Paul Toohey – A failed effort to heal an injured child has led to the machete killings of three East Timorese women branded as sorcerers.

Nelson Ximenes didn't grow up like other kids. His back was crooked and bent. Sometimes his head would slump forward and it was an effort for him to hold it up. He was always shorter than the other kids, but he kicked the football around and was accepted in his village.

In December last year, Nelson, 16, started to run high temperatures. His stomach became swollen. He saw shadows, off to the side of his vision. He knew what these black shapes were. They were witches, flitting about, making him die. They had cursed him and were visiting him at night, watching his life fade, thrilling to the power of their magic.

Nelson told his parents what he was seeing. He could even put names to the shadows. They were three women: Madalena Maria de Jesus, 72, Florencia Lopes, 47, and Regina Ximenes, 23. They represented three generations – a grandmother, her daughter and granddaughter. Witches. They were near-enough neighbours who lived in a tiny village on a hilltop above Nelson's similarly tiny village, Vatuguili, about an hour's drive west from the East Timor capital, Dili.

Representatives from Nelson's village climbed the steep hill and demanded the witches undo their spell. The women declined. With good reason. To have accepted the occult repair job would have been an admission that they were witches. East Timor dresses itself up as a Catholic nation, but animism and sorcery run deeper than all that.

The three women were put in an impossible situation. To act or not act was equally a sign of guilt. Friends of Nelson gathered. On the evening of January 6, they drank palm wine, strong as whisky, armed themselves with machetes and knives and climbed the hilltop. Sometime after 9 o'clock, they cut down Madalena, Florencia and Regina in their little rattan-walled shack and set it alight.

The witches were dead, but not dead enough. Nelson succumbed to his illness, 14 days later, on January 20. No one had thought to call a doctor.

By then, 10 small-time vigilantes had been arrested for murder, including Nelson's father. It was straight out of Transylvania. Or maybe it just is what it is – straight out of East Timor.

Getting to Vatuguili is pretty simple. Cross a dry river bed, follow a rocky track and there you are. But the back villages of East Timor are not signposted. When the business is investigating witchcraft, child guides cannot be bought even with American dollars. No one wants to know. "We all know they were witches," says Joni dos Santos, a young man who wears magic in the form of geomet-rical scarification points on his forearms, probably roots he's implanted under his skin to ward off bad magic.

Joni knows the way to the place where the witches were burnt, but says he can't come with us. He has to look after his goats. Joni points the way to Vatuguili and we find it all right. The village chief, Anaklito da Costa, steps out of his threadbare cabin. Where were the witches burnt? Up there, he says, indicating a place that looks to be up in the clouds.

I ask Anaklito whether he thinks it's cruel the way the people of his village killed the women. Three times he gives an irrelevant response about how the police came to make arrests. But I ask the question in so many ways he can no longer avoid it. He finally sighs: "This question you should ask every Timorese."

I ask what happened to Nelson's body. Anaklito points to a spot no more than 20m away: "There." He shows us Nelson's grave, behind a pig-proof fence. He is buried in the front yard of his family home. He says Nelson's dad is in jail for witch-killing but his mum is home, inside the rickety shack.

Nelson's mum, Paulina dos Santos, comes out, dragging four children behind her. Describing Nelson's descent to death, Paulina says: "First, his stomach was swollen. He couldn't eat, couldn't drink. The boy told us about nightmares he had. He always sees the shadows of the three women. And the boy told us he wanted the witches to come here and make him better. One group went to tell them to come, but they refused. Everyone got upset and they went and killed them."

Why did the witches curse him? "We never have problem [with them]," Paulina says. "We are distant relatives of theirs. We don't know the reason they did this."

Had the people around here always thought of the three as witches, or did they only become witches when Nelson became ill? "Maybe, maybe not," says Paulina, shifting uncomfortably. "People here, we know witches. We don't see what witches do, but we know what witches are. If you think someone is a witch, she or he is dangerous."

No one can describe the type of magic the witches used on Nelson. That would be admitting to personal knowledge of bad magic.

Paulina says Nelson was born "like a normal baby. When he was about nine months old, he fell down. The boy's grandmother" – the ancient betel-mouthed woman sitting on a bench, watching and cackling – "went up to see an old lady to come and give the boy a massage". Instead, Florencia, one of the witches, offered to heal the baby. Paulina says Florencia cracked little Nelson's backbones and left him disfigured. Doctors in Dili said they couldn't repair the damage done by Florencia.

It became somewhat clearer what had happened here. It wasn't Nelson whose cards were marked; it was Florencia who had long ago been targeted for destruction, for damaging Nelson's back. In the years that followed, Florencia and her mother and daughter were watched closely for any signs that they were practising witchcraft. They had indeed been seen carrying "magical things". When Nelson started dying, it was decided to break the spell by destroying the coven on top of the hill.

We'd met a policeman along the road who'd investigated the case. He told us what he thought had happened on January 6. "The villagers were half-drunk. They were saying, 'We have to kill the witches'." They climbed the hill and called out to Agustino Karion, husband of the younger woman, Regina. It seems he knew this was coming – his bags were already packed. He was given the opportunity to take his and Regina's nine-month-old son out of the house. Another child, a 10-year-old girl called Natalina, younger sister of Regina, was also allowed to run.

"The old woman was killed in the kitchen with machetes," says the policeman. "When they started to kill the older lady, they [her daughter and granddaughter] were trying to get to the kitchen to help her. But then people started to kill them, in the doorway. He [Agustino] just stood there, doing nothing. He didn't try to stop them – didn't cry. Strange."

Strange, too, that the witches' several next-door neighbours didn't hear the women scream or beg. Not a sound until the hut went up in flames.

When the murderous band had done their business, they headed back down the hill, Karion and his baby son in tow. "After it happened that night, he was with the group, sitting there cooking and eating bananas." Police questioned him but couldn't arrest him for the crime of not helping his wife.

The old woman Madalena had been a widow for years; Florencia's husband disappeared in 1999, during the militia upheavals. Karion has fled inland with his son, to live in an even more remote village. Natalina – who told police there were no magical objects in the house, just traditional medicine – is now in the care of nuns.

The dead women were simple people who grew corn and had a few goats. Their entire life possessions would have run to a few clothes and some pots and dishes. Each would have likely owned a crucifix or a picture of Jesus. They chewed betel nut to keep hunger at bay. After autopsies in Dili, their remains were carried in bags back up the mountain, where they were buried in a shared grave marked by three unpainted wooden crosses which look, in context, more like vampire stakes. The grave is only metres from the charred remains of the house in which they were cut down.

It is beautiful up here. The bougainvillea is blooming, the oleander is in flower. Normally in remote Timorese locations, villagers come outside to say hello to strangers. Not in this place. The people stay indoors, possibly scared, possibly ashamed.