‘Miracle’ cleric nephew jailed for killing son

Paul Otieno Deya was found guilty last month of murdering three-year-old Wilson, who was found with a slit throat and slashed abdomen.

Deya, 32, ran after his wife Jackline, 30, and attacked her with a knife after she found Wilson’s body in a bedroom at the family home in Bermondsey, south-east London.

Deya was ordered to serve a minimum term of 20 years.

Old Bailey Judge Giles Forrester told him: “This was a grotesque and terrible crime.”

Deya, who had been depressed, became jealous of his wife and had been asked to leave the family home because of his behaviour.

Judge Forrester told him: “You did it to hurt and punish her in the way you knew would hurt her the most – by killing her child.

“Your victim was particularly vulnerable because of his age. He was utterly defenceless.

“He was devoted to you and put his trust in you.”

Self-styled archbishop Gilbert Deya, who has sought to open a ministry in Leeds and already has bases in Manchester and Sheffield, is fighting extradition to Kenya following allegations of child abduction after infertile women were presented with “miracle babies”. One woman allegedly had three babies in one year.

The judge said he did not know how much he had been influenced by the teaching of the controversial archbishop who also believes mental illness was the work of the devil. But Deya had not received medical treatment before the murder.

Mrs Deya said in a statement to the court that Wilson “was an angel from God”.

He had looked on his father to protect him but instead “daddy turned out to be a monster who killed him”.

She added: “Paul knew I loved Wilson and that is why he killed him.

“Paul left him to die, to bleed to death - how wicked and evil.”

Deya will begin his sentence in a mental hospital, where he is on suicide watch.

The court heard that when police arrived at the flat in November 2009, they found Deya had attempted suicide with similar injuries as his son.

Mrs Deya told the court she had not been having an affair.

She had been at the church run by his uncle, who acted as his adopted father.

Deya, who worked in the controversial television evangelist’s media department, denied murder, claiming diminished responsibility.

But he admitted wounding his wife, the financial director of Gilbert Deya Ministries.

Mrs Deya denied a defence suggestion that she had deliberately discouraged him from getting help because of the church’s belief in spiritualism and through shame.

She said six months before her son’s death, Deya said he had a dream in which dead people told him to kill their children.

She said: “He said dead people called him and he wanted to kill the children, especially Wilson.

“It was not a good dream and we prayed over it. We didn’t seek advice, we just prayed over it.”