• Most witnesses to the Ouko murder story are still alive. Of those that have died probably, none died ‘mysteriously’.
• The PSC report also included former Commissioner of Police Philip Kilonzo as a witness “who had died mysteriously”.
One of the most curious aspects to the Ouko murder story told over the years is the claim that many witnesses, some say absurdly all the witnesses, have died “mysterious deaths”. It is an often made contention that defies both reason and provable facts.
The ‘mysterious deaths’ story does have its uses.
It allows hard pressed journalists with deadlines to meet, or just out of sheer laziness, to fill column inches with a dark and spine-chilling account of the Ouko murder story without having to do anything as tiresome as checking the facts.
Others, particularly those people commenting on web sites and social media, can assert knowingly (although not knowingly, as we shall see) that there’s no point investigating Ouko’s murder because all the witnesses are dead.
But of course it also aids and abets those who do not want the truth to be told: stick to the same old story, don’t ask questions, no point anyway, all the witnesses have died ‘mysteriously’.
Most witnesses to the Ouko murder story are still alive. Of those that have died probably none died ‘mysteriously’.
GOR SUNGUH’S 100 MYSTERIOUS DEATHS
In March 2005, Gor Sunguh, the chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) tasked to investigate the murder of Dr Robert Ouko declared: “More than 100 key witnesses linked to the unresolved murder have also died in the past 15 years”. The PSC’s report in fact listed 18 of whom at least one was still alive.
DR IAIN WEST
One of those listed by the PSC was Dr Iain West, the British pathologist who accompanied the New Scotland Yard team. West actually died aged 57 of an aggressive cancer in a UK hospital in July 2001, over 11 years after Ouko’s murder.
POLICE COMMISSIONER PHILIP KILONZO
The PSC report also included former Commissioner of Police Philip Kilonzo as a witness “who had died mysteriously”.
Kilonzo however died seven years after the Ouko murder at the age of 60. He collapsed while drinking in a bar having just ordered a kilo of meat to be prepared for his lunch. Prior to that Kilonzo had been jogging. After his collapse it took three men, including his bodyguard, to carry him to the ambulance.
Kilonzo was a big, late middle-aged man. He’d just been running and was having a few drinks. No mystery, Kilonzo was not poisoned he died of a heart attack.
THE HERDSYBOY PAUL SHIKUKU
It has often been stated too (including in the last week on social media) that the teenage herdsboy, Paul Shikuku, who initially found Dr Ouko’s burning body on the morning of February 13, 1990, disappeared ‘mysteriously’ straight after he had told the Kenyan police of his discovery, never to be seen again. That story too is provably untrue.
In fact Shikuku gave the same testimony to the New Scotland Yard detectives a few days later and a year after that he was front page news when giving testimony to the Gicheru Commission of Inquiry. He was also positively identified by his former employer as being alive a few years later.
MAID SELINA WERE
Dr Ouko’s maid, Selina Were, who said she saw a “white vehicle” at Ouko’s Koru farm gate in the early hours of the day he disappeared, was said to have died many years ago, taking her secrets to the grave.
In fact Selina died in 2012, over 22 years after Ouko’s murder. Her family held a press conference. They begged the media not to report her death as being mysterious. She was 68, they said, a year before she had been bitten by a snake and had never fully recovered.
Never mind the facts, two years later the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission report listed Selina Were under “mysterious deaths”.
DETECTIVE KEN LINDSAY
In the theatre of the absurd that characterises the mysterious death stories, none to my personal knowledge is more ridiculous than the instance of former Detective Sergeant Ken Lindsay who was part of the New Scotland Yard team brought in to investigate Dr Robert Ouko’s murder.
Ken Lindsay’s name (spelt incorrectly) was included in the PSC ‘s ‘List of Witnesses/Suspects who died mysteriously’. That was in March 2005. In 2017 I spoke to Ken Lindsay on the telephone several times and swapped emails with him. We laughed about how well he sounded for a dead man!
In addition to Ken Lyndsay I have interviewed at least two other witnesses who have at some time been declared dead.
MOST WITNESSES STILL ALIVE
The truth is that most of the people I would want to question if opening a new investigation into Ouko’s murder today (which is not to say they are guilty of anything but that they may be able to cast light on the subject) are still alive 30 years later.
All the New Scotland Yard team except Dr Iain West (and he left behind his forensic pathology report) are still alive.
Dr Robert Ouko’s Ministry Of Foreign Affairs team except for Bethuel Kiplagat, are all still alive, as are many of his ambassadorial colleagues from the time such as Vincent Obare and Denis Afande.
Dr Robert Ouko’s brothers Barrack, Maurice and William and Barrack’s wife Esther, are still alive.
Jonah Anguka and his wife Susan, Alexander Oyiolo the ‘Protocol officer’ who met Troon when he landed at JKIA, James Onyango K’Oyoo (now Member of Parliament for Muhoroni), all of the Weekly Review reporting and editorial staff and many more too numerous to list here, are all still alive.
NOTHING LIKE A NATURAL DEATH?
Many of those involved with the Ouko murder story were in their 50’s at the time. It is not a surprise that some of them 30 years later have passed away: and it’s no mystery.
In his book ‘How to be a Kenyan’ the humourist and writer Wahome Mutuah affectionately declared that Kenyans, ‘imagine that there is nothing like a natural death and take rumours to be truer than the truth’.
In this instance of the ‘mysterious deaths’ stories, indeed in much of the way the Ouko murder story has been told, I fear that Wahome Mutuahi was right.