A torn ear, a cup of chang’aa and a few careless words at dawn unraveled a night of brutal violence in Webuye, turning an otherwise circumstantial murder case into a firm conviction.
Hours after a cyber café security guard was brutally killed during a robbery, a bleeding suspect, Wycliffe Wafula Matanda, spoke freely about the crime in a chang’aa den.
That injured ear — and the reckless confession — became crucial evidence, anchoring a conviction that was upheld from the magistrate’s court to the Court of Appeal.
Matanda’s wound and drunken admission tied him to the guard’s killing, leading to a death sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment.
The killing occurred in the early hours of June 26, 2009, along Nyange Street in Webuye Township, Bungoma County.
According to a Court of Appeal judgment delivered last week, night guard Joseph Chumaki, who was employed by a private security firm, had been assigned to guard Concepts Cyber Café.
By morning, he was dead. Computers were missing and blood stained the floor.
The first sign of trouble emerged around 3:30am when a neighbour noticed that the cyber café’s door was open. But the guard was nowhere in sight.
Phone calls followed. First to the café owner, then to the private security firm.
When a fellow guard later inspected the premises using a spotlight, he made a chilling discovery.
“I saw my colleague lying dead on the floor,” the witness testified in court.
Police arrived shortly afterwards and found Chumaki’s body lying in a pool of blood inside the café. He had deep cut wounds on the head and neck and his collarbone was fractured.
The café had been ransacked with computers scattered on the floor. Crime scene officers photographed the area before the body was taken to Webuye District Mortuary.
An autopsy revealed the brutality of the attack, revealing that Chumaki suffered multiple deep cuts to the head and neck and his brain stem had been severed.
The pathologist concluded that death resulted from cardiopulmonary arrest and hypovolemic shock following severe head injury. Investigators believed the killing occurred during a violent robbery.
With no eyewitnesses, the case might have gone cold — but a small detail noticed after sunrise kept investigators on track.
Around 7am, chang’aa brewer Janet Nabwire opened her door to two regular customers. One of them, Matanda, immediately stood out. He had a fresh cut on his left ear, still oozing blood.
“I noticed that the appellant had a cut on his left ear with blood oozing from it,” Ms Nabwire later testified.
As the men drank, Matanda began speaking freely.
Ms Nabwire overheard him telling his companion that he and an accomplice had stolen computers from a cyber café on Nyange Street the previous night.
Matanda narrated how the guard fought back by biting his ear, before his accomplice struck the guard with a metal bar and a panga. After finishing his drink, Matanda left to buy an Elastoplast bandage for his wound.
Those careless words spoken over illicit liquor became the backbone of the prosecution’s case. Ms Nabwire testified that she had also seen Matanda with a computer, which she later saw him smashing with a hammer.
Police soon received a tip about a suspect with a bitten ear and officers tracked Matanda to his home, where they found, the wound still fresh.
“The appellant had a fresh wound on the ear,” an investigator testified.
Under interrogation, Matanda led police to a nearby hill where officers recovered a broken computer and a battery backup hidden from view. The items were taken to the station and Matanda signed an inventory acknowledging their seizure.
The cyber café owner later identified the recovered items using serial numbers and purchase receipts, confirming they had been stolen from her shop. The swift recovery strengthened the prosecution’s case.
Matanda was charged alongside four others with robbery with violence. Prosecutors alleged that the attackers — armed with pangas and iron bars — robbed the café and murdered the guard in the process. Three of the accused were acquitted for lack of evidence but Matanda was convicted.
At trial, no eyewitness had seen the fatal blows delivered. The defence seized on this gap, with Matanda denying involvement.
He claimed police arrested him days later, forced him to give fingerprints and found nothing incriminating in his house. However, he offered no explanation for his whereabouts on the night of the killing.
The magistrate found the prosecution’s witnesses credible, particularly Ms Nabwire’s testimony. The court also accepted police evidence regarding Matanda’s fresh ear wound and the stolen items recovered at his direction. He was convicted and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment.
The High Court upheld the conviction in 2014. Still dissatisfied, Matanda appealed to the Court of Appeal in Kisumu. His lawyers argued that no one had seen him commit the crime and that the chang’aa seller had merely overheard a conversation.
They also challenged the identification procedures, the structure of the trial judgment and the severity of the sentence.
However, the appellate court focused on the compelling circumstantial evidence, noting that Ms Nabwire’s testimony remained unshaken under cross-examination.
“The evidence of PW2 (Nabwire) was not debunked or shaken in cross-examination,” the judges stated.
The court also noted that her account was corroborated by police evidence — Matanda’s fresh ear injury and the stolen items recovered shortly after the robbery.
On identification, the court ruled that even in the absence of an eyewitness, the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming.
“Our analysis of the foregoing evidence is that it was sufficient to link the appellant to the offence,” the judges held.
They invoked the doctrine of recent possession, noting that the stolen computer was recovered soon after the robbery without any explanation from Matanda. They also dismissed claims that an alibi defence had been ignored.
“To the contrary, the record does not bear out any alibi defence that was advanced. The appellant never mentioned his whereabouts on the material dates, that is, June 25 and 26, 2009,” the judges said.
The court further rejected complaints about the structure of the trial judgment, finding that it adequately addressed all the issues.
On sentencing, the judges noted that they lacked the authority to interfere, as robbery with violence still attracted a mandatory death sentence at the time.
In the end, the appeal failed and the conviction stood. Years after a guard died defending a cyber café, justice turned on a bitten ear — and a careless confession made over a cup of chang’aa at dawn.
