Court of Appeal judges have overturned the acquittal of Rahab Wanjiru and ordered her arrest over the murder of two children.
For the past 12 years, Rahab Wanjiru has lived as a free woman, but in the shadows of her past lay a crime too horrific to be forgotten.
On June 5, 2012, she was acquitted of the brutal murder of two boys – Kinyanjui Chomba (four) and Morgan Mbugua (two) – who disappeared one evening from their home in Naivasha's Maraigushu area of Nakuru County and whose lifeless bodies were found floating in a dam.
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal overturned her acquittal after finding her guilty of the heinous crime.
Judges Paul Gachoka, Mohamed Warsame and John Mativo ruled that the evidence presented and once dismissed now painted a chilling picture of premeditated revenge.
The three judges have ordered Wanjiru's immediate arrest and presentation before the High Court for sentencing.
“We hereby quash the trial court’s findings in favour of the respondent and substitute the same with an order of conviction. The respondent shall immediately be apprehended and arraigned before another judge in the criminal division of the Nakuru High Court for mitigation and sentencing,” the Appeal Court judges ruled.
At the heart of the murders was a bitter family dispute.
The father of the slain children, Paul Chomba, testified in court during the hearing that he was once married to Wanjiru's sister, Miriam Wanjiku.
The couple had three children before their marriage broke down in 2007.
On March 9, 2008, Mr Chomba married Abigael Nyambura, the mother of Kinyanjui and Morgan.
However, this second marriage did not sit well with Chomba's ex-sister-in-law, Wanjiru.
Friends and relatives testified that she blamed Nyambura for her sister's misfortunes and saw her as an intruder in the family.
The court heard that on April 10, 2008, Wanjiru, accompanied by another woman, visited Chomba's home and found Nyambura with her children.
They enquired about Chomba's whereabouts and left after being told he was not at home.
Three days later, they returned at around 7pm and this time they were insistent, pressing Nyambura on whether she knew Chomba's first wife and demanding to see him.
Uneasy, Nyambura left to fetch her husband from her mother-in-law's house, leaving the women with the children asleep while the children from her husband's first wife went to collect milk.
It was a decision Nyambura would regret for the rest of her life.
When Nyambura returned 20 minutes later, accompanied by her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, Wanjiru, her companion and her two children had disappeared.
On the table in her house was a handwritten note with a chilling ultimatum: that she leaves Chomba and Wanjiku's house or prepare to bury her children.
The three women rushed to the Naivasha police station and reported the matter as officers launched a search party.
The next day, the lifeless bodies of Kinyanjui and Morgan were found floating in a nearby dam, just 100 metres from their home.
A post-mortem confirmed that they had drowned.
Their bodies also showed signs of physical injury, suggesting that they had struggled before their deaths.
As police sifted through the evidence, forensic experts zeroed in on a crucial piece: the threatening note left in the house. Handwriting analysis confirmed that Wanjiru had indeed written it.
Despite the evidence, the High Court dismissed the case on June 5, 2012, citing a lack of direct evidence linking Wanjiru to the crime.
She was acquitted and lived as a free woman for more than a decade.
But justice, though delayed, was not denied after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) appealed the verdict, arguing that the trial judge had overlooked key evidence in the case.
The Court of Appeal on Tuesday agreed with the DPP, finding that Wanjiru had a clear and malicious motive to end the children's lives because she was upset by her Chomba's decision to remarry.
“We are persuaded to hold that Wanjiru, with all motive and intent, kidnapped the children in order to hit back at Chomba and Nyambura. She then took them to the nearby dam and murdered them. We have no doubt in our mind that the respondent committed two counts of murder as she had been charged,” ruled the judges.
The judges also faulted the trial judge for ignoring compelling evidence, including the forensic analysis of the note.
Had this evidence been taken into account, the judges said, Wanjiru would have been convicted in the first trial.
