At the height of their fight against crime in 2005, police in Kenya profiled what they referred to as members of a gang of criminals with international links across the region.
The mob was reportedly involved in bank robberies, murders, carjackings and cash-in-transit heists.
While some members of the gang are reported to have been killed in either Kenya or Tanzania, others remain at large — almost five years after they were placed on the Kenya Police’s Most Wanted list.
They include Jackson Irungu Mwangi alias Jack, Silas Mugendi Njeru alias Patrick Irungu, Godfrey Mulwa Kitheka alias Ngilu, Evans Mathyaka Mue alias Walter Musyoka Mue alias Kijana, Samuel Gitau Saitoti alias Simo, Peter Mutua Kainde and Wafula Muyela.
Another group of Kenyan criminals was arrested in Mozambique in December 2005 while reportedly planning a robbery.
The 10 were airlifted to Dar-es-Salaam under Kenyan and Tanzanian police escort aboard a Mozambican military plane before being handed over to Tanzanian authorities.
They were convicted of robbing a Moshi-based forex bureau of Tsh44 million and the National Bank of Commerce, Moshi branch of Tsh5.3 billion, and sent to the cooler in Moshi.
They include William Onyango Ndanyi alias Daddy, Jimmy Maina Njoroge, Patrick Muthee Muriithi, Simon Githinji Kariuki, David Ngugi Mburu and Michael Mbanya Wathigo.
So far, five of the Kenyans in the Moshi jail have died in what still remain mysterious circumstances.
Saitoti and his gang were reported to be the masterminds of the biggest bank robberies, carjackings of four-wheel drive vehicles and the murder of police officers in the period between 2003 and 2007.
A resident of Kajiado, the tall and light-complexioned gangster was said to have hideouts in Kiserian, Nairobi, Mombasa and Nakuru.
In Kenya, he was accused of involvement in the Fort Jesus Forex Bureau heist of October 2003, the daring rescue of his accomplices from the Embu GK Prison in August 2005, the murder of two police officers during a robbery in Mombasa on December 12, 2006, an armed robbery in Njoro on January 4, 2007 and the Habib Bank, Mombasa branch robbery of January 17, 2007.
The 30-year-old matatu driver and resident of Ngong was arrested in Arusha’s posh Liro estate while in the company of an accomplice identified as Peter Michael Kimani alias Kim.
The over 100 Tanzanian police officers and military personnel who laid siege on the house recovered seven guns, hand grenades, two bullet-proof jackets and over 85 rounds of ammunition from the pair.
Police accused him of being behind the murder of renowned international scientist and AIDS researcher Prof Joel Bwayo, who was gunned down by criminals along the Kiserian-Isinya road.
Prof Bwayo’s wife and a foreign friend were seriously injured during the incident, in which Matheri and his accomplices are reported to have taken control of part of a road during a daring robbery spree.
Since 2000, Matheri’s criminal record was the worst, only rivalled by Rasta, Wanugu and Wacucu, the trio whose hunt in the 1990s dominated media reports before they, too, died in a hail of bullets.
Matheri was accused of at least 11 murders, rapes, robberies and carjackings.
He was also implicated in the killing of an American missionary and her daughter, who were attacked in the Kinoo area of Nairobi while waiting in their car for a friend to pick them up.
Several days later, he and his gang pursued a father and son — who had witnessed a robbery by the mob — to their home and shot them in cold blood.
Former police commissioner Hussein Ali had described Matheri a “public enemy number one,” and said he wanted him dead or alive.
For almost two years, Matheri and members of his gang arrest, in spite of a sustained hunt by a special squad of police officers. News of his death was received with celebrations, especially in his hometown of Gachie, which had had enough of him.
Even before Matheri’s cruelty had spread to the rest of the country, his neighbours had raided his home and torched his house and eight others belonging to his relatives.
The villagers’ fury had been aroused by the shooting to death of two people in the area, and witnesses had identified the attacker as Matheri.
He was gunned down together with an accomplice, Muchiri, who acted as his bodyguard. His wife and child were held in police cells for several days following his death before they were released.
The man was not your conventional criminal, nor was he the kind that makes it to the police list of ‘the most wanted’.
He was simply ‘The Naivasha Vampire’, the man who lured women to his house, raped them, cut their veins and sucked their blood.
When the story broke out, police raided his den in their droves, and found the most shocking scene they had ever witnessed.
One of Matheri’s victims had died during an orgy, and the man had dug a shallow hole inside his hovel and buried her there. How he slept with the though of a dead body beneath his bed is hard to fathom.
Residents of Kihoto in Naivasha, where he stayed in a rented mud house, lived in fear as reports circulated that he had killed a dozen other women, yet he was still at large.
His hunts were, however, cut short when police arrested him and charged him with murder.
An earth mover was sent to the sleepy slum to excavate more bodies from the hovel, but the search was futile.
The Vampire is still in jail, thank God.
Unlike Matheri — and other criminals before him, — Shimoli was arrested and jailed, then gunned down shortly after he finished his prison term.
In early 2000, police declared this man the most dangerous villain on Kenyan soil, and set up a team to hunt him down. When he was arrested a few months later, the charge sheet read like a thriller.
He was reported to have killed his brother in law and shot his wife in the back after accusing them of tipping off the police about his criminal activities.
Things were even hard on him, given his rather unimpressive prison record. The man had escaped from jail three times — including once from the dreaded Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
During interrogation after his arrest in Gitari by Flying Squad officers attached to the Kikuyu Police Station, Shimoli confessed to several murders and rapes.
The unsuspecting police officers had initially thought they were raiding a drugs den when Shimoli, who had sent some of his accomplices for shopping, met them at the door with a wide grin.
There was nothing he could do. He had been caught pants-down, with his favourite gun lying on a coffee table — loaded for the next hunt.
Shimoli was one of the most murderous criminals thing country has ever seen before he met his death.
He would spare nothing, not even a life, to regain his freedom — however short. Among the victims of his romps was a police officer, who was shot dead in Uhuru Park, Nairobi by his accomplices during one of his dramatic escapes from custody at the Kenyatta National Hospital, where he was being held.
During his appearances in court, Shimoli was photographed raising the middle finger at judicial officials, and had the audacity to light a roll of bhang within the corridors of justice. That very foolish act earned him one more year in the slammer.
He was accused of 14 murders, 88 rapes, countless bank robberies, car-jackings and drug deals.
However, the state failed to prove all the charges against him, and he was jailed for 12 years for illegal possession of a firearm.
A few years later, he walked out of prison a free man, having completed his term. He had protested against his release, saying he would not survive a day outside with the police on his heels.
Less than two months after his release, his body was found at the City Mortuary — with a bullet in the head.
It later emerged he had been gunned down in Ruai, in the outskirts of the city, three days earlier.
He was put on the police ‘Most Wanted’ list alongside nine other suspected criminals. However, despite being arrested and charged with various offences — among them robbery with violence, murder, cash-in-transit heists and rape — Kiragita (his nickname) managed to get out of prison on what police described as flimsy technicalities.
He was later arrested by Special Crime Prevention Unit detectives alongside a Charles Kimani and a former Administration Police officer, John Kamau Karuga, at a hideout in Kawangware.
He was described as a dangerous carjacker, involved in the May 24, 2004 daring daylight robbery at the Bank of Baroda in which Sh7.4 million was snatched.
Police insisted he was part of an 11-man gang that attempted to hijack a cash-in-transit van on its way from Nanyuki to Nairobi. Although four of his accomplices were arrested, Kiragita and six others managed to escape, but were traced through a concubine to Nairobi’s Kayole estate.
The female accomplice also led detectives to another wanted gangster, Thomas Gitau alias ‘Wamatumbo’.
Kiragita and his accomplices were also wanted for the cold-blooded murder of the then Officer Commanding Scenes of Crime, Apollo Jakait, who was shot dead in Ongata Rongai while driving home.
After his release from prison on June 20, 2004, Kiragita was shot dead by police at Industrial Area on May 20, 2005 during a robbery. He was in full police uniform at the time of his death.
He and his three accomplices had accosted a businessman, identified as Rajan Gautama, at the Entreprise Road/ Dar-es-Salaam Road junction, forced their way into his car and shot and injured him before robbing him of jewellery, a mobile phone and money. Police recovered three rifles, a pistol and 20 rounds of ammunition.
A native of Mutitu wa Ndooa in Kitui, the stout, dark-complexioned man who had hideouts in Mombasa, Nairobi’s Kayole and Umoja estates, Machakos and Mutito was implicated in a January 21, 2007 robbery in Machakos and another on the next day in Kitui, apart from the Mombasa Habib Bank robbery, the Njoro robbery, the Embu GK Prison rescue and the murder of two police officers in Mombasa.
