The High Court has convicted Duncan Livingstone Kimathi of murdering United States International University (USIU) student Sarah Akello Aruwa after finding that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.
Justice Kanyi Kimondo found Kimathi guilty of murder contrary to Section 203 as read with Section 204 of the Penal Code.
Aruwa, a final-year International Relations student at USIU, disappeared on June 30, 2012, after telling a friend that she was going to meet a man she had met at the university library. Her body was later discovered in a thicket in Ndithiati Village, Ngewa, Githunguri, Kiambu County.
The prosecution’s case was based largely on circumstantial, electronic, documentary and identification evidence.
The court heard that Aruwa’s family began receiving ransom demands after her disappearance. A caller using her phone initially demanded Sh100,000, later reducing the amount to Sh70,000 after negotiating with her brother-in-law, Jim Onyango.
The caller subsequently sent a threatening message warning the family to pay or Aruwa would die.
Police and relatives who entered Aruwa’s locked house recovered a notebook containing a handwritten note stating that she had gone to meet “Daniel Mureithi”, described as a USIU student living in Savannah. The note included two telephone numbers.
Government document examiner SSP John Muinde testified that the handwriting in the notebook was made by the same person who wrote samples attributed to Aruwa.
The court also placed significant weight on telephone records. One of the numbers recorded in the notebook was registered to Kimathi, who acknowledged in his defence that he used the number.
Safaricom call-data records showed that the number communicated with a car-hire company’s telephone number for much of June 30, 2012, the day Aruwa disappeared.
The car-hire operator testified that he hired a Toyota NZE, registration number KBH 642R, to Kimathi at about 10.30am that day. Muiru told the court that the vehicle’s tracking system showed it in the Ngewa area, heading towards Githunguri.
Kimathi denied hiring the vehicle on that date. He told the court that he had intended to attend a concert at the Carnivore grounds but ultimately did not go.
Justice Kimondo rejected that account, finding that the prosecution evidence placed Kimathi in circumstances connecting him to Aruwa’s disappearance.
The court also considered evidence from police officer PC John Amalemba, who said he saw a man arrive at the scene where Aruwa’s body had been discovered. The man claimed to be a police officer but left after members of the public questioned him.
Amalemba later identified Kimathi at a police identification parade.
The judge, however, rejected separate voice-identification evidence from Onyango, finding that the conversations with the ransom caller had been too brief and that Onyango had not previously known Kimathi.
The court also considered evidence concerning Kimathi’s alleged girlfriend, Winnie Wairimu Kariuki. Police recovered a bra, pantie and bloodied top from a house in Savannah, which relatives identified as belonging to Aruwa.
Kariuki, who had been charged alongside Kimathi, absconded after being released on bond. Her bond was cancelled in November 2018 and a warrant for her arrest was issued. In October 2022, the court allowed the prosecution to proceed with Kimathi’s trial separately.
The judge further considered Kimathi’s previous conviction for abducting a girl and demanding a ransom in a separate case before the Makadara Chief Magistrate’s Court. Justice Kimondo ruled that the conviction was admissible because it was directly relevant to the circumstances surrounding the alleged abduction and ransom demands in the present case.
Kimathi maintained his innocence throughout the trial. He denied being a USIU student at the time of the offence, hiring the vehicle, visiting Ngewa or being involved in Aruwa’s disappearance.
He also challenged the integrity of the notebook and the interpretation of the telephone number written in it. His document examiner, Emmanuel Karisa Kenga, agreed that the notebook and known samples of Aruwa’s handwriting came from a common handwriting source, but questioned the clarity of one digit in the telephone number.
The judge rejected that challenge after examining the original notebook in court, finding that the mobile number matched the number registered to Kimathi.
The court found that Aruwa died from neck compression caused by manual strangulation, based on the post-mortem examination conducted by government pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor.
Justice Kimondo noted that there was no eyewitness to either the abduction or the killing but held that the combined circumstantial and electronic evidence formed a chain pointing to Kimathi’s guilt.
The judge concluded that Kimathi and his accomplices had lured Aruwa into an abduction for ransom and subsequently killed her when the ransom was not paid or as police investigations intensified.
