By JOE OMBUOR

Philip Mule Kilonzo had enjoyed former President Moi’s trust for years before the Ouko murder.

He was Commissioner of Police at the time of the Foreign Affairs minister’s killing.

During the August 1, 1982 coup, Moi sent Kilonzo, then Rift Valley PPO, to carry out a reconnaissance mission around military barracks in Nakuru.

This was to find out what was happening with a view to determining the President’s next course of action - flight from his Kabarak home or staying put to await the crushing of the uprising.

The coup was crashed and Moi regained control of the Government.

For Kilonzo, the assignment, which he carried out diligently, was a valuable and fitting endearment to the President. Moi made him Commissioner of Police after Bernard Njiinu in 1988.

Power corridors

That was about the time trouble started for Dr Robert Ouko, whose murder two years later, provoked speculation he and others well placed in the corridors of power at the time could have had information about its masterminds.

Hardly two years into his tenure as Commissioner of Police, those plotting Dr Ouko’s assassination had no qualms roping him in "to have the police force on their side".

When Ouko’s charred body was on February 14 1990, ‘discovered’ at Got Alila outside his Koru home, Kilonzo accompanied Hezekiah Oyugi, then a powerful PS in the Office of the President and then Nakuru DC Jonah Anguka in a helicopter to the scene.

He remarked: "This is among the worst murders in this country and must be investigated thoroughly."

Kilonzo later teamed up with then Government Pathologist Jason Kaviti in a determined but futile attempt to convince Scotland yard Detective John Troon that Ouko committed suicide after dousing himself with petrol and setting himself alight.

Oyugi and Kilonzo, so it was said, jointly hatched the suicide theory after they reached a consensus with Dr Kaviti, who disowned it 15 years later at the Gor Sunguh-led Parliamentary Select Committee probe on the murder. On his murder seven years later, speculation naturally had it Ouko’s death had everything to do with it, to silence him on what he knew once and for all.

His elder brother James Ngwiri was to remark many years later: "I do not know what killed my brother, but I am sure of one thing that he did not die of natural causes".