As is typical of most young women gaining freedom for the first time away from their parents, Faith Vicky Owuor got herself a boyfriend immediately she joined university.
She moved in with Marcel Jumanne Dalance, an old friend from her hometown Kisumu, who became her lover when they both landed at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Jkuat).
They were both 19 and too young to get married, but they were now in university and every student couple around them was cohabiting.
So, when Faith’s parents got her off-campus accommodation in room 105 at Alpha House in Juja town, a stone’s throw away from the university, her boyfriend moved in without the knowledge of her family.
Unknown to Marcel, Faith had an ex-boyfriend, Ahmed, who lived in Dubai. Upon finding out about his former girlfriend’s new-found freedom, Ahmed brought himself back into the picture. The ex-lovers communicated several times while Marcel and Faith were living together.
The chats between the former lovers graduated fast into an urge to meet. Ahmed flew to Nairobi, but the night before he was to meet his ex-girlfriend, fire broke out in room 105, Alpha House. She died in the fire, but Marcel survived.
He was among the people who helped to put out the fire, according to witnesses who included the caretaker of the property, Mr Stephen Ng’ang’a. He explained that it was Marcel who woke him up at around 1:30am, telling him that fire had broken out in the room.
Officers from Juja Police Station immediately responded to the fire. That was July 10, 2014. And it would take six years to know exactly who was responsible for Faith’s death.
Police Constable Japheth Kipruto was on duty that night, and he was among the first officers to respond.
At the scene, Mr Kipruto, who was in the company of Corporal Elizabeth Mwangangi, met Marcel and Ng’ang’a, who were among the people who had helped to put out the fire.
“Marcel and the caretaker led us to the room, which was in complete darkness,” Corporal Mwangangi would later tell the court.
However, on arriving at the room, Marcel pulled back, refusing to enter. He told the police that he had left Faith in there making tea. The caretaker entered the room with the officers, where they found Faith’s body completely burned on the bed.
Interestingly, the electric kettle and the gas cooker, either of which Faith would have ordinarily used to make tea, had not exploded. Furthermore, Faith’s body was lying flat on the bed and nowhere near the two cooking devices or the door, meaning she had not struggled when the fire broke out.
Without any witnesses, investigators had to rely on circumstantial evidence to place a suspect at the scene and determine whether there was a motive in killing Faith, or if it was an accident.
Marcel provided an alibi, claiming he was at a nightclub with his friends until 1am when he returned to find the room on fire. On being cross-examined, his friends Byron Okoth and Leonel Mumachia said they were with Marcel only up to 10pm.
“There remained a gap as to where Marcel was between 10pm and 1am,” the court heard. In the hours leading to the fire, Faith was in communication with her friend Mildred Nekesa, a University of Nairobi student who also hails from Kisumu.
“I will tell you the story. The tables have turned. Marcel and I are done for good. We have really fought. Things were hot. He even wants to kill me,” Faith texted Mildred at about 10pm before her phone went off.
Ms Nekesa was the last person to speak with Faith, according to a forensic analysis on their phones. She also bore the unfortunate task of informing Faith’s parents that their daughter had died after receiving the information from Marcel.
On cross-examination, Ms Nekesa confirmed that Faith and Marcel had a physical fight that night, because Faith was waiting for her ex-boyfriend Ahmed to arrive the next day and had, in fact, broken up with Marcel after he found out.
Justice James Wakiaga said any statement issued by a dead person in relation to their death is admissible as evidence. Consequently, Faith’s text message to Ms Nekesa on the day she died possibly pointed out who her killer was.
“Such statements are admissible whether the person who made them was or was not expecting death when he made the statements,” Justice Wakiaga said.
“While it’s not the rule of law that a dying declaration must be corroborated, the trial court must proceed with caution, and to get the necessary assurance that a conviction founded on a death declaration is indeed safe,” the judge said.
But even with a text message showing that Faith and Marcel had a fight on the night she died, the court needed more evidence.
During questioning on the night of the fire, Marcel told the police that the mobile phones found on him were his. He said Faith’s phone may have been burnt in the fire.
However, when Ms Nekesa arrived at the station, she confirmed that one of the phones Marcel had in his possession belonged to Faith. The phone was taken away for forensic analysis.
There was the question of what caused the fire. Marcel and his two friends, Mr Okoth and Mr Mumachia, had told police that the room had an electric fault on the day the fire broke out.
Mr Mumachia and Mr Okoth claimed they left Marcel’s room together with him at around 5pm on the material day. They went out for drinks at a local club called Kamwangi Place.
The caretaker of the building confirmed seeing Faith at around 5pm in the room, and Marcel at about 6pm along the corridors.
Mr James Museja, a student who lived in room 103, also confirmed seeing Marcel going downstairs at between 5pm and 6pm, “to the meter box to recharge his electricity supply [with a prepaid token]”.
The big question was if room 105 had a problem with electricity, why was Marcel topping up the tokens? This question would be answered by Mr Ben Rono, a safety engineer at Kenya Power.
In his expert assessment, Mr Rono said he first noticed that the fire only affected room 105 and not the neighbouring rooms, which had electricity when he arrived. It also only burnt the bed and a wardrobe.
“The bulb holder was missing. The meter box at the ground-floor was intact, the extension socket outlet inside the room had been partially burned, the wall with circuit breaker had smoke, the iron box was not in use and the cables shared with room 106 were not affected,” said Mr Rono.
With these observations, Mr Rono “concluded that the cause of the fire was not electrical” and he could not tell what caused it.
With an electrical fault having been ruled out as the cause of the fire, the next matter on the table for investigators was to find out what killed Faith.
The charred body that was pulled out of the room was so badly burnt that it took Faith’s mother Claris Otieno to identify it as belonging to her daughter through a gap between her teeth as well as her height.
A pathology report by Dr Eunice Mugweru of Kenyatta Hospital said that Faith died as a result of severe burns, and that she was alive before the fire broke out.
“The respiratory system had inhalation burns in the upper air ways, meaning that the deceased was alive before her death,” said the postmortem examination report.
“It was however difficult to tell whether there was any struggle before death, since all the soft tissue had burned, but did not affect the internal organs,” Dr Mugweru would later tell the court during Marcel’s trial.
With this, the court concluded that Marcel was making up stories on what killed his girlfriend.
“There is undisputed evidence that the relationship between the accused and the deceased was not rosy on the night she met her death. There was also the evidence to the effect that the deceased’s former boyfriend, one Ahmed, had come back in the picture and that the deceased was supposed to visit together with the said Ahmed,” ruled Justice Wakiaga.
“It is, therefore, clear to my mind that the motive for the murder of the deceased was a result of love gone sour or love triangle and that in an attempt to stop the deceased from hooking up with the said Ahmed, [he killed her],” said the Judge.
Marcel was last Friday found guilty of murdering his girlfriend Faith. He will be sentenced in two weeks’ time. Ahmed’s whereabouts are still unknown, but he was never thought of by detectives as a suspect in the murder that occurred hours before he was to meet the victim.
