• Forensic cyber detectives picked Gachoki’s last signal deep inside Burnt Forest, hours after the murder.
Detectives are looking for a suspect they have linked to the daylight murder of Samuel Mugoh Muvota.
Police say Denis Karani Gachoki, the main suspect, is armed and dangerous and is suspected of being in possession of a firearm that was snatched from a stupefied police officer at a popular joint in Mombasa in November 2020.
Efforts by detectives to arrest him have been unsuccessful since the suspect influences rogue cops who tip him off once an operation for his arrest has been launched, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said.
According to the DCI, on one occasion, Gachoki’s accomplice was texted minutes before his arrest, throwing a spanner in the works of a meticulous operation that had taken months to put together.
However, the photos circulated by the DCI of the alleged suspect contrast the individual seen shooting Muvota in a viral CCTV footage.
The photos of the suspect the DCI circulated is a heavily built man, while the individual seen shooting is of trim body frame.
Police said Friday that Gachoki recently fell out with his boss Muvota over the sharing of proceeds from their “pishori trade” and women who are enlisted to the mafia-style syndicate.
This among other issues, is suspected to have led to a bitter fallout leading to Monday’s daylight murder of Muvota.
Muvota left behind seven widows and children.
Forensic cyber detectives picked Gachoki’s last signal deep inside Burnt Forest, hours after the murder.
“We believe that the suspect has already crossed the border to a neighbouring country,” they say.
A picture of the suspect was circulated asking for the public's help to arrest him.
Muvota, 40, was fatally shot by a lone gunman on Mirema Drive in Kasarani, Nairobi, on May 16 shortly after dropping off a friend.
The owners of three of the seven documents found in the man’s Honda CR-V said in their police reports that they were victims of drugging.
According to police, one of them is a university lecturer, another is a Thika-based businessman, while the third is a resident of Roysambu.
All claim they were stupefied at nightclubs within Kasarani and Kahawa West areas between May 14 and May 16.
On Thursday, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said Muvota’s files stink to high heaven.
The findings have revealed skeletons in the man’s dark life dating as far back as 2011, when Muvota started robbing his victims at ATMs.
He then graduated to a full-time thug who hired beautiful, expensive-looking women and deployed them as drinks spiking agents at various high-end entertainment spots.
According to police, Muvota headed an ATM and SIM swapping syndicate that operated like a mafia criminal organisation.
He was a multi-millionaire, with several real estate properties scattered across the city, a fleet of vehicles and seven wives all living lavishly.
None of the wives suspected that Muvota lived a double life.
So lucrative was Muvota’s trade that he had recruited more than 50 voluptuous women to drug and rob his victims.
The drugging and robbing has led to broken marriages, left many men admitted in hospitals and others dead from an overdose of a stupefying drug only identified as ‘Tamuu’. The drug is supposed to be administered to patients suffering from mental disorders.
After 11 years in the highly dangerous trade, that targeted top public servants, businessmen, politicians and men of the cloth, Muvota seems to have made more enemies than friends, the DCI said.