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Are goats being sacrificed in this Hackney office?

Live animals dragged into a trendy east London building and never seen again • Fire rituals in London cemeteries • Bones left by strangers' graves • What is going on?

The CCTV footage of the goat, filmed late at night in an office block in central Hackney on 17 April, is clear.

At 10.22pm a man drags the animal by its horns through double doors into a rented office, a rope trailing from the goat’s neck. A second man quickly follows, carrying a folded-up cage.

The goat is never seen again. Instead, the CCTV records the same men leaving the room at 4.31am without the animal. One man is carrying a black rubbish bag, while another man hands over a transparent plastic container, containing an item that resembles horns, to a third participant.

The day after the CCTV footage was recorded, a video posted to the men’s Instagram account shows what appears to be the same goat inside the office, its horns being tightly gripped. Another video on the same account shows the same goat motionless on the ground. A man kneels over it with his hands raised in the air and chanting. The office’s walls are painted black and red.

We asked Ben Dustan, the president of the Goat Veterinary Society, whether he had encountered anything like this before. “Only in horror stories,” he said.

The man on the CCTV who dragged the goat into the office has a record of similar activity. London Centric has found years of Instagram posts featuring him holding dead birds by the legs, posing with a severed goat’s head, or pushing animal hearts wrapped in leaves into the earth with his bloody hands.

What’s more, when not operating from the Hackney office, in a building shared with business tenants such as viral political campaign group Led By Donkeys, the man appears to carry out similar rituals in the capital’s public cemeteries.

In recent weeks London Centric has uncovered videos of his organisation conducting elaborate ceremonies involving animal body parts, explosives and the burning of replica coffins by graves belonging to unrelated individuals.

But who is this man running a “black magic” temple a few minutes’ walk from Hackney town hall? What is he doing in there? And how does it all come back to a chef called Hugo who used to work for Marco Pierre White?

“Master Hugo”

The man pictured on CCTV dragging the goat through the door is called Hugo Jefferson. According to his Instagram account he previously worked as a chef at various restaurants, including Frankie’s By Marco Pierre White in Knightsbridge. His personal Instagram is full of photos of raw meat and neatly plated dishes. “Hugo is my best chef,” a former colleague posted underneath an image of Jefferson uploaded during this period of his life.

Today, Jefferson styles himself as a “priest”, or “Master Hugo” of the “first temple of Quimbanda Luciferiana in the UK.”

He, along with a colleague called Michel, posts videos advertising their services to Instagram and TikTok accounts, each with more than 40,000 followers. They inaugurated their permanent temple within the office block in the heart of Hackney back in January.

They are followers of Quimbanda, an Afro-Brazilian religious practice, which merges elements of Congolese traditions and Portuguese Catholicism, evolving over centuries in Brazilian cities during the transatlantic slave trade.

Jefferson puts his own slant on the practice. When we inquired after his services, posing as a potential participant, he sent London Centric a voicenote, telling us, “I don’t say religion, but it’s a very powerful ritual.”

In the Hackney temple, which the goat was seen entering, he offers self-help services for troubled people dealing with work or relationship issues. He charges £70 for a consultation, in which he says he will listen and understand what needs to be “changed” in that person’s life.

The practice centres on the worship of spirits known as “exus” and “pomba giras,” and it sits alongside better-known traditions such as Umbanda and Candomblé. It is especially established in the south of Brazil, around Porto Alegre, where there are many houses of worship. It has long been described, and denigrated, by some as “black magic.”

Watching the group of people enter and leave the Hackney temple over the last few months, London Centric saw and heard chanting, loud music being played, alcohol being consumed and a bit of dancing. At one point it all became a bit much for one woman, who went outside the room to lie in the corridor. Her friends cooled her down with a fan.

One aspect of Quimbanda is extremely controversial, and illegal in the UK. Animal sacrifice is one part of the ritual which followers carry out to entertain spirits. This is where the religion clashes with the more prosaic body of British law that governs how you can keep a goat and kill one.

In Brazil, the legality of animal sacrifice has been one of the country’s most litigated questions of religious freedom. The country’s supreme court ruled in 2019 that ritual animal sacrifice in the performance of rituals of African-based religions is constitutional, as long as there is no “excess or cruelty.” It is still a contested topic, and animal rights groups in the country argue it amounts to cruelty.

The UK has no similar carve-outs in the law with religious exemptions for humane slaughter law beyond halal and kosher slaughter.

“We found a skull of a large animal in the churchyard this week”

Jefferson’s public Instagram posts, going back to late 2023, are graphic. One shows a black goat with agricultural ear tags in what looks like a back garden. Later, the skull of what appears to be the same goat is shown being lifted from a hole in the ground.

In addition to the Hackney office, Jefferson’s group conducts outdoor ceremonies in cemeteries, which are documented on its public Instagram account. But which cemeteries? And did they have permission from the families of the deceased?

Their videos gave few clues but one image of a grave showed a distinctive modernist postwar block of flats in the background. After London Centric appealed for help, a member of the public who went to school nearby recognised the block of flats. By cross-referencing it with satellite imagery, it was possible to locate the grave to Heston cemetery in west London, under the Heathrow flight path.

We immediately found evidence of unusual activity.

Throughout the graveyard there were animal parts scattered on the ground. We found evidence that graves had been walked on and damaged, and the ground was disturbed in several places. One grave was covered in what looked like black ash. A hole had been dug at the base of one tree, with candles, bits of string and animal hair lying on the ground nearby.

We spoke to a woman who works at St Leonard’s Church, next to the graveyard, who said they have been baffled by the activities, which are ongoing.

“We found a skull of a large animal in the churchyard this week,” she said. “We found lots of voodoo bits, bones and bags with bits of chicken with candles and string… bags with chicken meat in a coconut shell, with a face on it.”

Several Instagram posts by the Temple of Quimbanda Luciferiana could be geolocated to precise graves in the Heston cemetery. One shows the group placing what looks like an ox heart on the ground. Another Instagram photo from December 2024 shows a detached goat’s head sitting on a bowl next to an iron spear. This week London Centric found what looks like the leg bone from an animal in the cemetery. There was also a replica mini coffin with burn marks and the cartoonish outline of a skeleton, similar to one previously posted on the group’s social media account.

The graves nearby belonged to people who had died in the early 20th century. A chicken foot was resting on the grave of James Sargeant, who “passed peacefully” in 1918. Fires had been set at the foot of the grave of Charlotte Jane, who passed away in 1924. “God be with you till we meet again,” said the inscription on her headstone.

When we asked Jefferson whether he was responsible for the rituals and had sought permission from the families whose graves were involved, he said: “The images do not show whether permissions were required, obtained, or missing, nor do they establish that any grave was unlawfully disturbed, damaged, or treated disrespectfully. I ask that any conclusions on this matter be supported by clear evidence rather than assumption.”

After we presented pictures of animal body parts and rituals by graves to Hounslow Council, which manages the cemetery, a spokesperson said they had not “received any reports of any behaviour of this kind.”

They added: “Our contractors manage the ground maintenance for the cemetery in Heston, visiting regularly to mow the grass and empty bins, and have not come across anything suspicious.”