•The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has been busy.
• There were the murders of Tob Cohen, Monica Kimani and Ivy Wangechi, to name but a few. Some were high profile, many obscure but all horrific.
All years are bloody but 2019 was especially grim and sensational.
Femicide is becoming a household word and many cases involve men who were rejected, whose wives or lovers walked out. So they took revenge. And sometimes they took their own lives.
Families are struggling to come to terms with the murders of their loved ones — hacked and stabbed, shot, strangled, poisoned, burnt with fire and acid and tortured.
Fathers killed wives and children, wives killed husbands, a pregnant lover was stabbed. Brother killed brother, a daughter killed her mother. money and land were often motives.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations through its Homicide Department has been busy. Several cases have been prosecuted and culprits jailed.
Many cases are in court, all suspects have pleaded not guilty.
There was the murder in August of Dutch businessman Tob Cohen, whose mutilated body was found in a water tank. His widow Sara Wairimu and a man were charged.
Court documents detailed a stormy marriage with allegations of cruelty on both sides.
Sarah, who is out on bail, has been fighting Tob's relatives and demanding her wardrobe, her vehicle, her mansion and her dogs.
in September businesswoman Monica Kimani was tied up in her bathtub and her throat was slit in Kilimani, Nairobi. TV journalist Jacqueline Maribe and her fiance Joseph Irungu, alias Jowie, have been charged.
Kimani had just returned from South Sudan with a bag full of undeclared US dollars.
In April, a final year medical student, Ivy Wangechi, was hacked to death in broad daylight outside Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret. The suspect, Naftali Kinuthia, travelled to Eldoret with knives and pangas and said she had refused To love him.
Sharon Otieno, the pregnant lover of Migori Governor Obado, was raped, strangled and stabbed numerous times last year. He admitted he was the father but denied the crime. The case is in court.
A woman, Judith Mwai, 74, and her daughter Catherine Mwai, 47, were found murdered inside their house in South B Estate in Nairobi in September.
Investigations revealed that Mwai had strangled her mother before she ended her own life by consuming poison. The motive was not established.
Elsewhere in Mavoko, Machakos county, two women were murdered in what police said was a well-orchestrated murder to look like a robbery.
Purity Wanjiru, 35, and her mother Anne Gatiti, 60, were shot with assault rifles at their home in Mlolongo on October 2. Wanjiru's husband was wounded. Wanjiru had been a wealthy liquor distributor and her husband had been her driver.
Ex-GSU officer Anthony Kilonzo was arrested. Another suspect was gunned down by police at his parents’ home in Katani a few metres from the murder site.
Theories of a convoluted plot have been advanced but not yet unravelled.
Murders and suicides involving police and military officers also increased.
IN November, Ex KDF officer Peter Mugure was arraigned in connection to the murder of his wife and two children in Laikipia. He lured his estranged wife, Joyce Syombua, 31, and their two children Shanice Maua, 10, and Prince Michael, five, to his quarters in Nanyuki.
The bodies were found in a shallow grave in an abandoned cemetery.
(Edited by V. Graham)