Inside the mind of man who killed 5 sons

Just four months before John Kiprono Kirui butchered his five sons and committed suicide in Saboi Village of Kuresoi District, he quit chang’aa brewing and told his brother he was thinking of joining a church. (READ: Man kills five children, commits suicide)

This turnaround pleased the family of the 47-year-old farmer — not least his wife Betty Kirui, 37, for whom Kirui’s drunkenness posed a threat. Neighbours say the threat to her life was real.

So when her husband quit brewing the potent traditional liquor, there was hope he would eventually quit alcohol altogether.

“He was a quiet man who easily lost his temper and resorted to armed violence to make his point,” said Mr Leonard Kiprotich, 24, Kirui’s brother. “My brother was a very reserved person but he was not unfriendly. When approached he was affable and chatty; otherwise he kept to himself.”

This is corroborated by a neighbour, Mr Reuben Kipchirchir.

His wife often bore the brunt of his frequent bursts of rage. Since their marriage in 2001 the couple had had a tumultuous relationship that was often violent.

“He beat her very often, and he seemed not to care that she was a woman and his wife for that matter,” added Mr Kiprotich.

In those 12 years, Betty must have felt the cold hard metal of Kirui’s sharpened panga bite painfully into her skin countless times and bore bruises for months at a time after each episode of their domestic squabbles.

Kipsonoi sub-location assistant chief Lina Koech described Kirui as a humble man who did not talk much, a light drinker and hardworking family man who loved his children.

“I was pleased when he stopped brewing chang’aa to focus on his family,” said the administrator.

It is difficult to figure out what caused a man obviously bent on changing his wayward behaviour for the sake of his family to capitulate in such a manner and turn against his own children so brutally.

Many villagers cite family squabbles as his undoing. Kirui scribbled a suicide note in Kalenjin, addressed to his mother-in-law and left it on the wall of his house.

“Now you can take back your daughter,” it read, according to a translation by Mr Samuel Langat, a primary school teacher and Kirui’s immediate neighbour.

Villagers say there was a perpetual tug-of-war between Kirui and his in-laws, who they felt were undermining his marriage. That is why when Betty ran away from a husband bent on killing her that night she hid in a friend’s place in a different village and not her parents’ home, which is nearby.

Village elders also recalled Kirui’s land inheritance dispute with his father, who frequently reminded him that he was not his real son because he was born out of wedlock to an unknown man.

His father felt that since he had five other sons (they were a family of nine siblings but one son died a week before Kirui’s death), he had no obligation towards Kirui.

Worse, Kirui had five sons who would one day need land.

Kirui had tried to kill his wife on several occasions, his brother disclosed.

But this acute resentment towards his wife must have been misdirected towards his mother-in-law. Kirui seemed to want to punish his in-law by wiping out his entire family.

Erstwhile protector

It was a plan well thought-out and executed, albeit with a slight aberration — Betty escaped. In the dead of night that “Black Monday”, five innocent lives were driven to an early grave.

And on Tuesday morning, the stiff cold bodies of Amos Kipkoech, 10, nine-year-old twins John Kiprop and Caleb Kipchirchir, Daniel Kiplagat, 5, and two-year-old Gideon Kipng’eno, lay in a pool of blood on the dusty floor of their two-room semi-permanent house.

The boys’ erstwhile protector - their father - butchered them with a knife seemingly sharpened for that purpose, one after the other as they screamed for help.

Kirui then reached for a rope and hanged himself. He “stood” over the mutilated bodies of his sons in death, his body hanging from the sisal rope tied to the rafters, his feet dangling.

After his wife fled, with a panga cut in the shoulder, Kirui had rounded up his sons into the room as the fire that he had lit to distract neighbours razed the grass-thatch kitchen.

He even went for the eldest son, who had gone to visit his grandmother (Kirui’s mother) at her house.

Betty seemed distraught and refused to grant an interview to the Saturday Nation at her friend’s home in Kugeron Village.

Kewamoi Dispensary nursing officer Zephania Boen, who is looking after her, said she was emotionally traumatised and it would take time for her to accept the demise of her entire family.

“I think we leave it to God, for now. But I hope she recovers,” he said.

He started with Amos as the others watched. He stabbed him severally then slit his throat. The others screamed, but the radio whose volume was on full blast drowned their agitated calls for help. They huddled together near the door which Kirui had locked.

He then proceeded to butcher the rest of his children one by one in a similar fashion. The positions of the bodies corroborate this; the eldest son lies at the center of the room near his dead father while the other bodies are crowded close to the door where the pool of blood forms a dreadful pond.

The scene indicates a deranged but conscious and clear thinking mind.

From the hastily scribbled suicide note scratched hastily on the wall to the several sharpened knives lying around the scene and the incredible destruction meted against the homestead by its protector, this is a scene straight from hell.

It speaks of deep emotional turmoil and mind-boggling violence. Villagers, shocked to the core by the bestiality of it all, converged on a field next to the homestead and looked bleakly about in the aftermath of the murder.

Betty seemed distraught and refused to grant an interview to the Saturday Nation at the home of a friend in nearby Kugeron Village.

Kewamoi Dispensary Nursing Officer Zephania Boen, who is looking after her, said she was emotionally traumatised and would take time to accept the demise of her entire family.

“I think we leave it to God, for now. But I hope she recovers,” he said.

Little discernible emotion ran through the gathered crowd – only deep, palpable shock.

Saboi Village is usually peaceful and quiet, nestled in lush hills adjacent to the majestic Kiptunga Forest Block of the Mau Forest Complex.

It has a cool and temperate climate, and crops mostly do well throughout the year. Most residents are peasant farmers born and bred here, and used to simple predictable daily routines devoid of much excitement.  There’s plenty to eat and surplus for the market as well as a quiet, predictable lifestyle.

The roar of police Landrovers and flash of media cameras and the grisly sight in their midst must have been very disturbing for such a quiet village that early on a Tuesday morning.

We managed to nudge a few brave ones to speak of the beastly act and from 43 year-old Samuel Langat, a primary school teacher and immediate neighbour to the deceased, we finally managed to prise information from witnesses regarding the incident.

“I arrived home at 8pm last night and passed by Kirui’s boma on my way home as I usually do. I found him with his children outside their house and I said Hello. His wife was in the kitchen making supper. Nothing seemed amiss,” said Mr Langat.

He said that at around 11pm, he heard a commotion and Betty’s screams from Kirui’s house. He went to investigate and found the couple fighting. Kirui had accosted his wife with a panga. In the ensuing fracas, he cut her on the left shoulder.

“As I rushed in to help her, Kirui must have gotten distracted and she managed to extricate herself and jump out through the window. Clearly, his intentions had been to kill her. She narrowly escaped death,” said Mr Langat.

After that, he had a brief talk with Kirui who seemed a little drunk then went back to sleep: “I felt reassured that there would be no further incidents as the wife had left and there would be no further reason to fight. They did this all the time.”

But at around 3am, he heard the children screaming. When he got out, he found Kirui’s kitchen on fire. He had set it alight himself. When asked why he was torching his own homestead, Kirui said that it was an accident.

There was no further incident, but Kirui switched on his radio to a deafening volume and never switched it off that night – or the following morning either.

Mr Langat would discover the bodies when he went to check on the family at 8am on Tuesday.

“At around 8am today (Tuesday), I ventured into Kirui’s homestead because it was unlike him to have the radio on so loud that early in the morning. Furthermore, I have never known his children or his wife to sleep until that late. Personally, I thought he was out in the shamba, so I went to check on his children,” Mr Langat said.

What he found, he says, sapped the strength right out of his knees and dried the saliva in his mouth. Apart from the screaming radio, it was all quiet. Way too quiet.

“After knocking on the door with no response, I decided to check the window behind the house. I peered through a chink and noticed broken furniture and bloodstains,” he says.

He adds that he broke down the window, and the first thing he saw was Kirui hanging from the rafters from a rope tied around his neck and his feet touching the floor. Indeed, Mr Langat remarked, he seemed to merely be standing there but for the rope around his neck.

The bodies of his children lay strewn about the floor at his feet with deep cuts in the throat and chest. Betty Kirui is being taken care of at the house of a friend in the nearby Kugeron Village. When the Nation visited the homestead following the incident, she seemed distraught and refused to grant an interview.

Kewamoi Dispensary Nursing Officer Zephania Boen, who is looking after her, said that she was emotionally traumatised and would take time to accept the demise of her entire family.

“I think we leave it to God, for now. But I hope she recovers,” he said.