scrollEfft

If Kenya were ancient Rome, 2024 would have been annus horribilis (horrible year). Horrible because Kenya witnessed an outbreak of femicides that saw 170 women and girls killed, according to a report by Africa Data Hub/Odipo Dev and Africa Uncensored.
The list of the stories is depressingly long, the details horrifying. Here is a sample of the many heart-rending stories of women killed, often by people known to them and in places they should be most secure.
On January 14, 2024, the mutilated remains of 20-year-old Rita Waeni were found stuffed in garbage bags at a rental apartment in Nairobi’s Roysambu area. Her head and personal effects were missing.
Her Instagram account indicated that the killer lured her to her death through the social media app.
As if snuffing out her life was not cruel enough, the killer tried to extort money from her family, sending them three messages from her phone demanding a ransom of Ksh500,000 within 24 hours to secure her release. The family did not get any further details about the ransom or an opportunity to explore the demand. A family member told reporters that further demands were made after she had already been murdered.
Police later detained two suspects, one of them a foreigner attempting to leave the country on a Mozambican passport. Two other persons of interest were later arrested.Just days before Waeni’s murder, the body of 26-year-old Starlet Wahu was found inside an Airbnb apartment in South B, Nairobi. Wahu was the younger sister of controversial evangelical preacher Victor Kanyari.
Police said the suspected killer had been seen getting into the apartment on January 3 at night.
Police had to break down the door to the apartment and found a knife, two HIV test kits, and one used condom.
Makadara police boss Judith Nyongesa said Wahu bled to death after being stabbed in the thigh. A post-mortem examination also showed that she had been strangled.
John Matara was later charged with her murder and his trial is still going on in a Nairobi court.
When he was first arrested, several women stepped up to accuse him of assaulting them.

In September 2024, Uganda’s long-distance runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who had recently competed in the women’s marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympics, was murdered in Trans Nzoia county.
The 33-year-old athlete succumbed to her injuries on September 5 after her former boyfriend allegedly set her ablaze after dousing her in petrol.
The brutal murder happened just weeks after she made her Olympic debut in the women’s marathon in Paris, where she finished 44th.
The suspect later succumbed to the burns he suffered during his attack on Cheptegei.
Relatives Dahabo Daud Said, Amina Dhahir, and Musayba Abdi Mohammed, residents of Eastleigh area in Nairobi, were reported missing in October 2024. Shortly after the story broke, their bodies were found in Parklands, Bahari, and Chumvi in Machakos county.
Hashim Dagane alias Hashim Khalif was arrested soon afterwards and in January 2025, he was charged with the murder of the three women and detained in police custody. The charge sheet included the name of a fourth victim, Deka Abdi Noor Gorane, his girlfriend, who had earlier gone missing.
Information emerging soon after his arrest suggested that Dagane was a former policeman in Ethiopia and had fled the country after he became the main suspect in the murder of his wife and three children.

In June 2024, at the height of the Gen Z protests in Kenya, several dismembered bodies were found dumped at the Kware dumpsite near Mukuru kwa Njenga slums in Nairobi. Most of the victims were women and their remains were wrapped in sacks and plastic bags.

The prime suspect of the killings, Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, remains at large after escaping from police custody alongside 13 other prisoners on August 20, 2024. The 33-year-old was waiting to be charged in court, allegedly after confessing to killing 42 women between 2022 and July 11, 2024.

According to Caroline Wandia, her sister, Risper Ng’endo, 26, left their home in Kirinyaga county on February 1, 2025, after receiving a call from Denis Kipkirui Kemei, her 27-year-old fiancé, asking her to visit him. Wandia kept in touch with her sister until her calls stopped going through, probably because her phone battery was dead or the device was switched off.
Ng’endo’s body would later be found in Isinya, Kajiado county, according to her father, James Munene, who said Kemei called his (Munene’s) sister-in-law, Rose Njeri, to confess that he had killed her.
Out of some morbid mischief, Kemei misrepresented himself to Ng’endo’s family as a senior officer in the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) but was in reality a farm worker in Kajiado county. He claimed that their phones had been switched off because they had travelled to the US, although Ng’endo did not have a passport.
Four days after she disappeared, Ng’endo’s body was found in a locked house in Isinya, Kajiado.
Kemei has since surrendered to the police and reportedly confessed that he killed Ng’endo on February 3, 2025, although the motive for the murder was not clear.
The relationship between Kemei and Ng’endo had lasted six years and their families knew each other, underscoring the trend in most of the cases of women and girls killed by people they know, trust, and are comfortable with.
According to the Deputy Director of Investigations at the DCI, Paul Wachira, femicide refers to the killing of a woman or a girl, particularly by a man, on account of her gender.
Most femicides in Kenya are motivated by many variables, including the revenge of a jilted lover, domestic abuse, and business disagreements or envy.
According to Wachira, although the term femicide has been used in law enforcement circles since 1976, the concept is under-recognised in Kenya, where officials struggle with the language around it.
“Many believe femicide is not a distinct crime,” he recently told a workshop.
However, Wachira is emphatic that femicide is a form of gender-based violence that requires specific attention and legal interventions.
The femicides have sparked widespread outrage in the country and ignited calls for urgent action from the authorities, activists, and the public. With each case, the demand for justice grows louder as the nation struggles to confront a crisis that continues to claim the lives of its women.

According to Dr Mutuma Ruteere, the Director of the National Crime Research Centre, the problem is bigger than is publicly perceived because not all the crimes are reported.

In a recent interview with Spice FM, he explained that the magnitude of femicides is also clouded by the fact that some of the victims of gender-based violence die of their injuries or other effects months later.

He said police data was accurate about the spikes in femicides. Still, there was a statistical possibility that enhanced reporting of femicides by the expanded media space was shedding more light on the crime and that annual femicide reports give a clearer picture.

Contrary to the widely perceived opinion, Dr Ruteere ruled out love triangles and organ trafficking as the most significant motives in femicides.

At least 14 women were killed in January 2024 alone, adding to the already staggering toll of 150 such cases in 2023.

By the end of October 2024, the National Police Service had documented 97 killings of women within just three months.

In December 2024, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi announced that 7,107 cases of sexual and gender-based violence had been recorded since September 2023.

What the government is doing about femicide

In January 2025, President William Ruto appointed a 35-member Technical Working Group on Gender-based Violence, underscoring the enormity of the problem in the country and the need to address it.
Chaired by one-time Deputy Chief Justice Nancy Baraza, the task force is expected to identify the causes of the violence, the trends, the hot spots, and the gaps in prevention, response, investigations, prosecution, data management, and survivor support systems, and recommend measures to curb the problem.

The DCI has set up a specialised desk to tackle GBV, but it is mainly reactive, just handling the cases as they arise.

Kenya does not have standardised data collection and reporting dedicated to femicide and GBV, making it difficult to get a clear scope of the crimes.

Experts have also pointed out the failure of the Penal Code to sufficiently capture the “unique dynamics” of femicide compared to homicide as another setback in the war against this aspect of GBV.

Rights activists and legal experts also note that whereas the Sexual Offences Act of 2006 addresses gaps in the laws governing sexual and GBV crimes, it does not explicitly address femicide.
Data from the 2022 Demographic and Health Survey shows that 34% of women reported experiencing violence since the age of 15.
Meanwhile, Kenya continues to grapple with the rising wave of femicide, with alarming statistics painting a grim picture of violence against women.
In the next pages, the JFJ team brings you some of the femicides in Kenya that have shocked communities.

On the morning of January 22, 2025, John Kiama Wambua, 29, would have passed for a regular traveller carrying a backpack on his way to his destination. No one could have suspected that the heavy bag was stuffed with the body parts of a young woman he had dismembered.Police officers from Huruma Police Station on patrol around Kelly Towers stopped Wambua at about 5am.

“He suspiciously clung to the heavy backpack. Having reason to believe that Wambua could be ferrying or trafficking something illegal, the officers opened the bag and, to their shock, found part of a mutilated human body,” said a detective investigating the matter.

Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, who took over the murder case, said that during interrogation, Wambua allegedly confessed that the body parts belonged to his wife, Joy Fridah Munani.

He then led the officers to his single-room house where more body parts of his 19-year-old victim were found.

According to the investigating officers, police recovered a knife believed to be the murder weapon and the victim’s clothes soaked in blood.

“The suspect confessed that the body parts belonged to his wife and led the officers to his house where more dismembered parts were recovered from under a bed,” said the detective.

The horrendous killing of Munani was among the latest in a worrying trend of femicide cases that have rocked Kenya.

Wambua was arraigned before Nairobi Chief Magistrate Gilbert Shikwe, who allowed the detectives to detain him for 21 days to give them time to complete their investigations.

Kassim Yakub, the lead investigating officer, told the court that the police needed the time to conduct the identification of the deceased through DNA testing, completion of the post-mortem, and assess the suspect’s mental health.

He added that the investigators were still searching for missing body parts and a potential second weapon believed to have been used to dismember the body.

Moses Wanjala Wasike sold a small plot of land received from his father to build his family house at Makhele village, Webuye West sub-county, in Bungoma county.Wasike, the last-born child, and his wife of two years, Sylvia Khayecha Wanjala, were still living in his parents’ compound.

Well aware of her husband’s problems with alcohol abuse, Wanjala decided to secure the proceeds of the sale, Ksh78,000, by entrusting it to her sister for safekeeping.

On the fateful day – January 26, 2023 – Wasike demanded an explanation from his wife of two years when he could not find the money.

Her explanation that her sister was keeping the money safe for them so enraged the 30-year-old boda boda rider that he viciously attacked his wife, beating her mercilessly.

During the trial, High Court judge Rose Ougo heard that due to Wasike’s excessive drinking, the couple’s union was rocked by domestic conflicts.

His family said they suspected he was abusing drugs.

Wasike told the judge that his wife triggered the fight by not giving him a proper response as to why the money was missing from where he had kept it in their house.

He maintained that he did not harm his wife and that he woke up his brothers, who found Wanjala unwell and took her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

One of his brothers testified that he rushed to the couple’s house after Wasike told him that his wife had fainted. He found her lying on the floor, unconscious. He claimed that she had no visible injuries, but her clothes were dusty.

The judge dismissed Wasike’s suggestion that Wanjala had been attacked by a third party, saying he was alone in the house with his wife and that she was found unconscious because of the beating he had given her.

A post-mortem showed that Wanjala died of head injuries caused by a blunt object.

Justice Ougo ruled that Wasike caused the injuries as there was no third party during the fight.

“The evidence irresistibly points to the accused (Wasike) as the one who assaulted the deceased. He had the opportunity to do so and he did assault the deceased, causing her grievous bodily harm,” said the judge. “Under section 206 (a) of the Penal Code, an intention to cause grievous harm amounts to malice afterthought for purposes of a murder conviction.”

Wasike maintained that he did not kill his wife. He added that he was not remorseful and that their families had done reconciliation rituals.

However, Wanjala’s family insisted that he deserved punishment for taking her life.

The community perceived Wasike as an individual embroiled in domestic conflicts and linked to criminal groups. He was also engaged in alcohol and drug abuse and did not respect authority.

His family wanted the court to give him a non-custodial sentence and said they were ready to take responsibility for his safety and would help him resettle and rebuild his life.

The prosecution opposed Wasike’s plea to be set free. In his report, the probation officer said the defendant did not deserve a non-custodial sentence.

While sentencing Wasike, Justice Ougo said: “I have considered the pre-sentence report, the accused’s mitigation, and the guidelines on sentencing. Murder is a very serious offence and the penalty provided in law is death. However, this court has the discretion to sentence the accused to a jail term or probation, depending on the facts of each case and mitigating factors.

“A life was lost and a sentence is not a measure of the value placed on the life of a victim. The victim was in an abusive marriage and lost her life due to injuries caused by the accused over monies she chose to keep because of the accused’s behaviour; his drinking and drug habit, which his own family confirms has been a problem to them and the community too.”

Justice Ougo noted that Wanjala’s family was still hurting and that the victim had died at the early age of 20 years as she sought to help her husband, only for the man to turn on her and inflict injuries that led to her death.

“The accused was not provoked at all. Though he seeks a non-custodial sentence, I am not persuaded he deserves it. Though his family wants him back home, the community does not. I note that the accused had been in remand for one-and-a-half years. I have taken this period into account,” said the judge as she sentenced Wasike to 20 years in prison.

Richard Kiptoo Maiyo was standing by the roadside at Kiremo village in Timboroa, Baringo county, along the Nakuru-Eldoret highway when, from a distance, he saw a man and a woman fighting.“It was around 5:30pm on December 3, 2014. When I looked closer, I saw that the man was holding a shiny object,” he testified in court.

Maiyo recognised the couple as Joshua Karanja and Tumaini Kwamboka, a woman who used to sell vegetables and fruits on the highway. The two were in a relationship.

He rushed to the scene and saw Kwamboka collapse while holding her abdomen. Karanja ran off as Maiyo approached, High Court judge Rachel Ng’etich heard.

He saw that Kwamboka’s intestines were exposed and that she was bleeding profusely. He shouted and people chased Karanja, but he managed to disappear into Timboroa Forest as they rushed Kwamboka to Timboroa Hospital. She died while being treated.

Lilian Moraa Labera, Kwamboka’s mother, recalled hearing people shout as she sold potatoes by the roadside.

She rushed to the scene only to find that her daughter had been stabbed. She rushed home to pick up a sweater for Kwamboka when she returned she was informed that Kwamboka had died in hospital.

A post-mortem report indicated that Kwamboka died of excessive bleeding and punctured lungs. She had multiple wounds in the stomach, neck, and hands.

Karanja presented himself to Lessos Police Station in the neighbouring Nandi county three days later. He said he had called his mother who informed him that police officers were looking for him. He maintained his innocence.

A police officer testifying during Karanja’s trial for the murder said a day after turning himself in, the suspect offered to show the investigators where he had hidden the murder weapon. The knife was retrieved from Timboroa Forest, buried about 10 kilometres from a road.

The trial dragged on for 10 years, but Karanja was finally sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment in 2024.

In his defence, Karanja said he had no previous criminal record and that he regretted the killing.

He claimed that police officers had tried to persuade him to admit he was guilty and in exchange they would drop the charges, but he declined.

He said he was a young man who had ambitions of becoming a teacher and had applied to Tambach Teachers College to gain knowledge and contribute to society.

In mitigation, Karanja told the court that during his long stay in custody, he had participated in various rehabilitation programmes, including counselling and anger management, relationships, substance abuse, peer pressure, negotiation, and communication.

His lawyer said Karanja had taken theological courses which had contributed to his spiritual growth and asked to be granted an opportunity to be let out of prison to preach to young people.

The prosecution reminded the court that Karanja cut short the life of a young woman and that although the murder happened more than a decade before, Kwamboka’s family was yet to come to terms with the loss.

In her judgment, Justice Ng’etich said Karanja’s actions pointed to his guilt.

“He ran away from the scene and hid the murder weapon. From the postmortem report, the deceased sustained serious injuries and the injuries have no semblance of being inflicted accidentally,” said the judge.

She added that Kwamboka was subjected to great pain before her death.

“The accused subjected the deceased to inhuman treatment which in turn affected their loved ones who are yet to heal from the loss. There is no indication that the accused has made any effort to offer an apology to the deceased’s family, which may explain the reason they are still in pain and yet to recover from the loss.

“I am, therefore, inclined to impose 25 years’ imprisonment. The period served in remand be computed in the sentence.”