Murgor accuses DCI of charging Wairimu without evidence, postmortem

The Body of Dutch national Tob Cohen is carried away by Scene of Crime personnel after recovered in a pit hole in his Kitusuru Home, Nairobi on Friday. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

Lawyer Philip Murgor has defended Sarah Wairimu against allegations linking her to the gruesome murder of Dutch businessman Tob Cohen.

Addressing the media on Saturday, just a day after the body of Cohen was pulled out of a septic tank at his Kitisuru home, Murgor said Wairimu was innocent by law and based on evidence.

“She is innocent by law and on the basis of the evidence regardless of what the investigators say,” he said, adding that until proven guilty, she is innocent.

Murgor hit out at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) for trying to create a narrative that her client is guilty even before the postmortem and investigations are complete to frame his client.

He has also accused DCI boss George Kinoti of bungling the investigations after he led a team of detectives to Cohen’s home without informing Wairimu.

Murgor has also claimed that DCI has roped in the media to push a narrative aimed at incriminating Wairiumu even before the postmortem results are out.

“A section of the media has been used to run a narrative that Wairimu is guilty,”

Murgor said that despite being charged with murder, they are yet to see any single statement implicating Wairimu.

"She faces murder yet not even a single statement or a post-mortem was attached to the charge sheet,” she said.

He said Wairimu has nothing to do with the murder saying she has been in police custody since July 28 when she was arrested and has never visited their Kitsuru home until Friday when Cohen’s body was found

She was arrested on July 28 as soon as she invoked her right to remain silent and have her lawyer represent her

“For 17 days she has had no opportunity to do anything in her house, except twice when she was taken to take a bathe and change her clothes accompanied by DCI officers,” he said.

Murgor has taken issues with the way the investigative team has handled the matter saying from the onset, it seems the outcome has been one, to incriminate Wairimu.

He cited an incident where the police applied to treat the home of Cohen as a scene of crime yet there is no law requiring police to treat a place as a scene of the crime.

“They appeared before Kiambu court seeking orders to treat the house as a crime scene which the court granted,” he said.

“It seems DCI wanted an opportunity to say there is something they have found.”

Court gave them the go-ahead to investigate the place, but they did not move until Tuesday

He also wondered why the DCI team stopped the search on Thursday when they were a few metres away from the manhole where the body was later retrieved on Friday.

Fishy search

The search was proceeding well on Wednesday when all over sudden an officer stopped the search saying they were to continue the following day.

“Enough of the search for today. We will continue the search on Thursday it is the same Thursday that Sarah was charged,” the officer is said to have ordered the team.

Instead of going back to the scene, the DCI takes Sarah to Kilimani and charge her with murder.

The investigating team is reported to have taken all the keys of the home and ordered the two boys in the home not to come out of their houses.

“DCI through Maxwell Otieno ordered the caretakers not to come out no matter what they hear and the boys heeded.

It is then that the team returned on Friday and headed straight to the manhole where the body of Chen was found.

His hands were tied and a rope fastened around his neck. The body was in a blue jeans, which Wairimu had told police he was wearing on the day he disappeared.

Cohen, 71, was last seen on July 19 and has been missing for 63 days.

Wairimu is currently remanded at Lang’ata Women’s Prison.

She was presented before the court on September 12 and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation to determine her fitness to stand trial for the murder of her husband.

Kinoti has described Mr Cohen had been murdered in his house and they were right after all. “I told you we will get to the bottom of this,” Mr Kinoti told Cohen's sister Gabriella as the two hugged.