- According to the house help, the mysterious man was known to the couple judging from their interactions.
- The house girl said neither she nor the farm hand could identify the stranger.
Image: HANDOUT
Mystery surrounds the identity of a visitor who was in the house of a US-based couple brutally killed in Nyamira county.
The couple was on vacation from their home in the United States. Family members have told police about an unidentified visitor who came to the house the night the man and his wife were killed.
The house in Nyamakoroto, Kitutu Masaba constituency, has CCTV cameras and police will check to establish if the tragedy was captured.
The house help, who was new to the home of Edward Morema, 62, and his wife Grace Mong'ina aged 60, said they were visited by a mysterious man on the night of the incident.
According to the house help, who had only spent a few days in the home since employment, the mysterious man was known to the couple judging from their interactions.
The bodies of the two were found in their palatial home on Tuesday. It is not clear who was behind the killing and the motive, police said.
The house girl said neither she nor the farm hand could identify the stranger as they had never seen him before.
Masaba North police boss Robert Ndambiri said detectives are investigating the angle among other theories.
“This could be an old grudge or something else but what we know it is murder,” he said.
Police believe there were more players in the house who murdered couple, given the manner in which it happened.
“It is not possible for one person to tie them and kill them the way it happened,” Ndambiri said.
Morema's grandson, Samuel Matundura, said on the night before the couple was killed, a man who seemed familiar to them stopped by their home in Nyamakoroto and spent the night with them.
The house help prepared dinner for the couple and the visitor before leaving them in the sitting room as she went to sleep upstairs.
The farmhand, who also lives in a separate house in the same compound, rarely visited the main house.
He had apparently locked the main gate to the compound and retired to his house, a few meters from the main house.
The house help and the farmhand have since been arrested as police investigate the murder.
Matundura said he had called Morema and told him all was well before they retired for the night.
Morema did not reveal to his grandson anything about the visitor.
“He had been in Western Kenya for some construction activities and he had just returned home. So, I wanted to know how they were doing,” Matundura said.
Morema was overseeing construction of his rental apartments in Kakamega, the reason he stayed around with his wife.
The following day, the couple did not wake up as it is the norm. By 10 am, Matundura made another call to his grandfather Morema but his phone was off.
And because the previous evening, there was a power outage in the area he thought it was normal.
The couple however have solar panels at their home, so Matundura did not understand why their phones were switched off.
He said he sent a young girl to go check on them and she found the new house help busy with her daily chores.
She told the young girl the couple was still asleep. The girl ran back and informed Matundura that the couple was still asleep at 10am, which raised his concern and prompted him to go and check by himself.
It was when he opened the door to one of the bedrooms that he found the lifeless body of his grandmother Grace in a pool of blood, lying on the bed in one of the bedrooms downstairs. Her hands had been tied to the back using a binding wire, and she had been smothered, with the throat slit.
In the garage, Moremo’s body lay in a pool of blood, in a similar manner.