Back at his Uhuru village in Alego Usonga, friends and family members are still reeling in shock following the news of the death of Wells Fargo Human Resource Director Willis Ayieko Onyango.
The body of Ayieko was found four days after he went missing on Friday under unclear circumstances.
According to preliminary investigations, Ayieko’s killers took approximately three hours, and 52 minutes to snuff life out the people’s manager in the wee hours of Saturday.
The Nation has compiled accounts from various family members, and friends who were with him moments before he went missing, and records from the vehicle tracking system in an attempt to put together a trail of Mr Ayieko's final movements.
Ayieko flew out of Nairobi on Friday, October 18, 2024, and landed at the Kisumu International Airport (KIA) at around 2.30pm.
He had earlier called his driver and asked him to deliver his orange Ford Ranger double-cab pickup at the airport.
He left KIA at 2.45pm for Gem with a brief stopover at a place called Tiengre on Kisumu-Busia road at 2.55 pm.
He chauffeured himself during the 41 kilometers journey, arriving at Muhanda, Nyamninia area in Gem Sub-County, at 3.53pm for a night vigil at the home of one of his close friends and veteran journalist Ben Agina, who had lost his mother.
Mr Willis Ayieko's car, which was found abandoned in Sabatia.
Photo credit: Pool
He was last seen wearing a black collared T-shirt, navy blue khaki pants, and a pair of chocolate brown boat shoes. He had his pair of spectacles on and two African-made bracelets on his left wrist.
Ayieko stayed at Agina’s home for six hours until 9.52pm when he left for his home in Alego, Siaya County, using the Kisumu-Busia road. He never made it home.
It is not clear whether his attackers were among the mourners at the night vigil or they laid in wait for him and intercepted his car after he left Nyamninia.
The tracker would later show the vehicle at the Nyabeda area, where according to Ayieko’s elder brother Aggrey Oduor, the HR boss must have been waylaid.
There are however questions as to how the killers got control of the vehicle in an operation that took a maximum of three minutes since the vehicle was stationary from 10.12pm to 10.15pm.
Later, they appear to have forced him offroad to avoid suspicion on the usually busy Kisumu-Busia road since, according to Google Maps, there is no major road around Regea Area. The vehicle was moving at a speed of 30 kilometres per hour.
The assailants appeared to be well versed with the terrain since the tracker showed the vehicle snaking its way through villages in the night, moving from Got Regea to Dudi and then to Nyamninia before heading to the Mundeku area at 10.55 pm.
At 11.30pm, the pick-up was spotted again at Nyamninia and a minute later at Yala before it was driven back to the Kisumu-Busia road where it moved towards Muhanda where the tracker captured it at 11.39 pm.
The Ford Ranger was driven to Dudi for the second time in the night where it is believed the killers must have carried out the heinous murder of the Wells Fargo staff between 11.30pm and 3.44 am on Saturday.
It is suspected that it took the killers three hours, and 52 minutes to torture their victim and abandon his badly mutilated body in a shallow stream.
At 3.47am, the killers drove the vehicle from Dudi using feeder roads back to Regea, where it passed at 4.04am, then to Maliera at 4.35 am, and made a stop at Regea again at 4.50am for eight minutes.
The killers were now on the Kakamega County side, driving on Sidindi-Butere road through Namasoli, Shiatsala market, Masaba, Buchanya, and ended up at Frankmatt Supermarket on Buyangu-Ekero road in Sabatia, Butere at 6.04 am.
At 6.06 am, two men suspected to be the killers of Ayieko were caught on CCTV footage abandoning the pick-up at a filling station and walking away carrying two paper bags.
Oduor said his younger brother had planned to travel to Kakamega on Saturday to join a group of his friends, identified as the ‘Sky Team’, but never made it there.
His wife made several frantic calls to his number in an attempt to establish his whereabouts but her calls never got through as Ayieko’s two phones were switched off.
She filed a missing-person report on Monday, vide OB No 33/21/10/2024 at 2.20 pm, and later took to social media with the hope of tracing her husband.
It was not until Tuesday that Ayieko's vehicle was found in Sabatia, Kakamega County, raising significant questions as to who drove it there.
The same day detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations were dispatched to the scene where the vehicle had been found.
A day later, on Wednesday at 2pm, Ayieko's body was found lying face down in a shallow stream in Dudi on the border of Siaya and Kakamega Counties, by a secondary school student.
“This is when we were informed that a body had been found and we rushed to identify the body,” said Oduor.
The discovery put an end to a four-day search for Ayieko. The mutilated state of the body revealed how the HR boss was subjected to a horrific death by his killers, who handcuffed his hands at the back, chopped off some parts of his body and used his trousers to tie his legs together.
"My brother's killers removed his eyes, ears, breasts, and mouth. Where were they taking the parts, perhaps to take to the person who had assigned them the duty of killing my brother to confirm they had finished the job? I feel very bad," said Mr Oduor.
It was only last month that Oduor lost another brother, who was an auditor with the county government of Siaya and with this, he feels the family has been hit hard.
"As a family, we have many questions because we can't understand why someone would target my young brother who is usually very harmless. Why didn't they come for me because, with my age, I might have made many enemies but not Willis," said Oduor.
According to Gem Sub-County Police Commander Charles Wafula, the discovery of Ayieko’s body provides one of the crucial leads in unravelling the motive of the killing.
“This discovery is very crucial for our officers who are working together with the DCI to find the killers. We are following some leads that will soon help us to establish the motive behind this murder,” said Mr Wafula.
