New crime alert: How thieves rob homes of the well-off during funeral services
A burglar. There’s a new crime where while family members are attending the funeral of a loved one, criminals attending the service slip away and go to the targeted homes.
What you need to know:
- A stranger posed as a relative and stole from city lawyer who was in church for his wife’s funeral service.
- Criminals follow up funeral announcements of those who attend church in upmarket areas, show up and pretend to be relatives of the bereaved families.
On Valentine’s Day, February 14, as lovers painted the town red with bouquets of flowers and luxuries, it was not a rosy affair for Mr Peter Munge and his family.
The city lawyer, his children, close relatives and friends gathered for a solemn occasion at the Christ Is The Answer Ministries (Citam) Valley Road Church.
The family was mourning Mr Munge’s wife, Priscillar Nyawira Munge, who died on February 8.
However, not everyone who attended the funeral service was known to the Munges.
That, though, was not unusual for a public event. And in any case, there is comfort in numbers during such trying times.
The programme indicated that the funeral service was scheduled to start at 2pm.
And as family and friends kept tabs on the clock, anxious to pay tribute to their loved one, so was a stranger in their midst— except she had an ulterior motive.
An hour into the memorial service, the woman slipped out of the church and sped to Mr Munge’s home in Lavington, Nairobi.
Lawyer Peter Munge. A stranger posed as a relative and stole from the city lawyer who was in church for his wife’s funeral service.
Closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage seen by the Nation shows the moment a Nissan Note registration number KCY 904L pulled over at the Munge’s gate.
On board were two individuals — a male driver and a woman passenger. The woman turns out to be the stranger who was in church. A security guard approaches the vehicle, engages the occupants briefly before opening the gate and letting them in. A different camera mounted inside the compound captures the vehicle parked outside the house.
The woman disembarks and walks towards the main door.
From 3.31pm, she disappears out of view because of a blind spot. The driver remains in the car.
Six minutes later, a boy plays his way into the camera view. He is seen speaking to someone from the direction in which the mysterious woman entered the house.
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Then he alerts the driver to move the car to where the woman is presumably waiting. She appears to have knowledge of the camera points around the home and is keen to stay out of view.
Thereafter, the car is driven out of the compound at 3.39pm. The mission is accomplished within 10 minutes.
According to Mr Munge, substantial theft took place at his home in that brief period.
“After church we got back to the house in the evening and that is when we realised that some items were missing from the children’s rooms and in various other places in the house,” Mr Munge says.
Only the housegirl was at home at the time. The burglar seems to have done sufficient background checks before committing the crime without raising suspicion.
“The next day when we checked the CCTV, we realised that a lady came to our home by taxi and accessed our house after pretending to be a relative, stole from us and left,” Mr Munge says.
A search for the Nissan Note’s ownership details on the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) database revealed joint ownership between one Paul Muya Macharia and a commercial bank.
The Nation caught up with Mr Muya at Nairobi's Grogon area where he said he is simply an online taxi driver who was on duty. He was unaware that he had been hired by a criminal.
“I was on my routine day-to-day duties when I received an online cab request from a client who was going to Citam Valley Road where a church service was going on,” Mr Muya recounts.
“I dropped off my client at the requested destination and he entered into the church compound. As I was reversing the car, a lady approached me and said that she was unable to book a cab online. She asked that I take her to Njumbi Road where she was to run some errands. We agreed that she would pay me Sh500.”
It was not immediately clear whether the woman had chanced upon the taxi or the male passenger who had hired it from town is an accomplice.
Mr Muya, who has since recorded a statement with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), says it is a normal occurence for clients to want to be served offline for one reason or the other.
“Upon arrival (at the Munges’ home), the lady told me to wait for her to drop a parcel. She said that she will take less than five minutes. She entered the house, and I remained in the car.
“After some moments, a boy who was playing nearby told me that I was being called,” Mr Muya says, his account corroborated by the CCTV footage.
“I couldn’t immediately see the person who was calling me because she was at a corridor that was hidden from my sight. When I moved closer, the lady who had entered the house told me to move the car nearer to where she was standing ‘because she wanted to place a bouquet of flowers in it’. However, she got into the car without the flowers, saying that my car was too small for the flowers to fit in. We drove off.”
According to Mr Muya, as they left the compound, the lady changed her drop off point from Citam Valley Road to town. She also agreed to pay more money for the waiting time.
“All through the journey, she was on phone. She told me to drop her off near HH Towers in town. She gave me Sh1,000 and asked that I give her change which she would use for bus fare. I gave her Sh100,” he recollects.
An official from Citam, who is not authorised to speak to the press, confirmed knowledge of the incident. The matter was reported at Muthangari Police Station vide OB number 12/16/02/2024.
It has since emerged that there is a gang is on the prowl. The criminals check out for death announcements involving seemingly well-to-do families who attend church in upmarket Nairobi neighbourhoods.
From media publications, social media posts or announcements in church, they are able to locate the houses of the bereaved.
Then they keep track of the day of the memorial service and attend church like other mourners.
While the service is underway, the criminals slip away and go to the targeted homes to either break-in, if no one is there, or deceive whoever they find, most probably the househelp.
Since the thieves have much information about the bereaved family, the househelp would not suspect that something was amiss.
“One of the house managers had been left at home. As the police were investigating the case, I came to realise that there is a group of presentable ladies, who are not young, who are involved in the thefts,” Mr Munge explains.
“They join mourners during funeral services before carrying out their plots. I am aware of two other similar incidents in the last few months. One happened at the same church we were in and another at the All Saints’ Cathedral.”
Mr Munge says that the suspects avoid online transactions either when booking a taxi or paying via mobile money so as to meticulously cover up crimes by leaving no trail.
“The suspects do their investigations about the home. Since they look presentable, and are not young people, they easily convince househelps by pretending to be relatives. Then they steal household items when they are let into the house,” Mr Munge explains.
At All Saints’ Cathedral along Kenyatta Avenue, similar cases have been reported. The Provost, Very Reverend Canon Evans Omollo acknowledges that thieves attend such church ceremonies.
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“Somebody comes, monitors and knows that a family has a funeral service here at All Saints. Then they will take all the details, probably they’ve published the details in a newspaper or on social media,” Mr Omollo says. One such case that Provost Omollo is referring to occurred in October, 2023 when a family that prefers to remain anonymous was holding a requiem mass for their matriarch.
Days prior to the church event, the family had been holding daily meetings at their home in Karen. On the material day, and in a fashion similar to that which happened at Mr Munge’s home, an unknown person gained access to their home while they were in church.
The house was ransacked and valuables that included mobile phones, laptops, jewelry and cash stolen. CCTV surveillance footage showed that the thief was a smartly dressed woman. Incidentally, cameras at the All Saints’ Cathedral had captured the woman dressed in the exact way as the bereaved family members.
She left the church premises moments after the start of the memorial service and went to the house.
“The they come and bid time, immediately you start the service, they leave and usually don’t request an online taxi. They’ll try to confuse a taxi driver that is standing by offline to take them to your home because you’ve publicised it. They know where you live, they know the road, they know the house number and probably they had come for ‘maombolezi’ so they even know the compound. Sometimes you may even have hosted them in the house and they know the workings of the house,” the provost explains.
Mr Philemon Samoei, a security manager at All Saints' Cathedral, says the thieves take advantage of the vulnerability of the grieving family.
“At the time the funeral service is going on, most of the congregants lower the guard because the focus is basically on the bereaved family and the programme. The suspects are usually smartly dressed for the event. As a security expert, sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between an honest mourner and one who has an ill motive,” Mr Samoei says.
He said that although similar incidents have not been reported at their church this year, they handled several cases last year. In one instance, he says that security officers spotted a suspicious woman who was attending a memorial service.
They alerted some of the family members to be cautious, and also to check that all was well at home.
According to the security expert, the purpose for alerting the family members was so that they could lay a trap at home and catch the suspect since she could not be arrested for simply attending a service.
“By coming to such institutions where weddings or funeral services are held, they are just out to pick information because they want to get to know where the home is,” explains Mr Samoei.
Provost Omollo and Mr Samoei say the new crime trend is an escalation from the one they had dealt with years ago.
At the time, thieves would attend weddings in the church with the sole aim of stealing from those in attendance. The Nation reached out to Nairobi Regional Police Commander Adamson Bungei about this new crime trend but he was not available for comment by the time of going to press.
“I really feel sad because at the lowest time when somebody loses their loved one, then you pounce and hurt them more,” Provost Omollo regrets.
