Father, stepmother arrested over death of six-year-old girl in fresh probe

Postmortem reveals that six-year-old Beverly Mumo Musyoki, was hit by a blunt object. [Source: DCI, Twitter]

Police in Emali, Makueni County have arrested two suspects accused of the torture and subsequent murder of a six-year-old girl in August 2020.

According to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the suspects are her father Robinson Musyoki and stepmother Rose Muteti.

The two were arrested after homicide detectives opened a fresh probe into the death of six-year-old Beverly Mumo Musyoki, which had earlier been dismissed as ‘natural’.

“After conducting fresh investigations into the murder, which had earlier been dismissed as the work of 'powers of darkness, the homicide experts opened a fresh can of worms linking the two to the murder most foul and arrested them yesterday at Emali, in Makueni county,’ DCI disclosed to the public through its official Twitter page.

Tweets by DCI on Monday morning further revealed that Naomi Kiamba, Beverly’s biological mother, had separated from her husband, who is a suspect in the murder of their daughter.

“She learnt of the death of her daughter through a phone call from her ex-husband, who called her on August 24, 2020, and informed her that he was headed to Montezuma funeral home, since their daughter had fallen sick and died,” DCI’s tweet read in part.

Preliminary investigations have also revealed that as a result of the parents’ separation, a children’s court had directed that Robinson should stay with the children for one month.

Beverly's father Robinson Musyoki and stepmother Rose Muteti. [Source: DCI, Twitter]

The one-month period was to run from October 29, 2019, to December 5, 2019.

“That was the last time Naomi saw her daughter alive, since her ex-husband, an engineer at the Kenya Pipeline, never returned the children and stopped picking up her calls. Unknown to her, Robinson had married another woman and moved in with her in an unknown location,” the investigators stated.

Detectives say the silence prompted the now frustrated woman to seek aid from the courts again and obtained a warrant of arrest for her husband who was, at the time, not picking up her calls.

The warrant was served to the OCS Industrial Area police station, the sleuths say.

A year later, Naomi tells detectives, she received a call from her husband informing her that her daughter had died. 

Naomi rushed to Montezuma Funeral Home where she found the body of her daughter bearing bruises all over.

A report issued then by the chief government pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor indicated that the cause of death was blunt force trauma.

The two suspects are awaiting arraignment on murder charges at the Machakos High Court.