Murder that jolted the Muigai Kenyatta family

On the day she was murdered by still unknown assailants, Mrs Esther Njoki Muigai had collected her children from school in the afternoon and dropped them home as usual. She then left "to meet a friend". She never came home alive. Twenty-four year later, the findings of police investigations have yet to be revealed to her relatives who are now demanding to know who killed their mother and why.
 

The body of Mrs Esther Njoki Muigai, the fifth wife of Mr Peter Muigai Kenyatta, was found on their expansive farm at Kasarani, Nairobi, on the night of October 16, 1980. Mr Muigai Kenyatta, a son of the late President Jomo Kenyatta, was at one time an assistant minister for Foreign Affairs. 

Mrs Muigai , then aged 47, had been attacked and murdered at the farm gate by unknown assailants as she drove home. Police said she was attacked by gangsters who had earlier laid an ambush and that they killed her as she opened the gate.

It was reported that she was heard screaming before apparently being forced back into the vehicle. Farm workers dashed out but found her attackers gone.

During the search that followed police found the body dumped by a road near Njiru Country Club just after midnight. Her car was found more than 25 kilometres away, abandoned and having been partially burnt near Jamuhuri Park.

 That the killing took place at all still baffles her relatives because the Muigais, because they were an extension of the larger Kenyatta family, were well guarded and protected. Also their farm then was behind the Gatharaini armoury, a military compound guarded by armed soldiers 24 hours a day. There is a public road passing by the armoury gate to the farm and it would have therefore been surprising that the killers went past the armoury and laid an ambush without the soldiers noticing anything.

In any case, they knew all the family members and no stranger ever went through the gate unnoticed. 

Could it be that the soldiers on duty that night did not see any stranger going towards the farm gate? It is said that a sword found in her car resembled those used by soldiers. Were they questioned about it? Or could it be that the armoury was not guarded that night? 

The answer to the last question is no, for when the family were told of a strange vehicle and screaming, they immediately went to inquire from the soldiers and found them there. They also confirmed having seen Mrs Muigai driving home alone.

The only way through the farm was a private road rarely used by non-family members, so how was it possible that somebody unknown to the soldiers went past them, locked the gate and waited for her?

Or were the soldiers on duty that night accomplices in the murder? Were they ever questioned during the investigations, and what did they tell the police? 

Only the family knew the geography of the farm well, so relatives now say that it is likely that someone close to family organised the ambush.

At any rate, great effort went into silencing any questions about the murder. No statements were made of the investigation except a preliminary one from the family spokesman saying that it looked as if she had been hit with a blunt object which caused her death. After the initial report, newspapers carried no further news stories on an intriguing murder that touched on Kenya's most high-profile family.

During investigations the morning after the murder, police detectives chased away family members, including the victim's children, broke into her bedroom and took away some items which they never returned. What was taken away and for what purpose? 

All of Mrs Kenyatta's personal effects on the fateful day, including a handbag and bedroom keys, were removed from the vehicle and have not been seen since. Though the car was found burning at Jamhuri Park, next to the war cemetery, the damage was not so extensive.

That the vehicle was the parked there and the body dumped at Kasarani raises the question of which vehicle was used to drop the body on the farm. Could another vehicle have been used, and whose was it?

Why did the killers take away her personal effects and for what reason? It is unlikely that somebody without an interest in whatever she was doing then took them. 

The investigations never gave a clue as to the motive and those behind the murder, and we the relatives have been left in the dark, said one relative last week.

The relative, who does not wish to be named, says he spoke to the CID director in 1987, Mr Ignatius Nderi, and a well-known police reservist at the time Mr Patrick Shaw, who told him that the information on the murder had been given to a senior family member and that the police were advised to keep off as it was a family matter.

After the funeral, the family had agreed to involve the police in the search for the killers. Mr Shaw, an inspector Wachira and scene-of-crime officer Humphrey Kariuki immediately launched the investigations, whose findings have not been revealed to the children to date.

The silence and hostility on the part of the rest of the family and the police have made the Mrs Muigai's relatives believe that their mother’s murderers are known by somebody in the family who has refused to divulge the information for strange reasons.

The police said Mrs Muigai had dropped her children home from school and left in the evening without specifying where she was going. The motive of the murder was not immediately established and no arrests made, although the police promised to carry out investigations.

It is 25 years since, and her relatives are wondering when the killers will be brought book and what the motive was.

When this happened her children Loise, Jennifer, Eugene and Susan were 25, 23, 21 and 15. The four, who are some of the 22 children left behind by Mr Muigai Kenyatta in 1979, along with her close relatives are still waiting to be told by the police or any member of the family who those behind the killing.

 According to Eugene, who was at home when the incident happened, it was routine for the mother to take them to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. On the fateful day of October 17, she took them to school as usual in the morning and collected them in the afternoon and dropped them home. She left at around 5pm.

At around 7.30pm a farm worker, a Mr Obonyo, came rushing to the house to ask if Mrs Kenyatta was in the house. On being told she had gone out, he said he had heard somebody screaming outside the gate and seen a vehicle travelling towards Njiru Country Club and using the private farm road.

Eugene immediately informed the rest of the family and rushed to the army men guarding the armoury to enquire which vehicle had just left the farm gate.

The soldiers said it was Esther’s (Mrs Kenyatta's) vehicle, registration number KPD 543, that had just gone through the gate and that she was alone in it.

The family immediately informed the police and officers from the Njiru and the Ruaraka stations were mobilised to mount a search.

They established that the killers had laid an ambush outside the gate after locking it. On finding the gate locked, Mrs Kenyatta came out of the vehicle and, as she opened the gate, was grabbed and kidnapped.

As the search for the body went on at around 9.30pm the officers stumbled on a packet of Embassy cigarettes, a piece of cloth torn from her dress and her false teeth.

 Later, the detectives were informed by other officers by radio call that the missing vehicle had been found burning. They had confirmed that nobody was in it, but they recovered a sword with blood stains and a gear lever from it. 

A post mortem examination said she had been hit by a blunt object and died from internal bleeding.

Mr Muigai Kenyatta was survived by four wives, while another had died earlier. At the time of his death, the first wife had five children, the second and the third five each, the fourth three and the fifth four.

His was a close-knit family, and all the children and their mothers stayed in a single farm house. They shared a home, with each wife having a separate bedroom. But although relations were cordial, the family has since disintegrated and the farm house abandoned. The children have also gone their different ways. 

When he died, Mr Muigai Kenyatta had served as an assistant minister for Foreign Affairs. He went to Parliament immediately his father died in 1978. He was very close to the elder statesman and was the natural choice for his replacement.

Relatives still grappling with the loss are left to speculate on the possible motives.

Could it be that the murder had something to do with a property at Nairobi's Industrial Area she owned jointly with another person?

A tenant who had leased the plot later told the family that Mrs Muigai had differed with her partner as he had overheard them exchange words a week before the murder.

Strangely, however, according to relatives, before his death in 1985, the partner was not known to have demanded his share of the proceeds in rent or otherwise.

Relatives now wonder who he might have been or whether he had any relatives assigned to claim his share of the property. Was he holding the stake for somebody else? Or did he want to sell them to somebody else in the family? Did Mrs Muigai pay with her life because of differences over this property?

On the the fateful day, she had picked up her children from school and dropped them home as usual, the she left home, saying only that she was going to meet a friend. If she did, who was this friend, as nobody has come forward to say they met that day? 
 

Also at about 10pm on the night she died, the relatives say, a relative came home from outside the farm as the search went on. Was he ever been questioned by police on his movements that night?

That a member of the family might have been involved is reinforced by a reluctance to discuss the killing, according to her relatives. At first, they say, it was not to be discussed "to protect the family image". What protection if no family member was involved? 

"If Esther was involved in any wrong-doing, let them reveal it so that everybody may carry their own cross," one relative said last week.

Or could the death have been linked to the sharing of assets following the death of Mr Peter Muigai Kenyatta? Relatives claim to have established later that their mother and two other members of the family had signed letters of administration of their father's estate in the months leading to her death. Might a dispute or animosity have arisen out of this?

Their time is up and very soon," says one relative, "Whether they are family members or not, they will be known and face the law.