Who killed them? Mystery of seven bodies discovered in Mwingi

The site where 7 bodies were discovered on the outskirts of Mwingi town. [Philip Muasya, Standard] 

As you descend a gully barely 30 metres off the Mwingi - Garissa Road, just outside Mwingi town, a heavy, suffocating stench immediately hits your nostrils.

A police tape announcing a crime scene still flutters in the wind around the area where the bodies of four men were recovered a few weeks ago.

Many days after the bodies were exhumed in shallow graves, the pungent smell of decomposed human flesh is still horrifying, an indication that the bodies could have been lying there for weeks before they were discovered.

If it were not for the gulley, which is partly hidden by a thicket and which serves as a stream collecting runoff water from Mwingi town, barely a kilometre away, before draining into the nearby River Tyaa, motorists and pedestrians using the busy road would have easily spotted the bodies from a distance.

It is here where the four bodies of the unknown male victims were dumped and hurriedly covered with a thin layer of soil, just enough to conceal them from casual view.  

The scene paints a chilling picture of an unresolved crime that has shaken the town residents.

The macabre discovery was dramatic. It took the keen eye of Nguli Mang’ele, a livestock herder who was grazing his goats within the area, to spot the first body that had swollen, with a body part protruding from the shallow grave.

Coupled with the heavy smell hanging in the air and what he had seen, Mang’ele cautiously approached the scene and momentarily stopped on his tracks.

"At first I thought it was a dead animal because of the smell," he says. 

"When I moved closer and saw what looked like a human leg sticking out, I froze. I was terrified,” he adds, still haunted by the memory.

What the herder did not know was that just within the same area lay three other bodies, all hidden just below the surface.

Alarmed, he signalled another man who had taken a detour to the bushes to relieve himself and together they went to inspect further. It was a human body, they confirmed.  

Soon after, the two men alerted a member of Nyumba Kumi within the town who immediately informed the area chief. The chief quickly passed the report over to the local police, who in no time descended on the scene, with a curious crowd in tow.

In no time, the area became a beehive of activity as word spread quickly within the town that more bodies could have been dumped at the scene. 

The police immediately cordoned off the area and erected a crime scene tape to keep the surging members of the public at bay.

The body that had been spotted earlier was quickly exhumed, partly decomposed and placed in a body bag. A police officer’s keen eye then detected something more: mounds of soil that appeared rather curious. A simple dig with a shovel revealed horror; three more bodies, all butt naked and buried just below the surface.

Kavuvwani location chief Mwinzi Muvengei, within whose jurisdiction Mwingi town falls, recalls the moment he received a call from a member of Nyumba Kumi and the horrifying shock of the town residents following the grim discovery.  

“I was off duty when I got a telephone call alerting me to the discovery of a human body in that specific place. I immediately notified the police,” Chief Muvengei recalls. 

When the four bodies were exhumed, people froze in shock. The grim discovery sent shockwaves across Mwingi town, with residents struggling to comprehend the brutality of the killings and the circumstances under which the men met their deaths.

Who would have imagined that just a few metres off a busy road that connects Nairobi to the North Eastern parts of Kenya, and within a major town, human corpses would be rotting away without being noticed.

“Two of the bodies had decomposed badly. The other two looked intact and had no smell; it was as if they had been previously preserved,” recalls Muvengei. But what shocked the residents further was the fact that none of the bodies had clothes on. One had a rasta hairstyle which was still intact.  

Not far from this scene, three other bodies had been recovered three weeks earlier, one male that had been covered with sand on the bed of River Tyaa. A few metres away, a female body with a missing head was also recovered hidden in a thicket.  

“When the security team went to comb the area in search of the missing head, they found it lying close by to another male body,” says the chief. 

According to Muvengei, this particular male body appeared to have visible torture marks.

“His private parts were swollen, like they had been hit or squeezed with force,” he says.

Curiously, like the four bodies, these too had no clothes on.

The seven bodies were taken to Mwingi Level IV Hospital mortuary as authorities made an appeal to families who may have lost their kin to come forth and make reports.

However, due to the complexity of the shocking murders, the investigation was taken over by homicide detectives who travelled from Nairobi, revisited the two crime scenes before transporting the bodies to City Mortuary in Nairobi County.

 A Postmortem examination conducted two weeks ago by Chief Government Pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor revealed that some of the victims died from severe violent trauma.

According to the report, two of the bodies showed that the victims died due to strangulation, two died due to severe blunt force to their heads, while one victim was fatally stabbed in the abdomen.

Dr Oduor said that the cause of death of the remaining two victims could not be immediately established because of the advanced level of decomposition.

Authorities say that so far there is no family from Mwingi or within Kitui County that has come out to report a missing relative, fueling speculation that the victims could have been killed far away and their bodies dumped in Mwingi.

In an interview with The Standard Newspaper in his office last week, Kitui County Commissioner Erastus Mbui revealed that investigations were still ongoing and urged calm and patience.

“Let us give the police time to do their investigations. We also appeal to the public to volunteer any information that could be of help,” Mbui said. 

He said that whatever information is gathered will be professionally analysed with a view to unravelling the murders.