A self-styled spiritual healer, who reportedly whipped her followers to rid them of evil, was taken into custody yesterday after the police, acting on information, unearthed a corpse from a shallow grave in her backyard.

The spiritual healer, Patricia Alves, 41, also called `Patsy' or `Mother' of Lot 14 Second Street, Alberttown was taken into police custody shortly before noon. The dead woman, believed to have been suffering from Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) was reportedly being treated by Alves. Neighbours identified her only as `Camille'.

Police Public Relations Officer, Assistant Superintendent David Ramnarine, told Stabroek News that Alves was assisting the police in their investigations and "seems to be cooperating very well." Though he could provide no details on the identity of `Camille', Ramnarine said information suggested that she might be from Anna Regina on the Essequibo Coast. The police, he said, were investigating.

Alves has been in court several times over the beating of persons who she was reportedly treating for various ailments.

Shortly after 8:15 am yesterday, the police swooped on Alves' home, the last building on a three-house lot, after a nearby resident called them.

No one could have seen directly into the yard from the road as there were blue tarpaulins covering the entrance, as well as any view from above. When Stabroek News arrived on the scene shortly after 9 am the police were removing some of the tarpaulins. A crowd of curious onlookers climbed ladders, trees and the fence to get a glimpse of the yard, the grave, which was about two feet deep, and the corpse. A female reporter, on glimpsing the corpse through a hole in the galvanized-sheet fence, fainted and was taken to a hospital where she was sedated.

A resident in the street told Stabroek News that she was in her yard between 8 am and 8.15 am picking dunks when, as was customary, she peeped through a hole in the fence to see what was going on next door. She said that she was particularly interested because it was unusually quiet. The sound of beating and crying that would come from Alves' house on a daily basis had not been heard the day before.

The neighbour said that she saw someone busy covering a hole with mud and on looking closer, observed the feet of a person bound together by what appeared to be either rope or cloth poking out of the hole.

The neighbour said she called other members of her family to see what was happening and they called the police who responded immediately. The neighbour's daughter told Stabroek News that she had always told her mother to stop peeping over at Alves' house, but according to the mother the peeping paid off.

The comments and anecdotes about Alves' activities were many. Former members of her congregation who preferred to remain anonymous told Stabroek News that they had been concerned about the beatings and had warned her about it. They said that she would beat her patients/members with an iron pipe or cutlass.

Neighbours said that Alves kept a `service' every Saturday below her house with loud drumming and chanting and the burning of incense, the smell of which would be so strong, it would permeate their homes.

Some neighbours claimed that in the past the police dealt with Alves leniently because she was "friendly" with a senior police officer. They claimed that their reports about her activities were not taken seriously by the police.

One man alleged that he had been stripped naked at the police station after Alves had made reports against him. He opined that had he not been a retired senior officer with one of the disciplined services and known by the likes of the former police commissioner and others, he would hate to think about what his fate might have been. Showing Stabroek News court documents indicating he had filed and gotten an injunction against Alves for being a nuisance and littering his yard, the man said he was never paid the sums the court had ordered. He said he became so frustrated that he stopped cleaning the backyard.

On one occasion, another neighbour said, she had engaged a young man to weed her yard and Alves had complained to the police that the neighbour had taken a man to kill her with a cutlass. She said the weeder was arrested and taken to the Alberttown Police Station, but later released.

Yesterday, Alves, wearing a mud-spattered dress, watched passively as police officers uncovered the shallow grave and exhumed the body. Initially, she resisted the police's efforts to remove her from the premises, prompting a spectator on the road to shout: "Gie she a Wang Yu."

Alves was whisked away by the police at around 11:35 am in a mini-bus from a vociferous crowd shouting "Upturn the bus!" and "Rock the bus!" among other derogatory remarks. A young man of about 17 years old and a girl of about 12 years old, both with visible scars about the exposed parts of their bodies, were also taken away by the police.

Shortly after Alves was taken away, the body of `Camille' was carried out of the yard wrapped in a body bag. The noise that had erupted when Alves was being taken away gave way to silence as the body was carried to the waiting hearse.

In July 1998, Alves was one of two women who were remanded to prison for allegedly beating another woman during a spiritual ritual. She had been charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm. She had pleaded not guilty to the offence. Alves had accused the complainant of stealing items from her church.

Then in March 1999, the police rescued a toddler from Alves' home. The two-year-old child, who had been undergoing a `spiritual cleansing,' was taken from the Alberttown home in a critical condition and was admitted to the Children's Ward of the Georgetown Public Hospital. Apart from injuries the child was suffering from dehydration. Reports were that a number of ceremonies had been performed to rid the child's body of evil spirits. Alves and another woman were held by the police in connection with the case but were released a week later.

The year before, the police had also broken into the same Alberttown home and removed a 16-year-old girl from West Demerara under similar circumstances.

One good thing that came out of yesterday's drama was that two former "good neighbours" who said they had "fallen out with each other because of Patsy" were yesterday talking again like old friends for the first time in many years.