Molo Law Courts on January 13, 2023. (inset) Angeline Mary Wangui who was murdered on December 12, 2022 in Nakuru.
After completing her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations, she chose to venture into selling land and houses as she worked to save money in preparation for joining college.
For many of her clients, she helped turn empty plots into dreams, a place to build a future, raise children, or retire peacefully within Nakuru County.
But on a quiet December morning, Angeline Mary Wangui herself was found abandoned by the roadside, her life cut short and her body dumped near Ngata Bridge along the Nakuru–Eldoret highway bypass by passers-by in a sack.
The young woman who spent her days helping others secure their future would never get the chance to secure her own. She had planned to enrol at either the Kenya Medical Training College or Kabarak University.
It was the evening of December 11, 2022, at her sister’s modest house in the Barnabas area. Wangui was spending time with family. The mood inside the house was calm and familiar.
Her elder sister, Tracy Nyambura, who was heavily pregnant at the time, was resting while Wangui helped around the house.
Outside, Barnabas pulsed with its usual evening rhythm. Matatus hooted impatiently at the stage, boda bodas weaved through traffic, and music drifted from nearby kiosks as the town slowly eased into the night.
Inside, nothing felt unusual.
Then Wangui’s phone rang. She was being invited to a house party reportedly planned in the Kiamunyi area, a neighbourhood popular with university students, especially those from nearby Kabarak University.
The call was brief and, to anyone listening, it would have sounded ordinary. Moments later, money for transport was sent to her phone. A plan had been made for her to go out.
Ms Nyambura remembers that moment clearly. She said nothing about the call or the outing seemed unusual at the time.
“We were together at home that evening. I was pregnant and she had been helping take care of me. She received a phone call and shortly after someone sent her transport money. She told me she was going out but she would be back,” she recalled.
Wangui took her time preparing. There was no urgency in her movements, no sign that anything was wrong. The shower ran longer than usual as steam filled the small bathroom, blurring the mirror and softening the evening’s fading light.
She dressed casually for the night—nothing extravagant, just comfortable clothes suitable for a house party. Into her small sling bag, she placed a few essentials: spare keys, a little cash and lip gloss. Her Infinix phone went in last.
Angeline Mary Wangui- whose body was found dumped by the roadside at Ngata Bridge along Nakuru- Eldoret highway after attending an overnight party with friends.
To Wangui, it was simply a night out.
When she stepped outside, Barnabas Estate greeted her with the familiar chaos of evening traffic. Conductors shouted destinations from matatu doors while passengers hurried in and out of vehicles.
She blended into the crowd like any other young woman heading somewhere.
At the terminus, Nyambura, who had escorted her sister, watched as she boarded a matatu bound for Nakuru town and would later take another matatu to Kiamunyi. She had no idea it would be the last time she would see her alive.
As the vehicle pulled away, the noisy streets of Barnabas slowly gave way to quieter residential roads where groups of students walked in clusters, laughter echoing through the cool night air.
Somewhere in Kiamunyi, Wangui believed friends were waiting.
“She stepped out expecting to come back later that night. When her phone stopped going through and she didn’t return, I thought maybe her phone battery had died and decided to wait,” she told Murder Tapes.
But by the following day, anxiety had begun to grow within the family.
Nyambura started to grow uneasy. Wangui’s phone was no longer going through, and she had not returned home as promised.
As the morning stretched into midday, the unease deepened. Around 1 pm, another call came, this time carrying devastating news.
Their sister had seen a disturbing post circulating on social media. A woman’s body had been discovered near Ngata Bridge.
At first, Nyambura refused to believe it.
Ms Nyambura said the family struggled to accept what they were hearing until a relative confirmed the identity of the body. Later, someone who had gone to the scene confirmed it was Wangui.
The discovery shocked the family.
Wangui’s body had been found by the roadside near Ngata Bridge, several kilometres from Kiamunyi. Investigators later said she had likely been dead for several hours before being discovered.
Investigators later established that Wangui had left home after receiving the phone call from a man identified by the family as Micah Kiprotich.
According to Nyambura, Kiprotich had invited her to a party and even sent her money for transport. At the time, he was reportedly a student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Clinical Medicine at Kabarak University.
She said Wangui had trusted him and often spoke about her desire to pursue a career in the medical field, like Kiprotich.
The news eventually reached Wangui’s father, James Maina, who was in Gilgil at the time.
Mr Maina said he was initially told his daughter had been involved in an accident before he travelled to Nakuru to confirm the news.
According to Mr Maina, a resident of Langalanga in Gilgil, he last spoke with his daughter hours before she met her death. The conversation was simple and routine.
Wangui informed him that she was preparing supper before retiring to bed and even requested him to pass greetings to her mother.
Before ending the call, she told him that she and Tracy planned to visit home the following day. It was a public holiday—Jamhuri Day.
Mr Maina later learnt that after having dinner, Wangui left for Kiamunyi for a party on the eve of Jamhuri celebrations and did not want to miss it, promising to return in the morning.
Molo Law Courts on January 13, 2023. (inset) Angeline Mary Wangui who was murdered on December 12, 2022 in Nakuru.
Two days later, he received a distressed call from their pastor, who asked the family to rush to Nakuru town without disclosing the reason.
“When the pastor called on December 13, I never suspected anything. My wife and I prepared ourselves and we left. On our way he told us that my daughter had been involved in an accident but after gathering enough courage he told us what had happened and that her body was in Nakuru City Mortuary where it was being preserved and we identified it. It was really heartbreaking to us. Losing a child mysteriously is very heartbreaking. She died a painful death. We just want justice over her death,” he added.
A postmortem conducted on her remains indicated she died of suffocation and that she had been sexually assaulted.
After a month of intensive investigation and search, a suspect, Mr Kiprotich, who had been on the run, was smoked out of his hideout in Uasin Gishu County on January 12, 2023.
He was presented at the Molo Law Courts under a miscellaneous application on January 13, where detectives requested 14 days to conclude investigations. They were granted the request, and the court directed that he be held at Menengai Police Station.
During the period, detectives said they would extract data from the suspect’s phone. He would also be taken to Nakuru Level Five Hospital for a mental examination before appearing in court.
On January 27, the suspect was arraigned in court, but the investigating officer requested an additional two weeks, saying the investigation was not complete.
The suspect later appeared in court on February 13, 2023, and detectives asked for another seven days to continue investigations.
On March 29, 2023, the investigating officer again sought seven more days, saying they were yet to receive forensic results from the Government Chemist in Kisumu.
The case was slated to be mentioned on April 12, the same year. Since then, he has never been charged in court.
Three years later, the circumstances surrounding how she left the party, what happened during the night, and how her body ended up at the bridge remain unclear. Investigators have never publicly explained what transpired that night.
According to the family, the investigation slowed down despite Kiprotich being questioned during the early stages of the probe and phone records that could have helped reconstruct her final movements.
The case has yet to result in any prosecution. For the family, the silence has been almost as painful as the loss itself.
Mr Maina said repeated attempts to seek updates from investigators have yielded little information.
“The police no longer pick my calls these days. Even the investigating officer stopped responding to me, and I eventually deleted the number because there was nothing more I could do. I just left it to God,” he said.
The lack of progress has left the family frustrated and desperate for justice.
Relatives believe investigators had sufficient leads to pursue the case further, particularly because Wangui had been invited to the gathering by someone known to her.
More than three years later, the family continues to hope authorities will reopen the investigation and shed light on what happened during Wangui’s final hours.
For them, the unanswered questions remain as haunting as the discovery that first shattered their lives—a young woman who stepped out for a night she believed would end with her safely back home, but never returned.
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