NAIROBI Kenya January 17 -The killer of the young woman who was brutally murdered and the body dismembered in Roysambu on Sunday used her phone to demand a Sh500,000 ransom from her father for her release.
Detectives believe the ransom was demanded even after Rita Waeni Muendo, a 20-year-old Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) student, had already been murdered.
“On Sunday, January 14, at 5.00 am, her father received a message, delivered from her phone number, demanding a ransom of Ksh. 500,000 within 24 hours for her release,” the family said.
The killer had also sent a photo of the deceased, while lying down.
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) have gone back to the drawing board after a suspect who was on Tuesday arrested at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) turned out to be a different person.
The man who was travelling using a Mozambican passport.
“She was due to join her fourth and final year of University at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT),” the family said.
According to the family, the deceased left her aunt’s residence in Syokimau to meet with a friend.
“We believe she was lured by her killer, who also tried to extort money from her family, even after killing her,” they said through their spokesperson Dr Lilian Mutea.
The killer and the deceased only communicated through Instagram and were in communication until the day they met. Some of the chats have been retrieved by the detectives from the deceased’s social media account.
He never made a phone call nor exchanged phone numbers with the woman.
According to the IG conversation, the man gave the girl direction to the meeting place, and also told her that they needed to meet as he was planning to be out of the country, and the woman fell for it.
At the rental apartment, detectives believe that the man killed Waeni inside the bathroom, and it is suspected she was drugged before being killed.
According to the investigations, the main suspect stayed in Ruaka, Kiambu county for about four days before the killing. Detectives for the second time visited Ruaka on Tuesday as they pursued leads to unravel the gruesome murder.
The dismembered body was found at the garbage collection point of Green House apartment along TRM drive on Sunday morning.
The deceased joined the man who had earlier checked into the Airbnb on Saturday at around 3pm but the man is said to have left for an unknown destination around 5am.
The caretaker, Mark Auma said he went to check the house at around 9.20am and noticed some blood stains on the stairs.
He checked the house and found it very clean and there was no one inside. He followed the blood stains which led her to the garbage collection point where they found the remains of a woman aged about 24.
The body had been chopped into pieces and stuffed inside polythene bags and police say the killer used a hacksaw. The suspect is said to have switched off his phone, number 0101053854, as soon as he left the premises.
The phone number is registered in a woman’s name and the first call he made, while booking the room, was from Ruaka.
The man who was at around 4.20pm captured on CCTV when he went for the room’s key appeared to be in a hurry and was wearing a white cap and specks in what appears was to hide his identity.
Police also believe he deliberately decided to pay cash and not through Mpesa to further conceal his identity.
He was also holding firmly a black bag that detectives believe contained the hacksaw and other materials he used in his murder.
The brutal murder took place barely a week after another woman, socialite Starlet Wahu, was also brutally murdered inside another Airbnb in South B.
On January 4, Wahu was also murdered and police arrested John Matara, a suspected serial offender in connection to the killing.
The body was found in a pool of blood inside the flat after the facility’s security reported the matter to the police.
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