Technology and circumstantial evidence are expected to play a significant role when the trial of the murder of businesswoman Caroline Wanjiku Maina starts today at the High Court in Nairobi, with three people, among them her former business partners, as the accused.
Ms Wanjiku’s decomposing body was found by herders in a thicket in Paranai, Kajiado County, on February 15, three days after she went missing. A post-mortem revealed that she died of blunt force trauma on her forehead and back. The post-mortem further revealed that her body was bruised on the hip and had multiple injuries on the left hand and wrist.
Six people were arrested, including a 17-year-old school boy who was found with one of Ms Wanjiku’s two mobile phones that had gone missing after she was killed. The phones were traced by police to Kisii.
Mr Stevenson Oduor Ouma and Ms Mercy Gitiri Mongo, who were Ms Wanjiku’s friends, were released after spending weeks in detention. Also released was the 17-year-old student of St Lawrence Nyabieyo Secondary School.
Mr Justus Nyamete Manyura, a 43-year-old tout from Kawangware, Nairobi, Mr Edwin Oduor Otieno, a tenderpreneur, and Mr Samuel Okoth Adinda have been charged with the murder. The three were released on a Sh1 million bond or Sh500,000 cash bail issued by Justice Daniel Ogembo on June 2. During the bail application hearing, Ms Wanjiku’s mother told the court that she had been sent a threatening message. This was, however, treated as suspicion.
“I do appreciate the concerns of the victim’s family. The text sent to the mother with a veiled threat is indeed unfortunate. However, unless some nexus is made between the sender and the accused persons, it will remain mere suspicion that the accused were involved in it,” ruled Justice Ogembo.
“Each accused is warned not to interfere with, intimidate, threaten or harass any of the witnesses or potential witnesses, or relatives of victims in this case, whether in the form of covert or overt action, through social or other media, and whether by himself or through proxy or through others,” warned the judge.
It is expected that technology will play a huge role in the trial, which could go on for several months.
The initial theory of the police was that she may have been killed over some tenders that her company was involved in, or a business deal gone sour. What is not in contention is that the 38-year-old mother of two had withdrawn some money from a bank in Ngara on the day she died.
“Police need time to get a report from the Integrated, Control and Communication Centre also known as the IC3 system and CCTV footage from the bank where the victim was last seen. We also need to get details of her bank accounts,” the lead investigator for the case, Mr Earnest Kinyua, from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) told the court in February while applying to detain the suspects.
The IC3 is a system of cameras installed on major roads in Nairobi and Mombasa to help police fight crime. The system’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras can trace the movement of a vehicle, showing the exact time, direction it is headed to and the number of occupants on the front seats.
The system has proven reliable on a number of occasions when police wanted to track stolen cars or solve complex crimes. In this particular case, there will be interest to know the movements of Ms Wanjiku’s car, which was found at the gate of Gatina Primary School in Kawangware, on February 13.
Also of interest will be the movement of a black car belonging to Mr Otieno and a white Mercedes Benz belonging to Mr Okoth in the days before and after Ms Wanjiku’s murder.
Additionally, there will be interest in the results of a forensic analysis on Ms Wanjiku’s two mobile phones, whose Sim cards were removed shortly after she disappeared.
