Notorious criminal ditches gun for Bible

She was raised in poverty and violence. When she married early and realised life had not improved, she turned to crime, writes JUMA KWAYERA.

In June 1999, a woman commanding a gang of criminals ambushed a Kenya Commercial Bank van ferrying Sh162 million from Meru. The ambush aborted, unmasking the face of the woman behind a decade of terror, meted with abandon in Nairobi and its surroundings.

This was at the Githurai roundabout on Thika road. In the gun-battle between the police officers and the gangsters, a policeman was felled and several others injured before the gang melted into thin air.

The woman, whom the police had identified on their most-wanted list as Lakwena, was Mary Wanjiku Karirimbi. In the criminal underworld she was known as Mary Nyambura alias Lakwena.

Lakwena is now a church minister, preaching to nearly 10,000 inmates in the country’s 90 prisons through her Jehovah Shalom Ministries based in Kiserian.

"Criminals are not bad people. I realised they are spiritually empty. They need guidance and nourishment, which prisons do not provide. I want to fill this gap," she says.

Mary Wanjiku turned to crime when she realised she was getting enough money to improve the lives of her mother and siblings. [Photo: Moses Omusula/Standard]

Female inmates, she adds, would reform quickly if a sense of hope was instilled in them.

"Most of them are victims of domestic violence and economic marginalisation. Prisons have not realised the need to fight crime through restoration of hope and love," she says.

Serial bank robber

In her years of crime, the police had profiled her as a lethal serial bank robber and highway gangster. She had been on the list of Kenya’s most wanted criminals that included the late Bernard Matheri alias Rasta, the late Gerald Munyeria Wambugu alias Wanugu and the late Anthony Ngugi Kanagi alias Wacucu.

"I drifted towards crime in childhood because of the violence I saw in my home every day. Although my father was wealthy, he was a serial drinker and womaniser, something that placed us (his 10 children) in perpetual need," Lakwena told the Sunday Magazine from her Zimmerman home.

She was so fed up with her father’s behaviour that at the age of seven, she advised her mother to divorce him. But her mother stayed put.

"I went into the criminal world when I was hardly 10 years old. My first major heist was when I was 15. This was sadaka (church offering) I stole from my grandmother who was a church elder entrusted with the money," Lakwena, a mother of three, said. Her first child is a university student, while the second is in high school and the last in primary.

She gained the reputation as Kenya’s most ruthless gangster after she commanded a series of bank robberies that involved millions of shillings. In her own words, the lowest amount of money she ever stole from a bank was Sh5 million.

Married a slacker

Despite prodding, she declined to comment on specific heists, lest the past return to haunt her again.

Lakwena left Kabare Girls’ Primary School after completing Standard Seven and got married into a fairly wealthy family immediately.

"Unfortunately, the man I married was a slacker, a laggard who never worked hard. He never struggled for anything. I wanted to help my mother and siblings escape the cycle of violence they were subjected to by my father."

That is when she formed a criminal gang alongside some young men of her age. They would steal from shops and houses in the neighbourhood.

Unknown to her, she was shaping her criminal career.

Neither her husband nor her relatives realised she was embroiled in crime.

"I left no trail because I was a smooth operator. It was during this time I had access to my first pistol, a Star. I covered my tracks further by acquiring a pseudonym — Mary Nyambura."

She even learnt to dismantle and assemble any type of rifle within minutes.

At 17 and expecting her first child, Lakwena’s bank account savings topped Sh500,000. This was apart from the stock in her shop at Kutus, which was big. She spread her tentacles to Namanga on the Kenya-Tanzania border and later Uganda. That was when she acquired the moniker, Lakwena, after former Ugandan rebel leader, the late Alice Lakwena, founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

At 18, she was already a millionaire mother. Her satisfaction was seeing her mother, brothers and sisters having enough to eat and going to school.

She recalls that her break into big time crime came by accident. That was in the early 1990s.

"I was preparing to travel to Nairobi to buy stock for my shop when a pick up pulled up at my shop very early in the morning. The occupants, my long time customers, asked me to sell them jackets, which I did. They then offered me a lift to Nairobi and I accepted without hesitation."

Upon reaching Nairobi, she asked to disembark at the Kasarani roundabout, but the driver, Wacucu, declined and she didn’t mind. Her destiny, she realised, was tied to theirs.

"When you have criminal blood, you will always detect your kind instinctively. I had a rough idea of what they did, but could not tell the extent of their operations."

She ended up in Rasta’s house in Donholm estate, Nairobi. She found out she had been abducted when she attempted to leave.

"This ended my first marriage. Although I was forced into this house, I was immediately attracted to Rasta. He showed raw power and ruthlessness. It titillated me. In an instant, I erased my husband from my memory."

Get-away driver

All the bank robberies they committed were methodically planned, sometimes for months in advance.

Throughout the interview, Lakwena displayed rare composure. She spoke with a steady voice, never raising it or showing excitement. Occasionally smiling when teased about possible temptation to relapse into crime.

"Nothing excites me. My emotions closed up when I was young and throughout my criminal life I was never the type to run away from anything, not even police firepower."

This steel will and sheer brute force endeared her to Rasta, who was killed in 1997 in Murang’a.

"We trusted each other and never did we at any point differ over anything."

Lakwena was vicious. She engaged police in gun-battles that would at times run into hours. Her gang, composed of husband and wife, terrorised Nairobi and its environs, shooting down anyone who dared stand in their way.

"Only occasionally, when for instance we were going to rob a bank would we need backup. But I was Rasta’s driver —always in the get-away vehicle. We’d never trust anyone else behind the wheels."

Lakwena says a higher power was preparing her for change because three times, she narrowly missed execution by police fire. On the three occasions she was spared by a born-again police officer.

Luck run out

But she ran out of luck during the abortive Githurai ambush. She slipped away, but the police caught her at a house in Mathare North estate. This marked the start of her turning point.

She was arrested with a cache of firearms and a debe (20kg tin) of live ammunition. When her image was flashed on television on the evening of the arrest, it shocked her relatives. Her father collapsed and died.

"Now my family blames me for his death. I have a strained relationship with them. Yet in the past they looked up to me for all their needs," she says with a tinge bitterness.

If there is a virtue bestowed on Lakwena, it is forgiveness. It began when she was charged with robbery with violence and possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition in 2002. After months of haggling, the prosecution was short of evidence to sustain the robbery charges. The Kibera Court convicted her to seven years in prison, but this was reduced to four on appeal.

"I know, the Flying Squad officers had express instructions to summarily execute us. However, their leader restrained his officers from doing any harm to us. It shocked me because we were staring at death," she said.

During her incarceration at Lang’ata Women’s Prison, she had an emotional experience that led to renouncing the "Devil of Crime".

"The new beginning came to me when I was still planning how I would expand my activities upon release. I spent my first month in jail gathering information about whom I would attack upon release. This was never to be."

She was released on presidential clemency in 2003.

"I had fasted for 300 days."

Having spent more than three quarters of her life in crime, Lakwena, now 42, says she wants to use her remaining days on earth to serve God.

But one thing still disturbs her. "I don’t understand why the rest died and I remain alive."