Former KDF Major Peter Mugure in a Nanyuki court on November 18, 2019.
Joyce Syombua and her two children, Shanice Maua and Prince Michael, left Nairobi for Laikipia Airbase on October 25, 2019 to visit Major Peter Mwaura Mugure.
It is still unclear how long the three had planned to stay in Nanyuki, but schools had closed that day and would be closed for nearly three months, so there was no pressure to return to Nairobi.
For Syombua, it was as good a time as any to let her children spend time with their father.
Syombua and Mugure had an on-off relationship that was no secret to family and friends.
She lived with the two children in Kayole, Nairobi.
Mugure, a distinguished Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) officer, who had even received commendation for UN-backed missions, was based at the Laikipia Airbase in Nanyuki.
Just two months before this trip, the Milimani High Court had ordered Mugure to pay Syombua Sh25,000 monthly upkeep after a DNA test showed that he was the father of Shanice and Prince.
Mugure later said in police statements that the visit was to kill two birds with one stone -- to spend time with Shanice, whose birthday was coming up, and to mend fences with Syombua as the couple explored ending the turbulence in their relationship.
Syombua and the children arrived safely in Nanyuki and spent the night with Mugure at Laikipia Air Base.
That is as far as undisputed facts go.
Syombua and her two children were brutally murdered, stacked in gunny bags and then buried in a shallow grave in Thingithu, Nanyuki.
Syombua was 31 at the time. Shanice was 10 and Prince was 5.
Their bodies were discovered on November 16, 2019, partially decomposed.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) believe that Mugure murdered Syombua and the children.
The ex-KDF officer has since 2019 maintained that he escorted Syombua and the children to the Nanyuki bus park, where they were to board a Nairobi-bound shuttle, and that he was framed in a conspiracy whose details are expected to be revealed in court.
Mugure was charged with three counts of murder alongside Collins Pamba on January 13, 2020.
Pamba was then a 21-year-old who occasionally did some casual work at the Laikipia Airbase, and who prosecutors say was in constant phone contact with Mugure on October 26, 2019, when Syombua and the children were last seen alive.
The prosecution has called 26 witnesses.
In May 2021, the prosecution led by Mwangi Gachanja revealed in court that Pamba had entered into a plea bargain to become the 26th witness.
The plea bargain was recorded in May 2021.
Pamba was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to being an accessory to murder. The three murder charges originally brought against Pamba were all dropped.
As part of the plea bargain, Pamba confessed to helping Mugure remove the three bodies from two houses on the Laikipia Air Base and bury them in an already dug grave in Thingithu, Nanyuki.
In the harrowing confession, Pamba claimed that Mugure had promised to recruit him into the military, but had also threatened the then 21-year-old with death if he ever spoke out.
Through lawyer George Gori, Mugure has filed a fresh petition in the Nyeri High Court alleging that he is the victim of a conspiracy to make him a scapegoat.
Mugure says that an analysis of the evidence presented by the prosecution in court shows that Pamba's confession contains inaccuracies that prove there is a deliberate move to frame him.
He adds that the confession was coerced and that forensic evidence already submitted to the Nyeri trial court by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) contradicts the details in Pamba's confession.
While the main aim of the petition is to declare that he was wrongly charged in a civilian court rather than the military court martial, Mugure has pointed to what he says are inconsistencies in Pamba's confession.
“That brief snippet above is irrefutable proof that they deliberately lied to the High Court. This is important not as a review of the merits or demerits of the prosecution’s case but rather to demonstrate to this High Court the extent to which power, in its rawest and truest form, and with impunity, has been used to implicate the Petitioner in the gruesome murders of his family members,” Mugure said in his court papers.
“The entire narrative tending to inculpate the petitioner herein in the alleged offence of murder is a frame-up, plain and simple. Blatantly conducted by agents of the state, no less.”
Mugure claims that there is no record of any contact between him and Pamba at the times that the latter said in his confession that he had received calls seeking help in disposing of the bodies.
Pamba had claimed that Mugure first called him on the afternoon of October 26, 2019 seeking help with an undisclosed job.
Pamba was on his way from Nairobi to Nanyuki.
In his confession, he said they met at Kirimara Springs Hotel shortly after 5pm and agreed to meet at Laikipia Air Base for the job.
The casual labourer said he went home after waiting for Mugure for over 30 minutes.
Mugure allegedly called Pamba at around 6.30pm and demanded to know his whereabouts.
Eventually, according to Pamba, they spoke at 10.16pm and met at the officers' parking bay in Laikipia Air Base.
Mugure allegedly left his house and unlocked a neighbouring unit where, according to Pamba, the bodies of two children had been hidden in gunny bags stacked in the bathroom.
Pamba said Syombua's body was at Mugure's house and that he helped the KDF man stash her remains in a gunny bag.
In his petition, Mugure said that phone records presented to the court show that Pamba was not at his Thingithu house between 6pm and 10.16pm as claimed in the confession.
The data, Mugure says, shows that between 6pm and 7.10pm Pamba was at the officers' mess at Laikipia Air Base.
Mugure adds that between 7.10pm and 9.49pm, Pamba made several movements between Thingithu, Nanyuki Lagoon and the general area of Nanyuki town.
In addition, Mugure argues that between 9.41pm and 10.15pm on October 26, 2019, Pamba communicated with another person.
Mugure denies that he called Pamba at 10.16pm as alleged in the confession.
“Pamba claimed that between 2230hrs and midnight, his phone rang several times but that the petitioner instructed him not to pick any such calls. His phone data indicates no texts or calls were made to or from his phone number between those times. In fact, between 2216hrs on October 26, 2019 and 0349hrs on October 27, 2019,” Mugure adds in his court papers.
In his confession, Pamba claimed that Mugure later went on leave but continued to call him, demanding that the casual worker visit the grave site to check if anyone had been snooping around.
“He would call me to go and look at the grave and see if people had interfered with it. I went to the grave site twice. He had even sent me Sh1,030 through M-Pesa to buy a spade which would assist me mount on the grave. I bought a new spade at Chieni Supermarket in Nanyuki town for a cost of Sh550, which I paid using M-Pesa. I went to the grave and added soil on the grave,” Pamba said in his confession.
But Mugure said that the spade Pamba claimed to have bought was facilitated by someone else, who is not even listed as a witness in the murder trial.
Pamba had also said that a KDF staffer, identified as Muthiani Mbindyo, had told him that Mugure had been looking for the casual worker and had demanded his academic certificates.
Mugure said that during the murder trial, Mbindyo denied receiving any instructions or message to relay to Pamba.
Mugure's lawyer, George Gori, wrote to the DPP's office in 2021, pointing out the inconsistencies in Pamba's testimony when measured against the scientific data provided by the prosecution.
In Mugure's new court papers, Gori said the DPP never replied.
In his petition, Mugure claimed that he was a KDF officer at the time of the murders and that if he was to be prosecuted, it should have been through the military process.
“The petitioner herein, being a person subject to the KDFA and a regular member of the KDF, has been illegally, unprocedurally and unconstitutionally embroiled in a criminal matter prosecuted by agents who are in law not legally permitted and/or empowered to do so. This is a clear breach of his constitutional rights as a Kenyan citizen and military personnel, and an outright violation of his right to enjoy the full benefit and protection of the law as guaranteed under Article 27(1) Kenya Constitution, 2010,” Mr Gori said in his submissions to the court.
After his arrest and planned prosecution became public, Mugure tendered his resignation from the KDF in order to retain the benefits he would have accrued. However, his superiors chose instead to terminate Mugure's services.
Mugure sued the KDF, and in August 2023. Justice Onesmus Makau ruled that he was unlawfully terminated and ordered the KDF to pay Mugure Sh2 million in damages.
