A Kenyan man is facing murder-for-hire plot charges in the US after police foiled his plot to have a woman, with whom he has a protracted court matter, killed.
Leonard Thuo Mwithiga, 52, a former top banking executive, was arraigned in a court in Putnam Connecticut after he told an associate to headhunt for him a hitman to “finish that woman” or “inject something into her food or water to kill her slowly like cancer”.
Mwithiga allegedly planned to have the woman killed between January 28 and February 3 next year when he would be in Kenya so that he is not linked to the death. He promised to pay the hitman $4000 (Sh609,000).
Mwithiga, the prosecutor claims, found a would-be killer, whom he gave $300 (Sh46,000) “in good faith”, not knowing he was dealing with an undercover police officer. He had also given the associate $100 (Sh15,238).
The woman who was to be victim has not been named as well as the associate, an Uber driver, who turned to be a police informant.
The informant told a state police officer who then approached Mwithiga, pretending to be the hitman-for-hire he needed, local media outlets reported.
CT Insider, a news outlet in Connecticut state, reported that investigation reports filed in court showed that the undercover cop, while equipped with audio and video surveillance, “spoke with Mwithiga for more than an hour on Monday night, finalising the details of" the plot.
The officer had met the Kenyan man in a hotel in the Connecticut capital of Putnam where he was immediately arrested.
Mwithiga was charged with criminal attempt at murder with special circumstances, conspiracy to commit murder and criminal attempt at intimidation of a witness. He has been given a $5 million bail.
The case involving Mwithiga and the unnamed woman was civil in nature, and the need to kill her was motivated to bar her from testifying in court, police sources told the outlet.
The Uber driver said in his statement that he became close to Mwithiga after picking him up a couple of times as a customer as early as September 2023.
“At some point, Mwithiga started setting up rides through text message instead of the Uber platform, police said in the report.”
Mwithiga, would travel back and forth between Kenya and the United States at the time, and gained confidence of the driver and told him about his intension to harm the woman.
The driver then started recording their conversations, the report said.
One of the recordings captures the man saying that he needed to “find someone who can put ‘some injection’ in [the woman’s] food or water that would kill her slowly.
In another, he said he was “very, very mad, I need someone who is a killer.”
“He also discussed with the driver various ways to kill the victim, including drugs or poison, the report stated. Mwithiga said he wanted the driver to find someone to kill the victim because police could not connect the driver to him,” the outlet reports.
According to their agreement, the killer-for-hire was going to take the victim on a date where they would both snort cocaine and the victim would then snort a “hot batch,” containing pure fentanyl.
The fentanyl overdose would see her death slowly.
During their meeting, Mwithiga also asked the undercover sergeant to conduct surveillance on the victim and asked him to “research a slow death” for the victim, “but ultimately he agreed that the hitman could kill the victim in any manner, police wrote in the report.
After their talk, Mwithiga sent the driver a photo of the victim and police arrested him that night, the paper reported.
