Who killed them? Mystery of three men executed similarly

The brutal killing of three men whose bodies were discovered in a river and dam early this month continues to be a puzzle, as the motive of their deaths remains unclear.

On May 1 at around 3pm, the decomposing body of an unknown adult male was taken to General Kago Funeral Home in Thika town, Kiambu County, by police officers from Kandara Police Station in Murang’a County.

The victim’s hands had been cut off, and his head had deep injuries, with bruises all over the body. The jaw was broken and it appeared the testicles had been crushed. The body was found naked in River Thika, on the border of the two counties.

When the Nation on Monday visited General Kago Funeral Home to check if the body had been identified and claimed by relatives, mortuary attendants said the body was that of Evans Kipruto Koskei.

A few hours after Koskei’s body was booked into the funeral home, at around 5.49pm, another body was taken out of the same River Thika by officers from Gatanga Police Station.

The body was booked in as unknown, but the victim had been killed in a similar manner to Koskei.

Both hands had been chopped off, there were bruises all over the body, the testicles were crushed and injuries on the neck suggested he had been strangulated. The face was badly disfigured and the body had started decomposing.

The body would later be identified by relatives as that of Omar Wanyama.

Gatanga and Kandara are about 30 kilometres apart. From both places, General Kago is the nearest mortuary.

Less than a week after the two bodies were discovered, on Thursday May 6, another body was found floating in Masinga Dam, more than 100km away, and taken to General Kago Funeral Home. The body also had no hands, was missing some parts and the jaw was broken. It has since been identified as that of Raphael Wahogo.

“The body was brought in by Masinga Police and as you can see, the hands have been chopped off and the body is badly decomposed,” a mortuary attendant at the funeral home told the Nation yesterday.

At the mortuary, friends of Wahogo who had gone to view his body told the Nation that Wahogo was driving on Thika road in the company of DJ Mike Kay -- whose body was found in a Murang’a river early this month -- when they were stopped by unknown people and asked to identify themselves.

After identifying themselves, Wahogo was taken out of the car and bundled into another one, which was driven away.

A few hours later, said the friends, the DJ was tracked and killed.

Passersby at the Kahuho bridge, which connects Kiunyu village to Kandara, saw the two bodies that turned out to be Koskei and Wanyama, and made reports to the police, said Gatanga Sub County police boss Peter Muchemi.

"Our joint officers went to the scene and preliminary investigations have it that the two have been in the water for some time," he said.

The new development comes a few weeks after the bodies of Elijah Obuong, 35, and Benjamin Imbai, 30, were also found in rivers. The two, together with Brian Oduor, 36, and Jack Ochieng, 37, went missing from Kitengela in April. Imbai’s body was taken by relatives from the General Kago Funeral Home and has since been buried.