru named Sadhguru and travelled the world experimenting with psychedelic drugs in a pursuit of spirituality
Daniel Anjorin, 14, was ‘all but decapitated’ by Monzo during a sword rampage on April 30, 2024
Monzo was eventually cornered and subdued by police armed with Tasers
At 6.51am last April 30, residents of Laing Close in Hainault, northeast London, were shaken awake by the crash of a speeding van slamming into the side of a house.
Donato Iwule, a security guard at the Co-op, was walking to work when he was struck by the vehicle and catapulted into a garden.
As he tried to stagger to his feet, Monzo emerged from the van wielding a samurai sword.
Standing over the dazed security guard, Monzo unsheathed the weapon, tossed the scabbard onto the ground and, gripping the sword with both hands, swung it at Mr Iwule’s neck.
Mr Iwule immediately saw blood and shouted ‘I don’t know you’ at his attacker.
Monzo, said to have been grinning and with ‘black eyes,’ replied: ‘I don’t care, I will kill you.’
As Monzo continued to swing his weapon, Mr Iwule twisted away just in time to see Daniel Anjorin leave his house for school.
He screamed a warning at the schoolboy to go back inside but Daniel, dressed in his school sports clothes and wearing earphones, was oblivious to the danger.
Tom Little KC, prosecuting, told Monzo’s trial that the Brazilian ‘moved quickly like a predator’ behind Daniel, raised the sword above his head and chopped down on the boy’s neck.
Daniel fell to the ground and Monzo continued to attack his prone body with the blade, before dragging him a few yards along the road by his schoolbag then retreating out of sight.
An ambulance arrived at 7.02am but as it approached Daniel’s lifeless body, Monzo emerged once again and struck the vehicle with his sword, forcing the crew to retreat.
Daniel, the son of health and safety consultant Dr Ebenezer Anjorin and science teacher Grace Anjorin and a student at £25,000-a-year Bancroft’s School, was later given CPR and taken to the Royal London Hospital, but was pronounced dead at 8.48am.
When police arrived at the scene shortly after paramedics Monzo burst from a bush brandishing the blade and bellowing questions about whether the officers believed in God.
They doused him with pepper spray and he turned and sprinted away, still wielding the sword, with PC Cameron King and PC Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield in pursuit.
Monzo then ambushed PC Mechem-Whitfield, stepping out of an alley and slashing her in the face, shoulder and arm before her colleague caught up and hosed him once again with pepper spray.
Mr Little said it was ‘a miracle’ that she was not killed.
When an ambulance crew arrived at the scene, Monzo attacked the vehicle with his weapon
Monzo’s horrific rampage left one dead and four seriously wounded
Henry De Los Rios Polania suffered deep injuries to his arm while protecting his family after Monzo burst into their home
Officers fired the 50,000-volt devices at the Brazilian then placed him in handcuffs
While PC King was tending to his colleague, Monzo dashed back down the alley and through a back door into the home of Sindy Arias and Henry De Los Rios Polania.
The pair were asleep with their four-year-old daughter when the crazed Brazilian burst into their bedroom demanding once again: ‘Do you believe in God?’
As the swordsman swung his weapon at the family Mr Polania, an IT engineer, raised his arm to shield his partner from the attack, sustaining deep wounds to his forearm.
Monzo left the house through the front door at 7.08am and officers were able to herd him into an enclosed garage space.
Backed into a corner and facing multiple jets of pepper spray, Monzo furiously slashed his sword, catching inspector Moloy Campbell across the hand, causing an arterial bleed.
In the chaos, Monzo jumped onto the roof of a garage and into some rear gardens before he was eventually Tasered and arrested in a doorway.
His blood-soaked rampage – which left two police officers wounded, two members of the public seriously injured and a bright young schoolboy slain just yards from his home – would prompt calls for more frontline officers to be armed with Tasers.
But during interviews, Monzo swore he had no recollection of the attacks.
His explanation for the carnage was confounding yet revealing.
‘One of my personalities is a professional assassin,’ he told dumbfounded detectives.
Monzo was a keen martial artist and would film himself training regularly
Social media photos show Monzo smiling and doing a thumbs-up with a collection of medals round his neck after winning a sports contest
Monzo grew up in the municipality of Astorga in southern Brazil, in a village so small that his school also served as a shop and local church.
Raised a Catholic, he spent his childhood worshipping in church, horse riding and playing with animals.
His brother, Eduardo, told the Old Bailey their mother ran her own clothing business in the village and they had a comfortable life, with Monzo performing well at school and learning English from the age of 15.
Monzo studied business administration at university in Brazil and set up an online clothing retailer with his brother before the family moved to New Hampshire in the US.
Unable to legally work in America, Monzo moved to London and began working in a pub – and also experimenting with cannabis, LSD and magic mushrooms.
‘We were a happy family and Marcus would work, meet with friends and enjoy the occasional social drinking,’ Eduardo said.
‘He was a healthy, popular guy, he had no problems.’
Monzo was a keen martial artist but was forced to pause his ju-jitsu training due to a knee injury and took up yoga as a substitute.
It was at yoga sessions in 2017 he was introduced to an online guru named Sadhguru, a yogi and spiritual leader who founded the Isha Foundation in India.
Monzo was enraptured by the guru’s teachings and travelled to an ashram retreat in India, an experience that transformed him into a ‘completely different person,’ according to his brother.
‘Marcus’s behaviour started to change,’ he said.
‘He didn’t want to be contacted by me any more and when we did speak he would only talk about Sadhguru.
‘He had grown a full beard and was wearing traditional white Indian clothing and had lost lots of weight.’
Monzo (pictured left) ‘used spirituality as a cover for his narcissism and drug addiction,’ according to friends
The swordsman (pictured) began practising yoga after a knee injury prevented him from martial arts training
Monzo filmed himself unwrapping the sword he later used to kill Daniel Anjorin. Also in this image is his cat, Wizard, who he strangled, skinned and de-boned because he became convinced the pet would be the architect of Armageddon
In 2021, Monzo travelled to northern Brazil for another spiritual retreat which involved staying with indigenous Amazonian tribes and drinking copious quantities of ayahuasca.
‘He said the drink was good for him and connects you to the spiritual world,’ Eduardo said.
‘I believe he was drinking it quite a lot.
‘I had heard some people had had a negative response and very serious consequences but I knew he was strong and decisive person so I wasn’t overly concerned.’
Monzo, by this point working as an amateur musician and ‘man with a van,’ became a fixture at alternative festivals around the world, including ‘breatharian’ events in Italy and Denmark.
Breatharianism is the belief that it is possible for humans to live without food, subsisting on ‘life force’ alone.
Several of its proponents have died from starvation or – in the case of teachers such as Hira Ratan Manek – were caught secretly eating.
One former friend, who met Monzo at Medicine Festival at a country estate in Berkshire, said he was already ‘heavily into psychedelics’ and was forming a god complex.
‘He has become more extreme over the past couple of years talking about being a spiritual guide and a guru and even a god,’ they told the Mail.
‘He was using spirituality as a cover for his narcissism.
‘Often the risks and harm caused by psychedelics are overlooked, particularly in spiritual communities. It’s a socially acceptable way to be an addict and kid yourself that it is not a problem – you’re somehow profound, superior and enlightened because of what is, in reality, a drug addiction.’
Monzo’s grip on reality began loosening, he started pushing family and friends away and his behaviour became increasingly bizarre.
Monzo had a five-star rating as a ‘man with a van’ on Task Rabbit
His social media posts became more deranged throughout 2023
He began ‘urine therapy’ at home, drinking and showering in his own waste for ‘healing and cleansing.’
By 2023, his Twitter output had become a constant stream of conspiracy theories and bizarre claims including that influential figures, including Elon Musk and Hillary Clinton, had been ‘replaced’ by ‘illuminati implants.’
He repeatedly engaged with accounts that claim the Earth is flat, suggested it was under the control of ‘Zionists,’ and would tell his customers the Pope was a lizard in human form.
In June that year, he told self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate: ‘I resonate with A LOT of the stuff you talk about.’
Monzo also wrote: ‘They demonized Hitler, because he was protecting Europe against their satanist communism.’
And he described notorious conspiracy theorist David Icke as: ‘Legendary, Ickonic! [sic].’
On April 4 last year, Monzo recorded himself unpacking the samurai sword he would later use to cause so much bloodshed in Hainault, referring to the weapon as ‘frigging sexy’ as he admired its leather handle.
Daniel Anjorin was a student at Bancroft School, which was also attended by Nottingham stabbing victim Grace O’Malley-Kumar
Sat before him in the video is a small ginger cat, named Wizard, who in the days before his rampage Monzo came to believe was about to cause Armageddon.
In the grip of a cannabis-induced haze, he strangled, skinned and deboned Wizard before placing him on a baking tray with the intention of cooking and eating the pet.
Monzo later said he felt he ‘didn’t have time’ to eat his cat due to the impending apocalypse, so set off with the animal’s remains on a baking tray, a number of swords and a ball bearing gun on a mission to kill.
Giving evidence during his trial, Monzo said he would often ‘switch between personalities’ to help process trauma he had suffered as a boy.
This was despite his brother’s claims of a happy childhood, however, and no specific source of trauma was ever provided by his defence.
‘One of my personalities is like a professional assassin I think,’ Monzo said.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Bernard Chin claimed in his defence that Monzo suffered from a pre-existing schizotypal disorder which made him vulnerable to psychotic episodes prompted by his drug use.
But Professor Blackwood argued he was capable of curtailing his substance abuse and was aware of the risks.
Jurors agreed it was the Brazilian’s insatiable drug habit that drove him to carry out the attack, and he alone was to blame and he was yesterday/today convicted of murder, four counts of attempted murder, possession of a sword, aggravated burglary and wounding with intent.
Indeed, so reliant is Monzo on psychoactive substances that, despite the carnage he knows can be caused, he admitted smoking synthetic cannabinoid Spice while on remand in prison.
As his former friend put it: ‘[Psychedelics] can change people’s personalities and brains permanently.
‘Marcus I know had a serious psychedelic problem. It gave him delusions of grandeur.
‘I have seen many lives destroyed by these drugs and I believe it is the cause of what happened.
‘I hope there can be a conversation about them finally.’
