Bizarre tale of woman in homicide-suicide saga who lived double life

Mary Mulombe with her late daughter Francisca Maua in an undated photo. [Courtesy]

A bizarre tale has emerged after the suicide of a 28-year-old woman who also poisoned her two young daughters at Ithanga.

Mary Mulombe, who was known as a humble and God-fearing woman at Katitika village, was living a precarious double life.

Her in-laws and friends from the village knew Ms Mulombe was an orphan and had been brought up by foster parents, but after her death, it has emerged that both parents are alive and she regularly kept in touch with them.

She had lied to her husband, Christopher Masila Kituku, a Kenya Defence Forces officer based at the Coast that she was brought up by foster parents after her mother died while she was a toddler.

The foster parents benefited from Kituku’s family through support in social events like weddings, and stepped up in case of any financial needs.

Dormitila Waeni, the deceased’s sister-in-law narrates that they were in good terms with her “in-laws” and would call occasionally call them to check on them. After Mulombe took her own life, the foster parents disowned “their daughter”.

When the homicide, suicide story was aired on KTN News, the deceased’s cousin recognised her and alerted her parents who started looking for her in laws.

“We were in total disbelief - people who we had known to be our family disowned their daughter and other people claiming to be the parents emerged mourning loss of three family members. It was difficult to bear,” Waeni added.

It sounded like a movie script and to be sure that the latest entrants were the Mulombe’s parents, they demanded for proof.

“We could not agree to be conned a second time,” the deceased father-in-law Peter Kituku Nzioka narrates.

The couple produced their daughter’s Huduma Number card and identity card.

The deceased had told her parents who run a business in Mbooni Kimutua village, Makueni County that her husband works in Somalia as a KDF officer, and her parents-in-law were sickly and could not talk while her brothers-in-law were drunkards, a justification she gave for not introducing them over the six years she was married to the soldier.

“What astonished us most is the discovery that she talked to her parents on daily basis and they had no ill feelings towards us. Mulombe even sent them money whenever they needed it without our knowledge,” Franscisa Maua, the deceased’s mother-in-law added.

After the “foster parents” vanished after the death of Mulombe, her in laws had to negotiate for a bride price before they can hold a burial ceremony for the three bodies.

Mulombe left a five-page suicide note in which she listed 14 reasons she decided to commit suicide and poison her children, key among them being her husband’s alleged unfaithfulness.

In the note, Mulombe listed the names of five women she accused her husband of six years of having affairs with. She termed it betrayal but assured her husband of “my undying love” even in death.

She further disclosed that she had Sh80,000 in her M-Pesa and another Sh100,000 in her bank account whose ATM she had put together with the note. She went ahead to provide the PIN number to the M-Pesa and the ATM.