The decomposing body of a man found at a forest in Wote, Makueni County, over the weekend is that of missing British national Campbell Scott.
This was confirmed by County Commander Alice Kimeli, who said a post-mortem will be done tomorrow at Makueni County Referral Hospital Mortuary to establish the cause of death.
Detectives from Nairobi who were probing the disappearance of the 58-year-old Briton had travelled to Makueni on Monday morning.
The investigators went together with officials from the UK Embassy following reports of the gruesome weekend discovery.
Sources told Nation.Africa that the team was called in to help the police identify the body found at Makongo forest in Kaiti division.
Scott flew into Kenya for a three-day conference and has been missing since Sunday, February 16.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) had sought help from Interpol in finding the 58-year-old.
Scott was in Nairobi for a workshop hosted by TransUnion, one of only three licensed credit reference bureaus in Kenya, which was scheduled on Tuesday, February 18, at the JW Marriott hotel in Westlands, Nairobi.
But he walked out of the same hotel that fateful Sunday towards Westlands. That would be the last time he was seen.
He is a senior director of the London wing of FICO, an American data analytics company specialising in credit evaluation.
FICO is one of the world’s biggest players in the credit scoring space, operating branches in 21 other countries in South America, Europe, Oceania, Asia and Africa.
In the London branch, Scott is in charge of product management.
Scott checked into his hotel room at the JW Marriott at around 1pm on Saturday, February 15, but left an hour later.
CCTV footage covering that afternoon shows Scott dressed in cargo pants and a blue shirt, seemingly relaxed and jovial, waving at staff at the hotel before walking out.
He returned at around 4pm, with the footage showing Scott exchanging pleasantries with the hotel’s security personnel before walking back to his room.
At around 11.15am on Sunday, Scott walked out of the hotel again. His colleagues thought he was going for a stroll to shake off jetlag, and assumed that he would be back in time for lunch.
Manaton Michael Edward, one of his colleagues who stayed at the hotel, expected to have a sit-down with Scott to prepare FICO’s presentation for the conference.
Edward called Scott’s UK-registered phone number at around 6pm, but it was off.
At around 7pm, Michael tried again to reach Scott but his phone was off. It is at that point that he decided to notify the hotel management, who advised him to report the matter to the police.
The hotel management, security and parklands police started the search for missing man.
The case was taken over by senior detectives from the Nairobi area who also invited officers from the DCI Crime Research and Intelligence Bureau.
Together with the hotel staff, the police visited different bars and hotels in Westland seeking information on the missing man, but nobody had seen Scott enter any of the visited establishments.
Several witnesses, among them security guards and hotel staff, have so far recorded statements with the police.
