Joseph Irungu alias Jowie is escorted to prison on February 9, 2024 after he was found guilty of murdering Monica Kimani.
Joseph Irungu aka Jowie, the man who was on Friday found guilty of murdering Monica Kimani in September 2018, lived life in the fast lane and had a good taste for life, but he was secretive and guarded about his personal life.
He was a loner but a man of the people. But most of all, he kept his ways close to his heart. So mysterious was he that his clique struggled to put a personality to his persona.
But as he came closer to his date with destiny, he developed a new affection – for God and faith. He turned to God for comfort and restoration, and he often spoke of his newfound love in his most difficult moments.
Joseph Irungu.
Now, more than ever, he has been posting snippets of Christian songs as a form of entertainment.
If there are lyrics that give a glimpse of how much the case was weighing on him, it is in Maverick City Music's God Problems: “There's just some problems only God can fix. If there'll be some moments that just don't make sense. I've seen it happen time and time again. There's just some problems only God can fix.”
Jowie found solace at a particularly unprecedented time, the moment he found himself in and put his fate in God's hands.
The uncertainty and finality that would come with the murder case in which he was the prime suspect was unfolding before him, immensely so, it seemed.
“There's just some battles flesh and blood can't win. There'll be some moments that just don't make sense. I can't see it now, but I'm still convinced. There's just problems only God can fix,” he said in the clip.
Jowie was many things to many people. To former TV anchor Jacque Maribe – with whom he stood in the dock for judgment – he was an ex-fiancé. But his friends have mixed and opposed views of who he is.
Former TV journalist Jacque Maribe and Joseph Kuria Irungu alias Jowie at the Milimani Court in Nairobi on Monday, October 15, 2018. Inset: The late businesswoman Monica Kimani.
He is a friend they knew as wealthy, someone who never drove the same expensive car for long, and for whom no drink was too expensive. One woman described him as generous. Another described him as sinister. They all had a different view of who he was, but they all agreed that he enjoyed the finer things in life. And he was never afraid to show off his expensive lifestyle on social media.
Photos on his Instagram account – where he has more than 23,000 followers – testify to his lavish experiences.
His insatiable appetite for the good life is immortalised in photos on the web and also on social media sites.
He usually wore cool jackets, fancy shoes and T-shirts, outfits that oozed extravagance and good taste – or so the photos suggested.
His former classmate, who did not want to be named because of Jowie’s new-found fame, previously described him as a "mysterious" person. According to him, Jowie had a lot of money but no one questioned its source because he had worked abroad.
“I have known him for more than 10 years,” he previously told the Nation. “We all knew he was working as a professional bouncer in the Middle East but did not go beyond that.”
His love of women, his friends say, is legendary. One young woman in the city, who said she had gone out with Jowie and his clique on several occasions, described him as "quite the marauding bull".
She claimed that Jowie had a habit of dating women and dumping them quickly. She also described him as an "overprotective" boyfriend who treats women generously.
According to her, almost every member of Jowie's clique knew he was in the military and therefore "asked few questions".
However, Jowie's dashing life came to a halt after he was arrested as a prime suspect in the murder of Monica Nyawira Kimani in 2018.
His celebrity lifestyle came to a dramatic halt as he sat in the dock with a gunshot wound to his chest.
Jowie, it is said, allowed very few people into his home, especially after he fell out with a man called Mark Kaloki. Kaloki worked for Kenya Airways as a cabin crew member.
If Jowie did work for KBR, he was part of a large network of private soldiers working for the US government as private armies run by security companies.
Whether Jowie worked for the O'Gara Group could not be independently confirmed, but the group's president, Bill O'Gara, has been quoted as saying that the group provides explosive ordnance disposal training "that is purely defensive in nature and for the sole purpose of counter-terrorism and protection of personnel and facilities".
