For a man accustomed to selling homes, the night of August 22, 2026 began like another evening of client hospitality.
It ended with a police file, a medical examination and a rape allegation that has now placed Willstone Homes managing director Ejidio Kinyanjui Gitau under an uncomfortable spotlight.
The complainant, a 19-year-old American visitor who was staying with her grandmother in Kenya, says she was taken to Kettle House on Kiambu Road after Kinyanjui picked her up alongside her two aunts from Kitisuru.
The grandmother, according to the account given to police, had previously engaged Willstone over a housing project.
That detail gives the case its unusual backdrop. What began as an evening involving a property client and her visiting family ended with competing accounts of what happened in a Lexus parked outside the club.
According to the police account reported by several media outlets, the bill at the club came to about Sh80,000 and was paid by Kinyanjui.
The young woman says she became heavily intoxicated during the evening. She alleges that while her aunts were away, Kinyanjui touched her and later took her to his Lexus, where she says he sexually assaulted her.
Kinyanjui has denied the allegation and maintains that the encounter was consensual.
The young woman also told police she believed Kinyanjui was armed. That particular allegation has not been independently established in the material publicly reported so far.
Her aunts later came looking for her, according to the police account. She reportedly told them what she alleged had happened, while Kinyanjui denied the accusation.
He then left the premises, with reports indicating that another bill of about Sh32,000 remained unpaid.
The complainant was subsequently taken to hospital.
Kinyanjui was arrested on September 1, held for several days and later released. The matter is now before court.
He has not been convicted of any offence.
The complainant has also not been publicly identified in this article.
What makes the case particularly interesting is the world Kinyanjui comes from.
Willstone Homes is not an obscure property outfit. Court records and previous media reports have placed the company in a string of disputes involving buyers, land transactions, shareholders and the company’s management.
In 2024, Kinyanjui was involved in a bitter commercial dispute with fellow Willstone directors Patrick Thuo Marigi and Victor Cosmus Muusya.
Court papers showed Kinyanjui held a 20 percent stake, with the remaining interest held through Diamond Transfer Limited.
The dispute involved control of company bank accounts said to contain hundreds of millions of shillings.
The parties eventually reached a consent agreement that restored all three directors as signatories and brought the shareholder dispute to an end.
Claims made during the litigation included allegations concerning tax evasion and money laundering involving approximately Sh417 million. Those were allegations contained in court documents and were not findings of guilt.
The company has also faced disputes with homebuyers.
One of the cases involved Julius Njeru, a Kenyan living in the United States, who said he bought a three-bedroom bungalow with a domestic servant’s quarter at Manna Residence in Ruiru for Sh8.95 million.
He paid a Sh2 million deposit after being introduced to the project through a YouTube campaign targeting the diaspora.
Njeru later complained that construction and ownership issues did not match what he had been promised.
The dispute eventually reached court, with the company acknowledging in court proceedings that his deposit had been used in acquiring the land.
The matter was later settled out of court.
Another buyer, Joseph Waruingi Kiiru, entered into a separate agreement for a Manna bungalow valued at Sh8.2 million.
He paid Sh4.2 million and later went to court after a dispute arose over construction, completion and the developer’s demand for the outstanding balance.
The court issued interim orders restraining interference with the disputed unit.
These cases do not establish that every Willstone project was improperly marketed. They do, however, provide some context to the company’s history of disputes with customers.
Willstone has also previously faced scrutiny over other off-plan housing projects and complaints from diaspora investors.
Some of those complaints have involved allegations concerning land ownership, construction delays and refunds.
The company has disputed allegations of wrongdoing and has previously maintained that it has completed numerous projects and settled thousands of families.
Kinyanjui has also previously found himself at the centre of a legal fight with Nation Media Group over reporting concerning his professional history.
He sought orders restricting further publication of material linking him to Banda Homes, a developer that collapsed amid complaints over undelivered housing projects.
In November 2025, the High Court declined to grant the gag orders he sought.
The court dispute did not determine the truth of every allegation published about him, but it meant the reporting remained part of the public record.
Then came the Kettle House night.
The most important question now is not the Sh80,000 bill, the Lexus or the property business.
It is what happened after the two sides’ accounts diverged.
The prosecution will have to establish its case through admissible evidence. The defence will seek to demonstrate that the encounter was consensual.
Medical records, witness accounts, CCTV footage, digital evidence and the circumstances surrounding the first report could all become important.
The reported ten-day gap between the alleged incident and Kinyanjui’s arrest may also feature in the proceedings, although the existence of a delay by itself does not establish whether an allegation is true or false.
For now, there are two sharply different versions of the same night.
One says a heavily intoxicated 19-year-old was taken from a nightclub into a parked vehicle and sexually assaulted.
The other says the encounter was consensual.
That dispute belongs in court.
But the case has already done something outside the courtroom: it has brought fresh attention to the man behind one of Kenya’s better-known off-plan property brands and the trail of commercial disputes that has followed the company.
In Nairobi’s property circles, a developer’s biggest asset is often trust.
For Willstone and Kinyanjui, the Kettle House case has placed that trust under another very public examination.
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