The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) has detailed intrigues into the murder of lawyer Willie Kimani in June 2016 that led them to the alleged killers who were found guilty last month.
Kimani, his client Mwenda and Joseph Muiruri, a taxi driver, were abducted after leaving Mavoko Law Courts in Machakos County on June 23, 2016.
They were leaving a court session in Mavoko where Mwenda had filed a case against a police officer who had assaulted him.
The three were bundled into a vehicle and taken to Syokimau Police post where they were locked up before they were later smuggled out and driven to a location where they were brutally murdered.
Their lifeless bodies were stashed in sacks and transported to a river in Ol Donyo Sabuk where they were dumped only to be recovered a week later on June 30 and July 1, 2016.
The High Court last month ruled that three police officers; Fredrick ole Leliman, Stephen Cheburet Morogo, Sylvia Wanjohi and their informant Peter Ngugi are all guilty of murder.
Lady Justice Jessie Lessit ruled that Ole Leliman was the bearer of the motive to murder the three based on police radio tracking evidence.
In the August edition of their DCI Magazine, the George Kinoti-led investigative agency outlines how a cigarette butt, a specimen of human faeces and an empty can of Red Bull energy drink were the key investigative leads that led detectives to Willy Kimani’s killers.
The three items were gotten from a shrub in Soweto, Mlolongo in Machakos county, the detectives said, the location where the three are said to have been murdered.
“Detectives located the Soweto site and established that it was an open field covered with knee-high grass and acacia trees. They talked to people in a nearby residential area. It emerged that a lady had seen a motor vehicle parked by the roadside that particular (fateful) night,” the report says.
“The site was secured and subjected to forensic evidence gathering with the help of FBI personnel. All materials gathered have been taken for analysis. They include photographs, cans of energy drink (Red Bull, cigarette filters and samples of human waste from the place where it is believed the killings took place.”
The specimens were then screened for DNA and later subjected to comparison from samples obtained from the four suspects.
According to an analyst at the Government Chemist Laboratories whom the DCI calls Dr Kimani, buccal swabs were obtained from Ole Leliman, Morogo, Wanjohi and Ngugi, where the presence of biological material was to be traced in the samples collected in Soweto.
“The DNA profiles generated from the cigarette butts matched the DNA profiles generated from the reference sample Peter Ngugi. The cigarette butt proved to be the weak link for the defence and coupled with a confession by Ngugi, the court was left with no option but to convict them,” DCI said, quoting the judgement.
The murder of the three triggered a countrywide uproar with lawyers in the country embarking on a protest against extrajudicial killings.
The three officers and the informer will be sentenced at a date yet to be announced.
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