Kisii court finds four guilty of murder

A Kisii High Court judge has found four people guilty of aiding the murder of a woman four years ago.

Justice Rose Ougo held that Joseph Odicho Adogo, Evans Nyoka Ongeri, Ronald Ogwangi Ondieki and Lameck Rioba Sakawa were guilty of being accessories to murder. Consequently, the quartet is now facing life in prison.

Ms Catherine Sarange went missing from her home in Jogoo estate, near Kisii town, on June 2, 2017. A month later, her headless body was recovered in a sewage manhole wrapped in a polythene bag. 

She was brutally killed after she refused to sell her family land to a neighbour, with Justice Ougo saying that the motive of her killers was clear.

Her body is still lying at the Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital mortuary awaiting the judgment.

On Thursday evening, Justice Ougo read her judgment in the case that had almost collapsed after police halted investigations for over a year and only arrested the suspects after the Nation exposed their inaction.

In a blow-by-blow account, the judge explained how the four aided the murder of Ms Sarange and how each of their actions led to their incrimination.

She said the evidence given in court by Ms Sarange’s two children corroborated the incident. The children identified the accused, who were well known to them.

“The accused persons were seen in the homestead of Sarange on the night she was murdered. With the help of the light from the moon, they were seen carrying the body of Sarange in a sack from a blood-stained house which had remained locked during the day to a waiting vehicle,” said Justice Ougo.

But she noted that there was not enough evidence directly linking the four to the murder of Ms Sarange, though there was reason to believe that they had tried to conceal her murder as testified by her two children and other witnesses.

They had also threatened Ms Sarange with dire consequences following a land dispute whose case was still underway in court. She disappeared a day before she was to appear in court for the case.

A torso

Justice Ougo also spoke about the evidence from Ms Sarange’s mother, Ms Teresa Kemunto Samuel.

“Kemunto said she was taken to the place where her daughter’s body was found. She was lying down there. She saw the body, it was rotten. She saw her legs and her clothes and there was a net tied around her stomach. She had no head on her body,” said the judge.

In her testimony, Ms Kemunto told the court about the procedures that police used to determine her blood relationship to Ms Sarange.

They took Ms Kemunto’s samples, including her fingernails. They took her to Kisumu twice in their efforts to make sure that she was Ms Sarange’s mother.

Ms Kemunto told the court that on the day her daughter went missing, she found a man at her homestead, and her grandchild informed her that he was burning Ms Sarange’s clothes.

She also said that she asked the man why he was in the homestead when the owners were away. He said that he was waiting for Ms Sarange to pay him for the work he had done. The man used to work for her daughter.

“When I returned there, I found many police officers. They had arrested the man,” said Ms Kemunto, adding that the man was not among the four suspects in court.

Police released the man later in unclear circumstances. After being released, he went into hiding.

Justice Ougo cancelled bail for the four and ordered that they be remanded at the Kisii GK prison to await sentencing. They had been released on a Sh500,000 bond and two sureties of the same amount each in August 2018

The sentencing is set for April 21. The court was informed that the four are first-time offenders. The judge ordered that their probation report be produced in court.

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