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Mystery surrounds the murder of Mary Wambui Kamangara, the woman whose body was found dumped in a dam in Juja, Kiambu County.
Wambui’s husband, Joseph Kori Karue, and his mpango wa kando, identified as Judy Wangui Mungai, are being held by police over the murder, that is suspected to have been perpetrated at Wangui’s Four Ways Junction apartment along Kiambu Road.
Karue is a loaded ‘tenderpreneur’ whose firm last year won a multi-million-shilling deal with a parastatal, while his late wife, a mother of two, was a businesswoman based in Kahawa West, Nairobi County.
Wambui and Wangui had gone to the former’s house and found Karue in there. An argument between Karue and his wife is said to have ensued.
Sources close to the investigation suspect he might have hit his wife with the butt of his pistol during the commotion.
She reportedly collapsed and died and her body was later dumped in the dam in Juja. Karue apparently told his wife’s parents that Wambui had been kidnapped.
According to police reports, Karue warned his lover - Wangui - against revealing what transpired in her house.
A police source revealed that Wangui “told us that the man promised to give her Sh2 million for her silence over the matter.”
But why did Wangui - who was earlier an employee of Karue and Wambui - agree to take the latter to her house, knowing she was Karue’s side dish and that his photos prominently adorned the walls of her apartment?
Wambui’s family says Karue was in a previous relationship before hooking up with the deceased.
“Before he met my sister, Kori (Karue) was involved with another woman, with whom they have a child,” said Esther Kamangara, the late Wambui’s sister.
Karue and his Wangui are said to have met in Nakuru in 2006 when he operated a poles’ treating plant.
Wangui was a secretary at the plant, which was later closed down, and Karue relocated to Nairobi, where he set up a hardware shop for his wife, with Wangui as a shop attendant.
The Nairobian could not immediately establish whether Karue was a co-director in a firm that won a tender to supply poles to a parastatal charged with the mandate of provision of electricity.
The Sh15 million tender was approved on July 15, 2018. Florence Wambui who is listed as one of the directors of the firm was non-committal on whether the co-director identified as Joseph Kori Karue, was the same individual implicated in the murder.
“I don’t want to be dragged into that matter,” she curtly replied when we sought clarification from her. The murder of Mary Wambui came two days after the body of Lorraine Kerubo Ogoti arrived in Kenya for burial.
Kerubo was based in Toronto, Canada, where she was allegedly murdered by her lover, Mawlid Hassan, over a suspected love triangle. Hassan later committed suicide at their apartment. Investigations are still ongoing.
The two deaths add to the growing list of murder cases revolving around love triangles, starring side dishes Kenyans love calling mpango wa kando.
Other high-profile killings of or involving a mpango wa kando include last year’s Sharon Otieno.
Sharon, a 26-year-old Rongo University student who was Migori Governor Okoth Obado’s lover, was killed and her body found in a thicket in Kodera, Homa Bay County.
Then there was Monica Kimani, whose murder sucked in prominent television presenter Jacque Maribe and her lover Joseph Kuria Irungu aka Jowie.
The couple was arrested and charged in connection with the killing. The case is still in court.
The latest killing has once again thrust the institution of marriage into the limelight, with many marriages seemingly under the siege of mpango wa kandos hovering in the wings.
City psychologist Faith Atsango says no woman would willingly agree to be in a polygamous marriage.
“Animals do it because of scarcity of males. They want good genes and protection. But we are above that as humans. Men do it because they always want more. Women in polygamous marriages, especially the second or third wife, do it because of scarcity of resources. It is obvious that any man who makes a little bit of money will always want another woman. For men, the primitive desire to have control over women is what drives them to ‘collect’ women like they would acquire property.
Another reason is the need for high societal status,” explains the psychologist.
She adds that even women who seemingly agree to have cowives oblige due to societal expectations, but detest the arrangement deep down their hearts.
A September 2014 survey by Consumer Insight indicated that at least one out of four married women are unhappy; with a majority of them blaming their dejection on the wrong choice of men.
The survey found out that irrespective of their marital status, Kenyan women are unaccompanied, especially at entertainment joints.
Ninety two per cent of the respondents indicated that they are always in clubs in the company of other men. In response to the findings, city psychologist Karen Kimani said married women rarely cheat on their husbands with a man they do not know.
“It has to be someone she interacts with daily, or she respects, like her boss, the husband’s best friend or her pastor,” said Karen
