A Nigerian man who was found murdered alongside his Kenyan girlfriend last Monday may have been tricked by his killers to call his girlfriend and pretend that he was involved in an accident along Kiambu Road and needed help, only to be killed together, even as the mystery behind the killing of the two lovebirds remains unclear.
Rachel Kanini, who turned 31 a few months ago and lived with her boyfriend identified as Olujobi Gbenga on Ridgeways Kiambu Road, received a call from her boyfriend informing her that he had been involved in an accident near Muthaiga.
Before she arrived, Mr Gbenga is said to have called Ms Kanini again to inform her that he had been arrested by people claiming to be police officers and that he needed her to accompany him to a police station to record a statement.
These are the last moments and interactions shared by close friends of Ms Kanini on a WhatsApp group formed exclusively for her closest friends ahead of her burial in Tala, Machakos next week.
Her friends claim that Ms Kanini called them and asked them to pray for her boyfriend after he called them to say he was in distress before he left the house.
Agnes Muthoni*, not her real name and who asked not to be named for this report for fear of being summoned by detectives to reveal more details about the murder, says Ms Kanini, who was about to get married, was worried about the whole accident and arrest saga and may have innocently driven herself into a death trap.
“The last moment I had with Kanini was a few weeks ago when she called me to ask if I could accompany her to the recently concluded WRC Safari rally in Naivasha. She sounded excited. I told her I was feeling exhausted and the last conversation was when she contacted me on the day she disappeared to tell me that she was worried that her husband had called to inform her that he had been involved in an accident and was on his way to the scene. She said, pray for my husband, he has been involved in an accident. A few minutes later, she called to say he had been arrested by people claiming to be police officers,'' Ms Muthoni told Nation.
The couple's disappearance, before their bodies were found dumped in Ruai almost a week later, was reported at Kasarani Police Station Nairobi under OB 2/26/06/2023 by a relative after close friends told their circles what Ms Kanini had told them and eventually failed to return home.
Although Kasarani Sub-county Criminal Investigations Officer Jimmy Kimaro declined to reveal the preliminary findings of their investigations when Nation visited his office on Sunday, family and close friends as well as detectives familiar with the incident at Kasarani Police Station and Directorate of Criminal Investigations Headquarters told Nation that the couple's killers were probably well known to them given the manner in which they were killed.
At the scene where the bodies were found in Ruai, near Ms Kanini's rural home and at City Mortuary in Nairobi, where the bodies of the two are being kept ahead of their post-mortem on Tuesday, it appears that after Ms Kanini turned up thinking she was going to find out what had happened to her boyfriend, she was bundled into his car and her own car, which she had driven to the scene, was dumped in Thome area, which is accessible from Muthaiga North Road, which connects both Kiambu Road and Thika road.
A source at City Mortuary told Nation on Friday that the two were apparently tied from behind, tortured and then beaten with a blunt object before being burnt to death.
“It seems that they were killed by people who knew them very well and their killers made sure that no trace was left behind to link them to the killing. They were brought here by police officers from Ruai and were detained unknown until recently when their families came here and identified them after many hours,'' a mortuary attendant told Nation.
Ruai DCI Dorcas Simalo said she had no details on the matter as her jurisdiction was a secondary one that only collected the bodies and took them to the city mortuary and investigations into the matter had been taken over by Kasarani Police Station and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters along Kiambu Road.
So far, no one, even their friends, knows what the deceased did for a living but what they do know is that they lived a good life and openly displayed their affection, especially on social media.
Police sources say that it was difficult at the moment to ascertain what could have been the motive for the killing.
In most cases, a love triangle, a business deal gone sour or a business rivalry have been linked to such killings.
