• The other man who participated in the crime remains at large after he jumped bail.
• Records show that the victim named WSN had gone to Nairobi town on that day in 2010 to beg as was her routine.
Image: FILE
In a strange case that even the court described as cut from television drama, a man had his wife lure a street beggar to his house before raping her, with the wife and another man assisting and watching.
The man will now spend his life in jail after all his appeals flopped. The other man who participated in the crime remains at large after he jumped bail.
Records show that the victim named WSN had gone to Nairobi town on that day in 2010 to beg as was her routine and later that evening, the perpetrator’s wife, who was known to her, invited her to their house in Madaraka.
In the house, she found the perpetrator named Kevin Odhiambo whiling the evening away with another man named Joseph Mugendi Mutharaka, who is now a fugitive.
When it was time to retire to bed, Odhiambo’s wife told WSN that in her house, everyone undresses before bed, ordering her to comply.
Shortly after, the incident happened.
The wife, named in the papers as Kamum, woke up and started strangling WSN and the two men joined the fray. Mutharaka held WSN's legs and forcibly opened them as Odhiambo raped her repeatedly.
“Kamum later got up and strangled her neck and that Jose, the other man who was in the house with [Odhiambo] held her legs and that the appellant [raped her on both sides of her privates],” the court papers read.
“It was her further testimony that, on the second day she pretended she was going to the toilet and managed to escape to another woman’s house in the neighbourhood, who gave her money for transport to return home.”
At the magistrate’s court, all were arraigned and charged. While Mutharaka fled, Odhiambo was nailed and sentenced to life in jail.
Odhiambo’s defense was that he was a stranger to the allegations and that he was arrested on the evening of May 28, 2010, three months after the crime, when he was closing his shoes shop.
“[He] denied committing the offences. He stated that ….. in the evening at about 7pm when he was about to close shop, two Administration Police officers arrested him and took him to Central police station and later transferred him to Kayole police station where he was questioned over an alleged defilement," the court papers said.
Odhiambo later unsuccessfully appealed at the High Court. The appeal verdict was delivered in 2016.
Dissatisfied, he tried his luck at the Court of Appeal, arguing that he was not properly identified as no parade was mounted by police and that the story by the victim was contradictory and not credible.
He also claimed that the witnesses who testified against him were procured through threats.
The judges did not agree with him, rejecting his appeal a second time, holding that the ingredients of a gang rape were well-proven.
“Upon analysis of the evidence and the submissions, we find that the learned judge addressed this issue and made a finding that we have no basis to disturb as the evidence is cogent, credible and trustworthy,” the judgment delivered on July 28, 2023, said.
It also upheld his life sentence.