It's hard to believe my old pal Paul Magu 'killed his family'

No one ever thinks they will ever know a killer in their life, not as an old pal.

Certainly not as a family annihilator. But I did. His name was Paul Magu, and my nickname for him in college was The Magi.

The Magi was this tall, cool, intense yet easy-going guy, sharp as a razor in mind and with an easy laugh.

We hit it off in campus right away, alongside another friend called John Ocholla.

I still remember endless hours spent at the college pub called Joe’s, playing chess and talking about old Soviet grandmasters like Karpov and Kasparov, as I drank coke and Popov.

The Magi liked poetry, and we often read T.S. Eliot poetry, and carefully tried to discern the mysterious meanings hidden therein. The Wasteland, especially, was pretty heady stuff.

But the most intense discussions we had revolved around the Ayn Rand book called The Fountainhead.

Featuring a hero called Howard Roark, we often discussed how the heroes and Objectivists of this world threaten the Second Handers, bitter people of no originality or purpose, who then often try to take them down.

The Magi was one of those people who make you happy to be in university because of their intellect and philosophy, never mind that many of these discussions took part as we imbibed enough cheap punch to float a small boat.

We never got into theological or God discussions though.

In college, I was a staunch heathen, a devout pagan, and the only chap I remember fiercely engaging me in religious debates was lawyer Charles Kanjama.

Even after campus, I still kept in touch with The Magi, at least for a while, when he worked as a lawyer for Shell.

We would catch up intermittently at that indoor and outdoor restaurant at the building that now houses the Deputy President’s offices.

Then I went to Russia for a while, and when I returned, went to work on Likoni Road, moving to the not-too-far-from-job Tena estate to share a house with my boy, Nashville, and The Magi and I lost touch.

Until this terrible family tragedy happened.

I still cannot see how the brilliant Magi could have been convinced his lucrative job as a lawyer to serve in some nefarious capacity as a servant of the Lord by some false prophetess, or the jolly fellow we all knew become a recluse.

It is terrifying and hard to fathom a death struggle with his wife in the bedroom, which she lost, let alone the far worse slaying of three young kids of nine and seven, with beautiful young Tiffany just five, denied the rest of their lives.

And then Paul leaving his car engine running by the side of the road, only to jump in front of a bus on a lonely road.

I had a horrid nightmare the other day where I was sitting in a car as the Magi drove and we were talking about Roark.

Only, every time I glanced up into the review mirror, his wife and three kids were there, all strapped into the back seat, all dead.

Women everywhere should never sit by as their husbands make radical lifestyle changes in the name of the Lord or anything.

Still, I will never be able to think of The Magi as a family annihilator.

In my mind he will always be that young man who once asked me at Joe’s what T.S. Eliot meant when he wrote,” April is the cruellest month of year, breeding, lilacs out of dead land.”

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