A retired police detective and Chief Government Pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor, have testified in the trial of former Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldier Peter Mugure.
Mugure is on trial at the Nyeri High Court for the alleged murder of his estranged wife, Joyce Syombua and their two children - Shanice Maua, 10, and Prince Michael, aged 5, in October 2019. Former DCI detective Jacob Murithi testified that on October 26, 2019, he took interest in the case of Syombua and her two children, which took place in his jurisdiction of Laikipia East.
He told the court that the family had travelled from Kayole Nairobi to Nanyuki airbase, where they had visited Mugure. However, they never returned after the visit.
"I started to investigate the case and requested to interrogate Mugure because I suspected that his statement that he escorted his family to the Nanyuki matatu stage to travel to Nairobi was suspicious," Murithii said. The investigation officer said he requested Mugure's mobile phone and discovered frequent calls to and from two phone numbers which had made over 40 calls.
Murithi told the court that he interrogated the accused, who said the first number belonged to Peter Mwangi, a taxi driver and a mechanic at Nanyuki airbase.
"I called Mwangi and met him separately, where he disclosed Mugure had on many occasions approached him and requested him to eliminate his wife, but he declined," Murithi said. "It was after this interrogation that I decided to arrest the accused and put him in custody for further investigation on November 15, 2019," Muriithi said.
He added that he enquired from Laikipia Air Base officers about the second number and was informed that it belonged to Collins Pamba, a casual worker who cleaned the police mess and houses of police officers. Pamba said the accused told him to help pack bodies in his car.
The bodies were of two children wrapped in a sack and a rope, and an adult and they put them on the boot of his Subaru car. Later, Mugure drove the car to the Thingithu area, where he buried them in a shallow grave.
The second witness Dr Oduol gave his testimony through a video call: "The cause of the death of two children was due to strangulation on their neck since there were blisters, while the cause of death for Syombua was a blow to the head from a blunt object on the head," Dr Oduol said.
