Why partners kill those they profess love for

Experts have identified three main reasons for the increase in love-related killings in the recent past.

Mr Mbutu Kariuki, a developmental psychologist in private practice in Nairobi, cited money, jealousy and sex as the main causes of the killings.

“When it comes to matters of love, we are all potential murderers, especially when we feel betrayed, the question then is why do some people act out these instincts and not others?” he said.

Mr Mburu was speaking on the backdrop of an increasingly worrying trend of lovers turning on their partners often after a “brief quarrel.”

Only last week, a fresh graduate of Kenyatta University was stabbed multiple times by her lover.

Miss Edinald Atieno was stabbed to death by Maxwell Ochieng, 36, in Kahawa Wendani.

Ochieng is said to have done this after Ms Atieno called off their relationship. He alleged that he had been paying the late Atieno’s university fees, an allegation her family denied.

Miss Atieno’s death was just the latest addition to an increasingly worrying statistic of couples turning on each other. The Sunday Nation counted 25 love-related murders since 2015.

There have been 12 such killings this year alone, which began with the shocking murder of Kalenjin musician Diana Chemutai alias Chelele.

Her estranged husband, ex-police officer Eric Musila, has been charged with her murder.

Mr Kariuki said the killings were not crimes of passion, but rather premeditated. “Some thinking, if not some planning, has gone in to them,” he said.

He said money was a big factor in the killings. “People get into relationship for money and when it runs out and the other partner leaves, one partner goes into a murderous rage,” he said.

He might have been having in mind Priscila Waithira, the 64-year-old business woman who was murdered on February 27 this year by her 22-year-old lover in Muthaiga Estate in Nanyuki town.

Witnesses said that Waithira’s lover demanded that the guards in the house show him where the businesswoman hid her money in the compound.

Mr Edward Buri, a lecturer of theology at Daystar University and a pastor at St Andrews Church in Nairobi, said such affairs were not true love.

‘A CHAMPION’

“Love is a champion of life, not death. Thus what we are witnessing as love is a form of affection which is a concoction of attraction, hate, jealousy and competition,” he said.

He said that the underlying dynamic in such relationships is pride, rather than humility. “It is pride which says you deserve to die and I deserve to live,” he said.

Mr Kariuki also cited double standards over sex matters between the genders as a possible cause of the conflicts. He said that while society accommodates men philandering, it abhors women doing the same.

“Fathers wouldn’t mind so much if their teenage sons are having sex, but would freak out if they learnt their daughters were doing the same. Men bring this kind of mentality in to their relationship with disastrous consequences,” he said.

A number of the love-related murders reported over the last two years have involved jilted lovers, some of whom have caught their partners in compromising situations.

On June 21, 2016, Kiplimo Korir was arrested for the suspected murder of his pregnant wife, Betty Chelangat in Laliat sub-location in Kericho County after he caught her with another man.

This was one of the least reported case that merited a brief in the newspapers, which perhaps illustrate how Kenyans have become inured to such cases.

Korir committed suicide a week later at Kericho police cells.

Two weeks before, on May 28, 35-year-old property developer Leonard Kanari shot to death Christopher Adagi, an employee of Credit Reference Bureau over a lady whom they were both dating.

From our statistics, most of these murders are committed by relatively young people between the age of 20 and 40. Most are committed by men against women.

There is a worrying trend too of university students killing their partners over love gone sour.

On March 15, a 19-year-old stabbed her boyfriend Kelvin Indakwa, a Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Nairobi, to death in Dagoretti.

She said she was pregnant by him but had allegedly denied the pregnancy. This was one of the rare cases where men were on the receiving end of the women’s wrath.

On July 12, 2015, Kelvin Cheruiyot, a student at Moi University West Campus in Eldoret stabbed her lover Cecelia Cheruto, also of the same university. He was lynched by irate students.

Even in the grimness of it all, Mr Buri saw the positive side. “That people are killing in the name of love means that people out there are hungry for authentic love. This is a healthy desire, but which must be nurtured” he said.