Kill me quick: Shocking reasons why Kenyans fake their own death

Thika businessman Julius Gitau Wanyoike faked his own death last year, complete with a staged abduction.  He resurfaced two months later with a cock-and-bull story which the police did not buy. Gitau was fleeing from menacing creditors- at the height of the Corona pandemic.

Criminologists refer to faking one’s death as pseudocide. Previously rare, it is slowly gaining currency as a trick for perpetrators escaping financial stress, skiving from criminal justice, runaway from family, for personal gratification or financial gain. Pseudocides, though, hardly end well.