On a chilly night on June 30, 2012, what began as a casual night of drinking between two brothers in Kinyanka Village ended in one of the region’s most gruesome homicides.
Stephen Kirimi lay dead in a pool of blood. His younger stepbrother, Jacob Bundi, had vanished without a trace.
According to witnesses, the events of that night were harrowing.
Kirimi’s wife, Salome Karimi, was woken at around 1am by a neighbour who told her that her husband had been attacked.
She rushed to the Eastleigh area, accompanied by relatives, only to find her husband’s lifeless body on the roadside with a deep neck wound.
“He was bleeding profusely and already dead,” she told the court.
The police launched an investigation, piecing together the puzzle of what had transpired.
An eyewitness, Christopher Mwiti, testified that he saw Bundi and Kirimi arguing outside a bar.
“He left, came back with a panga, and attacked him,” he recalled. “He first cut him on the neck, and when he fell, he cut him again.”
The murder shocked the close-knit village.
Investigations revealed that there had been ongoing tension between the brothers over land, particularly a miraa and tea plantation Kirimi cultivated, which Bundi also claimed.
The motive seemed tied to that dispute.
By the time police reached Bundi’s house, he had fled.
Officers found the door locked from the outside.
Inside, they recovered a blood-stained yellow jacket, sky-blue t-shirt and green trousers.
Government analysts later confirmed that the blood on the clothes matched the DNA of the deceased.
A postmortem by Dr Kang’ethe revealed just how savage the attack had been.
The neck had been nearly severed. “
The head was barely attached by muscles. All the neck structures were cut, including the spinal cord,” noted the report.
The cause of death was massive blood loss due to decapitation.
Bundi would later be traced and arrested in Timau, over a year and a half later.
At trial, he gave a different story. He claimed the killing was an accident.
He and Kirimi had been drinking together, he said, and while attempting to stop his brother from attacking a third man during an argument, the two struggled over a panga.
“We fell, and in the process, I cut him,” Bundi said.
He told the court he panicked and fled the village for fear of mob justice.
But the High Court was not convinced.
Justice Ong’injo found Bundi guilty of murder in 2018, describing the killing as intentional and merciless.
“There were signs of repeated use of a sharp instrument to decapitate the head,” the judge ruled. The court sentenced Bundi to death.
Bundi appealed the decision, raising concerns about the reliability of eyewitness testimony, contradictions in statements, and the omission of some physical exhibits during the trial.
He also challenged the mandatory death sentence, citing recent jurisprudence that allowed courts discretion during sentencing.
On July 4, 2025, the Court of Appeal upheld the conviction but revised the sentence.
Justices Jessie Lesiit, Ali-Aroni and George Odungadismissed Bundi’s defence and affirmed the trial court’s findings.
“The manner in which the appellant butchered the deceased, coupled with the fact that he disappeared for one and a half years, leaves no room for any other inference but that malice aforethought was proven,” they stated.
However, the court acknowledged changing legal standards regarding the death penalty.
“We are inclined, in the aftermath of the emerging jurisprudence… to impose a determinate sentence,” the judgment read.
The appellate court substituted the death sentence with a 30-year prison term, to be calculated from the date of Bundi’s arrest in February 2014.
