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Murder Tapes 4: The self-confessed serial killer who always gets away.
On October 10, 2019, Stephen Ngari went missing, only to be found two days later, dead in his house within Kimahuri Village, Nyeri County.
The twist in his death would turn out to be a murder that was committed by one of his employees, known as Mr Martin Mwangi, who, in a video, confessed to having ended the life of the aging man who was a farmer.
Police and court records on the same page further explained how the man died.
“That between October 10, 2019, and October 11, 201,9, the deceased went missing and was found murdered in his house in Kimahuri Village on October 12, 2019,” court documents on the murder show.
According to detective Moses Kibet, the deceased and the suspect enjoyed a good rapport and even lived together in the same house.
Mr Kibet led the investigations on Ngari's murder, a man who was well known as a great farmer. The detective swore an affidavit asking the court not to hand the suspect cash bail as he was a flight risk.
In his explanation, he claimed that Mr Mwangi fled from his known place, and it forced the police and sleuths to engage local informers and the intelligence agency to track him down.
He would later resurface on September 6, 2023, approximately four years later, and he was nabbed by DCI sleuths.
'Killer and victim meet'
The story of the death of Ngari is described by locals as very painful, as it has left a lasting scar in the lives of many.
The killer and the deceased met when, one rainy afternoon when a man looking for a job walked into Ngari's compound.
Mr John Mutahi told the Nation that on that day, he was the one who welcomed him to the home and even introduced him to his employer.
“The suspect walked into the compound and explained that he desperately needed a job. That is how I decided to introduce him to Ngari,” Mr Mutahi told the Nation.
According to Mr Mutahi, the suspect said that he hailed from Mweiga in Endarasha, but he could not explain how he reached there.
Ngari was a wealthy farmer but was not very famous in the village.
Kimahuri is located 23 kilometres from Nyeri town, and some 115 kilometres from Kenya’s capital – Nairobi. With its proximity to Mt. Kenya, Kimahuri is a cold and agriculturally fertile area. Residents here are spoiled for choice of what to grow.
From the merino sheep, to dairy cows, goats and almost all types of crops – you’ll find it here. That’s why almost everyone here is a farmer and also the reason why it was so difficult for Ngari to get a local farmhand unless he was a stranger – in this case, Martin Mwangi.
But here, Ngari goes by a different name.
“We used to refer to him (Ngari) as Wambungichi, but I could not tell where the name came from,” Mr Mutahi said.
According to the area chief, the name Wambungichi was that of Ngari’s father.
Many locals describe Ngari as a quiet man, and according to Mary Nyambura, the deceased sister in law, he had, until his death, stopped going to church.
“He was a generous and good man. He could even go to graze his cows despite being with a farmhand,” said Ms Nyambura.
Mr Mutahi told the Nation that things used to go on well and that Mr Mwangi was a hard worker.
“When the two first met, the deceased asked Mr Mwangi (suspected killer) whether he would go back home for his clothes, but he opted to buy gumboots and go on with the work,” Mr Mutahi said.
The two, Mwangi and Ngari, woke up every day and did almost the same things. Say a prayer in the morning, milk the cows, and take breakfast as they discussed politics.
Dispute
Differences between the duo kicked off when a rumour went round that they were seeing the same woman, identified only as Wambui.
Tension began to rise between Mwangi, Ngari and Wambui and various issues started.
Ms Mary Nyambura, the deceased sister-in-law, said the two argued a lot.
Matters grew worse when Mwangi was fired.
“He was given money and he left, but interestingly, he did not go far, he would be seen within the village,” Ms Nyambura said.
It is believed that he used to stay with Wambui, the woman who got him fired.
Mr Simon Muchina, the area assistant chief, told the Nation that when Ngari was killed, people did not realise it at first.
“When Mr Mwangi ended the life of Ngari, people did not know. Locals who used to purchase milk from his homestead could ask about his whereabouts and he would tell them that he had travelled,” said Mr Muchina.
Killer flees ... then confesses
Senior Chief Francis Gathungu said, “Ngari's close relatives then wondered why he never said where he had travelled to. But at the time, Mr Mwangi had already fled.”
The shocking thing about the murder was not how it happened but the chain of events that followed the killing that no one could have foreseen.
For 48 hours, Mwangi slept with Ngari’s body in the same house.
The body lay cold in his timber-walled house for about 50 hours as Mr Mwangi stole his vegetables from the farm.
He then left with the vegetables after waving people goodbye and for four years he was never seen in the village.
Mr Muchina (the chief) said that the crime scene where the body lay was full of blood. Even the killer weapon, a knife, was still in the house.
Four years after the death of Ngari, Mwangi walked into the Naromoru Police Station report office and said that he wanted to confess.
He then went ahead and told the police officers that he was the one who ended Ngari’s life.
Inside a small office, next to the highway, the chief detective at the station, after about five minutes of listening to the confession, called four other DCI officers to listen to the story. He wanted to make sure that he was not imagining things.
The confession
For the first time, the Nation has got its hands on the confession tapes.
“We started having fights with him over a woman who used to work at the local bar. He had been angry with me because women had picked his vegetables on the farm. He fired me and I went to Wambui’s house, but I could not sleep. Very early in the morning, I woke up and told Wambui I won’t be long, and left,” Mwangi says in one confession tape.
In the confession tapes, Mwangi says he stormed the compound and found a now calm and composed Ngari preparing himself some tea in the kitchen.
“It was around 6am. I entered and told him I was back. He asked why I was still there and rose as if to come at me. I took an iron rod for fanning the fire and hit him on the head, and he fainted. When he went to rise again, I hit him with the rod again, then a third time. Then I realised he was not gone yet, and we needed to finish our issues with each other privately,” Mwangi narrated.
Mwangi dragged the old man’s body to his main house opposite the kitchen. Through this front door, all the way to the back.
“I then cleaned up the blood in the kitchen, and I went back and hit him ten more times with the rod. He still was not dead. I took a knife and stabbed him, covered him with a sheet and went to drink,” Mwangi said.
The bar he went to was Wambui’s Dry Bar, just 70 meters from his now dead employer’s house.
As the old man’s blood filled up the sheets, he filled his system with local vodka. Went back to the same house in the evening and slept.
It is not clear if he told his lover, Wambui, of the murder, but the next day, he would milk the cows and sell milk as usual.
He had an alibi for whoever was bothered about Ngari.
Not his first victim
At the Naromoru police station, Mwangi then went ahead and confessed to other murder cases and Ngari was not the first victim.
On August 22, 2017, Mr Mwangi was accused of killing his cousin James Mwangi by strangling him with a belt.
Court papers on the death of James show that he walked to Nyeri Police Station, sat at the waiting bay and confessed to officers that he had killed his cousin.
However, four months after he had confessed, Justice Teresiah Matheka accused the police of shoddy investigations.
In her argument, Justice Matheka further accused the investigating officers of not conducting any activity aimed at knowing where the truth lay.
“Just a collection of things, ideas e.t.c without any analysis making this one of those cases I have come to know in my career as a judicial officer, as time wasters, fillers where the investigating and prosecuting authority for reasons best known to them which do not have anything to do with the interests of justice, shrug their shoulder and say “wacha itupwe na koti (Let it be thrown out by court),” Justice Matheka concluded.
Only four months later, he went and killed Ngari in Kimahuri.
According to Mr Muchina, Mr Mwangi confessed to having killed at least seven people, including a foreigner and an elderly woman, Julia Gathoni.
Gathoni, 82, was attacked in her sleep early 2023 and murdered. Her head was taken away and has never been found.
By June 2024, the DCI and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution had yet to charge Mr Mwangi with the murders that he confessed to.
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