Knife murder rocks Deya family

UK police on Tuesday arrested a son of embattled London-based Kenyan preacher Gilbert Deya on suspicion of murder. Paul Deya, 31, was arrested after his three-year-old son, Wilson, was found stabbed to death on Monday.

Paul was suspected of having killed Wilson and stabbing the boy’s mother, Jacqueline Otieno, 28, in a ferocious knife attack at their home in Southwark, South East London before turning the knife on himself. The couple’s 17-month-old baby girl was not harmed in the incident.

Baby thief

Pastor Gilbert Deya claims to pray for infertile women to have children. However, Kenyan authorities say he is a baby thief and have been seeking to prosecute him. He is fighting extradition from the UK, arguing that Kenya is banana republic-type country where he is unlikely to get justice. His wife is serving a prison term for child theft.

During the Monday incident, Paul’s neighbours called the police on hearing the couple quarrelling in their flat in East London at about 6pm. Police officers arrived at the Lynton Estate flat 15 minutes later to find the body of the three-year-old boy. Mrs Otieno was taken to hospital with a stab wound on the neck. She has since been discharged.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said Paul remained under police guard in South London hospital after undergoing surgery for stab wounds to his neck and body. “Police have launched a murder inquiry and are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of a three-year-old boy in Southwark,” he said.

The death is being investigated by officers led by Detective Inspector Keith Braithwaite, based at Stratford Police Station in East London.“At this stage, officers are looking into all the circumstances surrounding the child’s death. The investigation is being carried out by the Child Abuse Command of The Metropolitan Police Service,” the spokesman said.

Detectives are investigating reports that Mrs Otieno had asked her husband for a separation before he attacked her. Paul is believed to have stabbed himself repeatedly during the attack. He was adopted by the bishop after his own father died.

A well placed source who knew the couple said that Paul and Jacqueline worked for the Gilbert Deya Ministries in London. “Paul was in charge of Deya Broadcasting Network (DBN) a new satellite broadcasting service which broadcasts on Sky TV channel while his wife worked as an accountant,” said the source.

The Kenyan community in London expressed shock on learning about the incident. “Everyone is horrified by the gruesome murder of the little boy,” said Mr Macharia wa Gakuru, author of Deya & The Miracle Babies, a biography of Bishop Deya, part of which was serialised by the Daily Nation in July. Incidents of children being killed are rare in London. Last year there were six cases of children below the age of 12 being killed; only two were stabbed.

Borrowed time

On November 8, the Sunday Nation reported that Pastor Deya, 56, was living on borrowed time in London after it emerged that he had exhausted all avenues of appeal in the United Kingdom and will be kicked out soon. The controversial preacher is fighting extradition to Kenya in a complex and costly legal tussle in the British courts. It is believed his legal costs amounted to more than Sh124 million (£1 million).

Pastor Deya, who runs his world-wide Gilbert Deya Ministries from Ormside Road, Peckham, South London, has 34,000 followers in the UK alone. However, he is now considered a failed asylum seeker currently ordered to report weekly at Deptford Police Station in South London.

Sources told the Nation that Pastor Deya could be extradited before Christmas. The preacher is wanted in Kenya on five counts of abducting children aged between 22 months and four-and-a-half years between 1999 and 2004. He claims to have powers which have enabled 22 infertile and menopausal women to have “miracle babies”.

Police in Nairobi say their investigations revolve around the disappearance of babies from Nairobi’s Pumwani Maternity Hospital and involve suspects in Britain, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. His wife Mary and two other women, Miriam Nyeko and Rose Kiserem, were jailed for two years over the miracle babies saga.

The Daily Mirror, a London tabloid, reported that Paul and his wife were partners in a broke video editing business, J Okendo Ltd. A well-placed source told the Nation that Jacqueline was being looked after by her adopted West Indies family in Peckham, South London.

The couple’s 17-month baby girl, Velarie, is in the custody of Southwark Social Services. “The couple handled all Deya’s financial transactions,” said Mr Gakuru, a former Deya business associate. Sources told the Nation that although the couple appeared a normal happy family to the outside world, they were locked in a bitter, arranged marriage. The couple married in 2005 at Deya’s church in London, with Pastor Deya officiating the ceremony.

Sources said Paul was usually quiet and calm. “He was unwell for a while with a heart ailment which was treated at the Nairobi Hospital in 2008,” said Mr Gakuru. Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat MP for North Southwark and Bermondsey, who lives a short distance away from the couple’s home said:“The thoughts and prayers of the country will be with the little girl also found in the flat, and all the family”.

Paul was adopted by Bishop Deya after his biological father, Wilson Deya died in the 1970s. He arrived in the UK in the late 1990s along with Deya’s other children, Amos, Dan, Rebecca, Jane, David and Moses. Moses is now in the custody of social services after DNA paternity results proved he was not Pastor Deya’s son. Paul’s brother, Walter lives in Nairobi with his wife, Annete. Paul studied media studies at Croydon College along with his cousin Dan in 2003.