Inside the murder of a missionary in Angola, allegedly planned by his wife and her lover in $50K ‘crime of passion’
Minnesota missionary Beau Shroyer was murdered in a crime of passion orchestrated by his wife, police in Angola claim.
Beau, wife Jackie Shroyer and their five children had been in “the remote bush” in the West African nation since setting up a mission there in 2021.
Angolan police said a guard hired by the family stabbed Beau to death in his vehicle on Oct. 25 in the bush outside the city of Lubango, where the family lived in a walled compound.
Jackie and two others were arrested for allegedly organizing the hit, according to the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) of the Angolan police. A third man is at large, the police said.
“I just don’t have any words,” Carl Gessell, a friend of the couple in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, told The Post. “I’m shocked that this even happened. I can’t believe she would do something like that.”
Manuel Halaiwa, an SIC spokesman, said authorities have “strong suspicions” that Jackie was having an affair with the family’s recently hired bodyguard, Bernardino Isaac Elias, 24.
Jackie allegedly promised $50,000 for the hit on her husband, and gave the guard $400 to help plan the attack in the remote bush area near the municipality Humpata, where Beau was helping to start a farm, according to press reports and the police.
Elias, in turn, allegedly hired two other men to kill Beau — Isalino Musselenga Kayoo, a 23-year-old convicted felon nicknamed “Vin Diesel,” who is in custody, and Gelson Guerreiro Ramos, 22, who was still at large Monday, according to the police.
Three days before the murder, police say, Jackie went with Elias to scout the crime scene. The men rented a car on the day of the killing and drove to Humpata, 40 minutes from Lubango.
The suspects faked car trouble, and called Beau for help, police said. When the couple arrived, Jackie excused herself and went into the bush, claiming she needed to go to the bathroom, according to the SIC.
Authorities said they found the US-made knife that was used in the stabbing death — a gift from Jackie to her alleged lover, SIC claimed.
The Shroyers had been working for SIM USA, a North Carolina-based evangelical Christian organization which sponsored their youth ministry and has been overseeing missions around the world since 1893.
SIM said it is ensuring that Jackie has legal representation, and according to spokesperson Mark Bosscher, no formal charges have been filed against Jackie yet.
Friends of the family contacted by The Post said they were shocked but don’t want to say anything publicly until Angolan authorities complete the investigation.
The State Department confirmed that an American had died in Angola, but refused further comment. Authorities in Angola could not be reached for comment last week.
Before they moved to Angola in 2021, the Shroyers had never lived abroad. Despite concerns from their family and friends after they announced they were preparing to go to Africa to set up a mission for children under 18, the Shroyers were excited about their adventure and about the challenge of helping impoverished kids in one of the world’s poorest countries.
“Beau told me that God led him in a different path,” Gessell, 45, who works as a DoorDash driver and is a member of Beau and Jackie’s Detroit Lakes church, said in an interview with The Post.
Before heading to Angola, Beau worked as a local realtor and police officer.
“He said he was able to help a lot of people when he got to Angola,” Gessell said. “He was a caring person, the kind of person who would give you the shirt off his back.”
Gessell told The Post that Beau had promised to meet him for coffee when he was in the US over the summer, but the meeting never took place.
“I can’t see his wife doing that,” said Gessell, who has known the couple for a few years. “It’s got to be something else. But, you know, I don’t know if something happened between there and here.”
Others remembered Beau and his wife as deeply religious. Family friend Cleone Stewart said the family moved to Africa at Jackie’s urging.
“Jackie had visions of helping poor children and Beau was right beside her,” said Stewart, who had worked with Beau during Detroit Lakes’ Festival of Birds, an annual birdwatching event hosted by the city of nearly 10,000. Beau volunteered to lead many of the birdwatching tours, said Stewart, who is the city’s tourism director.
“He was really good as a field trip leader, really good at describing things,” said Stewart, adding that Beau could easily describe 1,000 different bird species. “He really knew his birds.”
The Shroyers sold their $300,000 bungalow in Callaway, Minnesota, in 2021, according to public records and settled in for language school in Brazil, where they learned Portuguese, said Jackie during the presentation before the family’s trip. The family was originally supposed to go to Portugal to learn the language, but the country would not allow foreigners into the country during the COVID pandemic, she said.
“I wouldn’t say anybody in my family is excited about it,” Jackie told her Lakes Area Vineyard Church congregation in a May 2021 video presentation, adding that her mother and sister were very involved in the lives of their children and worried about the couple’s decision to leave their home in the US.
“Before I became a mother, I saw pictures of children in extreme poverty,” Jackie said. “It just wrecked me. I need to go and do something and I began praying to God over the years. The only thing worse than lost children in the world is the lost children no one is looking for.”
By the time they returned to seek more donations from congregants this summer, the Shroyers confessed that life in Africa was a culture shock. For one thing, their five children were “constantly battling malaria” and they were dealing with a lot of difficult security issues.
They admitted they didn’t trust the guards who were charged with watching their compound in Lubango and had endured two break-ins while they sleeping.
During their video presentation this summer, they said they were in the process of hiring new guards.
“No matter how hard it is, we want to go back,” said Jackie, looking markedly thinner in a July video of the family’s presentation at their church.
She spoke enthusiastically about setting up a soup kitchen that feeds 300 street children outside their home once a week, and about a “breakfast club” where she teaches children to memorize Bible verses in exchange for prizes.
Their 10-year-old son Oakley had even made a good friend in Bebezinho, a 10-year-old Angolan boy.
“He was the first one to come to the door,” Jackie said of Bebezinho, adding that the children they helped called the couple Auntie Jackie and Uncle Beau.
For his part, Beau seemed to be enjoying his time in Africa. He posted a photo of himself getting his hair cut at a modest barbershop where he had helped the owner obtain a barber’s license.
He was also trying to establish a farm outside the city on the Humpata Plateau — where he was murdered. SIM had managed to convince the Angolan government to cede seven acres for their project, and Beau was organizing the cultivation of the land. He said he hoped to build a well but needed to construct a security fence beforehand.
“Every component of the well would be stolen, probably overnight,” he said, adding that he hoped to raise $150,000 to build a 10-foot-high security fence topped with razor wire to keep thieves out of the property.
“Beau wasn’t a perfect man,” said his pastor Troy Easton during a church service last week in Detroit Lakes, according to a report.
“He was just like the rest of us. He didn’t get it right all of the time. Just like you don’t, just like I don’t. But he did believe in and trust Jesus. … We can rejoice and find comfort in the truth that he is forever with the King.”
Still, it’s difficult to comprehend what Easton called “the unimaginable.”
“The news of Beau’s death, along with, now, the heartbreaking news of Jackie’s arrest in connection with his death has overwhelmed us with grief and speculation and confusion,” he said.
SIM is a nonprofit that employs 4,000 workers in 70 countries, according to its website. It has been sending information on the Stroyers’ situation back to their congregation in Minnesota.
“SIM remains committed to supporting the ongoing pursuit of justice for Beau and has taken steps to ensure that Jackie has appropriate legal representation,” said the church group in a statement on its website, adding that it is working with its sister organization in Angola.
The statement said the Shroyer children were still in Africa and were being “well cared for.”
